Le Monde diplomatique
November 2000

http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/en/2000/11/07mideastmedia

MIDDLE EAST: THE FAULTLINE
Media omissions, army lies

by AMIRA HASS *

Since the outbreak of what has become known as the Aqsa intifada, the
Israeli media have been going by the declarations of military and civilian
spokesmen. Normally this information is fairly precise, but this time it is
full of
lies, omissions and imprecision. One example: journalists were led to
believe
that the excessive use of force to disperse demonstrators was justified by
the
danger to which Israelis soldiers and civilians were exposed. This was the
case on 29 September at Friday prayers at the Aqsa mosque when,
according to army spokesmen, overexcited youths threw stones at Jews
praying at the Western Wall.

The Israeli human rights organisation B'tselem published a report which
confirms the version of Palestinian eyewitnesses. It says the stones were
aimed at the armada of Israeli police whose presence on the Aqsa precinct
was a provocation. What is more, the police did not used tear gas to stop
the
stone throwing but immediately opened fire with rubber-covered bullets which
kill when fired at close range, as was the case here. The blood shed on this
holy Muslim place unleashed a wave of anger throughout the country and the
death of young Palestinians added fuel to the fire.

By 24 October 115 Palestinians had been killed and 4,500 wounded in the
occupied territories, plus 12 dead and 1,650 injured inside Israel proper.
On
the Israeli side, there were eight dead. It took dozens of B'tselem teams of
investigators to verify the circumstances of each of these dramas. But all
the
witnesses have reported that, since the start, the Israeli army almost never
used tear gas, despite the fact that it is an extremely effective way of
dispersing crowds without casualties. Instead, the army regularly used
snipers
who targeted demonstrators, aiming at the upper part of their bodies in the
first days of the clashes 70% of the dead and wounded had been hit above
the belt, according to Palestinian medical sources.

Most of the Israeli media swallowed the story that the soldiers had only
used
weapons if their lives were in danger. It took filming of the gunfire to
demonstrate that this was not the case; only then did the army admit to some
"deplorable mistakes". The only possible conclusion is that the army had
given
the order to shoot in order to put an end to the disturbances. As we know,
the opposite happened.

On 6 October the army spokesman reported that soldiers acting as outposts
for the settlement of Netzarim in the Gaza Strip had twice opened fire on
Palestinians who were shooting at them. On that day four Palestinians died
and 24 were wounded at this crossroads. I was there. The spokesman failed
to say anything about the dozens of isolated shots and bursts of gunfire
that
had come from the settlement itself. He also forgot to mention that
soldiers,
positioned on distant surveillance towers, had used submachine guns against
thousands of unarmed demonstrators. The aim was clear: to dissuade the
young protesters from approaching the Israelis fortified forward positions.
In
this case, the soldiers were not defending their lives.

The spokesmen had reported almost all the shootings by armed Palestinians.
But the Israeli media were unaware of two facts. First, in general armed
Palestinians only opened fire when the crowd had already been strafed by
snipers out to kill. Second, Palestinian shots were singularly wide of the
mark,
as shown by the toll of victims on either side. In addition, Palestinian
officials
condemned what they called this "shooting at the sun".

The media meticulously detailed every clash of this sort, described as a
"heavy
bombardment" of the Israeli military outpost. In so doing, it reinforced the
feeling among public opinion that Israel was facing a war launched by an
army
of similar strength to its own. Based on army information, Israel radio also
reported that Palestinian ambulances were transporting tires and weapons to
the scenes of the clashes. In fact, the Palestinians could easily use
private
vehicles to do this. In addition, the Red Cross is present everywhere the
clashes take place and it controls the ambulances. This was a piece of
disinformation to cover the outrageous attacks on the ambulances by Israeli
troops and the killing of one of their drivers.

The names of the Palestinian victims were never reported on radio, TV or in
the newspapers (apart from Haaretz): their anonymity spared the Jewish
public from seeing the grief of their families. It was easier to present the
events
as a plot orchestrated by the Palestinian Authority. But in fact, Yasser
Arafat
knows that all big clashes and widescale agitation will one day rebound on
his
own authoritarian regime and its failure to keep its promise to create a
truly
independent Palestinian state.

All this disinformation crowns seven years of distorted coverage of the Oslo
process. In general, the Israelis have been blind and deaf to the complaints
of
the Palestinians, for whom the interminable peace negotiations were bringing
neither justice nor dignity. Undeniably, Oslo has locked the population of
the
Palestinian territories into so many fragmented cages, reinforced the
settlements and tied economic development to Palestinian acceptance of a
new form of Israeli control.


* Correspondent for Haaretz (Tel Aviv) in the Palestinian territories,
author
of Drinking the Sea, Henry Holt, New York, 1999

Translated by Wendy Kristianasen



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