So it was with interest that I read the many articles posted on numerous websites, editorials and blogs about the genocide taking place in Palestine, and yes I use that word 'genocide' deliberately. When one proclaims to be acting in self-defence, the very first rule is 'reasonable force'. Every humanitarian organization monitoring the situation in Gaza has unequivocally stated that the civilian death toll is unacceptable and Israels bombing of UN schools is a violation of international law.
It's in the reporting of the genocide that I find the arguments for and against Israels aggression most intriguing. Israeli apologists would have you believe that any statement critical of Israel is anti-Semitic. The fact is that there are very many Jews throughout the world who are themselves critical of Israels current bombardment of Palestine. There are very many who would have you believe that exposing Israeli war crimes is an attack on Judaism. There are those who would have you believe that Israels right to self-defense is an all-encompassing right that nullifies the rights of innocent civilians, women and children in Palestine. More worrisome are those who would have you believe that any criticism of Israel is akin to using the 'K' word in public. It's become almost taboo to talk about.
A recent article published by the Afro-Middle East Centre titled "Gaza's Challenges For Journalism" by Jane Duncan was most enlightening.
I post the article in it's entirety for fear of taking excerpts and distorting it's context.
The Israeli attacks on Gaza over the past month has focused attention globally on how Gaza was covered by the media, how much bias there might be in various reports, and whether the objectives of journalism were served by the manner of coverage. Jane Duncan examines the challenges facing journalists in the case of Gaza, and suggest that there are various tasks that journalists must undertake that go beyond the notion of 'balance'
In the past few weeks,
the South African media have been dominated by the unfolding catastrophe
in Gaza and South Africans have had to rely largely on foreign coverage
of this issue to understand it.
The mainstream
US media continued parroting the Israeli line that the country was
acting in self defence, or insisting on its right to be ‘free from
tunnels and rockets’, in Secretary of State John Kerry’s words, but
Israel is clearly meting out collective punishment to Palestinians. At a
deeper level, though, Israel’s motivation might well be to scupper
Palestinian unity (albeit strained) after years of bitter conflict
between Hamas and Fatah, and the killing of three Israeli teenagers
provided a pretext to do just that. A united Palestine would be deeply
threatening to Israeli interests.
What are the
tasks of journalism in South Africa in reporting on Gaza? Mainstream
journalism is not as embedded in the governmental power structure as it
is in the USA, giving it a greater degree of autonomy to tell important
but difficult stories.
Nevertheless, there is a
temptation to rely on foreign news agencies for their copy, increased
by the massive resource constraints in many newsrooms. Reporting on the
Israeli/Palestinian conflict often unleashes massive emotional responses
from South Africans. Journalists working on this beat may also be
tempted to produce sanitised copy, adhering to the basic tenets of
‘objective’ journalism to avoid becoming embroiled in energy-consuming
controversies.
This form of journalism is,
however, a cop-out, and ultimately a route away from good journalism,
rather than a route towards it. ‘Objective’ journalism requires
journalists to practise a number of strategic rituals, including seeking
balance by quoting the spokespeople in a conflict, even if the
spokespeople themselves have not been eyewitnesses to the events they
are asked to speak about. Ostensibly, a journalist’s task has been
discharged once the story has been ‘balanced’ in this way.
This
ritual can lead to journalists not wanting to take sides on matters of
considerable public importance when they really need to. ‘Balance’ means
that they don’t have to go out on a limb and assess who is right and
who is wrong, or whether the viewpoints being presented are just or
unjust. This is not to suggest that both sides should not be quoted, but
that the enquiry should not end once they are. ‘Balance’ should not be
used as an excuse to avoid investigation, and even independent thinking.
Take
the Israel Defense Force claim that it bombed a UN school housing
refugees from the conflict, because the rockets had been fired ‘from the
vicinity of the school’. This explanation should raise red flags for
any enquiring journalist, yet there is little evidence of the foreign
media having probed this claim; the story had been balanced, and hence
concluded.
Hamas’s members are not angels; some
have committed despicable acts. But significant struggles are rarely
free from contradictions. Yet, in spite of its messiness, at a
fundamental level, there is a right and a wrong in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unquestionably, Israel is using force that
is disproportionate to the level of threat it faces. It operates in a
global climate of near impunity, disrespecting international law, and
getting away with it because it has powerful friends.
The
modern state of Israel was founded on the dispossession and
displacement of Palestinians. Even after the creation of the Palestinian
Authority, Israel continued to expand its settlements and deprived the
Palestinian territory of substantial autonomy by controlling many basic
functions that a sovereign state would otherwise control. In Gaza,
conditions have been aggravated by the blockade since 2006. Israel’s
expansionist policies have fuelled deep resentment, and no lasting peace
can come out of a fundamentally unjust situation.
These
conditions have turned Palestinian life into a living hell. It is in
this context that the Palestinian resistance movement has been launching
rockets into Israel. An often-heard argument is that Israel has a right
to self defence, but somehow the same right doesn’t apply to
Palestinians.
Under international law, occupied
populations have a right to resist, including militarily, providing
that this resistance does not target civilians. In this regard, much has
been made of the fact that Palestinian rockets have been targeted at
civilians, but the vast majority of those killed by Israeli strikes have
been civilians, which makes them guilty of the very crime they accuse
Hamas of.
Israel supporters will no doubt cry
‘bias’ if journalists make these points, but the situation is inherently
unbalanced. If journalists point this out, they are not being biased;
rather, they are being balanced in a much more meaningful sense.
Journalism
should be defined by values, rather than by strategic rituals;
otherwise it risks becoming an unthinking, unreflective practice. These
values should include a commitment to truth telling, particularly in
situations where powerful actors want to hide the truth to maintain
their grip on power. If journalists fail to recognise the fundamental
rights and wrongs in a situation, they abdicate their democratic
responsibilities to society. The journalism of objectivity and balance
should not trump the journalism of justice and truth.
Journalism
will also be a lifeless activity without a commitment to democracy and
social justice. This means prioritising the stories of people who are
silenced or marginalised by mainstream discourses, as they often tell us
a great deal about how social power really functions.
The
public sphere tends to be an elite space, which means that, all too
often, media discourses come to us already inherently unbalanced. The
Israeli state has tremendous traction in the mainstream foreign media,
which places an obligation on journalists to seek out the voices of
those displaced and disadvantaged by its policies, and social media make
this much more possible than it was six years ago, when Gaza flared up.
There
are those who are queasy about condemning Israel’s actions too loudly,
given the historical context in which the country was established. As
pro-Israeli Jews turn into oppressors themselves, they destroy the moral
authority of this argument and fuel the very danger that they claim to
want to protect against, namely anti-Semitism. Journalists, and all of
civil society, must condemn anti-Semitism – which is antithetical to
basic democratic values – as and when it occurs.
The
Israeli state is on a road to nowhere, and the status quo is
unsustainable in the long term. Global mass action, including through
the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, is an important force
for change in the region. This is where global public opinion becomes
important, as do media framings of these events, which can make or break
global movements.
Journalists should not be
put off by false arguments. One of the more prominent is that critics
pick on Israel, while staying silent about conflicts in Syria and Iraq,
because they are anti-Semitic. These arguments are based on the fallacy
of relative privation, or ‘whataboutery’, which asserts that
Israel’s problems should be ignored because there are more important
problems in the world, especially the Muslim world.
This
line of argument should be recognised for what it is: as an attempt to
deflect criticisms of one of the most longstanding regional conflicts in
the world, and one that is eminently capable of being resolved if its
primary financiers committed themselves to doing so in a just manner.
Furthermore, ‘whataboutery’ proponents should also be put the
test, to see if they themselves act on their criticisms and mobilise
against the very injustices they decry. In any event, many of Israel’s
critics do criticise other unjust regimes.
Journalists
should also encourage South Africans to take positions on the conflict
on the basis of what is right and wrong, rather than on more dubious
bases, such as racial or religious solidarity. They are in a unique
position to promote forward-looking debates on the conflict and on other
countries’ roles in its resolution, given South Africa’s own experience
of oppression, followed by transition (however incomplete).
Hamas
has also demonstrated openness to political solutions, a fact which is
often lost in the western-mediated framing of the movement. In this
regard, it is clear that the two-state solution is not viable, given
Israel’s de facto control over the Palestinian territories. Yet
the South African government continues to cling to the two-state
solution; therefore, engaging with this debate is important for foreign
policy reasons.
Support is growing
internationally for a one-state solution, which could involve a
binational state or a secular, unitary state. A binational solution
would appear to the more realistic option, but will entrench Palestinian
and Israeli identities as separate, increasing the likelihood of
sub-national conflict in the future. This solution will also undermine
Palestinians refugees’ inalienable right of return to the territories
that they had been displaced from.
A secular,
unitary state, similar to the one that South Africa adopted, is likely
to be resisted by many supporters of Israel, who see it as the
destruction of Israel by other means. Unfortunately, the word
‘destruction’ conjures up images of a violent path to building the
nation, which ignores the fact that what is being proposed is a
democratic path.
It must not be assumed that
Palestinian and Israeli identities are so fixed that they are incapable
of progressive transformation towards a more shared identity. Democratic
theories of nation formation, including African theories, demonstrate
that this is very possible. In any event, a state where Jews are
persecuted will not be a democratic secular state, but an authoritarian
nationalist one.
South African journalism is
dominated by the professional model with its strategic rituals of
objectivity and balance. But there are welcome signs of a greater
diversity of journalistic practices, including civic journalism and
advocacy journalism. These alternative models do not betray basic
journalistic tenets; on the contrary, they enrich journalism.
Assessments
of the state of South African journalism are often filled with doom and
gloom, especially given recent threats to media freedom and the
evisceration of many newsrooms. But this should not detract from the
fact that the sector is also filled with great promise, and a real
potential to contribute to positive changes to some of the world’s most
intractable problems.
