Israeli interests' invisible stranglehold on how US media present Israel-Palestine

Being a long-time student of Middle East affairs and Arabic who does not get my information from mainstream media (and particularly not from ABC, NBC, CNN, etc.), I am constantly stunned to find out how little Americans understand about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This film shows why. There is an invisible (and now internalized) stranglehold of Israeli interests on how the media presents Israel-Palestine. Information that might be contrary to those interests is self-censored.

The film begins this way:
Today, the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians are plagued by daily violence and insecurity.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict dominates American news coverage of international issues.

Then it proceeds to dissect that coverage. The instructional-style documentary comes from the makers of Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire (Jeremy Earp, Sut Jhally, also 2004 but released four months earlier). Written and directed by Jhally with Bathsheba Ratzkoff, Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land just came to my attention three years after release when a friend in Rome emailed me links to it in video form online.

Why didn't I know about it? Well, in view of the media control by pro-Israeli interests in the US described in the film, it's not surprising that it was so little shown it previously escaped my notice, and even that I learned about it from someone who lives outside the US. Let's admit we don't want to know about our complicity. For me too, the realities behind the American media illusions about the fate of the Palestinian people in the occupied territories are things I'd rather not think about. A Palestinian I know, a longtime friend born in Israel who lives in California, has canceled his subscription to Al Jazeera. He couldn't stand to watch any more.

The Media Education Foundation says in its summary of Ratzhoff and Jhally's film for IMDB that it shows "how the foreign policy interests of American political elites--working in combination with Israeli public relations strategies--influence US news reporting about the Middle East conflict. Combining American and British TV news clips with observations of analysts, journalists and political activists, Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides a brief historical overview, a striking media comparison, and an examination of factors that have distorted U.S. media coverage and, in turn, American public opinion."

To speak of the "stranglehold" on the US media of "Israeli interests" sounds, to most Americans, like shrill agit-prop. Or worse: it sounds like the old anti-Semitic canard that the Jews control the media, the banking system, or the Eastern Establishment.

But it's not like that. Rather, given the biased, misleading reportage on the part of the best known American TV journalists shown in this film in clips, and ably contrasted with facts reported by the BBC and commented on by American peace activist rabbis like Michael Lerner of Tikkun, a dissenting former IDF officer, other experts on media accuracy, as well as Robert Fisk and Noam Chomsky (the usual suspects), a clear picture emerges. It's the picture of pervasive blackout of the Palestinian point of view--or of depicting anything Israel does that may not be legal or nice. Israeli attacks are always described on US television as "retaliations." Only the Palestinians "attack." Israeli settlements are referred to as "neighborhoods." The whole background of the conflict is never, ever filled in. (The facts are too inflammatory.) As with Iraq and Afghanistan, with whom we are "at war" (how so? who started it? who's fighting back and why?), the Palestinians are "at war" with Israel. The fourth most heavily armed nation in the world is "at war" with one of the most devastated, confined, and humiliated peoples. Is this a "war"? But that's the term used in the media.

If you don't watch Al Jazeera or even the BBC, some of the news clips not on US television are pretty shocking. They particularly show the brutality meted out to Palestinians at checkpoints. They also show detailed maps of the structure of Israel's settlements, the Jews-only roads, and the wall occupying the already occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza, explaining why Arafat could not agree to a two-state settlement at Camp David in 2000. There can be no two-state solution because in the demographics Israel has created, a Palestinian state would be meaningless. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, Netanyahu's information minister answering a question said in 1996 that "the Palestinians can have a state if they want, or they can call it fried chicken." Because it would be fried chicken, not a state. This mainstream Americans do not know because the map is not explained to them.

The charges can be brought against Bathsheba Ratzkoff and Sut Jhally's film--as it constantly and predictably is by US movie reviewers in The Daily News, The Village Voice, the NYTimes, and Variety (all found on the IMDb page or Metacritic) that this film is "a one-sided account" (NYTimes), that it's "pedantic" and "humorless" (Variety), and "may be better suited for classroom viewing than for theatrical exhibition" (Village Voice). The same charge could be brought against any television documentary. Anyway, does that make its information untrue? I don't think so. The same criticisms could be leveled at Hijacking Catastrophe, an indictment of the Bush administration post 9/11 rated equally low by Metacritic. But both films are devastatingly accurate.

This second one contains more crucial information. The Bush administration at least has been replaced. The Israeli-Palestinian situation is more urgent and horrific than ever, and the US media bias has just been devastatingly illustrated in the coverage of Israel's brutal assault on Gaza and its civilian population. The reasons are many and complex and the wrongs are on both sides, but the picture Americans have been getting is completely misleading. As you will see if you watch this film.

It is essential for a majority of Americans to understand media better and read or watch more critically. Let's take the Sunday New York Times Magazine that just appeared (January 25, 2009). An article is entitled "Can Social Networking Turn Disaffected Young Egyptians into a Force for Democratic Change?" This is to be welcomed as a realistic and in some ways hopeful picture of the political scene in what is essentially the US's second client state in the region, Egypt being the second highest US aid recipient after Israel. But let's look at how the article begins: "Only a few hours after Israel's first air strike against Hamas positions in the Gaza strip late last month, more than 2,000 protesters marched through the streets of downtown Cairo, carrying Palestinian flags..."

To begin by speaking of "Israel's first air strike against Hamas positions in the Gaza strip" introduces events in the misleading context habitually provided by mainstream US media and thus begins with a falsehood. They were air strikes all right--many, not just one--but what makes all the difference is that they were attacks on mostly civilian targets which included hospitals, clinics, schools, apartment buildings, shoppers in marketplaces, kids on their way home from school, and even UN headquarters. The "collateral damage" was immense from the Israeli assault on Gaza (obviously not a "war," though the US media use that word). It amounted to 100:1 ratio of deaths, 100 deaths for every Israeli death that occurred during these hostilities.

Hamas positions is a whitewash phrase, indicating that this article will not be taking any hard looks at Israel's actions. How, then, can we trust what is says about so-called "disaffected young Egyptians, " if it begins with a biased presentation of the events those Egyptians were demonstrating against? Americans need desperately to wake up to how the media are distorting the Israel-Palestine conflict. Until that happens, most of the US will continue to live in an Israel-can-do-no-wrong fog and public pressure to change things will be hard to marshal.

Recently Obama was interviewed on the Saudi TV channel, Al Arabiya. This was praised on CNN and Americans were impressed at the new President's reaching out. And it is a positive step. But as was pointed out by As'ad AbuKhalil on his (US-based) "Angry Arab" blogspot, Al Arabiya is a channel soft on America. The channel Arabs watch, where the hard questions are asked, is Al Jazeera. If Obama had gone on Al Jazeera, he would have had to talk about occupation and collective punishment and massive civilian casualties and humiliations and not just the need for Arab children to get a good education. For Americans, Obama's interview on an Arab TV channel looked good. To the Arab public, whose views were summarized in Counterpunch by Wajahat Ali, it arouses hopes, but its gaps also make it look like PR and filler. When is this ever going to change?

Ratzkoff and Jhally's documentary is available in YouTube segments which add up to the entire film and which begin here. Other segments follow and can be found on the right as usual with YouTube, all labeled "Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land."

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.