Here we are, 20 years on, and many of the reports of what's been
happening as the Israeli army smashes its way through Ramallah, Bethlehem
and the other Palestinian towns reminds me of what came out of Lebanon in
1982 as Sharon and his invading army raced north: Israeli troops beating,
looting, destroying; Palestinian families huddling in refugee camps, waiting
for the killers to come.
But there is a difference. A huge one. Twenty years ago, at
least for people living here in the United States, it was harder -- though
far from impossible -- to get firsthand accounts of what was going on. You
had to run out to find foreign newspapers, or have them laboriously faxed
from London or Paris. Reporting in the mainstream corporate press here was
horrifying tilted into putting the best face on Israeli deeds. Mostly, it
still is. But the attempted news blackout by the Sharon government and the
Israeli military simply isn't working.
Here's Aviv Lavie, writing in Ha'aretz: "A journey through the
TV and radio channels. and the pages of the newspapers exposes a huge and
embarrassing gap between what is reported to us and what is seen, heard and
read in the world. ... The entire world has seen wounded people in the
streets, heard reports of how the IDF prevents ambulances from reaching the
wounded for treatment. .The entire world has heard testimony by Palestinian
families who have been imprisoned in their homes for 72 hours, in some
places without electricity or water, and the food is running out."
As always, there are the courageous witnesses. These days, we
have the enormously brave young people in the International Solidarity
Movement sending back daily e-mails and phone calls to the United States
that flash their way round the internet and even translate into important
interviews in the mainstream press, or on TV news shows.
Meet a couple of them. Here's Tzaporah Ryter, filing this on
Electronic Intifada: "I am an American student from the University of
Minnesota. I currently am in Ramallah. We are under a terrible siege, and
people are being massacred by both the Israeli army and armed militia groups
of Israeli settlers. ... On Thursday afternoon, the Israeli army began
sealing off each entrance to Ramallah. ... Those traveling in began
desperately searching for alternative ways and traveling in groups, but the
Israelis were firing upon them, and everyone was running and screaming.
Women carrying their children were trying desperately to flee from Ramallah,
carrying infants and toddlers, and their young children were running along
in the rain through the fields, slipping and falling on the rocks, trying to
reach safety. Israeli jeeps were speeding across the terrain, pulling up
from every direction and shooting at the women and children, and also at me,
as we ran in opposite directions. They were chasing down people, hunting
them like that in the fields."
Or the extremely articulate and self-possessed Adam Shapiro,
whose testimony ended up in the New York Daily News and on CNN, where he
told Kyra Phillips: "This is not about politics between Jew and Arab,
between Muslim and Jew. This is a case of human dignity, human freedom and
justice that the Palestinians are struggling for against an occupier, an
oppressor. The violence did not start with Yasser Arafat. The violence
started with the occupation."
He went on: "I read the newspapers, and I listen to the TV
stations here. President Arafat, after every terrorist incident, every
suicide bombing, after every action, has condemned this loss of life, of
civilian lives on both sides. The Sharon government, sometimes will
apologize after it kills an innocent civilian, but it does not apologize for
raping the cities, and for going in and carrying out terrorist actions,
going house-to-house much like the Nazis did in World War II, going
house-to-house-to-house tearing holes through the walls, roughing up people,
killing people, assassinating people."
Most of the time, you read robotic commentary about Palestinian
terrorism and the wretched Arafat's supposed ability to quell the
Palestinian uprising with a few quick words. And then you turn on the Lehrer
News Hour on PBS and there, of all people, is Zbigniev Brzezinski, stating
the obvious, on April 1: "The fact of the matter is that three times as many
Palestinians have been killed, and a relatively small number of them were
really militants. Most were civilians. Some hundreds were children. ... In
the course of the last year, we have had Palestinian terrorism, but we have
also had deliberate, overreactions by Mr. Sharon designed not to repress
terrorism but to destabilize the Palestinian Authority, to uproot the Oslo
Agreement."
After predictable dissent from Henry Kissinger, Brzezinski went
on, "It's absolute hypocrisy to be claiming that Arafat can put a stop to
the terrorism -- and it's, let's put it mildly, poor information on the part
of the president to be maintaining that. This guy is sitting isolated.
Sharon is trying to repress the Palestinians, and terrorism is not stopping.
How is Arafat supposed to put a stop to it? But the fact of the matter is
that his ability to control the situation would be greatly increased if
there was serious movement toward political process, toward a political
settlement and that the United States took the lead."
Between this brisk statement of the obvious and the eloquent
courage Adam Shapiro and his brave fellow internationalists, the truth is
getting out -- not fast enough, not loud enough, but better than 20 years
ago.
Alexander Cockburn is coeditor with Jeffrey St Clair of the
muckraking newsletter CounterPunch. To find out more about Alexander
Cockburn and read features by other columnists and cartoonists, visit the
Creators Syndicate Web page at
www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2002 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
