The long-running and bitter conflict in Israel and Palestine is fought on many fronts, among them media coverage and the use of language.
A great deal is at stake, in that the words chosen can boost or reduce claims to moral legitimacy. Interested parties spend a great deal of time scanning the media for the smallest indication of bias one way or the other.
One of those is Adam Levick, the managing editor of the website CiF Watch, who wrote to complain about the use of the term "political prisoners" in a story on the Mail & Guardian website. The report dealt with support from Archbishop Desmond Tutu for a campaign to have Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti? and others freed from Israeli prisons.
CiF Watch is devoted to checking the London Guardian (and obviously some other media) for signs of anti-Semitism and "assault on Israel's legitimacy", according to its tagline.
Levick said the report was misleading in that it failed to point out that Barghouti was convicted of murder. He could therefore not be called a political prisoner "using even the broadest understanding of a term widely understood as referring to those imprisoned merely due to their political beliefs".
Barghouti, a prominent leader of the Fatah movement, was sentenced in Israel in 2004 to five consecutive life sentences for the deaths of five people in three attacks he was found to have directed. He refused to participate in the trial on the grounds it was illegitimate, and has continued to play an influential role in the Palestinian leadership.
Having looked at various approaches to the use of the term "political prisoner", from Burma to Azerbaijan, I can't agree with Levick on its proper definition.
Amnesty International makes a distinction between "prisoners of conscience" and "political prisoners". In its usage, the term political prisoner "includes any prisoner whose case has a significant political element: whether the motivation of the prisoner's acts, the acts in themselves, or the motivation of the authorities".
It will call for the immediate release of "prisoners of conscience" – imprisoned only for beliefs – but will call for a fair trial for political prisoners. In the context of Armenia and Azerbaijan, the Council of Europe adopted a detailed definition, which contains an important exclusion: "Those deprived of their personal liberty for terrorist crimes shall not be considered political prisoners if they have been prosecuted and sentenced for such crimes according to national legislation and the European Convention on Human Rights."
Although this represents the narrower view, it is not clear how it would apply this exclusion to cases such as that of Barghouti. European parliamentarians have used the term in connection with Palestinians held in Israel.
It is worth noting that among those held in Israeli jails is a significant number of people in administrative detention, who have not been found guilty of any crime, let alone political or other violence.
For South Africans, the example of Nelson Mandela is particularly striking. He was jailed for sabotage, and was the leader of a movement that conducted a campaign of violent resistance to apartheid. The government of the time applied the term "terrorist" to him and his colleagues, but it didn't stick. Even at the time, they were referred to as political prisoners.
In fact, trying to remove the reference to the political context of Barghouti's case – he is sometimes called the Palestinian Mandela – seems to me to be a political statement of its own. It amounts to airbrushing out an important piece of information to class him as no different to "ordinary" criminals. However one feels about what he did, leaving out the political context is simply inaccurate, and amounts to bias of a different kind.
I have seen the Guardian and other newspapers refer to "prisoners regarded by Palestinians as political". This seeks to avoid the controversy by placing some distance between the term and the newspaper's voice, but I think it is wordy and unnecessary. The direct reference to political prisoners is perfectly justified.
As for the M&G report, I did feel that it would benefit from a little more detail on the charges for which Barghouti was sentenced. It has been edited accordingly, replacing a general reference to his being jailed for his struggle for liberation.
The little things
There is another illustration of the difference that apparently minor choices of wording make in last week's M&G. The front page drew attention to a profile of Mmusi Maimane with a headline referring to him as "The DA's Obama of Soweto".
The headline on page 15 omitted the reference to the party, reading: "Mmusi Maimane: The Obama of Soweto". The street poster was similar.
Without reference to the party, the headline – and even more so the street poster, without the article to give context – sounded as though it was the voice of the newspaper. It seemed a pretty ringing endorsement, particularly read against the headline above a parallel piece on Julius Malema's skill as a public speaker ("A rabble-rousing orator", November 22).
The DA must have been pleased.
The Mail & Guardian's ombud provides an independent view of the paper's journalism. If you have any complaints you would like addressed, you can contact me at [email protected]. You can also phone the paper on 011 250 7300 and leave a message.