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False witnesses ... misleading coverage of Israel's terrorist activities
(Tim Llewellyn, The Guardian, January 16, 2003)
Whenever Israel has been exposed as an aggressor - in Lebanon in 1978 and 1982, or during the first intifada of the late 1980s - its media doldrums have been temporary. The efforts of its spin doctors, the US government and media, in conjunction with a weak Arab communications operation, have usually combined to make Israel's broad version of events prevail. . . . These continue to give the impression of a struggle between equal forces. . . . The fact of Palestinian resistance against a foreign occupying power is rarely emphasised. TV news viewers would have been unaware that last month Israeli soldiers killed 75 Palestinians, 14 of them children under 18. Then, two suicide bombers attacked Tel Aviv - the first such attack for six weeks. It was only when it had this "peg" that the BBC reported the rate of Palestinian casualties. Thus, suicide bombs are made to appear as the beginning of a new "cycle of violence", rather than an outcome of the occupation. . . . John Pilger's "Palestine Is Still the Issue" . . . this programme was not "campaigning" journalism. It was a painstaking portrayal of the humiliation Israel's soldiers and politicians visit daily on the Palestinians: not just the deaths, injuries and arrests, but the intrusions of the military into every aspect of a Palestinian's life. . . . In response, Israel and its supporters went into over drive. Hundreds of complaints flowed in to Carlton and ITV. Carlton's chairman, Michael Green, took the unprecedented step of condemning his own company's output, calling the Pilger documentary "a tragedy for Israel as far as accuracy is concerned". An official complaint was made to the Independent Television Commission. . . . The ITC's ruling this week that the programme "was not in breach of the ITC programme code ... Adequate opportunity was given to a pro-Israeli government perspective" is a serious setback for Israel's struggle to present itself as the victim of violence rather than its progenitor. . . . So the ITC ruling is a shot across the bows of both the BBC and ITN news managers, approving a reporter's account of a violation of human rights that mainstream bulletins and current affairs discussions routinely duck.

posted by LoZo 4:02 PM

 

Israeli Parliamentary Members Call for Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians
(Alison Weir, CounterPunch, February 8, 2003)
Americans returning from the Palestinian Occupied Territories reported that the Israeli government appeared to be preparing to "transfer" the Palestinian population; in other words, to forcibly remove them from their homes and transport them elsewhere. . . . A major Israeli daily reported that the military was studying the tactics that had been used by Germany in the Warsaw Ghetto, looking for tips on how to control an unwanted, violently rebelling population. Palestinians sent out emails describing Israeli soldiers going from house to house, counting the occupants--"taking inventory of us," as one person wrote. . . . 178 Israeli academics and over 1,000 American professors have written two letters to the world community forcing us all to consider just such a possibility. And unlike many other writers, they are calling "transfer" by its real name: ethnic cleansing. . . . In letters released on the internet they write: "We are deeply worried that "the 'fog of war' [during an invasion of Iraq] could be exploited by the Israeli government to commit further crimes against the Palestinian people, up to full-fledged ethnic cleansing." . . . For that is what "transfer" is: a crime against humanity. It is what Hitler espoused; what Milosevic urged. It is the getting rid of people of the wrong kind... of the wrong race, the wrong ethnicity, the wrong religion... the wrong people. It is, by its very nature, violent, racist, cruel. It is the uprooting of human beings from their land, their homes, their heredity, their lives; a ripping out, by the very roots, of an entire culture.

posted by LoZo 2:06 PM

 

Sharon And Settlers Destroy Palestinian Infrastructure
(Neve Gordon and Catherine Rottenberg, Znet, February 3, 2003)
Nine Palestinian farmers were taken to the nearby military base. When they arrived soldiers jumped on them, tied their hands behind their backs and fixed a piece of cloth around their eyes. They were led to a deserted area in the base and told to sit on the ground, while the soldiers threatened, and cursed them, hour after hour. Whoever dared to ask why he was being held, requested to go to the bathroom, or complained in any way, was kicked, slapped, or held down with his head to the ground. The farmers, turned prisoners� only offence was an unsuccessful attempt to plow their land. . . . This incident is part of the ongoing campaign carried out by the Israeli government and the Jewish settlers; a campaign whose major objective is to undermine the infrastructure of existence of the occupied Palestinians, so that they, in turn, will bow down to Israeli demands and give up the claims to their land . . . the following day the Palestinians contacted Ta�ayush and informed us that settlers had taken over the fields and were beginning to plant trees on the very land that the farmers had been trying to plow for over two months. The very land that -- only a day before the Civil Administration had promised would be �available� and �safe� for tilling. Those that went back to the military base to take the tractors, were once again tied and blindfolded and held for hours before they were released. The military was determined to suppress all Palestinian efforts to live a normal life.

posted by LoZo 1:01 PM