Keeping Out the Cameras and Reporters Simply Doesn't Work

Published on Monday, January 5, 2009 by The Independent/UK

Keeping Out The Cameras and Reporters Simply Doesn't Work

by The Independent/UK

by Robert Fisk

 

What is Israel afraid of? Using the old "enclosed military area" excuse to prevent coverage of its occupation of Palestinian land has been going on for years. But the last time Israel played this game - in Jenin in 2000 - it was a disaster. Prevented from seeing the truth with their own eyes, reporters quoted Palestinians who claimed there had been a massacre by Israeli soldiers - and Israel spent years denying it. In fact, there was a massacre, but not on the scale that it was originally reported.

Now the Israeli army is trying the same doomed tactic again. Ban the press. Keep the cameras out. By yesterday morning, only hours after the Israeli army went clanking into Gaza to kill more Hamas members - and, of course, more civilians - Hamas was reporting the capture of two Israeli soldiers. Reporters on the ground could have sorted out the truth or the lie about that. But without a single Western journalist in Gaza, the Israelis were left to tell the world that they didn't know if the story was true.

On the other hand, the Israelis are so ruthless that the reasons for the ban on journalism may be quite easily explained: that so many Israeli soldiers are going to kill so many innocents - more than three score by last night, and that's only the ones we know about - that images of the slaughter would be too much to tolerate. Not that the Palestinians have done much to help. The kidnapping by a Palestinian mafia family of the BBC's man in Gaza - finally released by Hamas, although that's not being recalled right now - put paid to any permanent Western television presence in Gaza months ago. Yet the results are the same.

Back in 1980, the Soviet Union threw every Western journalist out of Afghanistan. Those of us who had been reporting the Russian invasion and its brutal aftermath could not re-enter the country - except with the mujahedin guerrillas. I received a letter from Charles Douglas-Hume, who was editor of the The Times - for which I then worked - making an important observation. "Now that we have no regular coverage from Afghanistan," he noted on 26 March that year, "I would be grateful if you could make sure that we do not miss any opportunity for reporting on reliable accounts of what is going on in that country. We must not let events in Afghanistan vanish from the paper simply because we have no correspondent there."

That the Israelis should use an old Soviet tactic to blind the world's vision of war may not be surprising. But the result is that Palestinian voices - as opposed to those of Western reporters - are now dominating the airwaves. The men and women who are under air and artillery attack by the Israelis are now telling their own story on television and radio and in the papers as they have never been able to tell it before, without the artificial "balance", which so much television journalism imposes on live reporting. Perhaps this will become a new form of coverage - letting the participants tell their own story. The flip side, of course, is that there is no Westerner in Gaza to cross-question Hamas's devious account of events: another victory for the Palestinian militia, handed to them on a plate by the Israelis.

But there is also a darker side. Israel's version of events has been given so much credence by the dying Bush administration that the ban on journalists entering Gaza may simply be of little importance to the Israeli army. By the time we investigate, whatever they are trying to hide will have been overtaken by another crisis in which they can claim to be in the "front line" in the "war on terror".

© 2009 The Independent

Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for The Independent newspaper.  He is the author of many books on the region, including The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East [1].  [2]

Written by www.daily.pk Sunday, 04 January 2009 19:47

 

1. Summary

 

With the Gaza death toll exceeding 400, the Islamic Human Rights Commission calls on campaigners to send letters to the President of the United Nations General Assembly, to urge the U.N. General Assembly to establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI).

 

2. Background

 

After five days of consecutive bombardment of Gaza, and an ever-increasing death toll, demonstrators all over the world are calling for an end to the massacre. Campaigners are urged to continue attending demonstrations and boycotting Israel, and are now asked to send letters to the President of the U.N. General Assembly, urging for the long-overdue establishment of an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI), under U.N. Charter Article 22.

 

On the topic of Israel's current attack on Gaza, Archibishop Desmond Tutu said on Sunday:

 

"In the context of total aerial supremacy, in which one side in a conflict deploys lethal aircraft against opponents with no means of defending themselves, the bombardment bears all the hallmarks of war crimes."

 

Francis A. Boyle, in calling for the creation of such an Israeli war crimes tribunal, said:

 

"The establishment of ICTI would provide some small degree of justice to the victims of Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Peoples of Lebanon and Palestine--just as the ICTY has done in the Balkans. Furthermore, the establishment of ICTI by the U.N.

General Assembly would serve as a deterrent effect upon Israeli leaders such as Prime Minister Olmert, Foreign Minister Livni, Defense Minister Barak , Chief of Staff Ashkenazi and Israel's other top generals that they will be prosecuted for their further infliction of international crimes upon the Lebanese and the Palestinians."

 

3. Action required

 

Write to the President of the U.N. General Assembly, urging for the establishment of an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI), under U.N. Charter Article 22.

Fax: +1 (212) 963-4423 Email: http://www.un.org/ga/contactus.asp

 

4. Sample letter

 

If you receive a reply to the letter you send, we request you to send a copy of the letter you sent and the reply you received to IHRC. This is extremely important as it helps IHRC to monitor the situation with regards to our campaigns and to improve upon the current model letters.

 

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Sample letter to the President of the U.N. General Assembly.

 

[Your Name]

[Your Address]

 

President

General Assembly

United Nations

New York, NY USA

 

[Date]

 

Dear Sir,

 

Re: Creation of Israeli war crimes tribunal

 

The current massacre happening in Gaza is of urgent concern to my community and I. For attacks which bear all the trademarks of war crimes, is it not time for them to be assessed within the appropriate context of an Israeli war crimes tribunal?

 

Surely, you do not need me to relate to you the strangulation and bombardment of Gaza, and the humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding.  After five days of consecutive bombardment of Gaza, and a death toll exceeding 400, calls for an end to the massacre fall on the deaf ears of a murderous Israeli government.

 

The 1.5 million abused and starved inhabitants of "the world's biggest concentration camp" are being forced to continue to collectively-pay for democratically-electing their government.

 

While the Israeli authorities punish the Palestinians in order to teach Hamas a hard-handed lesson, the civilian casualties and number of injured continue to soar. Israel is refusing ceasefire requests, in spite of Hamas offering it on the basis of reasonable and attainable compromises: "an end to the blockade, and an Israeli ceasefire on the West Bank", according to Yuval Diskin, current head of Israeli security services Shin Bet.

 

Also, in light of the current attacks which have sparked international condemnation, Archbishop Desmund Tutu said: "In the context of total aerial supremacy, in which one side in a conflict deploys lethal aircraft against opponents with no means of defending themselves, the bombardment bears all the hallmarks of war crimes."

 

Over the past 2 months, fuel supply to Gaza has been blocked leading to the closure of its power plant, and even the U.N. has been forced to halt distribution of food aid, upon which most Gazans are reliant. The actions of the Israeli authorities violate the Geneva Conventions and so many international norms. It is now more necessary than ever for the U.N. to establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI), under U.N. Charter Article 22. Failure to create viable accountability would only further embolden the Israeli government to continue their extermination of the Palestinians.

 

As the crimes committed against Palestinians degrade all humanity, we request you to urge members of the U.N. General Assembly to swiftly take necessary and appropriate action towards creating an ICTI under U.N. Charter Article 22, and holding the Israeli government accountable.

 

I look forward to your reply regarding this urgent matter.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

[Your signature]

[Your name]

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Islamic Human Rights Commission

PO Box 598

Wembley

HA9 7XH

United Kingdom

 

Telephone (+44) 20 8904 4222

Fax (+44) 20 8904 5183

Email: info@ihrc.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Web: www.ihrc.org

 

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs