Israel’s free ride ends

01.13.2009 | The Guardian
By Michelle Goldberg

As Israel pulverises Gaza, questions and doubts about Israeli policy are
becoming more prominent in the American media

It’s a common, almost clichéd observation that the American media is less

critical of Israeli policy than the Israeli media. In mainstream American

depictions of the ceaseless misery of the Middle East, Israeli righteousness and

Arab violence are routinely emphasised. The reality of Israeli settlements and

Palestinian suffering have been, at best, a footnote.

Conservatives often complain that the news isn’t even more biased toward the

Jewish state – or the most hawkish elements within it – but such carping both

obscures and reinforces the real distortion in American Middle East coverage,

serving as a pre-emptive warning to any outlet that might show too much sympathy

for the Palestinians. (The crudeness of Israel’s most vociferous detractors on

the far left doesn’t help, since it further marginalises criticism of Israel as

the preserve of cranks who can’t see a difference between Dachau and Jenin.)

Slowly, though, something is changing. As Israel pulverises Gaza, questions and

doubts about Israeli policy are becoming more prominent in the American media.

The failure of the war in Iraq and the attendant discrediting of neoconservatism

has opened up new space in the American conversation. With the American right

dejected and weakened, there’s less pressure on the press to display the kind of

boorish one-sidedness that self-congratulatory conservatives like to call “moral

clarity”. Israel’s disproportionate retaliation in Gaza is increasingly

recognised as both brutal and, in all likelihood, ultimately futile. In

destroying Gaza, Israel is also destroying the American taboo that has ensured

the country such unstintingly favourable media coverage.

On December 31, CNN took on the contentious question of whether Israel or Hamas

broke the ceasefire, precipitating the current fighting. First, the network aired

a clip of the liberal Palestinian legislator Mustafa Barghouti saying: “The world

press community or media community is overwhelmed with the Israeli narrative,

which is incorrect. The Israeli spokespersons have been spreading lies all over.

The reality and the truth is that the side that broke this truce and this

ceasefire was Israel. Two months before it ended, Israel started attacking Rafah,

started attacking Hamas and never lifted the blockade on Gaza.” Ordinarily, TV

journalists would follow such a clip – if they even aired it in the first place –

with one of Israel making its case, and would stop at that, leaving an audience

already predisposed against the Palestinians to sort out the truth. Instead,

anchor Rick Sanchez did something that should be commonplace, but sadly is not:

he endeavoured to find out who was right.

“And you know what we did? I’ve checked with some of the folks here at our

international desk, and I went to them and asked: ‘What was he talking about, and

do we have any information on that?'” said Sanchez. And he reported that his

sources confirmed that Barghouti was right.

Since then, questioning and outright condemning Israeli actions have become

increasingly common in the establishment press. On January 8, the op-ed page of

the New York Times ran three opinion pieces critical of Israel. “When it is

shelled by its neighbour, Israel has to do something,” wrote columnist Nick

Kristof. “But Israel’s right to do something doesn’t mean it has the right to do

anything.” Last week, a new issue of Time magazine appeared, its cover showing a

star of David behind rows of barbed wire and the headline “Why Israel can’t win”.

The extremely conservative Wall Street Journal opinion page ran a piece by George

Bisharat with the headline “Israel is committing war crimes”. “Israel’s current

assault on the Gaza Strip cannot be justified by self-defence,” it began.

“Rather, it involves serious violations of international law, including war

crimes. … Hamas fighters have also violated the laws of warfare, but their

misdeeds do not justify Israel’s acts.”

No doubt, some of Israel’s most aggressive partisans are going to be alarmed by

this sudden shift in the American discourse. They’re used to dismissing the

world’s criticism of Israel as the mutterings of antisemites and bien-pensant

third-worldists. The US has been a cocoon that protects Israel and its advocates

from facing harsh judgments. But Israel has been ill served by America’s endless

indulgence. What is happening in Gaza endangers, first and foremost, the

benighted people who live there and who are dying by the hundreds. It also

endangers Israel itself, pushing already elusive prospects for peace ever more

out of reach.

An American media that turned a blind eye to Israeli expansionism and human

rights abuses ultimately made the Jewish state less, not more, secure. Without

the US putting pressure on Israel to dismantle the settlements and loosen the

blockade in Gaza, leaders there had neither the incentive nor the political cover

to do so. Now that the American press is displaying a bit of courage in facing an

unfolding catastrophe abetted by American leadership, perhaps our politicians

will have room to do the same.