In the last few years, the international media has devoted an unprecedented amount of attention to the Arab–Israeli conflict. Although those following the turbulent events in the Middle East have no
shortage of news resources to choose from, the journalism available isn’t always of
the highest quality. Our ability to make sense of regional developments is undermined by 24-hour media coverage, which focuses more on up-to-the-minute stories and reaction to them, as opposed to providing a context to these events. Furthermore, there are two additional problems bedeviling our consumption of news which are not limited solely to Middle East issues. The first of these is the growing tendency to ‘dumb down’ the presentation of news events. The second problem is the agenda or world view of the media, which distorts news presentation to the detriment of those who have limited understanding or knowledge of the issues.
There has never been a greater need for a balanced and responsible presentation of the issues in the Middle East, at a time when feelings and perceptions surrounding the conflict are running high on all sides. Journalists must not be afraid to ask difficult questions and to challenge the preconceptions of their readers.
This subject is close to my heart for very good reasons. My late father, Chaim Bermant, a leading columnist in the Jewish Chronicle for almost four decades and a regular contributor to other British national newspapers, cared deeply for the fate of the State of Israel and its people. Although he had firm Zionist convictions, he was ready to take Israeli governments to task and question policies such as the settlement building in the West Bank and Gaza. He was not afraid of pointing out inconvenient truths which were uncomfortable for his Jewish readers. Indeed, a great many of his readers strongly disagreed
with what he wrote but openly admitted that his column was the first thing they looked at in the newspaper.
Anticipating events is a dangerous undertaking for any journalist, but my father was occasionally willing to run the gauntlet. I would like to quote a brief excerpt from an article in the Jewish Chronicle that my father wrote on 2 April 1982:
Israel is, for the time being, the most powerful state in the Middle East … The Arabs know this better than anyone, and if Israel were to make real concessions now, she would be doing it, and would be seen to be doing it, from a position of strength. If, however, she waits while the hatreds simmer and the unrest grows, until they assume the gravity of a full-scale rebellion, and she is forced to make concessions out of weakness, she could be in danger. At present, Palestinian leaders … would be content with an independent state on the West Bank, but if they sensed weakness, they could think that the whole of Israel was within their grasp, and any hopes which may still exist for a comprehensive settlement could vanish.
I believe that the above passage is pertinent today, as one surveys the ascent of Hamas and Hizbullah in the region.
A good journalist will not be easily pigeonholed and you could certainly say this about Ze’ev Schiff — the veteran military commentator of the Haaretz newspaper who died in June this year. Schiff’s unparalleled knowledge and expertise was an invaluable guide to Middle East developments. He robustly defended Israel’s strategic interests at every corner, constantly warning of the dangers on the horizon. This is exemplified by his recurrent warnings of the growing Hizbullah rocket and missile infrastructure in southern Lebanon. Equally, as a hardened realist, he had no time for the Jewish settler movement, warning that its reckless ideological fervour endangered Israel’s strategic interests. Similarly, he believed that the IDF was losing its way following years of policing in the Palestinian territories. This became all too clear in the wake of Israel’s failures during the 2006 war in Lebanon.
Schiff’s gravitas and his unique standing among the Israeli elite meant that one could not ignore his strong criticisms or reservations. Thus, he attacked the Sharon Government for its claim that Israel didn’t have a Palestinian partner for negotiations. Indeed, he went so far as to suggest that Israel should negotiate with jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti:
History has provided us with examples of successful negotiations held by governments with leaders who were held in prison, for example, Nelson Mandela, leader of the blacks in South Africa, and Jomo Kenyatta, leader of the rebels in Kenya. Both eventually became presidents of their countries and great leaders who brought about agreements. Israel must also search for the proper Palestinian exemplar, and it just might be Marwan Barghouti.
Conor Cruise O’Brien has had a distinguished diplomatic and literary career, yet he has also written extensively on both Ireland and the Arab–Israeli conflict for the media and is sympathetic towards the State of Israel. O’Brien’s status as a former Irish diplomat and as an outsider looking in to the Arab–Israeli conflict has made his writing on the subject particularly interesting. During the 1980s and 1990s, he wrote often for The Times newspaper on the Middle East and his insights were disturbing and thought-provoking in equal measure. Although one didn’t have to agree with his bleak outlook on the conflict, he certainly made you sit up and think. He wrote, for example, in October 1990:
The idea of a ‘territory-for-peace solution’ is a mirage. Problems do have solutions
but what is involved in this case is not a problem but a conflict. Conflicts do not have solutions: they have outcomes.
Conor Cruise O’Brien has also excelled at demolishing accepted wisdoms. For example, in the same newspaper piece of October 1990, in the months following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and immediately following the deaths of nineteen Palestinians in the Temple Mount riots, he attacked the notion of a linkage between the annexation of Kuwait and a solution to the Arab–Israeli conflict. He argued that Western leaders had fallen for Saddam’s ‘bright idea’ to link the two, and that the Palestinians as Saddam’s allies would enhance this linkage through heating up the intifada. This argument has implications today in the wake of suggestions by world leaders that the resolution of the Arab–Israeli conflict is crucial for achieving peace and stability in the Middle East as a whole.
Where Conor Cruise O’Brien sees darkness, Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian often manages to see light in the bleakest of situations. He has written, for example, that Israel’s recent setback in Lebanon may result in the success of the Arab League peace initiative. Freedland is among the most eloquent, humane and insightful British journalists writing on the Middle East today. Numerous journalists in the liberal press are too busy drowning in their own self-righteousness to be credible observers of regional developments (Robert Fisk and John Pilger come to mind here), but Freedland is fortunately not among them.
The appalling consequences of the allied invasion of Iraq are played out on our television screens day in and day out, but there is another dimension to this tragedy which Freedland has described so starkly in relation to the failure to act on Darfur:
Back in the prelapsarian days of 1999, when Tony Blair went to Chicago to evangelise for liberal interventionism, the response to this closed door would have been to suggest that the rest of the world, led by the West, should bust its way in. But that was before the calamity of Iraq, which has tainted for a generation the Blairite doctrine of muscular humanitarianism. So no one talks seriously about military action against Khartoum now, not least because Bashir’s government is an Islamist one – and a western war against such a regime would look uncomfortably like confirmation of the clash of civilisations that both Blair and President Bush insist does not exist.
In a similar vein, Freedland was perspicacious in getting to the heart of the matter when writing during last year’s Lebanon War:
Hizbullah are not partisans in the forest, heroic resistance fighters on a student bedroom poster. There is no meaningful occupation they are seeking to end: Israel effectively withdrew from Lebanon six years ago … [Hizbullah’s] idea of foreign activity was the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires. Today
Hizbullah are the proxy army of Iran, whose president vows to wipe Israel off the map. All of which makes Israel’s fighting back legitimate. Which is not to say it is wise. I agree with those who believe the Israeli military has acted out of all proportion, at a terrible cost. But I don’t see how that constitutes a new and separate moral category from, say, Britain’s action in Iraq against the wholly bogus threat from Saddam – a war which has claimed tens of thousands of civilian lives.
The Middle East is likely to continue dominating the headlines in the months and years ahead. It is difficult enough to make sense of the death, destruction and general suffering in the region without having to read patronizing and self-serving interpretations of these events. One can but hope that there will also continue to be plenty of good and responsible journalism on the Middle East, providing honest, perceptive and colourful insights into this troubled region.
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