COVERING THE INTIFADA

How the Media Reportedthe Palestinian Uprising

By Joshua Muravchik

THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY

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© 2003 by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Published in 2003 in the United States of America by TheWashington Institute for Near East Policy, 1828 L Street NW, Suite1050, Washington, DC 20036.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Muravchik, Joshua.Covering the intifada: how the media reported the Palestinianuprising / Joshua Muravchik.

p. cm.ISBN 0-944029-85-X1. Al-Aqsa Intifada, 2000 Press coverage—United States. 2.Israel—Politics and government—20th century—In mass media.3. Journalism—Objectivity—United States. I. Title.

DS119.765.M87 2003070.4'49956053—dc21

2003012382

Front/back cover photo of press photographers and cameramennear the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, April 8, 2002;Israeli soldiers (unseen) fire smoke grenades in background© AP Wide World Photos. Back cover photo of author courtesyof American Enterprise Institute. Cover design by Alicia Gansz.

The Author

Joshua Muravchik is a resident scholar at theAmerican Enterprise Institute and an adjunctscholar of The Washington Institute for Near EastPolicy. He is the author of six previous books(most recently, Heaven on Earth: The Rise andFall of Socialism [Encounter Books, 2002]) andhundreds of articles. His op-ed pieces have ap-peared in all major U.S. dailies, his longerarticles in New York Times Magazine, Foreign Af-fairs, Foreign Policy, Commentary, New Republic,Weekly Standard, and numerous other journals. Hisprevious studies of the news media include onebook (News Coverage of the Sandinista Revolu-tion [American Enterprise Institute, 1988]) anda handful of major articles, among them "MisreportingLebanon," published in Policy Review in 1983. Heholds a bachelor's degree from the City College ofNew York and a doctorate in international rela-tions from Georgetown University.

The opinions expressed in this monograph are thoseof the author and not necessarily those of TheWashington Institute for Near East Policy, itsBoard of Trustees, or its Board of Advisors.

ChairmanMichael Stein

THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTEfor Near East Policy

An educational foundation supporting scholarly researchand informed debate on U.S. interests in the Near East

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Fred S. Lafer

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* resigned upon entry to government service, 2001

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Amidror (IDF), IRAWEINER FELLOW

Jinying FangMartin Kramer, WEXLER-

FROMER FELLOWHazem Saghie

2003 Visiting Military FellowsMichael Knights

MENDELOW DEFENSEFELLOW

Lt. Col. Eric MathewsonUNITED STATES AIR FORCE

LtCol.YoramYoffeeISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES

Director ofDevelopmentLaura Milstein

Development AssociateMarilyn Turner

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EhudYa'ari

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Joshua MuravchikDaniel Pipes

Michael RubinHarvey Sicherman

Raymond Tanter

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Introduction 1

Episode 1: Sharon Visits the Temple Mount 7

Episode 2: Barak's Ultimatum 21

Episode 3: The Ramallah Lynching 39

Episode 4: The Sharm al-Shaykh Summit 47

Episode 5: The Election of Sharon 57

Episode 6: The Gaza Incursion 63

Episode 7: The Dolphinarium 73

Episode 8: The Karine-A 77

Episode 9: The Powell Mission 85

Episode 10: The Jenin 'Massacre' 99

Conclusion 111

Endnotes 123

Preface

For the thousand days since September 2000, Is-raelis and Palestinians have been at war. Unlikea conventional conflict, this war began withMolotov cocktails and police batons, moved todeadly suicide bombings and tank-backed retalia-tory raids, and then was characterized by thefiring of homemade mortars and "targeted kill-ings" by helicopter gunships. So far, about 3,000have died, with thousands more wounded. Althoughpopularly known as the "Palestinian uprising"—orintifada—these events should more accurately beregarded as war.

Popular perception, however, is often what mat-ters most in the world of international politics,and this is certainly true of the Israeli-Pales-tinian conflict. Perhaps no international disputehas been the subject of as much press coverage—television, radio, print, and web-based—as thebattle over rights, land, security, and survivalin the Holy Land. Reportage from Ramallah, Gaza,Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv often sets the diplomaticagenda; grisly images of human carnage at pizze-rias, cafes, outdoor markets, and refugee campsoften frame the debates in the White House, theUnited Nations Security Council, and capitalsaround the world. In the Middle East, journalistsare often more than just conveyors of news—theyhave the power to shape the news and, in so do-ing, determine the path of future events.

Despite the significant role that journalistsplay as actors in this conflict, they are rarelythe subject of rigorous, methodical, academicinvestigation. Two years ago, The Washington In-stitute decided to address this lacuna byundertaking a major research project to assessthe quality and accuracy of reportage on thePalestinian "uprising" by elite U.S. media.

VII

Thanks to a generous grant from Janine andPeter Lowy, valued Institute trustees, we wereable to commission noted scholar and historianJoshua Muravchik to undertake this effort. GivenDr. Muravchik's previous work on media cover-age—he is author of the definitive work onreportage of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, abook on news coverage of the Nicaraguan revolu-tion, and numerous articles on how the mediahas covered issues ranging from U.S. defensespending to Cold War clashes with the SovietUnion—we were delighted that he agreed to takeon this project. After two years of research,including reviewing dozens of hours of video-tape and thousands of column inches of newspa-per reportage, we are proud to present thisstudy.

After dissecting ten newsworthy episodes dur-ing the course of the uprising, Dr. Muravchikpresents an innovative way to evaluate the pro-fessionalism of U. S. reporters, producers, editors,and television anchors. His findings include thegood, the bad, and the ugly: outstanding report-age by some, misinformed and error-plaguedreportage by others, and patterns of outrageousreportage by a select few. Bias, he argues, iscertainly present but not rampant. Superficial-ity; misinformation; lack of historical context;and reliance on narrow, skewed, or unrepresenta-tive sources are greater and more pervasiveproblems. Although much of the reportage he evalu-ates is flawed, the problems, he notesoptimistically, can be fixed—but only if jour-nalists are willing to address them honestly,directly, and with an open mind. Perhaps mostusefully, Dr. Muravchik offers a set of sugges-tions for improving the quality, depth, andaccuracy of the reportage—suggestions that shouldreach the desks of top executives at major newsoutlets throughout the United States.

VIII

We believe a study on media reportage of theArab-Israeli conflict is long overdue. This is afirst installment of what we expect to be a regu-lar feature on our research agenda.

Michael Stein Fred S. LaferChairman President

IX

The appalling violencebetween Israelis and Pal-estinians that began in

September 2000 has been one of the most painfulepisodes in the history of the modern Middle East.People on both sides, and many outsiders, hadhoped that the famous handshakes on the WhiteHouse lawn in 1993 that sealed the Oslo agree-ments marked the beginning of the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Now those hopes seemed to haveturned to ashes.

For Israel, the pain of dashed hopes was com-pounded by the sense that much of the world blamedit for the breakdown and looked upon the Pales-tinians as the victims. Some Israelis accused theinternational news media of bias against Israel.On the other side, however, some Arabs insistedit was they who were the victims of unfair cover-age. Noting that they were criticized from bothdirections, news organizations tended to read thisas proof of their objectivity, a plausible infer-ence that was not necessarily well founded.

To assess the coverage, I have undertaken thisstudy on behalf of The Washington Institute forNear East Policy. It has been designed in col-laboration with the Institute's director, RobertSatloff. It examines seven national news outlets:the New York Times, the Washington Post, and fivetelevision networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and Fox).The television coverage examined is limited tothe main nightly news broadcasts, which are afixed ritual on the three older networks. NeitherCNN nor Fox has an evening news program exactlyequivalent to those of the older networks, but Ihave done my best to select the closest analogue.

Because it was beyond my ability to study twoyears of news reports, Dr. Satloff and I selectedten critical moments in the unfolding of thisconflict, or the "al-Aqsa intifada," as it is some-times called. For each of these, I have studiedthe news reports over a five-day period, gener-ally beginning two days before some highlight

4 E3 Covering the Intifada EB

event occurred and continuing until two days af-terward. We make no claim that these were the tenmost important moments, since such a determina-tion would have no particular relevance to thepurposes of this study. Our goal was merely totake a manageable slice of these two years forexamination. We might have taken fifty days atrandom, except that we wanted to make sure tochoose days on which the Middle East tragedy wasindeed in the news. (The Times and the Post car-ried at least one story from the area almostdaily, but the television news often carried nothingabout it except on those days when the conflicthad heated up.)

To avoid inadvertent prejudice resulting fromour selection of events, we tried to select a mixof occasions, including some on which the mainstory was about diplomacy and others on which itwas about violence; some on which most of thevictims were Israeli and others on which mostwere Palestinian. Our chosen episodes are "frontloaded," that is, weighted toward the earlier partof the conflict. This is in part because there wasso much drama at the outset, in part because theearly reportage set a tone for much that fol-lowed, and in part because this study has takensome time to produce (being originally designedearlier in the intifada).

For the fifty selected days, I read care-fully all news stories relevant to the Arab-Israeli conflict that appeared in the twonewspapers. To examine the television coverage,I viewed each broadcast (thanks to the facili-ties of the Television News Archive of VanderbiltUniversity) and, in addition, read transcriptsof the broadcasts.

Beyond the care I tried to take in examiningthe material, this study has no formal methodol-ogy. I find quantitative media analysis almostinvariably unpersuasive. The number of times thata given term or thought appears in news reports iseasy to count, but what does it prove? My "meth-

53 Introduction EH 5

odology" is common sense. I am aiming to assessaccuracy, fairness, and balance. These are val-ues that lie at the heart of the American prac-tice of journalism. My goal is to judge whetherthe news organizations met these standards, and,if they failed, then to assess how often and howseverely. If only one or two of a journalist'smany stories fall short, not much should bemade of it; no one is perfect (not even mediacritics). Yet, if a journalist or news organi-zation repeatedly fails in the realms of accu-racy or fairness, this amounts to a seriouslapse of professionalism.

Where I have spotted a story that I believemerits criticism, I cite it and explain what Ithink is wrong. In most cases, I refrain fromcommenting on editorials, columns, or explicitopinion pieces, even though I have read manyopinions with which I disagree. My concern inthis study is not to counter such opinions butto judge whether the newspapers and networks Ihave examined have met the highest standards oftheir profession. In a few cases, however, Ihave noted erroneous assertions of fact withineditorials, and in one case what seemed to me anabsurd supposition.

Much more often, I criticize editorializingwithin news stories, that is, reportage that seemsstrongly colored by the journalist's opinions. Inaddition, as I shall explain more in the body andthe conclusion of the study, I believe I uncov-ered some systemic problems endemic to the asym-metry of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict thathave derogated from the quality of the coverageof these tragic events.

One obvious flaw in my method is the familiar"dog that did not bark" problem. Just as newsorganizations are often criticized for not re-porting good news, so my analysis focuses on in-stances of dereliction on the part of journalistsrather than on the many informative stories inwhich I found nothing to fault. Like others who

B H Covering the Intifada EB

study political events, I rely heavily on theaccounts of reporters from whose knowledge andskill I benefit. That they often have to work inhazardous conditions makes me all the more in-debted to them.

Lastly, I must address the question of my ownstanding to judge. I do not claim to come to thissubject as a dispassionate neutral. I am a Jew anda supporter of Israel. By the last term I meanthat I strongly uphold Israel's right to exist(which I believe is a central question of theArab-Israeli conflict), not that I necessarilyagree with every action of each Israeli govern-ment. I do not consider that disagreement with,or criticism of, Israeli policy is tantamount tobeing "anti-Israel." Israelis themselves are of-ten raucous in their own political disputes. Yet,obsessive or one-sided criticism of Israeli poli-cies may reflect a deeper animosity to the state.

I do not believe that my strong support forIsrael's existence prevents me from producing arigorous analysis. As individuals and citizens,news reporters have opinions and political alle-giances, yet this does not make it impossible forthem to meet standards of accuracy and fairness.Likewise, I have made every effort not to beovermastered by my predilections, but rather tocarry out this study with a discipline of reason,objectivity, fairness, and, of course, fidelityto fact. Readers will judge my success or failureat meeting those standards.

B The "al-Aqsa intifada"began on September 28,2000, following the vis-

it by Ariel Sharon, then the leader of Israel'sparliamentary opposition, to the Temple Mount.Sharon's stated purpose was to underscore hisopposition to relinquishing Israel's sovereigntyover Judaism's holiest site, an issue that hadbeen on the table at the Camp David summit twomonths before. This position is anathema to thePalestinians, who also want sovereignty overthe same place, which they call al-Haram al-Sharif—the location of Jerusalem's most sacredMuslim shrine and one of Islam's earliest ob-jects of devotion, the al-Aqsa mosque. Sharon,moreover, is a particularly offensive figure tothem because of his share of responsibility forthe 1982 slaughter of hundreds of Palestiniansby Lebanese Christian militiamen in the Beirutrefugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla.

The riot that followed hard on the heels ofSharon's visit to the mount ended without lossof life, although dozens of rioters and Israelipolicemen were injured. The next day, riotingrecommenced, spreading throughout the territo-ries and resulting in several deaths. In theoriginal Palestinian version of events, Sharon'svisit was a provocation that inevitably sparkeda spontaneous expression of rage from the grassroots. To the Israelis, the rioting was eitherorchestrated or encouraged by Palestinian offi-cials in order to strengthen their bargainingposition.

It is hard to doubt that the Palestinians foundSharon's visit provocative, but the renewed riot-ing on a second day, and then a third and fourth,suggested that additional factors were at work.This was confirmed some months later by MarwanBarghouti, probably the most important leader ofthe intifada, in an interview with the New Yorker."The explosion would have happened anyway,"Barghouti stated. "It was necessary in order to

10 E3 Covering the Intifada Efl

protect Palestinian rights. But Sharon provided agood excuse. He is a hated man."1

News organizations varied in the amount ofemphasis given to Sharon's visit. The New YorkTimes, which almost invariably characterized Sharonas "right-wing" or "rightist" (although the paperrarely, if ever, referred to the Labor Party primeminister, Ehud Barak, as "left-wing" or "left-ist") , focused more intently than any other out-let on Sharon's role in stimulating the violence.

The first day's riots were described by Timescorrespondent Deborah Sontag as "clashes . . .provoked by Mr. Sharon's visit" (September 29,2000), which was fair enough. The next day, how-ever, a Times editorial underscored the point,chastising Sharon for having behaved "provoca-tively" and explaining to readers that "authorityover [the Temple Mount] is the most sensitiveremaining issue in the peace talks . . . the keyto a final settlement." This was simply wrong:sovereignty over the Temple Mount was one of ahandful of crucial issues that remained unre-solved, including borders and the so-called "rightof return" of Arabs who had fled Israel in 1948,arguably the most sensitive issue of all. Thatevening, NBC's Tom Aspell, perhaps having read theTimes1 take, made the same mistake, commentingthat "the whole Middle East peace process is dead-locked over which side will control" the mount.

On October 1, the Times was still focused onSharon's pilgrimage, as correspondent William Ormewrote of "the third day of fierce fighting set offby the defiant visit." And two days after that,Orme wrote much the same again: "A defiant visitby Israel's right-wing opposition leader to themost sacred Islamic site in Jerusalem ignitedPalestinian protests." In this recapitulation, Ormereminded his readers of the importance of themount to Muslims but failed to mention its (stillmore primary) importance to Jews, although hemight just as easily have used a phrase such as "asite sacred to both faiths." By stating the one

B Episode 1 EH 11

fact without the other, Orme risked leaving theimpression that Sharon's aim was to set foot gra-tuitously on a Muslim shrine when in fact it wasto assert Israel's claim to a Jewish shrine. Evenif his action was ill timed or ill considered,there is a considerable difference between thetwo intentions.

This points to an additional issue, namely,that the site is holy to Christians as well, butno mention of this fact was found in the coverageexamined for this study. It was as if the inten-sity of the Jewish-Muslim tug-of-war canceled outChristian interests entirely.

On October 3, another Times editorial summed upthe events this way: "The precipitating incidentwas a provocative and irresponsible visit by theLikud leader, Ariel Sharon. . . . But the fightinghas now taken on a life of its own." In otherwords, the culprits were (1) Sharon and (2) theimpersonal force of momentum. This interpretationwas striking for what it omitted. The day afterSharon's visit—the day that the violence turneddeadly—was a Friday, and an estimated 22,000 wor-shipers packed al-Aqsa for weekly services. Theywere treated to a vitriolic and incendiary sermonby the imam, Shaykh Hayan al-Idrisi, known forhis outspoken anti-Semitism and opposition to theCamp David negotiations, who warned that "the Jews"were intending to replace the mosque with a syna-gogue or temple. He added hortatively, "The Mus-lims are ready to sacrifice their lives and bloodto protect the Islamic nature of Jerusalem and ElAksa!"2

In her account of that day's violence, theTimes' Sontag made brief mention of the sermonin the twenty-sixth paragraph of a twenty-seven-paragraph story, citing Israeli police officialswho pointed to it as an incitement. Her accountagreed that the sermon "did . . . raise anxietiesby talking about Jewish extremists," but this wasa misleading description since the sermon wassquarely aimed at "the Jews" per se, not at "ex-

12 E3 Covering the Intifada Ei

tremists." A few days later, Washington Post cor-respondent Lee Hockstader gave something of thesermon's flavor, quoting the shaykh as havingencouraged worshipers to "eradicate the Jews fromPalestine" (October 4).

None of the television news broadcasts exam-ined in this study carried any mention of thesermon. Nor did any explore the larger questionto which it pointed about the role of the Pales-tinian leadership in instigating the violence.The Post's Hockstader reported that, beginning onthe third day of violence, Palestinian television"carried archival footage [of] the Palestinianuprising of the late 1980s and early 90s, andplayed militant songs urging Palestinians to riseup and take to the streets" (October 4). This wasnot reported in the Times or on any of the tele-vision networks, according to the findings ofthis study. Neither did any of the networks re-port the fact that the Palestinian Authority (PA)closed schools during the first several days ofthe intifada, apparently to encourage students totake part in the riots. (PA minister of informa-tion Yasir Abed Rabbo denied that this was themotive, arguing that the schools were closed toprotect the children from Israeli snipers.3 Butthis explanation is unpersuasive since the schoolclosures were part of an official Palestinian"general strike" and since those youngsters whowere hit by Israeli gunfire were almost alwaysinvolved in rock throwing or standing nearby andrarely if ever were just walking to school.)

In one rare case in which the question ofPalestinian incitement was raised on U.S. televi-sion, it was with a sarcastic twist that empha-sized Israeli culpability. On the fourth day ofrioting, ABC correspondent Gillian Findlay re-ported that "Sharon . . . whose visit to the siteof their sacred mosque sparked these riots . . .refused to accept responsibility" (October 1).Then she added, referring to the Barak govern-ment, "The men who could have stopped Sharon's

SB Episode 1 EH 13

visit and didn't today blamed Palestinian lead-ers." In other words, Israeli complaints aboutPalestinian incitement were not reportedstraight—as Palestinian complaints about Israelibehavior often were on ABC—but rather in a waythat made the Israeli complaint itself a dam-nable hypocrisy.

The second day of violence, which happened tobe the Jewish New Year, began when worshipersemerged from al-Aqsa, where they had heard Shaykhal-Idrisi's sermon. Hurling thousands of rocksand bottles, they besieged an Israeli police postnearby and began raining projectiles on Jews prayingbelow at the Wailing Wall, which is located at thebase of the mount. Israeli police escorted Jewishworshipers away from the wall and then charged uponto the mount in order to rescue their comradesin the besieged outpost. Firing rubber-coated bul-lets and sometimes, it seems, live ammunition,they caused the death of four Palestinians. AnIsraeli soldier died in nearby Qalqilya that daywhen his Palestinian counterpart in a joint pa-trol turned on him suddenly and gunned him downalong with another Israeli who survived his wounds.

The Times account of that day's grim eventsclearly reported the stoning of Jewish worshipersat the Wailing Wall (Orme, October 1), but thePost's story failed to mention it. Of the threetelevision networks reporting the events on thatevening's news, CBS gave the clearest account,with reporter David Hawkins explaining that "theIsraelis opened fire after Palestinian protestersshowered rocks and bottles down on Jewish wor-shipers and tourists" (September 29). NBC's ver-sion was much less informative. "Israeli riot policestormed the shrine, opening fire with rubber bul-lets and live ammunition on Palestinians who werethrowing stones," reported Tom Brokaw, withoutmentioning the Wailing Wall or the police outpost(September 29). Then he added that "the riotsbegan after Israel's conservative Ariel Sharonwent to the Temple Mount to show that Jews were in

14 EB Covering the Intifada Efl

control." There was no way for viewers to knowthat Sharon's visit had occurred the day before,nor about the connection between the riots andthat day's services at al-Aqsa.

The most remarkable reportage was on ABC, whereGillian Findlay described the violence on themount without mentioning the assault on the wor-shipers at the Wailing Wall or the siege of thepolice outpost. Indeed, her choice of words seemedto downplay any Palestinian provocation: "Israelipolice and soldiers rarely come here. This is thesecond day in a row they have flexed their muscleshere, and Palestinians are furious," she stated(September 29). This one-sided version followedan opening by anchor Peter Jennings in which hedeclared that "four Palestinians were killed byIsraelis on [the Temple Mount] today." No mentionwas made of the Israeli who was killed by a Pal-estinian in Qalqilya.

Findlay went on for several sentences blamingSharon for the outbreak, citing both Palestinianand Israeli critics of his visit the previous dayand concluding thus: "Sharon said he came to in-sist that Israel must control this place. Pales-tinians again today vowed that would never happen."This conclusion, perhaps a pale echo of the shaykh'sincendiary warnings, suggested that Sharon wasout to change the status quo. In truth, Sharon'sgesture was aimed at reaffirming the status quothat had existed since 1967, under which Israelclaimed sovereignty over the mount but left itsadministration in the hands of the Muslim clergy.This had been put in question by Prime MinisterBarak's willingness at Camp David to relinquishIsrael's sovereignty.

Findlay also reported, without any show ofdoubt or opportunity for denial from the otherside, that "doctors who treated the wounded ac-cused the soldiers of aiming to kill." SinceJennings had stated that, in addition to the fourdead, 200 Palestinians had been injured, thisclaim by Palestinian medical personnel was all

EQ Episode 1 EH 15

but absurd on its face. If less than 2 percent ofthe injured died, what was the likelihood thatthe Israelis were "aiming to kill"? And how couldthe doctors tell this from the wounds? What couldthey deduce from the wounds of the 98 percent whosurvived? None of the other networks saw fit toair the "aiming to kill" accusation.

The third day's clashes were still more vio-lent, with a larger number of deaths, highlightedby that of twelve-year-old Mohammed al-Dura, whoselast terrible hour was caught on film by a Pales-tinian cameraman for a French television network.Mohammed and his father cowered behind a concretebarrel at the Netzarim junction in Gaza, wherePalestinian rioters had besieged an Israeli mili-tary outpost. The rioters hurled rocks and Molotovcocktails, and some of them fired guns. From theirfortified position, Israeli soldiers respondedwith gunfire. The boy was hit, and his fatherappealed in vain for a halt to the firing. A halfhour or so later, the son was hit again and diedbeside his father, who himself suffered nine sepa-rate bullet wounds but survived. Young al-Dura atonce became "a potent new symbol of what angryPalestinians contend is their continued victim-ization" (New York Times, Orme, October 2). ABC'sFindlay reported that "the video of twelve-year-old Mohammed plays on Palestinian television non-stop." Then she added, with apparent indignation,"It has appeared on Israel's most popular TV sta-tion exactly twice," implying that this amountedto downplaying the story.

Initially, most U.S. news organizations werecautious about saying who had fired the fatalshots, noting only that the boy had died "in acrossfire" (CBS, October 1). The one on-scene cor-respondent from the news organizations covered inthis study who immediately blamed Mohammed's deathon "Israeli fire" was ABC's Findlay (October 1) . Inaddition, NBC anchor John Siegenthaler twistedthe meaning of the report by his own correspon-dent, Tom Aspell. Siegenthaler prefaced Aspell's

16 Eg Covering the Intifada H

report with this summary: "Israeli troops openedfire, killing twelve people, including a twelve-year-old boy caught in the crossfire" (September30). But Aspell reported only that the boy haddied in a crossfire, not that the fatal shots hadcome from the Israelis. Pour days after the tragicevent, most of the other news organizations aban-doned their agnosticism and stated or impliedthat the shots that had killed the boy had indeedcome from the Israelis {New York Times, Washing-ton Post, Fox, October 4). The reason for thisshift was not hard to find. As the AssociatedPress's Laura King reported in a story carried inthe Post, "The [Israeli] Army acknowledged laterthat its soldiers apparently fired the fatal shotsand expressed sorrow" (October 4).

After the early acceptance of responsibilityby the Israeli spokesman, the Israeli army or-dered a formal investigation, and several monthslater it concluded that its soldiers probably hadnot fired the fatal shots. This conclusion wassubsequently reinforced by an investigative pro-gram broadcast in March 2002 by the German tele-vision network ARD.4 While most of the rocks andMolotov cocktails were thrown from the directionof the intersection where the rioters had massed,a pair of apartment buildings used as barracks byPalestinian policemen stood behind the Israelioutpost, and some of the shooting on the Pales-tinian side came from those buildings. Shots di-rected from there at the Israeli outpost wouldhave been on a line that led to the intersectionwhere Mohammed and his father were crouching.These and other details about the shooting (e.g.,the facts that Israeli weapons have better sights,that Israeli fire tends to be more disciplinedthan that of the Palestinians, who are less trained,and that Mohammed and his father were not amid anygroup of shooters or stone throwers) led the Ger-man crew to conclude that the Palestinian bar-racks were a more likely source of the fire thatkilled Mohammed than the Israeli position.

El Episode 1 EH 17

Because the Palestinian hospital where Mohammedand his father were taken claimed to have recov-ered not a single one of the roughly dozen bulletsthat hit the two, it will never be known whichside's fire killed Mohammed. But the incident,which is likely to live forever in Palestinianlore, also symbolizes a profound asymmetry in thepublic relations activities of the two sides. TheIsraelis had acknowledged culpability, on the basisof superficial information, for a shooting thatthey later concluded (plausibly) had not beendone by them. In contrast, the Palestinians neveracknowledged a shred of doubt in fixing the blameon the other side and making the shooting out tohave been deliberate, when in truth, even if thefire did come from Israeli guns, it almost cer-tainly was accidental, the boy having been a by-stander to violent demonstrations. Yet, PA chairmanYasir Arafat's top advisor, Nabil Abu Rudeineh,told the Times, "This is a killing in cold blood,an attack on an innocent child without any ex-cuse. This cannot be forgiven" (Orme, October 1).

In a similar vein, referring to the rioterswho died from Israeli gunfire during those fewdays, Arafat lieutenant Nabil Sha'ath accused theIsraelis of "premeditated murder" (CBS, September30; NBC, Washington Post [Hockstader], October1). Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat,sounding a theme that was to be repeated oftenover the next two years, stated, "It's a massacrebeing committed against the Palestinian people . . .a complete massacre" (NBC, October 1; WashingtonPost [Hockstader], October 3) . Ironically, if therewas a single deadly shooting "in cold blood" or"premeditated murder" during these first days ofthe intifada, it was the killing of the Israelipoliceman by his Palestinian partner in Qalqilyaon September 29.

In short, while Israeli spokesmen seemed tostrive to provide truthful answers even whilestraining to put their nation's best foot forward,Palestinian spokesmen conducted themselves as if

18 EB Covering the Intifada Efl

they felt no similar constraint. Yet, in the ap-parent interest of evenhandedness, the news orga-nizations reported the two sides' claims equallyand gave every appearance of treating them withequal credulity. A rare departure from this oc-curred when Sharon, defending his visit to themount, pointed out that any Arab was free to visitthe Israeli Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, asite of great sensitivity to Jews. In reportingSharon's point, the Times' Sontag followed it witha rebuttal of her own, reminding readers that "YadVashem is not a religious site" (October 2). No-where in the stories reviewed for this study didshe rebut the arguments of any Palestinian spokesmanshe quoted.

Despite Erekat's continued insistence that allthe shooting was on one side, by October 1, vir-tually all major U.S. news organizations werereporting that the confrontations involved gun-fire from the Palestinians as well. Still, therewere numerous reports echoing the Palestinian ac-cusation that the Israelis were using dispropor-tionate force. And Israeli denials were sometimesbrushed aside in odd non sequiturs. For example,CNN's Mike Hanna reported: "Israel says its forcesare using lethal force only when Israeli livesare at risk. But Amnesty International and otherindependent organizations record that the over-whelming majority of . . . wounded are Palestin-ian" (October 2). The word "but" suggested thatthe second sentence nullifies the first, but itdoes not. Similarly, the Times' Orme discountedthe Israeli version of the scene at Netzarim junc-tion without directly contradicting it: "IsraeliArmy spokesmen said the troops came under livefire from the Palestinian police. But televisionfootage of the incident, including the shootingof the 12-year-old boy, and the absence of anyserious Israeli casualties, served to reinforcethe Palestinians' belief that the Israelis wereresponding with disproportionate force" (October1). Additional film footage that circulated asthe al-Dura story reverberated indeed showed many

Episode 1 ffl 19

Molotov cocktails hitting the Israeli post andmuch Palestinian fire.

Three days later, the Times carried a featurestory by Orme on "the case being made here byPalestinians and some Israelis here, as well asby diplomats abroad, that Israeli forces haveemployed deadly force too readily" (October 4).Orme claimed that "there are many documented in-stances of close-range shooting at eye level,"although he did not explain how they were "docu-mented." The Post's Hockstader also wrote aboutthe second day's violence that "Palestinian offi-cials [stated] at least seven people . . . hadbeen hit in the eye by Israeli bullets" (September30). Were Israeli marksmen trained to aim for theeyes? And was their fire so accurate? These claimscried out for verification before being reported.

During the second week ofthe al-Aqsa intifada, fewforesaw that it might

continue for a long time. The peace process hadendured for seven years, and a week of mayhem,however upsetting, seemed an anomaly. The weekwas highlighted by three things: a public ulti-matum issued by Prime Minister Ehud Barak warn-ing the Palestinians that failure to end theintifada would lead to a harsher Israeli re-sponse; the destruction of a Jewish holy place,Joseph's Tomb in Nablus; and bloodshed insideIsrael's 1967 borders, where thirteen Arabs diedin clashes between Jewish and Arab Israelis.Much of the reportage aimed at discovering theunderlying dynamics and causes of all this un-expected violence.

Israel's version was that the violence was ini-tiated by the Palestinians and that it was fo-mented, if not directed, by Yasir Arafat. Thiswas the reasoning behind Barak's ultimatum. Incontrast, the Palestinians claimed that Israelhad attacked them largely unprovoked, was con-tinuing to attack them, and was employing exces-sive force. This indictment was somewhatinconsistent in that the concept of "excessiveforce" seems to imply that some lesser amount offorce might have been appropriate, implicitly con-ceding that Israel was responding to provocation.If Israel was engaged in naked aggression, as thePalestinian spokesmen usually suggested, then theuse of force was illegitimate per se, regardlessof its level.

Despite Barak's warning, Palestinian spokesmendescribed Israeli action in terms suggesting thatit was already so severe that it could scarcely beintensified. According to the Washington Post (KeithRichburg, October 5, 2000), Arafat claimed that a"serious massacre" was "being perpetrated againstthe Palestinian people." On CNN, Palestinian spokes-woman Hanan Ashrawi stated that Israel's army waswaging a "unilateral war against the civilian popu-

23

24 El Covering the Intifada Efl

1ation" (October 7), while Saeb Erekat again statedthat "Palestinians are being massacred" (October9). Ashrawi also appeared on NBC, proclaiming an-grily that "a whole nation is being killed everyday and being asked to lie back and to die quietly,not even to defend themselves" (October 8).

What did the various news outlets say aboutthe causes of the continuing violence? In the NewYork Times, William Orme and Jane Perlez reportedthat Arafat "said he was willing to resume peacetalks, but 'first we must stop the massacres againstour people'" (October 6). They added that "theradical Islamic movement Hamas . . . bitterlychastised Mr. Arafat for negotiating while theviolence continued," which made Arafat seem some-thing of a beleaguered peace-seeker. Yet, theirexplanation of Hamas's position was strange sinceHamas was neither against violence nor in favorof negotiations. It proclaimed its goal to be thedestruction of Israel and its belief, accord-ingly, in "armed struggle" as the means to attainthat goal. Orme and Perlez offered no explicationfor their odd report. In the same story, theywrote that "the Israelis have refused an interna-tional commission, arguing it could prove . . .unsympathetic to Israeli security interests." This,too, was an odd formulation, for Israel's pro-fessed fear was not that a commission might findfault with Israel but that it might be so preju-diced at the outset as to guarantee a one-sidedconclusion. The word "biased" rather than "un-sympathetic" would have conveyed Israel's posi-tion more accurately.

Two days later, the Times1 Sunday "Week in Re-view" section carried a 1,200-word piece by JohnKifner devoted to debunking "the underlying as-sumption—shared by Israeli officials who accusedMr. Arafat of 'orchestrating' the violence— . . .that he had the power to swiftly turn [it] off"(October 8). Kifner quoted an anonymous "Westernexpert" who stated that "Arafat's authority haseroded over the years," adding that "there is a

H Episode 2 Efl 25

tremendous frustration among Palestinians . . .an awful lot of rage" as a result of "the percep-tion . . . that the Israelis want to drag theprocess out, to build new settlements [and] ex-pand existing ones." Kifner also quoted Israelidissident Meron Benvenisti, who scorned the viewthat Arafat was in charge as "a typical approachof Israeli . . . so-called Arab experts." AndKifner concluded with quotes from a young memberof the Tanzim, the Palestinian group that wasinitiating much of the violence, saying "the Is-raelis think that Arafat controls us like pup-pets . . . but we are a force on our own." Kifnerdid not see fit to quote anyone with a view con-trary to his own thesis.

Washington Post news columns also conveyeddoubts about Israel's view that Arafat was respon-sible for the violence. "Many suspect that withemotions running so high, Arafat may not be ableto halt the violence even if he wants to," re-ported Lee Hockstader (October 7). Hockstader wenton to explain:

The Palestinians' sense of grievance is bound upin long-standing and unmet demands—for an inde-pendent state with East Jerusalem as its capi-tal; for the return of refugees who fled or wereforced from their homes in Israel's 1948 War ofIndependence; for the release of prisoners heldfor years in Israeli jails; and for the returnof West Bank and Gaza territories captured byIsrael in the 1967 Middle East war.

The question of what, exactly, the Palestinianswere fighting for was a crucial one. And theinterpretation Hockstader introduced here—thatthe Palestinians were after a return of the ter-ritories Israel captured in 1967—was to be re-peated often in Post coverage over the next twoyears, although it was tendentious. Most Ameri-cans and Europeans, even most Israelis, believedthat these territories, or the larger part ofthem, should be given over to the Palestinians.If this was indeed the Palestinians' goal, then

26 E Covering the Intifada EB

there was much reason to sympathize with them.If, however, their goal was to destroy Israel,then the Palestinians' struggle would deserve lesssympathy.

Alas, there was much evidence that the Pales-tinians had not abandoned the aim of ruling all ofmandatory Palestine, including the parts thatconstituted Israel within its pre-1967 borders.In public opinion polls, a plurality of Palestin-ians stated that this was their goal, and theofficial Palestinian Authority (PA) maps and text-books invariably portrayed "Palestine" as encom-passing Israel proper as well as the occupiedterritories. This, too, was the implication ofthe demand for the return of the 1948 refugeesmentioned by Hockstader without any explication.The return of these refugees and their progeny,or all the millions who claimed such status, wouldsuffice to ensure that Israel would no longer bea majority Jewish state. In short, Hockstader andseveral of his colleagues who used similar lan-guage were putting their own benign spin on theintifada. Eventually, the Post's ombudsman ac-knowledged that objections to this formulationconstituted a "fair criticism of its reportage."5

But the paper's correspondents ignored his as-sessment; they went on using such language withundiminished regularity.

Hockstader was also on shaky ground in hisreference to "prisoners held for years in Israelijails." Such prisoners had indeed been a sensi-tive issue in the Oslo negotiations, but in theend Israel had released them all, even those guiltyof murder. The Palestinians in Israeli jails atthe time of Hockstader's article were those whohad been incarcerated for new acts of violenceperpetrated after Oslo.

While Hockstader's summary of Palestinian goalsput them in a favorable light, his description ofIsraeli actions was far from sympathetic. "Insteadof a deft tap," he reported, Prime Minister Barak"has authorized firepower that is being criticized

H Episode 2 EB 27

as indiscriminate and excessive. . . . Televisionfootage of Israeli soldiers using tear gas, rub-ber-coated bullets, antitank weapons and helicop-ter gunships against armed and unarmed rioters hasgenerated a storm of criticism that Barak has gonetoo far" (October 9). Later in the article, Hockstaderadded, "Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian physicianwho heads a medical association in the West Bank,accused Israel of employing a heavily dispropor-tionate use of force. 'I don't think they need thosekind of weapons to protect their own troops,' hesaid. 'They're so well equipped, so well protected.'"Hockstader's citing of Barghouti was misleading.Medical personnel are universally respected, andwhile they may, as individuals, have a loyalty totheir own side, they are nonetheless, as profes-sionals, often presumed to have a degree of objec-tivity. Post readers had no way of knowing thatBarghouti, while he may be a physician, servesprimarily as a Palestinian political leader (hewas, for example, a member of the Palestinian del-egation to the 1991 Madrid peace conference) andwas presented as such in numerous citations byother journalists.

Reinforcing the image of a heartless Israel inanother story, Hockstader wrote on October 5:

Some Israelis have Arab acquaintances but fewhave Arab friends, and the mounting death tollamong Palestinians has registered with most Is-raelis more as a statistic than as individualhuman tragedies. 'Our deaths are stories, buttheirs are just numbers,' said the headline on anunusually frank article in the Israeli newspaperHaaretz this week.

The essence of Hockstader's assertion—that Israe-lis are callous to Palestinian suffering—is im-pressionistic and cannot be proved or disproved,but his reference to the Haaretz article wasmisleading. Haaretz is the flagship of the lib-eral side of the Israeli spectrum, and for it tocarry articles that are self-critical from anIsraeli perspective is anything but "unusual."

28 El Covering the Intifada Efl

This illustrates one of the several asymmetriesin the Arab-Israeli news environment. Israel hasnumerous publications and journalists that aresharply critical of their own government's poli-cies, and even those that are pro-government sharewith the presses of other democracies an ethos ofseeking and reporting the truth even if it isembarrassing to their own side. Many of the sto-ries in the Western press that put Israel on thedefensive originate in the Israeli press. Noth-ing comparable exists on the Arab side.

On the television news, only the occasionalbroadcast suggested an explanation for the vio-lence. On October 9, ABC correspondent GillianFindlay reported that

Palestinian leaders say they have been trying torein in the gunmen but they also warn that aslong as Israeli troops keep killing Palestiniansthere will be little anyone can do. 'Israel startedthis war,' said security chief Muhammad Dahlantoday, 'everything Israel is doing is making Pal-estinian anger stronger.'

Neither Findlay nor anchor Peter Jennings said aword to cast doubt on the claim that Israel wasthe initiator of the violence, nor did they bal-ance Dahlan with any Israeli spokesman who mighthave contradicted him. On the contrary, as if togive credence to the image of Israelis as unpro-voked aggressors, Findlay went on to say that"there are reports of Israeli helicopters openingfire on civilian homes in Hebron." She did notexplain further, although it is hard to imaginethat this report of a report was accurate unlessthe helicopters were returning fire. There was nosimilar report from the other outlets examined inthis study.

ABC also lent more credence than any otheroutlet to the charge that Israel was employingexcessive force. Findlay reported: "The Israelissay they are practicing restraint, but at thishospital, doctors say they are still seeing plentyof evidence of live ammunition, plenty of evi-

H Episode 2 H 29

dence the soldiers are still shooting to kill—chest wounds, head wounds" (October 6). This madeit sound as if Israel's claims were false, but whyshould the accounts of the Palestinian doctors betaken at face value, as Findlay seemed to takethem? And what were those individuals doing atthe time they were shot? If they were shooting atthe Israelis, then were the Israelis to be faultedfor firing back?

By this time, many news reports had verifiedIsrael's complaints that Palestinian gunmen werefiring from amid the mobs of youthful stone throwers.Yet, in another report, Findlay seemed to castdoubt on this: "In Gaza, Israeli soldiers openedfire on schoolboys throwing stones" (October 10).Did she mean to assert that no gunmen were amongthe "schoolboys"? If so, how could she have knownthis? On still another occasion she reported, "InGaza, Israeli troops blew up two Palestinian apart-ment buildings, buildings they say Palestinian gunmenhad been using for cover" (October 8). She did notsay—as, for example, Keith Richburg reported inthe Washington Post—that the two "apartment build-ings" in fact served as barracks for the Palestin-ian security forces. Nor was it merely Israel'scontention that gunmen operated from those build-ings: footage of shooting from them had been shownon the air. Indeed, it was from those buildingsthat the fatal shots that killed young Mohammed al-Dura had probably been fired, according to theassessment of the German television broadcast men-tioned in "episode 1" of this study.6

On October 9, NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell'sexplanation of the violence offered a novel twist:

To many, peace seemed so close at Camp David inJuly. How did it all fall apart? First, Pales-tinian resentment on the street, people see noeconomic rewards . . . and they resent the U.S.for blaming Arafat when the summit collapseswhile praising Israel's Prime Minister Barak.

In other words, the fault lay not with Arafat forrefusing to negotiate at Camp David but with

30 |H Covering the Intifada Efl

President Bill Clinton for criticizing Arafat'srefusal.

CNN was the other network to lend support tothe accusation that Israel was using excessiveforce. When the United States abstained on aUnited Nations (UN) Security Council resolutioncritical of Israel, Mike Hanna explained thatit was "a pointed gesture from the United Statestowards the Israelis that activities within thelast week have become virtually indefensible"(October 7) . But Hanna's version was at oddswith the explanation given by U.S. officials.UN ambassador Richard Holbrooke stated that theresolution had evoked his "clear distaste," butthat "vetoing it would have created . . . fur-ther problems in the region for us as the honestbroker and negotiator."7

On October 7, CNN ran a string of interviews,all from one side. First, correspondent Mike Hannaspent four minutes on camera with Palestiniannegotiator Saeb Erekat, who said that the under-lying motive behind Barak's ultimatum was that hewanted an "exit strategy from the peace process."Hanna did not press Erekat on why that might be,an obvious question in view of the fact that Barakhad staked his leadership on the peace process.This was followed by an equally long interview ofPalestinian spokeswoman Ashrawi, who claimed thatthe "Israeli army" was waging a "unilateral waragainst the civilian population." This, too, passedunchallenged by the interviewer, Wolf Blitzer.Following Ashrawi, CNN brought on John Daly ofthe Middle East Institute, a Saudi-funded Wash-ington think tank. Daly criticized Barak and Sharonbut not Arafat or any other Palestinian, and hecalled for turning the whole problem over to theUN. As against these three Arab or pro-Arab spokes-men, no one on that evening's news presented Israel'sside of the argument.

The next evening, CNN treated viewers to thesilliest media moment in this mostly unfunny epi-sode. The lead-in to that evening's report stated,

H Episode 2 EH 31

"Unrest in the Middle East has spread to otherArab nations. Thousands marched in Baghdad, Iraq,Sunday to condemn Israel." Could the network havebeen unaware that, under the iron-fisted rule ofSaddam Husayn, spontaneous political demonstra-tions did not occur in Baghdad? When thousandsmarched against Israel (or for any other reason),it was because they were ordered to march. Thelast thing in the world this march bespoke was"unrest."

That week was also witness to one of the moreimportant exercises of media self-policing. OnOctober 7 the Times ran a story clarifying anerroneous photo caption it had published duringthe first days of violence. The photo showed adazed victim, blood streaming down his face, whomthe caption identified as a Palestinian sittingnear an armed Israeli soldier. In fact, the in-jured man was a Jewish American student, TuviaGrossman of Chicago, who, together with two friends,had been pulled from a taxi in Arab Jerusalem bya mob that attempted to beat them to death bybattering their heads with stones. They had es-caped, albeit injured, to the protection of theIsraeli soldier pictured in the photo. The cap-tion falsely describing Grossman as a Palestinianhad been attached to the photo distributed by theAssociated Press and was carried by many newspa-pers in addition to the Times. Whatever fault theTimes bore in having run the caption and then abrief, insufficiently enlightening correction afew days later was counterbalanced by the fullaccount of the story the Times gave on October 7.One can only wonder how many of the other papersthat used the misleading caption corrected it ascarefully as the Times did.

One wonders, too, how the Associated Press'serror came about in the first place. Certainly itwas not deliberate, but could it be that theoverriding theme of Palestinian victimhood wascoloring the lens through which reporters wereviewing events? Were it not for the need to cor-

32 H Covering the Intifada H

rect the earlier caption, the story of the as-sault on Grossman and his friends would neverhave run (it ran a week after the event). Was nota murderous mob attack on innocent Jewish Ameri-can bystanders newsworthy? Aside from the effortby the Times to set the record straight on thecaption, scarcely a story on acts of violence byArab rioters against Jewish civilians appearedin the outlets reviewed for this study. Werethere none?

The one exception was on October 6, when bothCBS and NBC offered brief but vivid footage ofArab rioters on the Temple Mount once again show-ering stones and bottles on Jewish worshipers atthe Wailing Wall below. In contrast, CNN showedIsraeli security personnel charging onto the mountin response to these attacks. "Israeli policestormed a bitterly contested holy site, tearingdown Palestinian flags," reported Judy Woodruff.But she offered neither a mention nor a view ofthe assault on the Jewish worshipers that pre-cipitated the charge. No mention of these stoningswas found to appear in the other media outletsreviewed for this study.

Coverage of another kind of anti-Jewish at-tack was also uneven, the destruction of Joseph'sTomb, a prayer site for orthodox Jews that theOslo Accords stated should remain under the pro-tection of Israeli forces. (As with many an-cient sites, there is uncertainty about whetherthis was the actual site of Joseph's burial.) Ashrine had been erected, and holy books werekept there for use in prayer. As it was locatedin Nablus, a densely populated Palestinian area,it became a flashpoint. Israel withdrew its forcesfrom the site after the PA agreed to protect it,but it was trashed and burned soon after theIsraeli departure. The Washington Post, in adispatch from Richburg, carried a lengthier andmore descriptive account of the "dismantling" ofthe tomb "brick by brick" (October 8) than didthe New York Times, which mentioned it only

H Episode 2 EH 33

briefly, although adding a photo. Of particularinterest was Richburg's description of some ofthe participants:

'I feel proud,' said Nasser Badawi, 35, a mili-tiaman from Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization,who wore a gray T-shirt and had a shiny mini-AK-47 assault rifle slung across his back. Hesaid he began pelting Israeli soldiers with rockswhen he was 15 years old and only last week wasable to fire on them with his automatic weapon.'I feel like we did something today,' he said.'This is victory.'

This account of the role of Arafat's own organi-zation in the mayhem might have cast some lighton the question of Arafat's role (that is, whetherhe was encouraging the violence or helpless torein it in), yet no other news organization ex-cept NBC reported it, and even the Post, in otherstories, did not seem to give much weight to theimplications.

A few days later, the Times1 Orme reportedthat "[t]he Palestinians invited observers totheir hasty restoration work at Joseph's tomb"(October 11). Orme did not say whether he hadaccepted the invitation, and his story carriedno description suggesting that he had been there,so it remained unclear whether any restorationhad occurred. As it turned out, "restoration"was in fact performed: the building was trans-formed into a mosque.8

NBC correspondent Ron Allen provided a vividaccount of the events at the tomb, including thefact that Palestinian police stood by passivelyduring the destruction despite the PA's pledges. Aday later, he also reported a retaliatory actionthat occurred at a mosque in the Israeli city ofTiberias. "A band of young men burned and lootedthis Moslem place of worship," he stated (October7). The mosque was an old one, no longer in use,so it is unclear what "looted" may have meant. Foxand ABC also reported both events, with ABC'sGillian Findlay telling viewers that "angry Is-

3 4 EB Covering the Intifada

raelis attacked and burned two of the city's mosques"(October 8). No correspondent other than Pindlayreported multiple mosque burnings in Tiberias—and for good reason. There is only one mosque inTiberias: the old, unused one. The town's popula-tion is almost entirely Jewish. No mention ofeither the Tiberias or the Joseph's Tomb attackswas found on CBS. CNN mentioned the attack on thetomb but only belatedly, in the context of JerroldKessel's report that "under Mr. Arafat's orders,repairs began on the Jewish shrine" (October 10).

Following the mosque report, Findlay showed anangry crowd of Israeli demonstrators. She trans-lated their chants as "Death to the Arabs" and "Wewant blood." She then put on a single, threateningsentence from an interview with Barak: "Under theright of self-defense we will know what to do andhow to act, how to respond, how to initiate thosetypes [of action] that are needed." Then sheswitched to Saeb Erekat, who lamented "a very uglyscene" and appealed for the international commu-nity to "stop this madness and to stop hell frombreaking loose." Comparing the view she offeredof the two leaders, her audience would have beenlikely to conclude that it was the Palestinianside that was appalled by violence.

The arson attack in Tiberias was not the onlyviolence within Israel. Arab Israelis in the north-ern part of the country rioted and blocked roadsin support of their brethren in the territories.This led to deadly confrontations with police,and it also led to counter-riots by angry Jews whoat one point swooped down from the Jewish town ofUpper Nazareth into the Arab town of Nazareth,raining destruction. On October 10, New York Timescorrespondent Chris Hedges reported:

When the police arrived, they found groups ofIsraeli Arabs backed into alleys and throwingrocks at the Jewish demonstrators who were at-tacking the Arab area. The police pulled theJewish protesters across the road and fired onthe Arab crowd, shooting [two] dead.

H Episode 2 ffl 35

That same day in the Washington Post, Richburg

wrote:

Hundreds of Jewish civilians from a nearby townarrived . . . firing automatic weapons and bran-dishing clubs. Residents say they shouted 'deathto the Arabs!' Two Arab citizens of Israel werekilled. . . . Fifty others were injured. . . .Even for many here who are accustomed to theviolence and invective, the attack by Jews againstthe Arabs of Nazareth was considered astonishingand difficult to explain.

And on October 9, CNN's Jerrold Kessel relayed

ominous reports . . . of more violence and riot-ing inside Israel . . . and by Jewish settlers onthe West Bank against Palestinians there. ButJewish Israelis have taken to attacking Arab Is-raelis in various parts of the country. . . .[L]ast night in the town of Nazareth . . . twoIsraeli Arab citizens shot dead. . . . Minds andhearts have really been hardening . . . both inthe streets of Ramallah and Gaza and now verymuch in the streets of Israel, as Jewish Israelisare taking on their fellow citizens, Arabs, andattacking them literally.

On ABC, anchor Peter Jennings stated, "Last night,

two more Palestinians were killed by the Israelis

in northern Israel, which led to demonstrations

today in Palestinian towns, which led to confron-

tations with the Israeli army again" (October 9 ) .

And CBS's Richard Roth stated, "The nightmare has

been a series of attacks on Israel's unnoticed

minority" (October 11). The latter cliche seemed

particularly inapt in an atmosphere thick with

discourse about the "demographic factor" in the

political struggle. Of all these accounts, only

that of Hedges in the Times suggested that the

Jewish riots were in response to provocation on the

part of the Arab Israelis. Viewers of CNN or ABC

would not have known that the two men who died were

shot by police, not by the Jewish rioters.

Meanwhile, violence continued in the West Bank

and Gaza, and there were several incidents in

36 H Covering the Intifada EB

which doubtful claims were made by Palestinians,and not just the leadership. In the Post, Richburgwrote, "Palestinians reported that a 9-year-oldboy, identified as Mohammed Abu Assi, also waskilled at Netzarim junction, shot in the chestduring clashes" (October 5). But Richburg went onto say that "the Israeli military denied its troopsfired the bullet that killed the boy, saying ithad investigated the incident with the help ofPalestinian officials." Netzarim junction was thespot where Mohammed al-Dura had died five daysbefore. Had a second shooting of a still youngerchild by the Israelis in fact occurred, it seemsall but certain that it would have received farmore publicity.

In another dubious incident, Fox's David LeeMiller reported that "near . . . Ramallah a Pales-tinian man was found beaten to death" (October 9) .The next day's Washington Post carried a fullerreport by Richburg: "Two Palestinians were founddead this morning on the West Bank, apparentlykilled by Jewish settlers—or so the Palestiniansbelieve. One . . . appeared to have been torturedand his mutilated body had been set on fire."While Richburg's phrase "so the Palestinians be-lieve" established a modicum of reportorial dis-tance, the reasons for such distance became clearonly in the New York Times account that same day.There, correspondent Deborah Sontag reported thatPalestinian

protesters and mourners became enraged by theannouncement of an alleged brutal killing of aPalestinian by settlers. The 40-year-old man'sskull was crushed, his bones broken and his bodyburned, the crowd was told. Palestinian televi-sion repeatedly showed pictures of the charredand mutilated body . . . and offered the opinionof some Palestinian officials that the killingjustified an open season on settlers.

Two paragraphs later, Sontag added this enlight-ening note: "Israeli military officials, however,disputed the account of how the man had died.

H Episode 2 EB 37

They contend that the man, Isam Hamad, 36, diedin a car crash north of Ramallah and that thePalestinians chose to exploit the terrible con-dition of his body."

The oddest treatment of this incident was seenon CNN. On October 9, Ben Wedeman reported thePalestinian allegation that the victim had beenkilled by Israeli settlers and also reported thatthe Israeli authorities had investigated the deathand discovered that the man had died in an auto-mobile accident. Nonetheless, a night later MikeHanna reported the story again, in a manner lend-ing credence to the Palestinian claims. From theRamallah hospital he stated:

Displayed here [are] pictures of the body. . . .According to the doctors, the man had been burntwith some kind of electrical implement as wellas cigarettes. The X rays of his head indicatehe was then beaten with heavy objects. The doc-tors here say he appeared to have been murdered.Now the Israelis claim that he was killed in acar accident.

Then Hanna turned to a doctor who stated, pointingto the pictures, "Look, you see. This is a caraccident?" The net effect was to cast doubt onthe Israeli version, not the Palestinian ver-sion, although it was the latter that was al-most certainly fictitious.

• • On October 12, 2000, as^ ^ the intifada began itsI I third week, two Israeli

reservists on their way to duty in the West Banktook a wrong turn and ended up amid a hostilecrowd in Ramallah. Shortly thereafter at theRamallah police station, they were murdered bythe mob. Later that day, Israel retaliated byfiring rockets into the by-then-empty police sta-tion and a few other sites. The reports of thesetraumatic events varied greatly in their tone andemphasis.

The most vivid account was provided by DeborahSontag in the New York Times on October 13. "Is-raeli helicopter gunships rocketed Ramallah andGaza City today after a Palestinian mob here stabbedand stomped to death two Israeli reserve soldiersand then paraded a mutilated body through town,"began the story. It added:

Before the rockets started falling, Palestinianyouths danced on the bloody spot where one Is-raeli was tossed through floral curtains intothe mob below. In a call and response, theychanted: 'Here is where we gouged his eyes! Hereis where we ripped off his legs! Here is where wesmashed in his face!' One teenage boy joyouslythrust in the air the oil dipstick from thecharred carcass of the soldiers' car, which hadbeen burnt by the mob and lay curled beneath abillboard that said, 'Rule of Law Project.'

In contrast, the Washington Post account by KeithRichburg was much milder. It began by explainingthe context. "Like so many days here, this onebegan with a funeral" (October 13). The Palestin-ians were "grieving and angry." Only in the fifthparagraph did it get around to the murder, andthen with none of the grisly detail to be foundin the Times. The sixth paragraph consisted of asingle sentence, isolated for emphasis. "The Is-raeli government's reaction was swift and harsh."Then the article quoted the ubiquitous MustafaBarghouti—identifying him only as "a Palestinian

41

4 2 H Covering the Intifada

doctor in Ramallah," although he is in fact aspokesman and political leader—claiming thattwenty-five people were injured, nineteen of themcivilians, and adding "this is a massacre." ThePost did not mention, as the Times had, thatIsrael gave the Palestinian Authority advancewarning of its retaliatory strike so that thebuildings could be emptied.

In the aftermath of the murders, Palestinianssought to extenuate them by claiming that the twosoldiers were suspected of being Israeli under-cover agents. Such agents do in fact infiltratePalestinian areas, but these two were pulled froma car bearing Israeli license plates and wereclothed in their military uniforms, which madethe claim absurd. Nonetheless, the Post's NoraBoustany lent credence to it by reporting falselythat "at least some of" the reservists "were incivilian clothing" (October 13).

On October 14, both the Times (twice, inarticles by Hedges/Perlez and Sontag) and thePost (Richburg) reported that Arafat had or-dered a "very serious investigation" of the kill-ings. In fact, no investigation appears to havetaken place except by Israel, which some dayslater arrested a number of men believed to havebeen the perpetrators.

On ABC, Peter Jennings—who, on nights whenArabs had died, introduced the story with shortdeclarative sentences about Arabs "killed by Is-raelis" as if to drive home the point that thecircumstances were secondary—took a very differ-ent tack in this case. His preliminary sound bitewas painstakingly evenhanded: "Israelis and Pal-estinians, another day of dead and wounded, eachside accuses the other of going to war" (October12) . Then his lead-in was longer than usual, care-fully painting the context:

It has been another terrible day of fightingbetween Israelis and Palestinians. There wasa particularly ugly incident in the Palestin-ian city of Ramallah. Forty-thousand people

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live there. This week they're all angry at theIsraelis. There was about to be another fu-neral. Thousands of young men had congregated.At least two Israeli army reservists wereclearly in the wrong place. They were stoppedand taken into a police station. That was notenough for their protection.

Correspondent Gillian Findlay then reported themurders and the retaliation, devoting an equalnumber of lines to each, after which Jenningsadded this exquisitely balanced homily: "Thereare Israelis and Palestinians who do not wantthis peace plan to succeed. Yasir Arafat is vul-nerable to those forces and so is Prime MinisterBarak."

There was, however, a lot that was question-able about the equivalence that Jennings drewhere. Barak was elected to his post in a parlia-mentary system, indeed, one known for the shortlife spans of its governments, whereas Arafat hadruled the Palestinian movement for more than thirtyyears (and had been elected president of thePalestinian Authority without meaningful opposi-tion) . It was true that Arafat was susceptible tointernal political pressures, as is any authori-tarian leader, but this is not equivalent to thesituation of a parliamentary leader. Moreover,Barak had staked all his political chips on apeace settlement. He had tabled an offer embody-ing concessions that went well beyond anythingthat a majority in Israel's parliament had saidit would support. His political strategy was ap-parent: if the Palestinians would agree to asettlement, he believed that the Israeli publicwould be so happy with the breakthrough that alldemurrals about the terms of peace would be sweptaway. Arafat, on the other hand, had turned downthe American compromises proposed at Camp Davidwithout even deigning to suggest an alternative,and, as the intifada proceeded, he was refusingto call for an end to the violence. So, whileJennings's words were literally true, the im-

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pression they conveyed that the continuing vio-lence was equally the will of the two sides wasfalse.

Jennings then closed the segment with a reportthat carried his exercise in equivalence to thelevel of outright concoction. "And as everybodyin the region has said today, nobody knows whatwill happen tomorrow. Various Palestinian fac-tions as well as Jewish settlers in the territo-ries are calling for another day of rage," hestated. The Palestinian groups did in fact oftenproclaim "days of rage," but the settlers, al-though guilty of occasional acts of violence, didnothing of the sort.

This strange insertion of the settlers intoJennings's report harkened back to his broadcastof the previous evening, when he had told view-ers, "There are now more than a hundred Jewishsettlements in the Palestinian territories, andthe settlers, the Jewish settlers, are now veryinvolved in the violence" (October 11). This ledinto Findlay's report:

Ever since Rabbi Hillel Lieberman's bullet-riddenbody was found three days ago, Jewish settlershave been talking revenge. Today, thousands ofthem turned out for the funeral and a processionthat took them right past a Palestinian town.The settlers say the Palestinians threw the firststones, but soon the settlers were on a rampage.Attacking Palestinian homes, then turning on atruck driven by Palestinians. Israeli soldiersaccompanying the convoy did little to stop themob. It wasn't long before shots rang out fromPalestinians hiding in the hills, the army says,and the soldiers began firing back. . . . Today,the army sent tanks to defend the settlers. Thereal worry is the settlers may go on the attack.

When word of the desecration of Joseph's Tomb hadspread, Hillel Lieberman, an orthodox Jew in histhirties, had set off by foot to investigate it.He was apparently intercepted and murdered byPalestinians. Although reported elsewhere, thiswas not mentioned on ABC's evening news until

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Findlay's remark. Only the "rampage" of Jewishsettlers, in which no one died or even seemed tohave been seriously injured, impelled ABC to noteLieberman's murder.

On October 13, Jennings continued this tack.He prefaced that evening's broadcast with the ques-tion: "What does a day of rage mean between Israe-lis and Palestinians?" He did not repeat hisprevious claim that Jewish settlers had, likePalestinians, proclaimed a "day of rage." Indeedthe broadcast contained nothing about the set-tlers, presumably because there had been no ac-tion that day on their part. Still, Jennings laboredto preserve his tendentious equation by observingthat "rage [is] felt by both Israelis and Pales-tinians." But the example of Jewish "rage" that hepresented was nothing of the kind. He reported:"And today in Jerusalem, Israeli security forcesbarred Palestinians under the age of forty-fivefrom praying at the al-Aqsa mosque. So, youngPalestinians prayed outside, and some young menwere chased and beaten by Israeli police, whichmay help make clear why arranging a summit is sodifficult."

The reason young men had been barred from theFriday prayers was that these occasions had re-peatedly turned into riots, with rocks and bottlesbeing tossed down on the Jewish worshipers at theWailing Wall beneath. Nor was the action of theIsraeli police an expression of "rage" (althoughthe officers may have been angry), but rather amethod of chasing away young men who had defiedthe ban. The claim that this event explained thedifficulty of renewing negotiations was disin-genuous since it was Arafat who at this point wasstanding in the way.

CNN's Christiane Amanpour reported from the re-gion that week, placing great stress on what shemade clear she believed was the excessive use offorce by Israel. In an interview with one Israelicabinet minister, she pressed: "Even the support-ers of Prime Minister Barak are saying that he'sjust gone too far this time, that there simply is

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too much force being used against stone throwers"(October 10). What was striking about this was thephrase "even the supporters." If the prime ministerhad come from Israel's hardline camp, then theassertion would have been coherent, but Barak wasvery much a dove. It was not clear whom Amanpourwas referencing, if anyone or anything at all otherthan her own feelings. But if she meant that someof the most dovish Israelis criticized Barak's useof force (few in reality did), then her phrasestill made little sense since there would have beennothing remarkable about their stance.

Later in the same broadcast, she mentionedsome acts of violence that had occurred insideIsrael proper, perpetrated by Jews against ArabIsraelis: "A new sort of ugly dimension has comeinto this: Jewish settlers turning on Israelicitizens who happen to be Arabs." This was afurther muddle. The settlers were not in Israelproper but in the territories, and the Arabsthere were not Israeli citizens. The violenceinside Israel's 1967 borders did not have any-thing to do with settlers. While Amanpour be-trayed strong opinions about the conflict, sheseemed strangely deficient in the most elemen-tary background knowledge.

On October 16 and 17,2000, the leaders of Is-rael, Jordan, Egypt, the

United States, and the Palestinian Authority helda summit in Sharm al-Shaykh, Egypt, initiated byPresident Bill Clinton in the hope of arrestingthe Middle East violence and salvaging the peaceprocess. Israel agreed to the Palestinians' keydemand, the creation of an international fact-finding mission, insisting, however, that it beunder American aegis. This became the MitchellCommission (so called after its chair, formersenator George Mitchell). Israel also agreed to asimultaneous stand-down from violent confronta-tions rather than, as it had proposed, a pullbackof its forces only in response to a Palestiniancessation of violence. But Yasir Arafat issued nocall for an end to violence, and the WashingtonPost reported within an hour after the summit'send that Marwan Barghouti, "the fiery field mar-shal of the Palestinian revolt, had declared, 'wewill continue'" (Lee Hockstader, October 18).

The Palestinians' determination to continue whatthey called their "uprising" came across more viv-idly in Hockstader's report than in any account bythe other outlets reviewed for this study. Yet,he once again referred to it as a "revolt againstIsrael's continued occupation of most of the WestBank and some of the Gaza Strip," although, asmentioned previously, as good a case could bemade for calling it a revolt against Israel'sexistence.

The most ignorant or incoherent report on thesummit was by CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Octo-ber 16. Describing Palestinian protests againstthe meeting, she explained:

They felt [Arafat] was strong-armed into cominghere, that he would come here and come back withabsolutely nothing. And they also felt that itwas too close to the killings and the casual-ties. They thought there should be a decentinterval before any kind of summit.

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It was unclear how Amanpour derived her interpre-tation of Palestinian motivations, but her ex-planation defied logic. The demonstrators weredemanding a continuation of the violence. Howcould they want that and also a "decent interval"?Obviously there could not be any interval untilthey stopped their violence. Moreover, the no-tion of a "decent interval" implied that violencewas repugnant to them. That was why they weredemanding more of it?

Once again, the most pro-Palestinian tilt wasseen on ABC. On the first day of the summit,anticipating that Arafat might refuse to call fora halt to the intifada, Jennings leapt preemp-tively to his defense: "An Israeli government . . .cannot simply order its most extreme citizens tostop mistreating Palestinians. And while the Is-raelis say that Yasir Arafat can simply tell allthe Palestinians what to do, the evidence sug-gests he cannot" (October 16). But the issue wasnot whether all Palestinians would obey an orderfrom Arafat to end the violence; it was his con-spicuous refusal to issue such an order. And theinvocation of "extreme" Israelis "mistreating Pal-estinians" was gratuitous; it referenced no story.In fact, the Israeli government does endeavor toprevent its citizens from abusing Palestinians,although of course it does not always succeed.

Gillian Findlay's ensuing report echoedJennings's theme:

The Israelis insist Yasir Arafat could stop allof this. He could use his police to keep thestone throwers off the streets. He could shutdown Palestinian radio and TV, which Israel saysincites the crowds. And he could order his armedmilitia, the Tanzim, to never open fire, noteven in self-defense. Yasir Arafat could giveall of those orders, Palestinian leaders say,but it wouldn't make much difference.

This was yet another shot at the same straw manJennings had already pummeled. How much differencean order from Arafat might make could be discovered

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only if Arafat would give the order, but he wouldnot. And the formula about ordering his gunmen notto fire "even in self-defense" was tendentious.Although they were taking far more casualties, itwas the Palestinians who were initiating the vio-lence, as their terminology acknowledged: they wereengaged in an "uprising."

Then, after a bit of an interview with HananAshrawi, Findlay continued: "Seven years of talk-ing with Israel [have] produced nothing. Exactlywhat extremist groups told Mr. Arafat would hap-pen." The suggestion seemed to be that not onlywas it understandable if Arafat did not compro-mise at Sharm al-Shaykh, it would be wrong for himto do so, perhaps even to have gone there at all.Pindlay, it seemed, was endorsing Hamas's stand.

The next night, Findlay went on without anynoticeable shift: "The fundamental problem is thatthe Palestinians on the street don't see that theyhave any obligation to stop. The violence has allbeen from the Israeli side, they insist. Theyhave a right to protest, and they will continue"(October 17). With the summit consummated, Jenningsseemed to take the side of the Palestinian "pro-testers," complaining that the agreement announcedby Clinton was too pro-Israel: "Palestinians willtry to prevent violent demonstrations. Israel maypull back its forces from some Palestinian terri-tories if Israel believes the latest Palestinianuprising has ended," his voice emphasizing theword "may." This assertion did not merely violatejournalistic integrity; it was false. Israel hadcommitted, as was widely reported in other out-lets, to pulling back its forces from the Pales-tinian population centers if the violence thereceased for forty-eight hours.

On CNN, correspondent Rula Amin reported fromGaza on demonstrations against the summit: "Onceagain, the familiar pattern. The Palestinians throwstones. The Israelis respond with tear gas, rub-ber-coated bullets, and live ammunition" (October16). But this was false, or at least incomplete.

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As had been widely reported, the familiar pattern(probably followed by these demonstrations in Gaza,as well) included not only stones from the Pales-tinians but also Molotov cocktails and gunfire.Amin's report contained another important itemfrom which neither she nor other journalists drewthe obvious inference. "Almost every Palestinianfaction was present," she stated, "from the commu-nists to Islamic fundamentalists . . . to YasirArafat's supporters. All were united by the prin-ciple [that] their president must not compromiseon basic Palestinian demands." But if Arafat'sfaction turned out for the demonstration, it couldonly be because he wanted them to, suggestingthat the much-reported Palestinian pressure onArafat was a tactic in which he himself colluded.

Also that evening, CNN's Andrea Koppel cameup with a mystifying explanation for the weeksof mayhem: "When Camp David ended without anagreement, Palestinian despair eventually ledto violence" (October 16). This may have beentrue, but as the normally evenhanded PresidentClinton made clear, it was the Palestinians whohad refused to negotiate at Camp David. At thevery least, if Koppel's view was accurate, itcried out for some explication about the rela-tionship between the Palestinians and theirrepresentatives.

Jennings was not the only one to take ananti-Israel tilt during the week of the summit.In the New York Times "Week in Review" section,David Shipler, tracing the breakdown of the peaceprocess, wrote, "Trust was undermined when theright-wing Israeli government [of] Netanyahubuilt more Jewish settlements and dragged itsfeet on carrying out commitments to relinquishterritory" (October 15)- Trust, however, is atwo-way street, and Shipler was silent on theviolations of the peace process by the Pales-tinians, such as the failure to amend the Pal-estinian Charter to accept Israel's right toexist, as promised, or Arafat's speeches to Arab

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audiences suggesting that the accords were onlya tactic for eventually gaining control of theterritory of Israel as well.

In the Washington Post, Keith Richburg wrote,"Barak is already talking to his right-wing politi-cal opponents about forming a 'national emergencygovernment.' . . . Israeli hard-liners . . . warnedthey will not look favorably on any outcome thatseems likely to revive peace efforts" (October16). In truth, the view of hardliners to whomBarak was talking about a unity government wasnot opposed to "peace efforts" but to what theysaw as the overly generous terms that Barak'sdovish government had offered. In a separate storythat same day, Richburg wrote about Israeli mili-tary fire in Hebron that, as he reported, theIsraeli military stated was aimed at Palestiniansnipers. Yet, Richburg interviewed the owner of abullet-riddled house that had been the Israelitarget and reported credulously that he "said noone had ever shot at the Israelis from his house."

When Israel announced the arrest of a group ofRamallah residents whom it had identified as par-ticipants in the police station lynching, CBS'sDavid Hawkins expressed alarm: "The arrests . . .almost certainly required the infiltration of Is-raeli commandos into Palestinian territory. Thatfact alone could rekindle Palestinian fury" (Oc-tober 18) .

More numerous than the examples of outrightanti-Israel tilt in that week's coverage werereports that drew a false equivalence between thetwo sides. New York Times correspondent Jane Perlezwrote that "Mr. Sharon's provocative visit to Mus-lim holy sites . . . the destruction of . . .Joseph's tomb . . . and the burning of an ancientsynagogue . . . have challenged the very notionof respect for and sovereignty over religioussites" (October 15). Surely Sharon's tour of theTemple Mount (which happens also to be the holi-est site in Judaism and where he made no attemptto enter al-Aqsa mosque) bore no parallel to the

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the destruction of the two Jewish holy sites.Also in the Times, John Kifner, reporting on thekidnapping in Europe of Israeli businessmanElchanan Tannenbaum by Hizballah, added gratu-itously at the end that "Israeli operations in-side Lebanon are hardly unknown" (October 16).After giving a few examples, he commented evenmore gratuitously: "The Israelis were not alwaysinfallible. A Moroccan waiter was killed inLillehammer, Norway." This was true, but the storywas decades old and had no relation to the snatch-ing of Tannenbaum, nor was it analogous. It seemedto have been appended to the story for no otherreason than to remind the reader that Israelishave done bad things, too.

The Post's Hockstader reported that "each leaderhas made overtures to his most intransigent andhawkish opponents. On the Palestinian side, Arafathas reached out to Hamas. . . . And on the Israeliside, Barak has invited Sharon to join his gov-ernment" (October 15). The parallelism was mis-placed, even ugly. Hamas had been explicit in itsaim of destroying Israel, a goal that it hadpursued by relentlessly trying to murder as manyIsraelis as possible. Sharon, on the other hand,although a hardliner, had said he was prepared tomake compromises to achieve peace, even if theconcessions he was prepared to offer were toomodest to interest the Palestinians. (He had, forexample, supported the forceful uprooting of Jewishsettlements in Sinai in order to fulfill the 1978peace agreement with Egypt.)

Anticipating the summit, Keith Richburg wrote,"Both Barak and . . . Arafat will . . . be ridingforces they may not fully control—populationswith hardened attitudes and less interest in mak-ing peace then in laying blame and extractingrevenge" (October 16). This may have been truefor the Palestinians, who were forever proclaim-ing days of rage and seemed committed to pros-ecuting their "uprising" until victory. But Israeliswere in a state of despair as years of hope for

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peace went down the drain. The formula of thepeace process, "land for peace," acknowledged thatpeace was the Israeli desideratum. For the Pales-tinians, it was land. And now they seemed tobelieve that they had found a different path tothat goal. Richburg's parallelism was unfair. Thefalseness of it was inadvertently highlighted inthe illustration he offered:

For Palestinians, the pertinent image going intothe summit has been that of a 12-year-old boy,Mohammed Aldura, who was shot to death by Is-raeli soldiers while crying helplessly, cradledbeneath his father's arm. For Israelis, the im-age has been the mutilated body of one of theirsoldiers being dumped from the window of a Pal-estinian police station in Ramallah and a youngPalestinian gleefully holding out his hands tothe screaming crowd below to display the soldier'sblood.

As seen earlier, it is likely that al-Dura wasnot shot by Israelis at all, but even if he was,it was an accidental shooting in a crossfireinitiated by the Palestinians. So distressedwere the Israelis by the boy's death and soeager to make clear their regrets, they evenaccepted blame prematurely. In contrast, theRamallah victims were set upon with clearlymurderous intent by a lynch mob that joyfullycelebrated the deed afterward.

On CNN, the day after the summit, correspon-dent Ben Wedeman reported that

opposition to the Sharm al-Shaykh agreement re-mains strong on both sides. A coalition of Pal-estinian opposition groups, including Hamas,declared their determination to carry on theuprising. And Israeli opposition leader ArielSharon, accusing Israeli prime minister EhudBarak of being soft on the Palestinians, haslet it be known he will not join Prime MinisterBarak in an emergency government.

The fault in the analogy here is that Sharon'srefusal to join a coalition government in no way

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impeded Israel's compliance with the agreementsthat it had made at the summit, whereas the Pal-estinian groups could indeed make Palestiniancompliance difficult. But since Arafat did noteven try to comply, that was perhaps a moot point.

In a like vein, the network's Jerrold Kesselreported on the south Jerusalem Israeli neigh-borhood of Gilo, into which Palestinian gunmenhad been firing repeatedly from the town of BeitJalla, drawing Israeli return fire. The result,stated Kessel, was "two communities united infear, hatred, and an appetite to punish the other"(October 18). This was simply false. The Israeliswanted to be left in peace, not to serve uppunishment. But what could they do except respondto Palestinian fire?

The al-Aqsa intifadaspelled political doomfor Prime Minister Ehud

Barak. Already governing without a reliable ma-jority in the Knesset, he had gambled that apeace breakthrough with the Arabs would rally thepublic behind him. But with the peace processburied beneath the rubble of the new Palestinianuprising, Barak was compelled to face electionsin early 2001. His principal opponent was ArielSharon, who had won the standard of the LikudParty to widespread surprise, as he had long beenpresumed dead politically. The stain on Sharonwas a grievous one. As the mastermind of Israel's1982 war against the Palestine Liberation Orga-nization (PLO) in Lebanon, Sharon had arrangedwith his Lebanese Christian allies for their mi-litias to enter the Palestinian refugee camps ofSabra and Shatilla to clean out PLO fightersbelieved to have secretly remained behind in vio-lation of an agreement for their exile. Instead,the militia massacred many hundreds of civil-ians, and an official Israeli inquiry later heldSharon "indirectly responsible" for this crime.

Nonetheless, with Barak's peace strategy hav-ing failed dramatically, and with the Israelipublic wishing for a government to take a stronghand against Arab violence, the phoenix-like Sharondefeated Barak by a wide margin. U.S. news cover-age of this election might have been expected toproduce many instances of unfair treatment ofSharon or of Israel for selecting him. Varioussurveys have shown that journalists, especiallyin the elite media, are disproportionately Demo-cratic in their personal party allegiance, andthey might be expected to favor the Labor Partyover the Likud Party in Israel, even more so giventhe strong themes of an alien nationalism at thecore of Likud ideology, not to mention the addi-tional baggage carried by its standard-bearer.

Somewhat surprisingly, however, little of thisappeared in the news outlets reviewed for this

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study. In covering Sharon's landslide victory,there was less tendentious reportage treating Is-rael in a jaundiced light than during most othermoments of the intifada. It was as if the journal-ists, who had seemed so mesmerized by Palestinian"rage," were sobered by Israeli anger at the Ar-abs, which had expressed itself at the ballotbox.

There were, of course, exceptions. New YorkTimes reporter Dexter Filkins referred to Sharon's"reputation as one of the region's harshest men"(February 7, 2001). Did Filkins not know thatIsrael is located in the Middle East? The Ba'athistelites of Iraq and Syria were bathed in blood.The theocrats who ruled Iran were responsible forthe death and torture of untold numbers of theircitizens as well as for a global reign of terror-ism. The Islamists of Algeria massacred hundredsof thousands of their compatriots, many of themwomen and children. Those of Egypt were not muchmilder. The Sudanese regime prosecuted a devas-tating civil war against the south of the coun-try. There were also Osama bin Laden, Abu Nidal,and countless other terrorist leaders whose liveswere consecrated to nihilistic bloodletting. Sla-very, "honor" killings of nonvirgins, and variousother barbaric practices thrived throughout theregion. What were Filkins and his editors think-ing?

In a February 4 Times article, Deborah Sontagalso offered a predisposed summary of Sharon'sconception of peace:

An end to the conflict ... in [Sharon's] view . . .would entail an evolution of the Palestiniansand of the Arabs to the point where they whole-heartedly accepted Israel's existence and Israel'sterms for existence.

The word "wholeheartedly" and the phrase "Israel'sterms for existence" were expressions of sarcasmon the part of a hostile reporter rather than anhonest effort to capture Sharon's position. A

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fair rendering of his position could have insteadused the word "sincerely" and the phrase "enteredinto meaningful compromises to resolve the is-sues outstanding between the two sides."

When the election result was announced, Timescorrespondent Neil MacFarquhar reported thataround the Arab world, "the most common re-sponse was a collective shrug about the defeatof Ehud Barak . . . , stemming from the sense thatall Israeli leaders have treated Arabs with equalviolence no matter what their party" (February8). In reality, the Arabs have behaved more vio-lently toward Israel than vice versa, most Is-raeli violence has been retaliatory, and Israelhas relentlessly sued for peace. It may be truethat the Arabs feel that it is they who have beenthe victims of violence, but this is a highlydistorted, self-exculpating image. MacFarquhar,however, echoed this image in terms that appearedto lend it credence.

Most of the television networks carried sto-ries that included much criticism of Sharon butnonetheless presented a clear and fair image ofwhy Israeli voters chose him. For example, on theeve of the voting, NBC's Martin Fletcher, recall-ing Sharon's role in the Sabra and Shatilla massa-cres, noted ironically, "A government commissionrecommended he never be defense minister again.Instead, he could be elected prime minister" (Feb-ruary 4). At the same time, Fletcher conveyed themeaning of the election with a sound bite from asingle voter who stated: "The center wants onething: not to get killed."

Likewise, in the wake of the vote, Fox's Jenni-fer Griffin was hard on Sharon. "He promises tobring peace to Israel, but his critics say thatall he knows is war," she stated, adding that hisconception of peace "will put him on a collisioncourse with the Palestinians, and it's hard to seehow he will avoid more violence in the region"(February 6). But she also explained: "Israelivoters have said, in effect, that they are tired

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of feeling helpless in the face of Palestinianviolence and that they hope Sharon will . . .return a sense of security and strength to theJewish state."

CBS's David Hawkins, characteristically, wasmore jaundiced. On February 6, he spoke of Sharon's"hardline opposition to compromise with the Pal-estinians," which was a tendentious characteriza-tion. He might as easily, and more truthfully,have phrased it: "Sharon's unaccommodating termsfor compromise with the Palestinians." And he ex-plained the vote this way: "After five months offighting and nearly 400 dead, most Israelis havegiven up on a negotiated peace. Today, they chosethe general they believe is most capable of pro-tecting Israel's security." This was partially ac-curate, although the assertion that Israelis had"given up on a negotiated peace" was wide of themark. The true point was that Israelis had con-cluded that Arafat was not a sincere negotiatingpartner.

As usual, the most prejudiced report was to befound on ABC. Jennings led off the election-nightcoverage. "On World News Tonight, a new leader inIsrael," he began. "The Arabs and many Israelisthink he will lead the country into war. . . .There is no more divisive figure in Israel,and . . . the Palestinians hate Ariel Sharon" (Feb-ruary 6). Then, Gillian Findlay reported in witha series of commentaries on Sharon from his Is-raeli political opponents, which she did not botherto balance by presenting any of his supporters.Unlike the other networks, ABC gave its viewershipno comprehensible explanation of why Israeli vot-ers had chosen Sharon except perhaps that theywere bloodthirsty.

NBC, Fox, and CNN all reported that the Pales-tinians had responded to Sharon's victory by pro-claiming yet another "day of rage." According tothe findings of this study, neither CBS nor ABCchose to report this.

In April 2001, for thefirst time, Palestiniansfired mortars from the

Gaza Strip into Israel proper. Israel had suf-fered rocket attacks across its border with Leba-non at many moments in its history, and these hadled to major military actions. The prospect of asimilar pattern developing along its southernborder with an incipient Palestinian state wasviewed with gravity. In response, Israel launcheda military incursion into the strip, which it hadceded to the governance of the Palestinian Au-thority (PA) under the terms of the Oslo Accords.Although comments by Israeli military officerssuggested that their plan was to remain in Gazafor an extended time, the Israeli force withdrewafter one day, apparently bowing to the pressureof the United States after Secretary of StateColin Powell denounced the Israeli action as "ex-cessive and disproportionate."

The Gaza incursion was reported in the New YorkTimes by Jane Perlez, who quoted Powell's rebukeand went on to substantiate it implicitly: "The[Israeli] assault followed a fierce Israeli bom-bardment of Palestinian targets in Gaza, all inresponse to a Palestinian mortar attack" (April18). There was something in Powell's words "exces-sive and disproportionate" that invited comment.Until that moment, the military doctrine for whichPowell had been noted was the use of overwhelmingforce. "Cut it off and kill it," was how he hadexplained his strategy for handling the Iraqi armyin the 1991 Gulf War. His criticism of Israel wasthus a contradiction of what he had previouslyadvocated. But the Times refrained from noting thecontradiction. If President George ¥. Bush had,say, demanded that Japan increase its income taxrates, it is hard to imagine that Times reporterswould have resisted the temptation to point out howthis contradicted his own economic program.

Just two days before the Gaza incursion, Is-rael had responded to ongoing attacks from the

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Lebanese group Hizballah by striking a Syrian ra-dar station in Lebanon, since Israel held Syria—the dominant force inside Lebanon—responsible forencouraging Hizballah's activity. The Israeli strikewas reported in the Times by Deborah Sontag, whoseApril 17 account of it was laced with opinion. "Adeadly Israeli airstrike on a Syrian radar instal-lation deep inside Lebanon unsettled the Arab worldtoday just as Israel was receiving the first Arabofficial to visit since Prime Minister Ariel Sharontook office last month," she began. (The officialwas Foreign Minister Abdallah al-Khatib of Jor-dan.) Some paragraphs later, she added:

Before the Israeli airstrike, something of abacklash had been building against Hezbollah in-side Lebanon. . . . But the Israeli raid willmost likely increase support for Hezbollah. Theorganization is seen across the Arab and Islamicworlds as the sole group actively doing some-thing to counter Israeli violence.

This passage sounded a lot like the editorialthat the Times ran the same day chastising Israelfor the strike; it certainly was not reportage.And the last sentence was an Orwellian inversion;Hizballah's cachet was based on perpetrating vio-lence, not countering it.

On April 16, Washington Post correspondentDaniel Williams reported the strike against Syriaas "Sharon's second escalation within a week," al-though each was in fact a retaliation for an Arabattack. He also asserted that "peace talks be-tween Israel and Syria brokered by the UnitedStates collapsed last year, after Israel declinedto withdraw from the entire Golan Heights." Thiswas an extremely biased version of the failure ofthe Israeli-Syrian negotiations and flatly false.Israel had indeed offered to withdraw from theentire Golan Heights; this was never in question.Yet, the negotiations foundered over where, onthe narrow strip between the heights and the Seaof Galilee, the border would be drawn. Syria de-manded to hold on to a small piece of land that it

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had seized on the banks of the lake in 1948. Thisterritory was not part of the recognized interna-tional boundary. Syria had agreed to withdrawfrom it in its 19^9 ceasefire agreement with Is-rael but did not fulfill the terms.

The same day's paper carried a separate articleby Williams, a lengthy feature on Israeli settle-ments. "In contrast to the shifting U.S. stances,human rights groups have taken an unbending posi-tion that the settlements are illegal under theGeneva and 1907 Hague conventions," he wrote, quot-ing at length from a report by Human Rights Watch.No knowledgeable Israelis were quoted on the le-gal issues, although a strong argument can bemade that Human Rights Watch was misapplying thelaw. Instead, Williams quoted one militant settle-ment leader as stating, "We don't consider thisforeign land," an obviously unpersuasive replysince international law is not restricted to "for-eign land."

The building of settlements in the West Bankand Gaza is probably Israel's most controversialpolicy, one that is unpopular even with many Is-raelis. There is nothing out of bounds in high-lighting them in a feature story or in conveyingthe sharp criticisms. But there are also argu-ments to be made in defense of the settlements:that the land was captured in a war of self-defense against Arab aggression; that at CampDavid Israel offered to withdraw most of the settle-ments; that if more than a million Arabs can livewithin Israel, Jews should be able to live withina future Palestinian state. Williams, however,chose not to convey any of these arguments to hisreaders. Instead, after quoting Human Rights Watchand several U.S. officials critical of the settle-ments as well as several West Bank Arabs withtouching tales of being victimized by the settle-ment process or by the settlers, he "balanced" thereport by quoting militant Israelis who put theircase in a way sure to be off-putting. In additionto the weak point about international law, the

68 El Covering the Intifada BJ

same militant stated: "No government can with-stand the pressure [to build ever more settle-ments] , because inside each Jew, there is a smallsettlement movement. It's the essence of Zionism."To rebut other criticisms, Williams had anotherIsraeli say that settlements are "good for theArabs. They are employed building the settle-ments." In short, instead of making an honesteffort to achieve journalist balance, Williamswove together sympathetic quotes from Arabs andunsympathetic quotes from Israelis to make a tap-estry whose every thread made Israel look bad.

The television coverage of these days of vio-lence was marked by contrasts among the networks.The evening news came on soon after the Israeliattack on Gaza began but before it was clear thatIsrael intended to occupy some ground. On ABC,Peter Jennings began: "Israel is attacking Pales-tinian Gaza from land and sea and from the air. . . .Earlier, Palestinians fired mortars into an Is-raeli town near the border" (April 16) . CBS's DanRather reported the same story in a differenttone: "Israeli helicopters and tanks fired on Pal-estinian targets in Gaza [to]day. The attackswere in retaliation for Palestinians' shelling ofIsraeli towns." Jennings's choice of words madethe Israeli action sound ominous, and his use ofthe curious term "Palestinian Gaza" (is there someother Gaza?) conveyed his own conviction that theIsraelis had no right to be there.

Jennings pursued this theme the next night as heannounced, "The Israelis invaded the independentPalestinian territory of Gaza. . . . The Palestin-ians are furious, and the Bush administration saysit is excessive and disproportionate." Then, GillianFindlay came on to tell viewers again that "Pales-tinians are furious," adding that "Palestinians say[Sharon] revealed his true intentions with thisattack." This last sentence sounded ominous, butFindlay left it at that, explaining neither what itwas meant to imply nor why she had included it. OnCNN, Wolf Blitzer's take on the day's events sounded

BB Episode 6 ffl 69

a lot less alarming and was more enlighteningwith regard to Israel's motives than Findlay'sreference to mysterious "true intentions." "Asquickly as It entered, the Israeli governmentannounced it was pulling out of the small cornerof Gaza it had reoccupied," stated Blitzer. Thenhe added: "On Monday, Palestinians in Gaza lobbedmortar shells Into Israel. . . . It was seen byIsrael as a major escalation."

Jennings's inclusion of Powell's harsh descrip-tion of Israel's action was entirely in order, butthe previous evening, as he and ABC correspondentHilary Brown reported the Israeli airstrike inLebanon, they conspicuously refrained from men-tioning the U.S. position, even though the StateDepartment had made a strong statement that wasreported elsewhere. CBS, for example, in report-ing the strikes, mentioned the Syrian and Israelipositions and also that of the United States. Itshowed State Department spokesman Richard Bouchersaying: "We condemn this escalation in the cycleof violence that was initiated by Hizballah in aclear provocation designed to escalate an alreadytense situation" (April 16) . But ABC viewers heardonly that "Israeli warplanes hit a Syrian radarposition" and that "[t]he Syrian foreign ministersaid it was a flagrant aggression. Israel saidthe strike was in retaliation for Saturday's at-tack on an Israeli border patrol by Hizballah"(April 16). It seemed that ABC was faster toinclude the U.S. government position when thelatter was critical of Israel than when it wascritical of Israel's enemies.

Some reporters at CBS might have fit in betterat ABC. Apparently to counterbalance Boucher'sinterpretation that Hizballah was at fault and toput the onus back on Israel, correspondent DavidHawkins added this comment: "Regardless of whostarted it, Israel's air strikes have thrown coldwater on attempts to restart peace talks. Theyalso risk turning what's so far been a low-inten-sity conflict with the Palestinians into a wider

70 El Covering the Intifada Efl

war" (April 16). Hawkins's reportage was repeat-edly harsh toward Israel, although others at CBS,such as Rather, took a different tone. Such varia-tion was typical at the networks, with the excep-tion of ABC, where Jennings and his correspondentswere uniformly hard on Israel.

On NBC, the analogue to Hawkins was correspon-dent Andrea Mitchell. As Israel began its assaulton Gaza, she reported: "Israel launches a relent-less attack on Gaza from the land, sea, and air—for the first time, going back on an agreement,seizing land it gave up seven years ago" (April17). Not only was this characterization of theincursion somewhat heavy (after all, this "re-lentless attack" was over in one day), but thepart about "going back on an agreement" was falseand put blame on Israel unfairly. Nothing in theOslo process required Israel to foreswear self-defense, nor did the PA hold sovereignty over theterritories it governed until a final-status agree-ment was achieved. In fact, it was the PA thathad gone back on the agreement, which explicitlydisallowed it to have mortars, much less to firethem into Israel. For Israel to respond to suchan attack with military measures was well withinits rights under Oslo as well as customary inter-national law.

The harshest broadcast of the week came fromCBS's Hawkins on April 19, an unusually long essayputting all of the blame for the ongoing impassebetween Israel and the Palestinians on Sharon:

During the Camp David peace talks last year, itwas Yasir Arafat who turned down Ehud Barak'speace proposal, insisting on all or nothing. NowIsrael's new prime minister, Ariel Sharon, isoffering the Palestinians nothing at all. Sharonsays he won't give back any more land, especiallynot in Jerusalem. He also rules out the removalof any Jewish settlements from the Palestinianterritories.

The Palestinians, Sharon says, must settlefor less than half of the land in the West Bankand Gaza Strip, essentially what they have now.

H Episode 6 ffl 71

And since coming to power, the former generalhas dramatically ratcheted up Israel's militaryresponse to terrorist attacks. He's launched airstrikes on Syrian positions in Lebanon and in-vaded Palestinian territory handed back in pre-vious peace deals, drawing sharp criticism evenfrom the United States. Sharon's hardline policy,offering no compromises, is intended to weardown Palestinian resistance against Israeli oc-cupation of Palestinian territory. It's all stickand no carrot.

That means more fighting and bleak prospectsfor peace. Even if Yasir Arafat called an end tothe intifada, it's doubtful that he could stop itcompletely. And Israel refuses to negotiate un-til all Palestinian violence ends.

It's usually the Palestinians who are criti-cized for not being serious about making peacewith the Israelis. Now that notion is being chal-lenged by an Israeli government that seems un-willing to compromise.

• • The first of the inti-1^^ fada's massively deadlyI I suicide bombings occurred

on June 1, 2001, outside the Dolphinarium, a TelAviv disco. It claimed twenty lives, mostly teen-age girls. Yasir Arafat at first responded with avague statement opposing violence in general, butGerman foreign minister Joschka Fischer, who hap-pened to be visiting Israel and the PalestinianAuthority at the time, insisted on a clearer de-nunciation of the crime. Fischer himself helped com-pose such a statement, and Arafat put his name to it.

New York Times correspondent Deborah Sontagreported that "for the first time since .violence began eight months ago, Yasser Arafatmade a public call . . . for an immediate andunconditional cease-fire" (June 3). This sentencemay have driven home just how doggedly Arafat hadresisted making any such appeal until that mo-ment, something that had rarely been made clearin news reports that devoted many column inchesand minutes of airtime to claims that Arafat wasincapable of stopping the violence. Sontag's ar-ticle also quoted an Israeli official likeningArafat to a "zookeeper who opens all the cages ofthe lions and tigers," referring to his releasefrom custody early in the intifada of known ter-rorists and bombmakers. But Sontag found the analogylacking in political correctness, so she hastenedto add that this was "a comparison that many Pal-estinians would find objectionable."

Summarizing the intifada just before the bomb-ing, Washington Post correspondent Lee Hockstaderrepeated yet again, as if it were fact, his debat-able belief that the "Palestinians rose up againstcontinued Israeli occupation in the West Bank andGaza Strip" (May 30) . He went on to write that "mostWestern governments and human rights organizationsregard the Jewish settlements as illegal underinternational law. Israel insists that interna-tional law does not pertain to the West Bank andGaza." Hockstader offered no quote or other evi-

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dence for this last sentence, and it was false, adishonest way of making Israel's position look un-supportable. Israel's true position was not thatinternational law did not apply but rather thatIsrael's critics' interpretation of the law waserroneous.

A week or two before the Dolphinarium murders,Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had announced a "policyof restraint" in the hope that the recently re-leased Mitchell Commission report might prove tobe the impetus for an end to the months of vio-lence. U.S. diplomats had called on the Palestin-ians to reciprocate. Hockstader, however,insinuated that the Israeli policy was fraudu-lent, writing, "In recent days, as Israeli forcesobserved what [Assistant Secretary of State Wil-liam] Burns called the policy of restraint, Is-raeli bulldozers and tanks entered Palestinianterritory and uprooted fields and orchards, Pal-estinians say" (May 30). There was no way for areader to know whether this was true and, if so,what the reason might have been. Yet, the dayafter the Dolphinarium attack, Hockstader reportedthat the attack had intensified the "pressure onPrime Minister Sharon to renew airstrikes, assas-sinations and other attacks . . . which had beensuspended under a policy of restraint for thelast two weeks. . . . On Thursday [the day beforethe bombing] Sharon encountered a bitter outpour-ing of criticism for his policy of restraint"(June 2). Apparently, the restraint was not soillusory after all.

The Dolphinarium attack, with so many young,innocent victims, and coming as it did while Is-rael was pursuing a policy of restraint, createda moment of sympathy for Israel. Furthermore, tothe astonishment of many Israelis and most of theoutside world, Sharon opted to continue his policyof restraint, and he refrained from retaliating.The result was that very little in the pressreports on this occasion exhibited the unfriend-liness toward Israel that was evident on manyother occasions during the al-Aqsa intifada.

On January 4, 2002, theIsraeli government an-nounced that its forces

had intercepted a ship, the Karine-A, on the highseas laden with arms bound for the PalestinianAuthority (PA). This amounted to a serious viola-tion of the Oslo Accords. The principal reassur-ance that Israel had sought in ceding territoryand acquiescing in the prospective establishmentof a Palestinian state was that this state wouldnot become a threat to Israel. Two days after theannouncement, the Israeli government invited re-porters to a show-and-tell session at which allof the arms were laid out on display. These armsmade an impressive haul, but a question remainedabout to whom they belonged.

In the New York Times, correspondents JamesBennet and Joel Greenberg reported that "Pales-tinian officials denied any link to the ship," andthat U.S. officials "said they had no evidence theweapons were destined for the Palestinian Author-ity, and instead raised the possibility that thearms were headed to . . . Hezbollah" (January 5).The authors quoted the PA minister of informa-tion, Yasir Abed Rabbo, who affirmed, "We insistthat the Palestinian Authority has nothing to dowith this ship." Similarly, in the Washington Post,Hanna Rosin reported that Yasir Arafat "deniedhaving any knowledge of or involvement with theship, and his information minister [Abed Rabbo]said the announcement of the raid was 'a theatri-cal game'" (January 5).

The next day, the Times Greenberg reportedonce again that "Palestinian officials have vehe-mently denied any links to the shipment" (January6). And the following day, the Post's Rosin re-ported that "Palestinian officials continued todeny any involvement with the ship . . . andaccused the Israeli government of fabricatingcharges." She quoted the Palestinian minister ofinternational cooperation, Nabil Sha'ath, whostated, "In time, these allegations will prove to

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be unfounded." And she added an excerpt from a

statement issued by the PA that said it was "not

involved in this incident and such steps are not

part of its policies and it can not be involved in

any such operations of this sort at a time it is

fighting to end violence."

On January 8, however, the two newspapers car-

ried reports that resolved the question about the

ownership and destination of the shipment. The

Post's Associated Press story ran as follows:

The Palestinian naval captain captured by Is-raeli commandos with 50 tons of weapons on hisship said today that he was a member of Pales-tinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movementand that the arms were intended for the Pales-tinian-controlled Gaza Strip. 'I'm a soldier.I obeyed orders,' said the captain, Omar Akawi,in a prison interview. He added that he pickedup the rockets, mortars and antitank missilesin the Persian Gulf, off the Iranian coast.Akawi, who was captured Thursday along with 12crewmen in the Red Sea, said he worked in thePalestinian Transportation Ministry and re-ceived his instructions from an official inthe Palestinian Authority.

Despite confirming that Akawi was "a mid-rank-

ing member of [the PA's] naval unit," the story

proceeded:

The Palestinian leadership . . . continued toinsist that the Palestinian Authority had noth-ing to do with the weapons shipment. 'It's a kindof propaganda, unfortunately,' said Ahmed Qureia,the Palestinian parliament speaker. 'It's a falseway to undermine the peace process.' . . . Arafatreiterated today that he knew nothing about theshipment.

That same day, the Times ran a similar report by

Bennet based on an interview with Akawi, who, it

said,

identified himself as a 25-year member of Mr.Arafat's Fatah organization and a naval adviserto the Palestinian Authority's transport minis-

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try. . . . [He] said he knew that he was shippingmunitions but not the precise contents of hiscargo, which arrived packed in submersible can-isters. . . . '[T]hey told me it was weapons forPalestine, and I am a Palestinian officer merelydoing what he has to,' he said. 'It is my people'sright to defend itself.'

In what was perhaps the most damaging statementin Bennet's report because of the duplicity thatit underlined, the captain revealed that "he hadexpected to receive orders canceling his missionafter Dec. 16, when Mr. Arafat gave a speechcalling a halt to military operations. . . . Nosuch order came." In the same article, Bennetalso reported what seemed to be a tactical shiftin Arafat's response: "Mr. Arafat told JavierSolana, the European Union's foreign policy chief,that any Palestinian found to be involved in thesmuggling would be punished. He said he wouldwelcome international help for a Palestinian in-vestigation of the Israeli accusations."

On the networks, CBS and CNN carried the storyof the ship's capture the day it was announced. OnCBS, David Hawkins stated:

Palestinian officials say they don't know any-thing about the arms shipment. One called theseizure an Israeli propaganda stunt, timed tosabotage U.S. special envoy Anthony Zinni's at-tempt to restart peace talks. They say it's theIsraeli government that's not serious about re-turning to the negotiating table, pointing tocontinued Israeli raids into Palestinian terri-tory. . . . Both Palestinians and Israelis saythey want a ceasefire that will stick. The prob-lem is both sides think the other side's lying.

On CNN, Mike Hanna showed Arafat advisor NabilAbu Rudeineh stating, "We know nothing about thisship which the Israelis are talking about. . . .We consider it an Israeli propaganda in order tosabotage the mission of General Zinni." And thenHanna concluded: "Both sides remain as suspiciousof the other's pledges of peace as ever."

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Despite having reported these denials, neithernetwork's evening news chose to revisit the sub-ject during subsequent days to inform viewersthat the evidence of PA sponsorship of the ship-ment had become quite clear. One might have thoughtthat the titillation of the mystery about theship would have augmented its news value—whichwas in itself considerable because of the geopo-litical implications—and that the combinationwould have easily justified the airtime. One wouldhave thought, too, that the case for reportingthe solution to the puzzle was strengthened forthese two networks by the fact that both Hawkinsand Hanna were at least to some extent taken in,as shown by Hawkins when he stated "both sidesthink the other is lying," and Hanna with hissimilar words. As it turned out, it was the Pal-estinians who were lying, they knew they werelying, and therefore they also knew that the Is-raelis were not lying. Hawkins, in short, wasdead wrong. Hanna's formulation was broader, butit too was off. Given the ship incident, theIsraelis had an ironclad reason for being "suspi-cious of the other's pledges of peace." But thePalestinians had no such obvious reason for sus-picion of the Israelis, and therefore a probingreporter might have wondered whether the Pales-tinians' claims to this effect were genuine orwere a method of covering their own duplicity.

On January 11, however, CBS anchor John Rob-erts did report that

Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority announcedit has detained two senior Palestinian officialsand is seeking another on suspicion of trying tosmuggle arms into Gaza. Last week, Israel's navystopped and seized a Palestinian-owned ship whichwas carrying fifty tons of weapons and ammuni-tion. The Israeli government blamed Arafat, whodenies the charge.9

This, at least, informed viewers that the link tothe PA had been proved, although the report wascredulously agnostic about Arafat's role. Given

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that the whole gamut of Palestinian spokesmen hadvehemently denied any connection with the ship,this sudden, dramatic shift to the claim thatPalestinian officials were involved but that Arafathad no idea might have invited some journalisticskepticism. CBS exhibited none.

On NBC, the story was first reported not on theday the ship was captured, but two days later, atthe news conference at which Israel presented thecaptured arms. Correspondent Martin Fletcher de-scribed a "war chest of weapons bought, says Is-rael, by Yasir Arafat, breaking interim peaceaccords that limit what weapons and how many Arafatcan have" (January 6). This crucial bit of expla-nation of the diplomatic implications was absentfrom the other networks' reports. NBC then showeda clip from Palestinian minister for Jerusalemaffairs Ziad Abu Ziad, who stated, "We are notinvolved. We don't have money to buy such weapons,and war is not on our agenda."

Like CBS, NBC did report the PA's announcedarrest of two of its own for their involvementwith the ship, allegedly behind Arafat's back. Butin contrast to CBS's credulous account, NBC's January12 report also included an interview with thehead of Israeli army operations, who insistedthat Arafat was behind it all. (And, indeed, hewas. It was the proof of this, furnished by Israelto Washington, together with Arafat's denials,that eventually led the U.S. administration toturn its back on Arafat as a peace partner.)

Fox, which did not report the story on itsevening news until the day the ship's captain wasmade available to the press, put it clearly. Cor-respondent Jennifer Griffin stated, "Palestinianofficials have denied knowledge of the shipment,but in an interview . . . the ship's captainconfirmed the weapons were destined for the Pal-estinians" (January 7).

ABC broadcast the story on the evening theIsraelis showed off the cargo. After clips ofIsraeli officials blaming the PA, correspondent

8 4 H Covering the Intifada Ei

Hilary Brown reported that the "Israelis' claimsare hotly denied by the Palestinian Authority"and showed Information Minister Abed Rabbo stat-ing, "We are sure the Authority has nothing to dowith such allegations" (January 6). Brown thenadded, "State Department officials say they haveno evidence of Israel's claim and are withholdingjudgement on the case." Although this made ABC'saccount seem the most skeptical among the net-works of Israel's charges, ABC did not return tothe story any time over the next ten days toreport Akawi's revelations or other evidence thateventually proved those charges to be true.10

Following a suicide bomb-ing in Netanya duringPassover that proved to

be the deadliest attack to date, Israel launched"Operation Defensive Shield," its largest mili-tary operation of the intifada, on March 29,2002. For the first time since it had yielded theurban centers of the West Bank to the PalestinianAuthority, Israel reoccupied these territories,aiming to arrest or kill terrorists and to de-stroy their weapons and bombmaking facilities.On April 11, while these operations were underway, Secretary of State Colin Powell arrived inIsrael for a high-profile attempt at personalmediation of the conflict. After six days Powellleft, able to report little progress. Press cov-erage of Israel's offensive reached a crescendoover the military operation in Jenin, where sev-eral blocks of buildings were flattened and wherePalestinians claimed that Israeli forces had com-mitted a massacre.11

U.S. officials and many other observers weresurprised at Yasir Arafat's refusal to make thegestures Powell sought toward bringing the vio-lence to a halt. New York Times correspondentDavid Sanger explained Arafat's intransigence byshifting the blame onto Ariel Sharon. "Palestin-ians are so humiliated and enraged at their treat-ment by Mr. Sharon that no call from the UnitedStates [for an end to terrorism] makes much im-pression," he wrote on April 13, although thisanalysis conspicuously failed to explain why simi-lar U.S. appeals before Sharon was in office hadhad no effect. Sanger's colleague Serge Schmemannalso grasped for explanations that would makeArafat's behavior understandable. "Palestinianshave been irritated by what they perceive as adouble standard from Washington, with pressureson the Palestinians to condemn suicide bombings,but no condemnation of the heavy casualties in-flicted by the Israeli Army on Palestinian civil-ians, which the Palestinians refer to as 'state

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terrorism,'" he wrote on April 14, as if anyonewho genuinely wanted peace might be deterred bysuch irritation.

Also during Powell's visit, Israel announcedthat it had captured Marwan Barghouti, chief ofthe al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a new wing of Arafat'sFatah movement that had been increasingly in-volved in suicide bombings and other attacks againstIsraelis. Times correspondent James Bennet wor-ried that "the arrest . . . complicat[es] . . .Powell's effort to arrange a truce" (April 16). Hereported, "Palestinians insist that Mr. Barghoutiis a politician, not a military man," somethingthat could be said as well about all of the headsof terrorist groups. Members of the group, Bennetadded credulously, "have said they respect Mr.Barghouti . . . but do not act on [his] orders inconducting attacks," as if they would tell Benneton whose orders they do act. Bennet closed out hisreport with a quote from a Palestinian legislatorwho alleged that Barghouti's Israeli captors "willtorture him in a very, very bad way. They want himto say that Arafat supports Al Aksa Brigades."

The Washington Post did not stretch so to putArafat in a good light, but its correspondentAlan Sipress reached just as far to read malig-nity into Sharon's actions. Reporting on the sidetrip that Powell made to meet with Lebanese andSyrian officials, Sipress added this bit of in-terpretation: "Sharon, unmoved by U.S. demandsthat he immediately end his West Bank invasionand reluctant to address Palestinian politicaldemands, has sought to turn Powell's attention toother matters" (April 16).

It may have been that Sharon urged Powell tospeak to the Lebanese and Syrians, as Israel hasoften asked U.S. officials to do. But the problemon the Israel-Lebanon border was all too real,and U.S. concern was genuine. Continuing attacksand threats from Hizballah threatened to create a"second front" that could even grow into a full-scale Arab-Israeli war since it would bring Is-

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rael into confrontation with Syria. It is un-likely that any prodding from Israel was requiredto persuade Powell to try to calm these troubledwaters. But even if Israel did encourage Powellto address this issue, Sipress's suggestion thatit did so out of ulterior motives—namely, todeflect attention from the Palestinians—was ei-ther tendentious or uninformed. Far from beingsome sort of pretext, the Lebanese frontier haslong been one of Israel's most urgent securityconcerns.

Surprisingly, the networks devoted a largerportion of their stories to Powell's mission thanthe newspapers did, perhaps because their newsfocus more closely tracks the activities of U.S.government leaders. On ABC, correspondent GillianFindlay reported that "as he prepares toleave . . . , [Powell] doesn't have what he camefor: from . . . Sharon, a timeline for a troopwithdrawal. Without that, Palestinians say thereis little chance Yasir Arafat will renounce vio-lence" (April 16). This put the onus on Israel,but it was a dishonest formulation. Findlay hadbeen covering the intifada from day one, and shemust have known that there was little chance thatArafat would renounce violence whether or not hereceived a timeline for the end of the Israelioperation. Or, at least, there was little chancethat he would make an earnest effort to carry outany such renunciation.

Only days before, Arafat himself had pro-vided an inadvertent reminder of just how unre-liable any such declaration from him would be.Powell's arrival had been marred by yet anothersuicide bombing; this one, which killed six andwounded nearly a hundred in a Jerusalem market,was carried out by a female belonging to Arafat'sown al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. In response, Powellcalled off a scheduled meeting with Arafat un-til the latter denounced the action. Accord-ingly, Arafat issued a statement saying, "Oursteady principle . . . rejects using violence

90 E3 Covering the Intifada Efi

and terror against civilians. . . . We declaredthis position beginning in 1988" (Associated Press,New York Times, April 14). Were fourteen yearsnot enough time for ABC to catch up with thisgame?

CBS, in contrast, demonstrated appropriateskepticism. On April 13, Wyatt Andrews reported:

It sounded just like Arafat proclamations ofbefore, this condemnation of violence. But thereon Palestinian TV came a statement in Arafat'sname, condemning all terrorist activities thattarget civilians, whether Israelis or Palestin-ians, especially the last one that occurred inJerusalem.

After adding that "Arafat's response passed thePowell test" for rescheduling their meeting, Andrewswent on to ask and answer the obvious question:"Why would the secretary accept the condemnation ofa bombing from the man widely believed to have sentthe bomber? Because Powell is on a peace mission,and he wants a shot at telling Arafat to his face,'It's time to deliver.'"

The next evening, after Powell's meeting withArafat, Andrews reported:

There was no commitment from Arafat to stop.Arafat's chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, saidPalestinians want to end the violence but thatIsrael's West Bank incursion must end first.'Once the Israelis complete their full with-drawal,' Erekat says, 'we will then carry outour obligations.'

A few weeks later, Israel did withdraw its forcesfrom Palestinian cities (although keeping them onthe outskirts). This, however, was not followed byany reduction in violence by Palestinians.

The most remarkable report on CBS was by chiefWhite House correspondent John Roberts on April17, who showed a clip of President George W. Bushsaying that "a murderer is not a martyr . . . justa murderer," and then explained why he found thisdeclaration regrettable. According to Roberts,

BB Episode 9 EH 91

Bush's "admonishment reinforced a growing beliefin the Arab countries and beyond that thepresident's Mideast policy is rooted too heavilyin domestic support for Israel and ignores thesuffering of the Palestinian people." This wasthinly veiled code for a denunciation of the "Jew-ish lobby," frequently expressed abroad but rarelyin the United States.

That same evening, Andrews seemed to have for-gotten his earlier skepticism toward Arafat, andnow pointed a finger at Israel as the offendingparty:

Prime Minister Sharon, [Powell] said, finallyset a weekend deadline to end the West Bankinvasion, but the fact that troops are stillthere now, Powell admitted, killed any chance ofachieving a ceasefire. . . . For a week now, theIsraelis have said they are withdrawing, butsome tanks leave and then return. Israel ex-plains it's just searching for individual sus-pects, but across whole villages around EastJerusalem, new curfews have been imposed.

On NBC, Andrea Mitchell reported that Powell "calledupon Israel . . . to stop using excessive force"(April 13). But this terminology was not Powell's.The Arabs were accusing Israel of excessive force,which Israel denied. Powell had diplomaticallyavoided pronouncing judgment on the issue, art-fully calling on Israel to "refrain from the ex-cessive use of force" without saying whether italready had been guilty of this. Mitchell's subtleparaphrase changed the meaning of Powell's remarkand served to smuggle a little editorial into hernews report. At the conclusion of Powell's visit,she reported that "U.S. officials say Powell pushedArafat hard on terrorism and security. But noprogress on a ceasefire was possible because Is-rael has still not pulled back" (April 17). Al-though Mitchell was consistently harsher towardIsrael than her colleagues at NBC were, in thisinstance it appears that her slant, like WyattAndrews's turnabout on CBS, reflected briefings

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by a Powell entourage that was upset with Sharonand perhaps with Bush, too. Mitchell hinted atthis as she added, "Tonight, Sharon has more le-verage than ever over U.S. policy, a frustratinglesson for Powell."

CNN, too, expressed skepticism toward Arafat'sstatement against terrorism. "It was really . . . verystrong language . . . that Yasir Arafat used," re-ported Andrea Koppel on April 13, too generously,since in truth this language was boilerplate. Butshe added: "He has condemned acts of terrorismbefore, but what he has yet to do, say U.S. andIsraeli officials, is to translate those wordsinto concrete action."

The next evening, CNN correspondent JerroldKessel reported that "Sharon has called ColinPowell's decision [to meet with Arafat] a tragicmistake, fearing it might serve to rehabilitatethe Palestinian leader as a peace partner." Thiswas a distorted presentation of Sharon's fears. Hehad made quite clear his conviction that Arafatcould not be a peace partner because Arafat didnot really want peace. Sharon did not fear a peacepartner; he feared the resurrection of a cloak ofrespectability for a man whom he saw, with goodreason, as a terrorist uninterested in peace. Tothis, Kessel, who had never in the dispatchesreviewed for this study bothered to criticizeinconsistencies or hypocrisies in Arafat's posi-tions, pointed to one he espied on the part ofIsrael's leader. Sharon, he said, "has abandonedhis long insistence that there should be no nego-tiating under fire. Now he's the one who's press-ing for negotiating a ceasefire under fire, underhis fire." Apparently, Kessel thought he had madea clever observation, but it was too clever; Sharonwas not after a ceasefire. Even if he were, Kessel'spoint made no sense. Ceasefires are only reachedwhen there is fire—otherwise, what is to beceased?

The arrest of Barghouti elicited this sympa-thetic portrait from ABC's Peter Jennings on April

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15: "He was in favor of the peace process until,as he told an Israeli newspaper, the Israelisdidn't withdraw from the territories and went onbuilding Jewish settlements." Gillian Findlaychimed in admiringly that "Marwan Barghouti neverhid his beliefs." For CBS's David Hawkins, thearrest of Barghouti provided a lens on Israel'sdeeper nefarious objectives. "Palestinians insisthe's a politician," said Hawkins before interview-ing Palestinian leader Sari Nusseibeh, who said,"Marwan is actually—[has] always been . . . anextremely positive force in the peace process"(April 16). Neither interviewer nor intervieweeattempted to explain how it could be, then, thatBarghouti was credibly charged with mastermindingterrorist actions that had killed dozens of Is-raeli civilians or that he was known to be thehead of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, whose veryname—"Martyrs"—trumpeted its role in suicide-murder missions. Hawkins rounded out the reportwith a bit of strident editorializing: "Almostall Palestinians, and even some Israelis, don'tbelieve this is a war just against terrorism.They see it as a war to destroy the PalestinianAuthority and prospects for a Palestinian state."This vicious interpretation of Israeli motivesignored the simple fact that the war was thePalestinians' initiative and that Israel had des-perately sought an end to the violence. If thePalestinians stopped attacking Israelis, wasthere any reason to believe that Israel's mili-tary action would continue?

During these days, there was much in the NewYork Times about the violence on the ground. OnApril 13, United Nations (UN) correspondent Bar-bara Crossette reported, "The secretary-generalsaid the United Nations, with about 12,000 reliefworkers in the Palestinian camps and settlements,had been getting reports that Israelis had vio-lated the codes of conduct in war." She gave read-ers no way to know that the fifty-plus-year-oldUN relief operation in the Palestinian camps was

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far from an independent or objective source. Ithad become instead an integral part of the Pales-tinian polity, and the vast majority of those12,000 relief workers were themselves Palestin-ians. Similarly, the Times ran a Reuters story onApril 15 asserting that "the European Union [is]losing patience with Israel's West Bank offen-sive," a formulation that obscured the fact thatthe European Union had staked out a strongly anti-Israel position since the outbreak of the vio-lence and indeed before.

Several other Times stories implied criticismof Israel. Serge Schmemann reported that the Is-raeli offensive had caused "enormous destruction"(April 13). "Editorial Observer" Steven Weismanstated that "Mr. Sharon's drive against the Pales-tinians has turned out to be more brutal thanexpected" (April 13). And on April 14, the papercarried Associated Press reports citing Arafat'sclaims of massacres in Jenin, Ramallah, Nablus,and Tulkarm. Yet, the April 14 issue of the Times'also ran an illuminating account by Michael Gordonof the nature of the war Israel was fighting,providing context that, except for NBC, was offeredin none of the other media reviewed for this study:

For Israeli forces, it Is also an especiallydangerous mission. This is not an American-stylemilitary campaign that uses airstrikes for weeksor even months before ground troops are deployed.It is urban warfare, with soldiers moving [from]alley to alley, house to house, searching formilitants amid booby-trapped homes. Twenty-fourIsraeli soldiers have been killed and 124 woundedsince the operation began on March 28.

Operation Defensive Shield occasioned a remark-able Times editorial that seemed to reflect theunderlying assumption of much of the news cover-age. It opined that "real Israeli security willprove elusive until the occupation of the WestBank ends and Palestinians are permitted to . . .establish their state" (April 15). Because thisstudy is concerned primarily with the accuracy

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and fairness of reportage, comments on editori-als or columns appear only in a few places. Yet,this Times editorial embodied such a fancifulleap of faith that it warrants mention. Had theTimes merely asserted that Israel would con-tinue to suffer trouble from the Palestiniansas long as it occupied the territories capturedin 1967, the argument would have been hard togainsay. But the editorial went further. Itsuggested that the evacuation of the territo-ries and the creation of a Palestinian statewould lead to "real security" for Israel. Therewas not a shred of evidence for believing this.On the contrary, all relevant experience castit into doubt, beginning with the fact thatIsrael had never enjoyed security before 1967and that the current violence had been unleashedin the face of Israel's offer of a Palestinianstate containing almost all the territory inquestion. The Times is of course entitled toits editorial opinions, but it is disturbingthat such an influential organ should propoundbeliefs as unreasonable as these.

Although coverage of the allegations of a mas-sacre in Jenin peaked after Powell's visit (andwill be the focus of "episode 10" of this study) ,there were many stories about Jenin that coin-cided with the visit. On April 13, a nonbylineditem on casualty statistics in the Times statedthat "Israel has officially said 100 Palestiniansdied in Jenin, but some Israeli officials haveput the actual toll nearer 200". Palestinians putthe Jenin figure at several hundred." And Wash-ington Post correspondents Keith Richburg and AlanSipress reported, "Palestinians have said thatIsraeli troops killed hundreds . . . mostly ci-vilians, in . . . Jenin," adding that "Palestin-ians compared the killing in Jenin to the deathsof Palestinian refugees at . . . Sabra and Shatilla"(April 13). The next day, Richburg and Sipressrepeated these figures as well as the Sabra-Shatillaanalogy.

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On April 15, however, the Times1 Serge Schmemannand Joel Greenberg reported a change in numbers:"Once the bulldozers moved in and resistance waned,the [Israeli] army spoke of 100 to 200 Palestin-ian deaths. But after the ensuing furor, the armytoday said it was aware of 45 Palestinian dead."The reference to the "ensuing furor" seemed in-tended to cast doubt on the new figures, and thetwo authors went on to claim that it was theoriginal, higher Israeli figures "that promptedPalestinian charges of a massacre." This attribu-tion was far-fetched. Arafat, after all, was alsocrying massacre in Nablus, Ramallah, and Tulkarm,where no such Israeli figures had been put out,and indeed he had been denouncing Israeli "massa-cres" repeatedly since the first days of theintifada. In the Post, Sipress and Richburg nowreported that the Israeli army said it had dis-covered thirty-nine bodies "after searching abouthalf the camp" (April 15).

On ABC, correspondent Dean Reynolds reportedon April 14, "Today, at the Israeli cabinet meet-ing, ministers referred to dozens of dead Palestin-ians from the fighting in . . . Jenin—considerablybelow the hundreds to which they referred onlydays ago." Visiting Jenin, evidently with an Is-raeli military escort, Reynolds reported that "onthe tour, a Palestinian doctor was encouraged [bythe Israelis] to offer details which seem to havebeen rehearsed with soldiers beforehand." Reynolds'ssensitive journalistic antennae apparently alertedhim to the possibility of getting a doctored storyof events. Not once, however, in the period re-viewed for this study did anyone at ABC exhibit asimilar alertness to the possibility of manipula-tion by the Palestinians.

On CNN, Wolf Blitzer reported on April 13, "Wehave new pictures of the devastation in the Jeninrefugee camp. . . . Palestinians allege a massa-cre. Israel says there were hundreds killed orwounded." That same evening, correspondent SheilaMacVicar stated, "The Israeli military is now ac-

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knowledging . . . that at least 100 people died"in Jenin. Then, Blitzer interviewed Nasser al-Kidwa, the Palestinian representative to the UN,who charged

obvious war crimes which have been committed . . .the horrible war crime in the refugee camp inJenin. . . . This was willful killing. This waswanton destruction. This was massacres . . . warcrimes under international law . . . this isunheard of.

Two nights later, Blitzer interviewed Sharon,who denied that a massacre had occurred at Jeninand said that Israel now believed that the numberof Palestinian dead counted in the dozens. Thiswas followed by an interview with Palestinianminister of international cooperation NabilSha'ath, who insisted that the massacre story wasgenuine. "We don't know the exact number, becausealready a lot of the bodies have been snatchedand buried elsewhere in unidentified graves thatwe learned about," he said. "[Sharon] took sixdays to perpetrate the massacre and six days fora cover-up" (April 15).

The debate about Jenin dragged on, as "episode10" of this study will show. In the end, theIsraeli figures would be vindicated by a UN in-vestigation, while every version put out by thePalestinians would turn out to have been hope-lessly erroneous and propagandistic ,12

Although Israel's mili-tary action in Jenin wasmostly ended by April 11,

it was not until a few days later that Israelallowed journalists into the area. This may havelent some credibility to claims that a massacrehad occurred there, and the reportage of theclaims and denials reached a crescendo about aweek after the events had taken place.

The first New York Times story filed fromJenin was by David Rohde, who reported that "ininterviews, [residents] accused Israeli forcesof shooting civilians, removing bodies and bull-dozing houses with people inside" (April 16).One resident

led a group of reporters to a pile of rubblewhere he said he watched from his bedroom windowas Israeli soldiers buried 10 bodies. 'There wasa hole here where they buried bodies,' he said.'And then they collapsed a house on top of it.'

Rohde acknowledged that the "Palestinian accountscould not be verified," but he seemed to give themthe benefit of the doubt: "The smell of decompos-ing bodies hung over at least six heaps of rubbletoday, and weeks of excavation may be neededbefore an accurate death toll can be made."

On April 17, Rohde ran a long story on thecomplaints of aid organizations that Israel wasnot giving them sufficient assistance, quotingone unnamed worker as saying "the devastation isworse than I expected. . . . I couldn't have imag-ined anything worse than this." On April 18, thepaper carried Rohde's account of Palestinians dig-ging body parts out of the rubble, seemingly but-tressing the massacre claims.

In the early stages of the fighting, Israellost thirteen soldiers in a single event setoff by a booby trap. After that, Israel changedtactics, and instead of entering buildings inpursuit of enemy fighters, used armored bull-dozers to knock down buildings from which Is-

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raeli forces had been fired upon. On April 18,Rohde reported:

Israeli officials say they issued clear and re-peated warnings over megaphones to residents toleave the camp, particularly in areas where houseswere bulldozed. But Ms. Daoud, who is blind andpartly deaf, said she had never heard any Is-raeli orders to leave the camp, or the bulldoz-ers flattening houses nearby.

Was the reader supposed to infer that Israel'sclaims of having given warning were not true?

One of the factors tilting press coverage ofJenin to Israel's disadvantage was the highly vis-ible and agitated role of Terje Roed-Larsen. ANorwegian diplomat working for the United Nations(UN), Roed-Larsen had been a driving force behindthe Oslo Accords and perhaps was distraught atseeing his project come to such a bad ending.Times correspondent James Bennet quoted Roed-Larsenas stating, "Combating terrorism does not give ablank check to kill civilians" (April 19). This,like most of what Roed-Larsen had to say duringthis period, was extremely wide of the mark. Thesubsequent UN report noted that approximatelyfifty-two Palestinians in all died in Jenin.13 ByIsrael's count, thirty-eight were gunmen and four-teen civilians.14 Human Rights Watch, known forbeing highly critical of Israel, estimated thattwenty-two of the fifty-two were civilians.15 Thatis fewer than the twenty-three Israeli soldierswho died in Jenin. These numbers clearly bespeaka military operation at pains to avoid civiliancasualties, the opposite of the picture that Roed-Larsen was eager to paint.

When President George W. Bush applauded Israel'swithdrawal from Jenin, Times correspondent DavidSanger objected: "On a day when Arab, European andUnited Nations officials were focused on the de-struction that the Israeli incursions had leftbehind, . . . Mr. Bush's comments may bolster Pal-estinian suspicions that the United States wassupporting Prime Minister Ariel Sharon" (April 19).

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The reports from Jenin came amid a tense standoffin Bethlehem, where scores of Palestinian gunmenhad taken refuge in the Church of the Nativity.Times correspondent Serge Schmemann reported, "TheIsraelis had begun detaining some wives and moth-ers of men inside, Palestinians said" (April 17).Some women may have been detained, perhaps withdue cause, but it seems very unlikely that anysystematic activity of the kind described bySchmemann took place because no other news orga-nizations reported it—nor did the Times, accord-ing to the findings of this study, repeat thisclaim.

Washington Post correspondent Molly Moorepainted a vivid picture of the destruction inJenin. At the same time, however, she got on topof the massacre story days before the Times or thenetworks lent any similar illumination. On April16, she reported: "Interviews with residents in-side the camp and international aid workers whowere allowed here for the first time today indi-cated that no evidence has surfaced to supportallegations by Palestinian groups and aid organi-zations of large-scale massacres or executions byIsraeli troops. Thus far, about forty bodies havebeen recovered." But three days later, the Post'sJohn Lancaster was resurrecting the massacre talewith the help of Roed-Larsen and some other in-ternational participants. "What we are seeing hereis horrifying," said Roed-Larsen, "horrifying scenesof human suffering. . . . Israel has lost all moralground in this conflict" (April 19). Lancasteralso quoted Human Rights Watch official PeterBouckert, who stated, "I think it's clear that inthe end what actually happened in Jenin will fallsomewhere in between what the Palestinians arealleging and what the [Israeli Army] claims. Butonly an independent authority can establish whatactually happened."

When the UN conducted its investigation, how-ever, what was "clear" to Bouckert proved incor-rect. Far from splitting the difference, the UN's

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conclusions coincided more or less exactly withIsrael 's claims and not at a l l with those of thePalestinians. Lancaster returned to the subjectthe next day, writing that "Palestinian officialssaid many civilians died in the Israel i assaulton Jenin" (April 20).

On ABC, Peter Jennings introduced a report onApril 17 by Gillian Findlay that he clearly be-lieved—or wanted viewers to believe—constituteda kind of "gotcha" moment, proving the worst ofIsrael i intentions. I t was based on Palestinianclaims that Israel i soldiers had torn up thePalestinian Ministry of Education in Ramallah.Jennings began the segment with these words:

If you have listened with even half an ear to theverbal conflict between the Israelis and Pales-tinians, you will have heard Israelis say re-peatedly that whatever they did, it was to rootout terrorism. Whereas, the Palestinians havesaid that Prime Minister Sharon is trying toundermine Palestinian society.

Then he introduced Pindlay, who reported:

Amid all the damage—smashed buildings, torn-uproads, power and water systems that no longerwork—there has been another casualty here: thePalestinian Authority itself. This is the Minis-try of Education: doors blown in, offices trashed,employees who say they were forced at gunpointto lead soldiers from room to room. . . . Thesoldiers, [one employee] says, then went for thecomputers—ripping our hard drives, confiscat-ing financial records, student records. He saysthey even blasted the ministry's vault, takingcanceled checks and $10,000 in cash.

She then brought on Saeb Erekat, who claimedthat "everything of the civilian infrastructureand security infrastructure have been destroyed,"before finally giving an Israeli spokesman timefor a single cursory sentence in defense of hisgovernment's actions. This was the merest bow tobalance in a report whose unmistakable importwas made clear by Jennings's lead. But did it

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really prove what Jennings wanted viewers tobelieve it did?

Israel may indeed have ransacked the ministry'soffices, although the specifics provided by ABCwere all from Palestinian sources, leaving reasonto doubt such details as the theft of cash. But didthis show, as Jennings implied, that terrorism wasnot Israel's true target, that Israel was onlyusing terrorism as an excuse in a war whose truegoal was to stamp out Palestinian national aspira-tions? Only if one believes that the same Palestin-ian Authority that sponsored terrorism even whilenominally rejecting it, and that repeatedly closedschools in order to send children into the frontlines, would be above using its Ministry of Educa-tion as a front for terror-related activities.Perhaps Jennings believed this, but his impliedaccusation of Israeli duplicity meant that Israel,too, must believe Arafat would never misuse hisMinistry of Education in this way. And this Israelassuredly did not believe.

Given Jennings's ill-concealed animus towardIsrael, Roed-Larsen's fulminations fell upon himlike manna from heaven. He began his April 18broadcast by quoting Roed-Larsen's words that thescene in Jenin was "horrifying, beyond belief."During that week, a new ABC reportorial voice, thatof John Yang, was added to the coverage of theconflict, and he was clearly singing from the samepage as his colleagues. On April 19, three daysafter the Post's Molly Moore had reported on theabsence of evidence of a massacre in Jenin, Yangreported from that city: "There is no firm estimateof how many Palestinians died here. The Israeliarmies [sic'] say it's in the dozens. The Palestin-ians say it's in the hundreds, maybe the thou-sands." And the next evening, Yang was declaiming,"All this destruction here in Jenin is becoming arallying cry for the Arab world. A symbol of Israel'siron-fist approach."

By any reasonable standard, the low number ofcivilian casualties as compared with the number ofIsraeli casualties proved just the opposite. An "iron-

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fist approach," such as armies—including Arab armies—confronting terrorism have often taken in otherplaces, would have led to civilian casualties manytimes higher. For example, when militants in theSyrian town of Hama challenged the rule of dictatorHafez al-Asad in 1982, Asad's forces leveled muchof the town, causing an estimated 20,000 deaths—nearly 1,000 for every civilian that Human RightsWatch said had died in Jenin. That was an iron-fistapproach.

On CBS, anchor Dan Rather exhibited none ofthe bias of ABC's Jennings, but he, too, chose toquote Roed-Larsen. Unlike Jennings, however, heincluded Israel's version as well: "Israel saysits troops did their best to minimize civilian casu-alties. . . . But . . . one United Nations officialcalls Jenin, quote, 'a sad and disgraceful chapter inIsrael's history'" (April 18) . On April 19, CBS cor-respondent Mark Phillips used a story about Israel'swithdrawal from Jenin to deliver himself of along editorial accusing Israel of destroying theprospects for peace:

Moderates on both sides here feel trapped in acycle of violence. . . . Nobody's expecting therecent relative lull in violence to last. Whathas this Israeli operation accomplished? . . .It has only reduced, not destroyed, the Pales-tinian capacity for revenge, and it certainlyhasn't reduced their motivation. Among the casu-alties . . . have been the voices of moderationand compromise.

Phillips had apparently been assigned to the re-gion just that week, and he sounded as if he wereentirely unaware of what had transpired duringthe preceding year and a half. Such platitudinousmoral equivalence had been blown to smithereensby the suicide bombers. It was Arafat and hisFatah group who were supposedly the Palestinianmoderates, but they had morphed into the al-AqsaMartyrs Brigades, which was running neck-and-neck with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad inits efforts to murder Israeli civilians. And on

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the Israeli side, where indeed there were plentyof genuine moderates, the violence they felt"trapped in" was Palestinian violence.

On April 20, Phillips pounded away at his ideefixe of moral equivalence. "What happened in Jenindepends on who you believe," he said, citing thecontrasting Palestinian and Israeli versions. "Eventhe UN inquiry . . . isn't likely to end theargument over Jenin. In the bitterness and mis-trust of this conflict, each side has basicallyalready made up its mind over what happened thereand who is to blame." Of course, in reality, whathappened depended not on whom the observer be-lieved. Whatever the state of mind of the twoparties, there was an objective reality to theseevents, and journalists, one would have thought,were under a professional obligation to discoverwhat it was, as best they could, as, for example,did the Post's Molly Moore. But not Phillips, whosounded like a modern-day literary critic ap-proaching a "text" of which all constructions wereequally subjective, thus equally valid.

NBC's report from Jenin served to illustratehow poor the ABC and CBS coverage was. NBC was noless vivid in portraying the destruction that thePalestinians had suffered, but in a few briefpassages it allowed viewers to see the Israeliside, too. It is ironic that a reporter like CBS'sPhillips could strain so for artificial symmetryin order to present a surface balance yet fail ina substantive way to tell both sides of the story.On NBC, Tom Brokaw led by saying that Jenin hadwitnessed "some of the most intense fighting ofthe war," which had "leveled many homes and killedan undetermined number of Palestinians. On theArab side, they're claiming it was a massacre. Onthe Israeli side, they're claiming that is anexaggeration" (April 16) . Then correspondent Mar-tin Fletcher reported from the scene:

It's a rough ride into Jenin, but it's worse whenyou get there. The center of the refugee camplooks like it was hit by an earthquake, but it

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was the Israeli army. Palestinians claim therewas a massacre here, that close to 500 Palestin-ians were killed and their bodies taken by Is-rael and hidden in mass graves.

This gave a pretty clear view of the Arab takeon these events, but Fletcher next showed anI s rae l i officer who said of the massacre a l l e -gation, " i t ' s a complete l i e . " Fletcher went onto summarize the I s r ae l i assessment of the num-bers who died in Jenin. At th is point his in ter -view with the I s rae l i was interrupted by a coupleof local women who came along and said, asFletcher t ranslated the i r words from Arabic:"We don't have food or water. . . . And where areour children? Maybe they're dead. Come withus. . . . You'll find dead bodies." This was prettystrong, seemingly spontaneous testimony for thePalestinian version. Fletcher, however, contin-ued, pointing around him:

But the problem here isn't only death but de-struction. The Palestinians laid booby traps ev-erywhere. These white cables were strung allover the camp. They were controlling booby-trapbombs, and here's one of the bombs. To protecttheir soldiers, the army brought in giant ar-mored bulldozers to simply demolish booby-trappedhomes. So, now the question no one can answeryet is: How many more bodies are buried underthe rubble?

One could scarcely call this account pro-Israel i ,but both sides of the story came across.

On CNN, Sheila MacVicar also provided a bal-anced account. She did not fail to dramatize theanguish of Palestinian deaths, closing her April16 report with these words:

How many bodies, how many fighters, how manycivilians? No one yet knows. No one even knowshow many might be missing. Only a few hundred ofthe camp's surviving inhabitants are s t i l l intheir own homes. The rest are scattered and havenot yet been counted. It is mostly women andchildren who are left. Some of them wandered the

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camp weeping, crying for lost brothers and sons.And they point to that mountain of rubble andsay that is where they lie.

Yet, MacVicar also included the Israeli perspec-tive: "The Israeli military say this was the sceneof some of the fiercest fighting, and not a neigh-borhood, they say, but a fortress . . . the heartof the Palestinian terror infrastructure, andthe civilians who lived here, the women and chil-dren, they say, were used as shields." She alsoput an Israeli on camera for a moment pointingout some of the booby traps.

The next evening, Wolf Blitzer interviewed SaebErekat, who claimed, "We have 1,600 missing men inthis refugee camp [in Jenin]" (April 17). Erekatalso called for "an international commission ofinquiry to get the results and to decide how manypeople were massacred. And we say the number willnot be less than 500."

On April 19, when Israeli forces withdrew fromJenin, Christiane Amanpour delivered a long reportfrom Jenin that had none of the balance that MacVicarhad shown. She spoke of Israeli forces "attackinghouses with Apache helicopters and tanks"; of resi-dents who "say they never got any warning"; and ofIsraeli soldiers "us[ing] Palestinian camp resi-dents as human shields as they went house to housesearching for armed militants and booby traps,[which] violates the rules of war." Although herreport included more details on the battle thanmost other television news reports, she managednot to mention the use of booby traps by the Pales-tinians (beyond the confused reference to Israelisoldiers "searching" for them). It was the killingof thirteen Israeli soldiers by booby trap that hadreshaped Israel's tactics in Jenin, but no viewerwould have learned this from Amanpour's account.Instead, as she told it, Israel had resorted torazing buildings because of the effectiveness ofPalestinian "armed resistance."

Also during this week, anchor Wolf Blitzerconducted an interview with Ismael Abu Shanab,

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one of the founders of Hamas, and asked him whetherHamas would "accept an independent Jewish statein this part of the world" if "Israel were towithdraw completely to the 1967 lines" (April 16).Shanab shot back: "We accept Israeli withdrawal.And we said it many times, that we support Israeliwithdrawal to 1967." The evasion could scarcelyhave been clearer, but rather than press Shanab,Blitzer ended the interview and then summarized:"He seemed to say that Hamas would support a Jew-ish state in Israel if Israel were to withdraw tothe '67 lines." Shanab had said no such thing;accepting Israel's withdrawal is far differentfrom accepting Israel's existence. Blitzer, a formerreporter for the Jerusalem Post, is not unfriendlyto Israel nor ignorant of its security concerns.Nonetheless, he seemed to whitewash Shanab's an-swer. Perhaps he could not bring himself to ac-cept that Hamas's undisguised goal is the utterdestruction of Israel. But various polls demon-strate that this is precisely what a great manyPalestinians and other Arabs say they desire.Unless this brutal fact is absorbed, much elsethat transpires in the painful struggles betweenIsrael and its neighbors will be seen through aclouded lens.

• • In the preceding pages,— ^ ^ I have documented dozens

I I of instances of inaccu-rate, tendentious, misleading, or unfair itemsfound in the news reports that I examined. Sowhat? To err is human, and journalists trying tocover a bitter, entangled conflict unfolding onmany fronts—much of it in secret—are not likelyto achieve perfection. And, too, the circumstancesin which they work are often dangerous; for thatthey deserve our gratitude.

There are, however, some faults which oughtnot to be excused. The most serious of these isbias. By this I do not mean the biases that re-porters, like everyone else, may hold within. Iprefaced this study by specifying my own bias.Rather, I mean the betrayal of journalistic stan-dards that occurs when reporters allow their bi-ases to color their reportage, when what theypurport to be news stories are in fact subtleeditorials.

Of the news organizations I examined, the onewhose bias was abundantly evident was ABC televi-sion, which in almost every episode under studymade Israel look worse than it appeared in thereportage of the other networks or the two majornewspapers. Invariably, this bias began with thecomments of Peter Jennings, who, for example,wanted his viewers to believe that Israel was notreally at war against terrorism but rather onlyusing terrorism as an excuse for strangling Pal-estinian aspirations. Perhaps because Jenningstakes a direct hand in writing the news reportsand also in selecting many of the reporters (hehas the title of "editor"),16 ABC's reportage evinceda consistency of slant that I found in none of theother news organizations. During the period underreview, viewers of ABC never saw, for example, asdid those of other networks, the Temple Mountrioters showering stones and bottles on Jewishworshipers at the Wailing Wall below nor the boobytraps in Jenin that impelled Israel to smash build-

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ings. They would have learned, falsely, that Jew-ish settlers proclaimed "days of rage," when infact it was only Palestinians who did so. Theywould have heard Palestinian spokesmen denyingany involvement in the Karine-A arms shipment butwould have seen no follow-up story of the proof ofPalestinian involvement. And they would have heardmany other claims from Palestinian sources with-out challenge, indeed often reinforced by Jenningsand his reporters, such as that Yasir Arafat wascompletely helpless to stop the violence.

Other news organizations had individuals whoseconsistent anti-Israel slant stood out, for ex-ample, David Hawkins at CBS, Mike Hanna and JerroldKessel at CNN, Andrea Mitchell at NBC, DeborahSontag at the New York Times, and Daniel Williamsat the Washington Post. But unlike at ABC, thesevoices were balanced by others whose approach wasless tendentious.

The best reportage was by NBC's Martin Fletcher.Fletcher was hardly soft on Israel. His coverage,for example, of the destruction of parts of Jeninwas as vivid as that of any other journalist, butunlike most others, Fletcher presented a clearvision of the booby traps laid by Palestinianfighters so that his viewers could grasp whatIsraeli soldiers were facing.

What is the cause of bias against Israel? Per-haps some individuals are endemically hostile tothe Jewish state, but such a deep cause is un-likely. A better explanation can be found in anessay by a correspondent for the Economist whodescribed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as "anepic struggle of the weak against the strong."17

Since journalists often pride themselves on af-flicting the powerful, those who see the MiddleEast in these terms would naturally find them-selves siding with the Palestinians.

After bias, the next most serious journalisticfailing is ignorance. Most journalists are neces-sarily generalists, so they cannot fairly be ex-pected to be experts on each area they cover. Yet,

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they owe it to their audience to be reasonablywell informed, to give themselves a crash courseupon being assigned to a new place. The one whomost conspicuously failed to meet this standardwas Christiane Amanpour, who plunged into Israelapparently not even understanding such elementaryfacts as that the settlers are Israelis who livein the territories occupied in 1967 as opposed towithin Israel proper (which is why they are called"settlers") ; not knowing that Ehud Barak repre-sented the dovish side of the Israeli spectrum;and apparently believing that Hamas is opposed toviolence.

Beyond the failures of individual journal-ists or news organizations, I discovered onesystemic problem in the course of this studythat is probably more important than any oneindividual's bias. These journalists seem to fol-low a canon that says when two sides are fight-ing, it is their obligation to report equallyand with equal credence what is said by each.But the quality of the information provided bythe two sides in this conflict is highly asym-metrical. By this I mean simply that the Pales-tinians repeatedly lie. It starts with Arafatand goes down to his many deputies. It seemseven to reach to doctors in Palestinian hospi-tals and to many subjects of apparently unstagedman-in-the-street interviews, such as the Jeninresident who claimed to have watched Israel buryten bodies under a building.

Palestinian spokesmen asserted vociferously thatthey had nothing to do with the Karine-A. Theyinsisted that 500 people had been "massacred" inJenin. Amid these claims, Israeli aerial surveil-lance captured, and released to the press, photosof a staged Palestinian funeral in which the "corpse"could be seen running to the litter and climbinginto it.18 Arafat also claimed that "massacres"had occurred repeatedly in every Palestinian popu-lation center. Palestinian first lady Suha Arafatdeclared in a speech in Ramallah, with Hillary

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Clinton present as her guest, that Israel waspoisoning Palestinian wells. When Israeli forcesfound a photo of a two-year-old Palestinian boydecked out as a suicide bomber, Palestinian offi-cials claimed it to be a fabrication until thechild's family acknowledged the photo. Arafatclaimed to have renounced terror while secretlyencouraging it. He declared his intent to conducta "very serious investigation" of the Ramallahpolice station lynching of the two Israeli re-servists, although nothing of the sort ensued.Nor was the Jericho synagogue that was torched bya Palestinian mob restored, as Palestinian spokes-men had claimed. A Palestinian died in an autoaccident, and his body was shown to journalistsas a victim of Israeli torture. (It was also shownrepeatedly on Palestinian television to encouragerage.) And so on.

On the other side, Israel, while engaging inpublic relations with all the spin and self-in-terest that any democratic government is guiltyof, nonetheless operates, like other democraticgovernments, with a presumption of truth-telling.At least twice during these episodes, Israelispokesmen helped to reinforce stories embarrass-ing to their own side because that was what thefacts, at first glance, seemed to suggest. Onlylater did Israel discover that these stories wereprobably false or exaggerated. The first case wasthe death of Mohammed al-Dura on the third day ofthe intifada. Eventually, Israel's investigationconcluded that the boy had probably died fromPalestinian fire, and the research of German tele-vision network ARD reached a similar conclusion.But at the time, Israeli spokesmen, eager to puton record their regrets over the tragedy, ac-cepted that Israeli fire had caused his death.The second case was Jenin. At first, Israeli sourcessaid that as many as 200 Palestinians had died,thus fueling the claims of a massacre. Only laterdid Israel realize that the actual number was inthe fifties.

SB Conclusion gj 117

What happens in a conflict where one side,accustomed to operating with a controlled press,will say anything that seems to serve its pur-poses, without any conscience about its truthvalue, while the other side attempts to learn andtell the truth, at least to the degree of otherdemocratic governments? Faced with this situa-tion, have the media no obligation beyond report-ing "he says, she says"?

The asymmetry of veracity is compounded byother asymmetries. For one, Israel, being a de-mocracy, is rich in critics of its own govern-ment. Many of the leads to stories that makeIsrael look bad originate in the Israeli press,with Israeli nongovernmental organizations, orwith representatives of the political opposition.There is no shortage of Israeli academics andintellectuals willing to be quoted or to go oncamera criticizing their government's policiestoward the Palestinians. There is, on the otherhand, no comparable freedom in the Palestinianpress. And the willingness of individual Pales-tinian notables to speak out against their gov-ernment is sharply circumscribed. About a yearand a half into the intifada, voices began to beraised among the Palestinians criticizing corrup-tion and Arafat's style of governance, but onlylater were a precious few willing to challengePalestinian violence against Israel. (On the otherhand, calls by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad,and others for greater violence are widely airedand treated with respect.) In many stories I ex-amined for this study, an assertion critical ofsome Israeli policy, for example, on settlements,would be prefaced with the phrase "even manyIsraelis believe . . ." And this was undoubt-edly accurate. But I never saw, mutatis mutan-dis, a criticism of Palestinian policy with thephrase "even many Palestinians . . ."

Another important asymmetry is that the Pales-tinians have created a menacing environment forjournalists. The Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported

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in October 2002 that when three Hamas memberswere killed in Gaza by an explosion, apparentlyof their own bomb, "A group of journalists whoarrived at the scene of the blast, including anAP reporter and a photographer and a cameramanfor Associated Press Television News, were as-saulted by several Hamas supporters."19 On Au-gust 26, 2002, the Associated Press reported,"The Palestinian journalists union declared . . .that news photographers are 'absolutely forbid-den' from taking pictures of Palestinian childrencarrying weapons or taking part in activities bymilitant groups, saying that the pictures harmthe Palestinian cause." In October 2000, London'sDaily Telegraph carried an account by a Britishnews photographer who came upon the aftermath ofthe Ramallah lynching:

I reached for my camera. I was composing thepicture when I was punched in the face by aPalestinian. Another Palestinian pointed rightat me shouting 'no picture, no picture!' whileanother guy hit me in the face and said 'give meyour film!' I tried to get the film out but theywere all grabbing me and one guy just pulled thecamera off me and smashed it to the floor. I knewI had lost the chance to take the photographthat would have made me famous and I had lost myfavourite lens that I'd used all over the world,but I didn't care. I was scared for my life.20

Indeed, the whole grisly story from Ramallah mightnot have gotten out were it not for a singleItalian film crew that managed to escape withfootage of the killing. Ricardo Christiano, thebureau chief of the Italian television networkRAI, was so frightened when he learned that thefilm was being attributed to his company that hewrote a letter, published in the Palestinian press,swearing that it was "not the official Italiantelevision station RAI [that] filmed the events"but another station.21 He pledged that "we alwaysrespect . . . the journalistic procedures withthe Palestinian Authority for . . . work within

H Conclusion ffl 119

Palestine."22 When this letter appeared, it setoff a ruckus in Italy that led to the recall ofChristiano. His friends later were quoted as ex-plaining in his defense that of all the Europeanjournalists who had received beatings at the handsof the Palestinians, he had been beaten the mostseverely, leaving him traumatized.

Nor should it be assumed that such violencearises spontaneously from the grass roots ratherthan being orchestrated by Palestinian officials.When the Palestinian Authority was embarrassed inits relations with the United States by demon-strations of jubilation over the terrorist at-tacks of September 11, 2001, USA Today reportedthat "Palestinian Cabinet Secretary Ahmed AbdelRahman . . . called international news agenciesand said the safety of their staff could not beguaranteed unless they withdrew the embarrassingfootage of Palestinian police firing joyfully inthe air."23

Just as there is no indication that news orga-nizations have thought through how to handle theimbalance in truthfulness between the two sidesin the conflict, so there is also no evidence thatthey have weighed the implications of the intimi-dation aimed at both journalists reporting fromthe Palestinian areas and Palestinians themselvesto discourage dissident opinions. In these re-spects, the journalistic environment of the Is-raeli-Palestinian conflict is not a level playingfield.

A similar point was made by the WashingtonPost's editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt, regard-ing the U.S. conflict with Saddam Husayn's regimein Iraq:

Because our default position is to tell the truth—might as well, unless there's some good reasonnot to—we have trouble imagining people forwhom that is not so, for whom even a whisperedconversation far from officials or listening de-vices can never be considered safe. . . . And weassume, because of our blessed poverty of imagi-

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nation, that their officials behave more or lessas ours do, maybe lying when pressed, or whenthey think they can get away with it, but tell-ing the truth when, all things being equal, thereseems no reason not to.24

The conflict between Israel and the PalestinianAuthority is often described as a conflict be-tween two peoples. And so it is, in part. But itis also a conflict between an open, democraticsociety and an authoritarian one in which vio-lence and coercion are endemic. Whereas demo-cratic governments practice public relations or"spin control," authoritarian governments oftenaim for something more, namely news management ormanipulation, which they try to achieve throughdeceit and intimidation. Treating their domesticnews media as servants of the regime, they arelittle inclined to respect the functions or ob-jectivity of the foreign press.

Reporters tend to be savvy and tough; they arenot easy people to con or bully. Nonetheless,authoritarian regimes have often succeeded intwisting coverage to their purposes. Joseph Stalinfamously beguiled the New York Times into cover-ing up, and even directly denying, the monstrousfamine that claimed five to ten million Ukrainianlives in the 1930s. Adolf Hitler lulled the Timesof London into a benign interpretation of hisintentions, for which it issued a poignant meaculpa after World War Two. And during his guer-rilla days, Fidel Castro got the New York Timesand other news organizations to portray him asnothing but a radical democrat, only to acknowl-edge once he achieved power that he had been acommunist all along.

The various U.S. news organizations, as wellas the American Society of Newspaper Editors andthe Society of Professional Journalists, have codesof standards and ethics that guide reporters indealing with their sources. But none that I havefound include instructions for handling the machi-nations of authoritarian regimes, much less for

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trying to balance the competing presentations ofdemocratic and authoritarian adversaries. In thecase of the Middle East, that lacuna seems to workto Israel's disadvantage. Yet, it is not for Israel'ssake so much as for the sake of their readers andviewers and the effectiveness of their professionthat journalists ought to give systematic consid-eration to the problem of dealing with warringparties that are so dissimilar in how they dealwith the press.

Endnotes

1. Jeffrey Goldberg, "Arafat's Gift," New Yorker,January 29, 2001, p. 55.

2. Quoted in "First Statement of the Govern-ment of Israel" submitted to the Sharm El-SheikhFact-Finding Committee (a.k.a. the Mitchell Com-mittee), December 28, 2000, paragraph 183. Avail-able online (www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp7MFAH0jcb0).

3. Yasir Abed Rabbo, "We Are Not Sending OurChildren Out to Die," Palestine Liberation Orga-nization, Negotiation Affairs Department, Novem-ber 26, 2000. Available online (www.nad-plo.org/eye/opeds9.html).

4. "Drei Kugeln und ein totes kind" (Three bul-lets and a dead boy), originally produced as adocumentary by local television station HessischerRundfunk, then broadcast by ARD on March 17, 2002,as an episode of the regular investigative seriesDas rote Quadrat (The red square). See also FromSommer, Allison Kaplan, and Herb Keinon, "GermanTV Report: Palestinians Likely Killed Gaza Boy,"Jerusalem Post, March 20, 2002.

5. Michael Getler, "Tense Times/' WashingtonPost, June 9, 2002.

6. See note 4.7. Ron Kampeas, "Ultimatum Looms for Palestin-

ian," Associated Press Online, October 8, 2000;Barry Schweid, "Albright: Arafat Can Stop Vio-lence," Associated Press Online, October 8, 2000.

8. "IDF: PA Planning Mosque at Joseph's Tomb,"Haaretz, October 11, 2000; Margot Dudkevitch,"Palestinians Refurbish Joseph's Tomb," JerusalemPost, October 11, 2000.

9. In keeping with the general method of thisstudy in examining five-day segments, the datesthat I have encompassed for this episode are January4 through 9. Yet, in considering whether the net-works followed through to show the solution to

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the mystery embodied in the original story, itwould have made no sense to cut off my inquiryarbitrarily on January 9, so I looked at the weekbeyond as well.

10. This was as far as I searched. It is ex-tremely unlikely that the network returned to thestory beyond this point, since it had alreadygrown cold.

11. I have chosen to examine Powell's missionand the battles of Jenin as two separate epi-sodes, even though the five main days of coverageof Powell's diplomacy overlap slightly with thefive main days of coverage of Jenin, meaning thatcoverage of Powell was intermingled with news ofthe fighting. In keeping with my practice throughoutthis study of including whatever news storiesabout the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ran duringthe days of each selected episode, this episode,which focuses on Powell's mission, includes muchmaterial that also concerns Operation DefensiveShield and Jenin. Jenin itself is the focus of"episode 10" of this study.

12. The investigation concluded: "Fifty-two Pal-estinian deaths had been confirmed by the hospi-tal in Jenin. . . . A senior Palestinian Authorityofficial alleged in mid-April that some 500 werekilled, a figure that has not been substantiatedin the light of the evidence that has emerged.""Report of the Secretary-General prepared pursu-ant to General Assembly resolution ES-10/10," UnitedNations General Assembly, July 30, 2002, para-graph 56. Available online (www.un.org/peace/jenin).

13. Ibid.14. Ibid., paragraph 57.15. Ibid.16. Gillian Cosgrove, "Brain Drain of Local

Journos: Why U.S. Networks Have a Yen for Our Ink-Stained Wretches," National Post (Toronto edi-tion), August 17, 2002.

17. Max Rodenbeck, "Broadcasting the War," New-York Times, April 17, 2002.

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18. See Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson'sUnit, "Main Points of Briefing Given by ColonelMiri Eizen," May 2, 2002; available online(www.idf.il/english/news/funeral.stm). "IsraeliDrone Films Palestinians Faking Funeral in Jenin,"Israel Insider (Tel Aviv), May 5, 2002; availableonline (www.israelinsider.com/channels/diplomacy/articles/dip_0204.htm). Independent Media ReviewAnalysis, "Palestinian Group Admits Jenin FuneralStaged—But Claims Was for a Movie," May 5, 2002;available online (www. imra.org.il/story.php3?id=11834). Independent Media Review Analysis, "LAWRefutes Israeli Claims of Staged Jenin 'Burials,'"May 8, 2002; available online (www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id = H896) .

19. "Witnesses: Blasts at Militant's Gaza HomeKills Three," Haaretz, October 31, 2002.

20. Mark Seager, "I'll Have Nightmares for theRest of My Life," Sunday Telegraph, October 15,2000.

21. See Sharon Waxman, "On the JournalisticFront, Loaded Images," Washington Post, October19, 2000.

22. Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "Cov-erage of the October 12 Lynch in Ramallah byItalian TV Station," press release, October 18,2000. Available online (www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0i2p0).

23. Matthew Kalman, "Palestinian Leaders Tryto Repair Image," USA Today, September 13, 2001.

24. Fred Hiatt, "Lies in the Absence of Lib-erty," Washington Post, April 14, 2003.

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