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“U.S. Media Bias toward
Israel Conflicts With Journalist’s Experience.”
“As a journalist, the more you look into the issue of Israel and Palestine, the more you sense that something is not quite right; the images and the narration are out of sync, a little like a foreign film that has been awkwardly dubbed,” said Alison Weir at a 24 July 2001 Palestine Center briefing. Weir, a freelance journalist who recently spent a month in the Occupied Territories, said that as she explored the conflict, she discovered that the media coverage is “not just odd, it is deeply disturbing.” In her journalism career, Weir has mostly covered domestic news. She explained that like most Americans, she just skimmed articles on the Middle East. But “then I began to see pictures of children throwing stones against tanks, and I was told that these children represented a threat to those tanks.” This was illogical, so she looked at the issue more closely. When covering a topic, Weir continued, journalists should explain the background, provide some statistics, and present both sides. In the U.S. news, however, articles on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict offer little history and few statistics, and Palestinian perspectives are rarely heard. “I began to suspect that this was the most censored story I had ever encountered.” Weir decided to go to the West Bank and Gaza and “see for myself.” When she arrived, she began to wonder what it would be like “at the very epicenter of the region portrayed widely as extremely hostile to Americans in general and to women in particular.” However, she discovered that these were just two myths among many about the region “that are quite false.” People invited her to their homes, treated her “with respect,” and she was “completely safe, except when I came too near the Israeli military.” Nonetheless, articles in the American press presenting Muslims and Palestinians as “inherently violent” and Israel as “under a terrible siege” are prevalent. Stories describing the conflict as one “in which Palestinians are the ones who have been killed, whose cities are being shelled, whose land is being ruined, who are shown to be highly educated … are minimized.” These articles may even be “omitted entirely.” Americans rarely “read about the 49 percent unemployment” in Palestine, “the skyrocketing poverty rate,” or Palestinian children who have been killed. Once in awhile, there is a balanced story presenting the difficulties Palestinians face, and this satisfies most Americans’ sense of even-handed reporting. However, “we don’t know that we read about every Israeli casualty … while we read only a fraction of the destruction being rained down on Palestinians.” During the month she was there, for example, the San Francisco Chronicle published articles about the 10 Israelis who died during that period. There were also references to nine Palestinians killed during the same month. In reality, 29 Palestinians died while she was in the West Bank and Gaza. In her visit to the occupied Palestinian territories, “I saw an economy and a people being ruined. I think this merits news coverage.” Weir witnessed the flattening of agricultural land, leaving Palestinians who had farmed the land for generations “bereft.” She met breadwinners who had been out of work for months and extended families of 40 people being supported by one worker. This poverty has not happened by accident, Weir argued. “I was seeing newly, artificially, purposefully created poverty. Poverty being created by America through its support of a regime that is consciously, and again, quite effectively, squeezing out people it does not want around.” “When a rare, crazed, would-be freedom fighter escapes this prison and tries to strike his oppressor, we need to read about the prison he has exploded out of.” Rather than an “inexplicable, fanatical terrorist, we would see what we had helped create with our aid to Israel—a terrorized victim who has tragically but explicably turned to violence himself.” As she showed slides of people she met, Weir explained that suffering “wasn’t difficult” to find. “All I had to do was go to the nearest hospital.” While there, she saw “boys with holes through their stomachs, in their heads. I saw a brain-dead 12-year-old. He had dared to throw stones [at tanks and] Uzi-carrying … soldiers.” Of the boys she saw who were paralyzed, she said “they won’t skip, they won’t have children … Their childhoods are finished.” In Ramallah, she went to visit the family of a 9-year-old boy who had just been shot and killed. Apparently there had been a dispute near the boy’s apartment building and shots were fired. Hearing this, Israeli soldiers opened fire on this residential neighborhood for 10 to 15 minutes, killing the boy. She later went to the room and saw “where his father had been painting the wall, and where the boy has been sitting, watching his father paint. I saw the wet paint, the toy trucks on the bed, the blood on the floor.” She saw “the mother and older sisters weeping and weeping and weeping. I saw his father walk around in a daze, shell shocked, sleep walking in a bad dream that will never quite end.” During the time she was there, the gunfire she heard was invariably from Israeli positions. She explained that only a few times did she see Palestinians carrying guns—mostly at funerals to express “grief and futile, powerless bravado.” But one time, she saw three young men with guns trying to defend a sand barricade in Rafah from Israeli tanks. These guns “were smaller than the ones I saw Israeli soldiers carrying in shopping malls.” The men asked her not to take their photo, so she did not. “But I wish I could have. I’d like to show you these Palestinian guns. And then I’d like to show you the tanks that were approaching from the other direction. And then you can decide … how much of a security threat they presented [to] the fourth strongest military in the world.” Despite the desperation of the situation, Weir believes it can change. She argued that many believe since it has gone on for so long, it will continue. She believes the opposite—that it cannot persist for much longer. “This will change, … the cracks [in the system] are occurring.” These cracks can be widened. Israel/Palestine is “one of the most changeable countries in the world.”
The above text is based on remarks delivered on 24 July 2001 by journalist Alison Weir. Her views do not necessarily reflect those of the Palestine Center or The Jerusalem Fund. This “For the Record” was written by Palestine Center Publications Manager Wendy Lehman; it may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Palestine Center. To contact Weir, write to alisonweir@yahoo.com. This information first appeared in For the Record No. 79, 27 July 2001. |
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