http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=89346
Robert Fisk: When journalists forget that murder is murder
'It's not the words Israelis and Palestinians use about each other that concern
me. It's our submission to them'
18 August 2001
What on earth has happened to our reporting of the Middle East? George Orwell
would have loved a Reuter's dispatch from the West Bank city of Hebron last
Wednesday. "Undercover Israeli soldiers," the world's most famous news agency
reported, "shot dead a member of Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction yesterday in
what Palestinians called an assassination." The key phrase, of course, was
"what Palestinians called an assassination". Any sane reader would conclude
immediately that Imad Abu Sneiheh, who was shot in the head, chest, stomach and
legs by 10 bullets fired by Israeli "agents" had been murdered, let alone
assassinated. But no. Reuters, like all the big agencies and television
companies reporting the tragedy of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, no longer
calls murder by its real name.
Back in the days of apartheid, no one minced their words when South African
death squads gunned down militant opponents. They talked about murder and
assassination. They still do when Latin American killers murder their political
opponents. I've yet to find a newspaper which shrinks from reporting the
"murder" - or at the least "assassination" - of IRA or UDA gangsters in
Belfast. But not when the Israelis do the murdering. For when Israelis kill,
they do not murder or assassinate, according to Reuters or CNN or the most
recent convert to this flabby journalism, the BBC. Israelis perpetrate
something which is only "called" an "assassination" by Palestinians. When
Israelis are involved, our moral compass our ability to report the truth dries
up.
Over the years, even CNN began to realise that "terrorist" used about only one
set of antagonists was racist as well as biased. When a television reporter
used this word about the Palestinian who so wickedly bombed the Jerusalem
pizzeria last week, he was roundly attacked by one of his colleagues for
falling below journalistic standards. Rightly so. But in reality our reporting
is getting worse, not better.
Editors around the world are requesting their journalists to be ever softer,
ever more mealy mouthed in their reporting of any incident which might upset
Israel. Which is why, of course, Israelis are so often reported as being killed
by Palestinians while Palestinians, some as young as 10, are killed in
"clashes" - "clashes" coming across as a form of natural disaster like an
earthquake or a flood, a tragedy without a culprit.
One sure way of spotting Israel's responsibility for a killing is the word
"crossfire". Mohamed el-Dura, the little Palestinian boy shot dead by Israeli
troops in Gaza last year, became an iconic symbol of the Palestinian
"intifada". Journalists investigating the boy's death, including The
Independent's Jerusalem, correspondent were in no doubt that the bullets which
hit him were Israeli (albeit that the soldiers involved may not have seen him).
Yet after a bogus Israeli military inquiry denounced in the Knesset by an
Israeli member of parliament, all the major Western picture agencies placed
captions on the photo for future subscribers. Yes, you've guessed it, the
captions said he was killed in "crossfire".
Wars have always produced their verbal trickeries, their antiseptic phrases and
hygienic metaphors, from "collateral damage" to "degrading the enemy". The
Palestinian-Israeli conflict has produced a unique crop. The Israeli siege of a
city has become a "closure", the legal border between Israel and the occupied
territories has become the "seam line", collaborators for the Israelis are
"co-operators", Israeli-occupied land has become "disputed", Jewish settlements
built illegally on Arab land have become "neighourhoods" - nice, folksy places
which are invariably attacked by Palestinian "militants".
And when suicide bombers strike "terrorists" to the Israelis, of course the
Palestinians call them "martyrs". Oddest of all is Israel's creepy expression
for its own extrajudicial murders: "targeted killings". If a dark humour exists
in any of this dangerous nonsense, I must admit that Israel has found a real
cracker in its expression for Palestinians who blow themselves to bits while
making bombs: they die, so the Israelis say, from "work accidents".
But it's not the words Israelis and Palestinians use about each other that
concern me. It's our journalistic submission to these words.
Just over a week ago, I wrote in The Independent that the BBC had bowed to
Israeli diplomatic pressure to drop the word "assassination" for the murder of
Palestinians in favour of Israel's own weird expression, "targeted killings". I
was subsequently taken to task by Malcolm Downing, the BBC assignments editor
who decreed this new usage. I was one-sided, biased and misleading, he said;
the BBC merely regarded "assassination" as a word that should apply to
"high-ranking political or religious figures".
But the most important aspect of Mr Downing's reply was his total failure to
make any reference to the point of my article the BBC's specific recommended
choice of words for Israel's murders: "targeted attacks". The BBC didn't invent
that phrase. The Israelis did.
I don't for a moment believe Mr Downing realises what he did. His colleagues
regard him as a professional friend. But he has to realise that by telling his
reporters to use "targeted killings", he is perpetrating not only a
journalistic error but a factual inaccuracy. So far, 17 totally innocent
civilians including two small children have been killed in Israel's
state-sponsored assassinations. So the killings are at the least very badly
targeted indeed. And I can't help recalling that when the BBC's own Jill Dando
was so cruelly shot dead on her doorstep, there was no doubt that she was
killed by a man who had deliberately "targeted" her. But that's not what the
BBC said. They called it murder. And it was.
Within the past week, CNN, the news agencies and the BBC have all been chipping
away at the truth once more. When the Jewish settlement at Gilo was attacked by
Palestinian gunmen at Beit Jalla, it once more became a "Jewish neighbourhood"
on "disputed" land even though the land, far from being in "dispute", legally
belongs to the Palestinian people of Beit Jalla ("Gilo" being the Hebrew for
"Jalla"). But viewers and readers were not told of this.
When the next state-sponsored assassination of a Palestinian Hamas member took
place, a television journalist - BBC this time - was reduced to telling us that
his killing was "regarded by the Israelis as a targeted killing but which the
Palestinians regard as an assassination". You could see the problem. Deeply
troubled by the Israeli version, the BBC man had to "balance" it with the
Palestinian version, like a sports reporter unwilling to blame either side for
a foul.
So just watch out for the following key words about the Middle East in
television reporting over the next few days: "targeted killings",
"neighbourhood", "disputed", "terrorist", "clash" and "crossfire". Then ask
yourself why they are being used. I'm all for truth about both sides. I'm all
for using the word "terrorism" providing it's used about both sides'
terrorists. I'm sick of hearing Palestinians talking about men who blow kids to
bits as "martyrs". Murder is murder is murder. But where the lives of men and
women are concerned, must we be treated by television and agency reporters to a
commentary on the level of a football match?
