Mike Berger
So Richard Calland finds “Schadenfreude” in the events of September 11 and Israeli casualties a cause for quiet celebration (“A murderer unleashed”, April 12).
Since the Mail & Guardian is hardly different to other South African publications reporting on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, let’s examine the issue. It kicks off with a front page picture of Israeli soldiers searching United Nations employed Palestinians, with their hands in the air, before admitting them to al-Ayn refugee camp “where hundreds of Palestinian detainees … are being held”. All this under the headline “Israel faces the world’s wrath” in overpowering black print.
We jump to pages 12 and 13 where a number of pieces on the Middle East conflict appear. One is a reasonably factual article by Ewen MacAskill, under the theme for the week “Israel faces global wrath”, containing an inset highlighted in pink headed “Humanitarian crisis grows in the West Bank”. This reports, amid other accusations, that Annan was “appalled by the conditions on the ground for the Palestinian population”. The same Annan who has been singularily unappalled previously by the plight of the Palestinian refugees kept in camps and poverty by their oil-drenched neighbours for decades.
One should not omit our old friend Suzanne Goldenberg who usually directs her propaganda from that fortress of oppression, Israel itself. On this occasion (page 13) she exploits the real misery of Nablus, which she naturally attributes entirely to arbitrary Israeli brutality rather than the awful realities of war and the deliberate embedding of the terrorist infrastructure within the teeming civilian population of the Palestinian towns and camps. This process is being repeated for Jenin.
It was the same Goldenberg who floated the story that Israeli snipers were targeting the eyes and legs of Palestinians in order to lower mortality (sic). That story, having served its purpose, died a quiet death.
But let’s skip to Calland whose article is headed “A murderer unleashed” and contains an inset with the words “That this Israeli army should behave in a barbarian fashion is hardly surprising. It is led by a barbarian.” I will return to his poisonous piece, which stretches across two pages.
Neither the tone nor the content of the articles and headlines in the M&G are exceptional and if they differ from the usual it is in allowing pro-Israeli or neutral voices some space. For example, Tova Herzl, the Israeli ambassador, has her say in a quiet article headed “End terrorism before peace”. These facts are relevant to a theme introduced by Calland, and I quote, “the Israeli propaganda machine [that] has so expertly deceived the world”. A theme that echoes Robert Fisk in the Cape Times “Israel leads the propaganda war”.
Really? Is the M&G last week an example of Israel winning the propaganda war? Are the SABC, e.tv, The Sunday Independent (despite its belated acknowledgement of Israeli realities last weekend) examples of Israel winning the propaganda war? Is the fact that an Israeli supporter or neutral commentator occasionally manages to correct a small portion of the disinformation that appears daily in the world’s media evidence of Israel’s expert propaganda machine?
Elsewhere Fisk is outraged that this could be interpreted as “racist”, that is, anti-Jewish. But what about Calland? Let’s quote him: “Finally let us be honest. Who does not feel a sense of Schadenfreude at the sight of the World Trade Centre towers crashing to the ground? It is the same instinct that now leads us to quietly celebrate the news of an Israeli casualty.”
Well, since Mr Calland asks, I for one do not celebrate (quietly or otherwise) September 11 or Palestinian deaths and Palestinian misery. And, to my knowledge, I don’t have any Jewish friends who do.
We are left to imagine the degree of Schadenfreude and celebration with which Calland and his friends would greet the destruction of Israel and, who knows, the Great Satan itself.
Propaganda has always been part of human conflict but we’re seeing in the Middle East conflict the technology and culture of modern communications being put to new and horrifying uses. The strategy is straightforward:
Conduct a ruthless terrorist campaign to destroy the morale and economy of Israel;
Combine this with a relentless public relations campaign to disguise the true objectives and methods;
Use public opinion to block Israel’s defensive response.
Success depends on a number of factors. The power of the visual image, the susceptibilty of journalists for the immediate, personal and dramatic, the rapid dissemination of “news” out of context to a world primed to respond with outrage to perceived moral issues, the presence of large numbers of people ready to follow a cause with passionate intensity and, of course, the sheer difficulty of accessing the “truth” by the ordinary person in the street.
In the particular context of the Middle East other factors also come into play. In part this includes the one billion Muslims worldwide whose religious and ethnic loyalties can be expertly enlisted in the service of a cause presented as a desperate fight of coreligionists against oppression. But over and above these elements, lies the malevolence and dishonesty of many journalists and politicians who see in this conflict a means of pursuing personal agendas.
While the immediate victims are both the Palestinians and the Israelis, the ultimate victims are all of those who hope for a world in which peoples can settle their differences within the bounds of rationality and decency. Perhaps the great task of the new millennium is to find a way of using communications to serve truth and democracy rather than fanaticism and hatred. It will not be easy.
Mike Berger is a former professor of chemical pathology at the University of Natal