ZGram - 7/21/2001 - "Up to a point"

[Ingrid Rimland]

Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

July 21, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

I consider Israel Shamir, a Russian-born Jew, one of the finest journalists
that walk this planet in our times.  In my mind, he takes on more and more
of the features of that gentle, well-read man, Israel Shahak, who recently
passed away but left an intellectual legacy that will enrich the future.

However, I want a good thing to be perfect, naturally - and so I have been
after him to please give us - meaning Revisionists - a fair shake and a
break.  Here is a man of substance and of influence, and surely he must
know, as lesser men don't know...etc. etc.

Of course I knew the answer before I even asked.  His surface answer was
that he was not that interested in what really happened, World-War-II-wise;
his concern was focused on the here-and-now.  A deeper answer is embedded
in this essay I offer for your thoughts.

Israel Shamir is an Israeli journalist based in  Jaffa. His articles appear
on his site http://www.israelshamir.com/ or  write to
<<mailto:shamiri_@netvision.net.il>shamiri_@netvision.net.il

All his  articles are in public domain and can be distributed freely, but
hard copy  publications must ask for a permission.

Here is his essay, with a preface:

[START]

Dear friends,

I  had the honour to be invited to speak in the high international forum of
UNESCO  in Paris on the question of the media's coverage of the
Israeli/Palestine  conflict. It was an interesting gathering of
upper-middle level politicians and  journalists.

The  key speaker was UN Coordinator for the Middle East, the suave
Scandinavian Terje  Roed-Larsen. His idea was gradualism, back to Oslo,
step-by-step and  shwaye-shwaye. One felt he learned well the terrible
lesson of his  predecessor Count Folke Bernadotte, who was assassinated on
orders of the  Israeli Prime Minister and my namesake, Yitzhak Shamir.
Bernadotte was rash  enough to think he could tell Jews what to do. Terje
Larsen was very diplomatic,  very pro-peace process, now and for ever.
After all, he does not have to stay in  the Khan Yunis refugee camp to wait
for gradualism to bring fruit from a barren  tree.

The  Palestinian National Authority was represented by that eloquent
teddy-bear, the  round-faced Nabil Shaath and the witty and dignified elder
ambassador Nasser al  Kidwa. Nabil Shaath provided the journalists with a
much needed headline, when  he said that in Taba they almost made peace. My
headline would be "A miss is as  good as a mile". The invited Palestinian
journalists were prevented by Israeli  authorities from going to the
conference, while Israeli ones promised to come  but failed to appear.
There was a loud-mouthed French Jew in the audience, who  claimed to
represent an Israeli paper. He even tried to speak Hebrew to me, but  his
Sunday school lessons were not up to it. Anyway, he denounced me as a
communist, and thus unfit to speak in such distinguished  company.

Israel sent two ex-ministers, a youthful and  good-looking devotee of
Barak, Professor Yuli Tamir of Peace Now, and  General Amnon Lipkin-Shahak,
the ex-Chief of Staff for the IDF and a one-time  candidate for Prime
minister from the now defunct Centre Party. Yuli Tamir spoke  of Barak"s
largesse in Camp David, and of importance to keep "the Jewish  character of
the Jewish state". One wanted to ask "What about the importance of  keeping
the Aryan character of the Aryan state?" In the mind of an average Jew,
these two men probably exemplify the Israeli Left. This alone speaks
volumes  about Israel. If that is Israel's "Left", you can imagine the
Israeli Right. The  late lamented Israel Shahak used to say that the
Israeli Left is worse than the  Israeli Right. These two ex-ministers,
taken as a sample, served to remind us of  Shahak's maxim.

 Of  the ladies and gentlemen of the press who attended the conference, I
must  mention the incredibly tall and pleasant Scot, Sir Ian Gilmour, the
British  ex-Minister of Defence and a media personality, one time owner of
The Spectator,  a exuberant and feisty magazine that fell into evil
clutches of Conrad Black.  And the dynamic Phyllis Bennis of Washington IPS
called for Israeli withdrawal  from occupied territories. I think I heard
this notion before, but she was very  convincing anyway.

 It  was an important occasion, made possible thanks to the Palestinian
organizer of  the conference, Dr Saleem Fahmawi, a man who grew in a
refugee camp, made it all  the way to the UN, but never forgot the village
of his ancestors. There was also  a chance to meet some friends of
Palestine. Some hundred of them gathered at  night to hear my call for the
new strategy, i.e. "one man - one vote" solution.  It was a heated
discussion, with many young people present, and I left comforted  by the
general response. The following is the gist of my speech at the UNESCO
conference on Getting the Facts Right.

 UP TO A  POINT

 The media world was well described in the  brilliant novel by Evelyn
Waugh, The Scoop. Though the main plot of the  book unfolds in Africa, the
relevant scene takes place on Fleet Street, at the  office of the Daily
Beast owner, lord Copper. The media baron asked his  foreign editor from
time to time, is Yokohama the capital of Japan? Or Does Hong  Kong belongs
to us? The editor had two 'safe' answers. When lord Copper was  right, he
said, Definitely, lord Copper. When he was wrong, he said,  Up to a point,
lord Copper. That is the fork, from definitely to  up to a point, of the
permissible borders of mainstream media discourse.  We journalists are
dependent creatures. We would like to be honest and sincere,  but we have
to think of our mortgages, and of our vocation. If we step over the
borders established by the media owners, we would have to look for a
different  occupation altogether.

 Speaking of Palestine, the borders are  quite narrow. I would say they run
parallel to the borders of internal Jewish  Israeli mainstream discourse,
from Meretz to Sharon. If we compare it with  pre-Mandela South Africa, it
is similar to the White mainstream discourse, from  Nationalist to
Progressive, not including ANC. In my view, this discourse is  exclusivist,
even supremacist. It is based on sustaining Jewish supremacy in  Palestine.
It does not offer equality or even a safe future to the local  inhabitants.
But that is all you are allowed to say. You may support the  creation of
Palestinian reservations which puts you firmly in the Israeli  "liberal"
camp, or you can back mass expulsion and ethnic cleansing, and you  will be
called a hardliner or a hawk. These are the firm borders of the  discourse.
Whoever crosses the borders, and speaks for equality of a Jew and  Gentile
in the Holy Land, finds himself in the wilderness. His voice will be
silenced, maybe for good.

 I  know this first hand. I live in Jaffa, a town with a mixed population.
There are  Palestinians, Moroccans, Israeli Ashkenazi Jews, Russians, and
we all live  together rather harmoniously. But a lot of people who were
born in Jaffa live in  refugee camps and they are forbidden to return just
because of their religion or  ethnicity. I find it morally impossible, that
a Jew from New York, Paris or  Novosibirsk, like me, can come and live in
Jaffa, while a local man, born in  Jaffa, may not come back home. I called
for the return of the Palestinian  refugees and immediately lost my job
with Haaretz. That is the most  liberal Israeli newspaper.

 The case of Palestine coverage in the  media is special for one reason. We
have a peculiar vocabulary, developed for  the local coverage. If I kill
Ahmad, it would be reported that "Ahmad was killed  by an Israeli". But if,
God forbid, Ahmad would kill me, you would learn that "a  Jew was murdered".

As  in Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde, an Israeli may kill; but if an Israeli is
killed, he turns into a Jew. It is absolutely forbidden to speak about
Jewish  atrocities and murders. The Jews are forever victims. It often
appears we have  three nations in Palestine: Jews, Israelis and
Palestinians. Israelis may commit  crimes, but it is innocent - always
innocent - Jews that are murdered. If you  confuse these two words, and
refer to a murderer as "a Jew", you will be called  an anti-Semite, and
probably you will lose your job.

 It  should not be too complicated to cover our story. It is not even as
complicated  as other places of world concern. The right of national
self-determination  inclusive of autonomy or independence isn"t an easy
right to realize, as  Corsicans can tell you. Palestine should be easier to
cover: it is not the  question of national self determination, but of basic
human rights. Kosovo? In  Kosovo, Albanians were discriminated against and
tormented by Serb authorities,  but they always had the technical right to
vote and the Yugoslav government  never withdrew their citizenship. They
were distant second-class citizens, but  still citizens. Kurds in Turkey?
They also can vote.

The  coverage of Palestine should be easier, but it is not. A journalist
may write  and speak about marginal problems, like the Jewish settlers
beyond the Green  Line. But the basic power structure of Jewish dominance
in Palestine may not be  questioned. We may not say that the Palestinians
have no right to vote; no right  to move to other parts of their country
and no right to return to their homes in  the only country they have ever
known.

In  my opinion, the source of the media bias in covering the Palestinians
is  tremendously important. For it speaks volumes about the power structure
of the  US and Europe. It gives us unique feedback from the obscure world
of media  lords. And, it goes without saying, that 'establishment'
journalists are not  given much leeway on reporting on this valuable
feedback. They are always too  busy writing "definitely".

The  reason is obvious. Too many of our media lords subscribe to the notion
of Jewish  supremacy, and they are spread around the globe. In England,
there is Conrad  Black, he actually owns many papers in Canada, the US, and
in Israel. In our  country, he owns The Jerusalem Post. When he bought this
paper, he dismissed the  staff and hired people of his opinions. He is a
right wing Zionist, a zealous  supporter of Jewish supremacy.

 In  the US, there are too many of them to count. But allow us to mention
Mortimer  Zuckerman, a media lord and the current Head of the Presidents"
Conference of  American Jewish Organizations, the big daddy of all Jewish
groups in America. He  is one of the richest men in America, he made his
fortune speculating in real  estate and owns the third largest 'serious'
American weekly magazine, US News  and World Report. He also owns the
popular plebeian tabloid, The Daily  News, a major circulation in the New
York and New Jersey market. His  newspapers generally advocate the brutal
rule of market forces. With one  exception; they call for generous annual
subsidy of Israel by American tax  payers. Two ex-Prime Ministers of
Israel, Netanyahu of the war-mongering Likud  and Barak of the slightly
less hawkish Labour party supported Zuckerman in his  quest for the
leadership of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish  Organizations.
This side of the Ku Klux Klan, this association of 52 heads of  American
Jewish organizations is the most bigoted body of men in American  politics.
Haaretz recently reported, that Mortimer Zuckerman had  dismissed his
shiksa wife, in order to get this coveted chair. As long as  he stayed
married to a non-Jewish woman, his colleagues, Jewish billionaires,  would
not trust him. And he is one of the most influential publishers in the  US.

On  the other end of the planet, in Russia, the TV stations and newspapers
also are  under the ownership of Israeli citizens. One of them, Vladimir
Gusinsky, was  forced to part with his TV station. But his extremely
pro-Israeli staff was  quickly hired by another channel, belonging to
another Israeli citizen, Mr  Chernoi. In 1985, he was an accountant living
on a salary of 100 dollars a  month. Today he is worth 5 billion dollars,
owns virtually all the aluminium  plants in Russia, and lives in a nice
suburb of Tel Aviv. Currently, he is under  investigation for 34 murders,
money laundering and membership in the Russian  mafia. In a recent quip, he
was quoted as saying that "the media is not  business. the media is
politics and influence". He uses his media empire to  stifle all criticism
of Israel in Russia.

I  spoke recently to a young Russian military attach=C8 in one of the Wester=
n
capitals. He told me: your Israeli situation is similar to ours, but we
have  Chechnya a thousand miles away, while you have it next door. I asked
him: do you  want to say that Chechens have no right of vote? He was
amazed. He did not know  that the Palestinians have no right to vote. The
media of Gusinsky, Chernoi, and  Berezovsky, that is three powerful media
lords, all of them Israeli citizens,  took care to cultivate his ignorance.

Even in Sweden, traditionally supportive of the  Palestinian cause, since
the national newspapers were bought by Jewish  entrepreneurs, the coverage
of Palestine became more and more lopsided. I do not  know whether the new
owners had to ask for it explicitly, or their chief editors  just guessed
their desires, but the results were the same.

This international group of Jewish media lords,  >from Washington to
Moscow, is not subservient to the interests of Israel. But  support of
Israel is a part of their agenda. On the top of the list, is  globalisation
and neo-liberalism; what they call "freedom of market forces". On
political matters, they tend to distrust democracy and personal freedoms
while  making constant demands for corporate liberties.

Mutual support is also high on their list of  priorities. When Gusinsky was
under investigation for embezzling funds, the New  York Times and the
Washington Post, that is the late Mrs Kathryn Graham and Mr  Sultzberger,
both published virtually identical lead stories and editorials  supporting
the "Independent Russian Press". Independent, appears to be a code  word
for "Jewish-owned".

This should be a serious cause for concern.  When an Egyptian businessman
bought Harrods in London, the newspapers went into  a fury. The headlines
blared 'our national heritage is being taken away by  foreigners'. In
Israel, no outsider is allowed to own a newspaper. There was a  rich
Russian Jew, Gregory Lerner, who tried to buy a newspaper in Israel. He was
sent to jail for six years for various mafia-related crimes. It is worth
noting  that, before he made his rush into the media, nobody cared about
his offences.  An Iraqi Jew took over a newspaper, and very soon he found
himself in jail.  Because the media is not a business, it is the nerve
system of a  country.

In  my opinion, the case of Palestine is much more important for you, for
Europeans  and Americans, than just another case of injustice. Because it
proves that this  international group of Jewish media lords have become a
mite too powerful. In my  experience, Jewish journalists can be as
objective as any. Actually, the best  coverage of Palestine is done by
Jewish journalists, from Susanne Goldenberg of  the Guardian to Gideon Levy
of Haaretz. But it is easier to squeeze a camel  through the needle"s eye
than to find an objective media lord. This problem can  be solved without
actually removing media from the hands of individual  proprietors if
newspapers would be treated like precious water sources and other
all-important public utilities. That is, unless we want to delegate all
these  newspapers to the murky realm of ethnic press, and build from
scratch a new  network of free press.

[END]

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

Thought for the Day:

"Veracity is the heart of morality."

(Thomas Henry Huxley)