Sunday, April 22, 2007
One of the silver linings of the NUJ boycott is the way it's really shined the spotlight on the dreadful state of British journalism. This British journalist has a bunch of interesting stories to tell: Not in my name
I visited Israel for the first time last year to research some articles about tourism there. Within hours of my return I received a call from a journalist acquaintance who asked me with genuine shock: “What’s all this about you going to Israel?†He said that a mutual journalist acquaintance of ours was “absolutely disgusted†with me for going there and that he hoped I was “going to put the boot in†when I wrote my articles.
These were not close acquaintances, I hadn’t even spoken to one of them for nearly nine years and it must have taken them some digging around to find my telephone number. They obviously thought it was worth the trouble to have a dig at a writer who was friendly to Israel. Apparently the “absolutely disgusted†man – a weekly columnist on a high-profile magazine - has since tried to get an article published that claims that Tony Blair murdered Yasser Arafat.
'Those suicide bombers have got guts'
The evening after my return from Israel, I met up with some journalists for some drinks in the West End of London. I was again abused for my trip. Their hatred of Israel was matched only by their adoration of the Palestinians. One of them gushed: “Boy, those suicide bombers have got guts. I wish more people in the world had their courage.†Another of them erupted when I told him that most people in Israel wanted a peaceful settlement to the conflict. “So why,†he asked, “did they murder their most peaceful Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?â€
Well, I guess if you’re going to get your facts wrong you might as well get them spectacularly wrong – I wonder if anyone else has ever got Netanyahu confused with Yitzhak Rabin?
I was also warned not to get any ideas about trying to get a positive account of my trip published. In the end I did manage just that but only after an unprecedented, almost sentence-by-sentence dissection of my article by the commissioning editor during the course of which I had to repeatedly remind him that there is such a thing as an Israeli Arab and that not everyone in Israel is an Orthodox Jew. Both facts seemed to come as huge shocks to him. I’ve no doubt that if I had written on "The Hidden Wonders of Tehran" or "The Joy Of Jeddah," I’d have had a much easier ride...
This article makes me feel better. For years now I've been reading the British press and wondering what the heck? Some of the cartoons they publish are appalling. They are quite as bad as anything in der Sturmer. Yet I've conversed with well-educated Brits, even including some Jews, who claim not to see anything wrong!
I wonder how much of the bitterness in the modern Middle East we owe to our friends across the pond. A study of the Mandate Era years is illuminating to say the least - perhaps shocking is a better term. We are conditioned to respect, even revere Britain - yet the story of "the Great Game" and the influence of what can only be termed a combination of self-interest combined with sheer bigotry have left deep wounds on millions of people. The effects of biased journalism aren't innocent either, but have fanned the flames of violence decade after bloody decade. The story has become part of the story and that's got to be a cardinal sin in a world that depends on a free and neutral press.
Unfortunately, this history, and the texture of what's assumed to be the pinnacle of culture in the English speaking world, isn't widely known and it isn't widely taught. Holocaust studies focus on the Nazis themselves but seldom mention the blockades before, during and after the horror, the refugee ships, the Bevin government, the White Papers, the broken promises; the desperate attempts to escape the hell of postwar Europe, the disarming of Jewish soldiers who'd fought valiantly for the King. Somehow, in the Israel narrative, we get magically from the Holocaust to the dread, omnipotent IDF - and even discussing those years opens one to accusations of "industrializing" the Shoah.
Worst of all we are beginning to see the same outrageous, self-serving bias, to the point where it amounts to outright lies, in the US. The tiny, tattered Israeli army that struggled to survive the opening rounds of 1948 has morphed into a megalith armed with the best of first world war machinery, brutally and deliberately attacking poor little third world armies.
In this strange distorted mirror, the scapegoat for centuries of British imperialism, irony of ironies, has become tiny Israel - in so many ways her victim.
Here to me is one of the great ironies of this whole situation (and I will concede that irony might not be the right word): This move was SO ridiculous and SO blatantly anti-Semitic that even the Manchester Guardian was moved to condemn it! For more see my blog (sorry, can't resist the opportunity to self-promote!), http://baldheadedgeek.blogspot.com.
I wonder whether the British journalist thinks that the British Muslims who executed the 7/7 bombing of the London busses and underground (resulting in the deaths of over 50 people), admirable for their "guts"?
There is a sick mindset in the UK.
I highly recommend reading Melanie Phillips articles as an antidote.
http://www.melaniephillips.com