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Judging Israel
Charles Krauthammer
(Reprinted without permission from TIME)
Jews are news. It is an axiom of journalism. An indispensable axiom,
too, because it is otherwise impossible to explain why the deeds and
misdeeds of the dot-on-the-map Israel get an absurdly disproportionate
amount of news coverage around the world. If you are trying to guess
how much coverage any Middle East event received and you are permitted
but one question, the best question you can ask about the event is:
Were there any Jews in the vicinity?
The paradigmatic case is the page in the "International Herald
Tribune" that devoted seven of its eight columns to the Palestinian
uprising. Among the headlines: "Israeli Soldier Shot to Death;
Palestinian Toll Rises to 96." The eighth column carried a report that
5,000 Kurds died in an Iraqi gas attack.
Whatever the reason, it is a fact that the world is far more
interested in what happens to Jews than to Kurds. It is perfectly
legitimate, therefore, for journalists to give the former more play.
But that makes it all the more incumbent to be fair in deciding how to
play it.
How SHOULD Israel be judged? Specifically, should Israel be judged
by the moral standards of its neighborhood, or by the standards of the
West? The answer, unequivocally, is: the standards of the West. But
the issue is far more complicated than it appears.
The first complication is that although the neighborhood standard
ought not to be Israel's, it cannot be ignored when judging Israel.
Why? It is plain that compared with the way its neighbors treat
protest, prisoners, and opposition in general, Israel is a beacon of
human rights. The salient words are Hama, the town where Syria dealt
with an Islamic uprising by killing perhaps 20,000 people in two weeks
and then paving the dead over; and Black September (1970), during which
the enlightened Jordan dealt with its Palestinian intifada by killing at
least 2,500 Palestinians in 10 days, a toll that the Israeli intifada
would need 10 years to match.
Any moral judgment must take into account the alternative. Israel
cannot stand alone, and if it is abandoned by its friends for not
meeting Western standards of morality, it will die. What will replace
it? The neighbors: Syria, Jordan, the PLO, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Ahmed
Jabril, Abu Nidal (if he is still around) or some combination of these
-- an outcome that will induce acute nostalgia for Israel's human-rights
record.
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Any moral judgement that refuses to consider the alternative is
merely irresponsible. That is why Israel's moral neighborhood is
important. It is not just the neighborhood, it is the alternative, and,
if Israel perishes, the future. It is morally absurd, therefore, to
reject Israel for failing to meet Western standards of human rights when
the consequence of that rejection is to consign the region to neighbors
with considerably less regard for human rights.
Nevertheless, Israel cannot be judged by the moral standards of the
neighborhood. It is part of the West. It bases much of its appeal for
Western support on shared values, among which is a respect for human
rights. The standard for Israel must be Western standards.
But what exactly does "Western standards" mean? Here we come to
complication number 2. There is not a single Western standard, there
are two: what we demand of Western countries at peace, and what we
demand of Western countries at war. It strains not just fairness but
also logic to ask Israel, which has known only war for its 40 years'
existence, to act like a Western country at peace.
The only fair standard is this one: How have the Western
democracies reacted in similar conditions of war, crisis, and
insurrection? The morally relevant comparison is not with an American
police force reacting to violent riots, say, in downtown Detroit. The
relevant comparison is with Western democracies at war: to, say, the US
during the Civil War, the British in Mandatory Palestine, the French in
Algeria.
When Western countries have been in conditions approximating
Israel's, when they have faced comparable rebellions, they have acted
not very differently.
We do not even have to go back to Lincoln's Civil War suspension of
"habeas corpus", let alone Sherman's march through Georgia. Consider
that during the last Palestinian intifada, the Arab Revolt of 1936-39,
the British were in charge of Palestine. They put down the revolt
"without mercy, without qualms", write Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami.
Entire villages were razed. More than 3,000 Palestinians were killed.
In 1939 alone, the British hanged 109. (Israel has no death penalty.)
French conduct during the Algerian war was noted for its
indiscriminate violence and systematic use of torture. In comparison,
Israel has been positively restrained. And yet Israel faces a far
greater threat. All the Algerians wanted, after all, was independence.
They were not threatening the extinction of France. If Israel had the
same assurance as France that its existence was in no way threatened by
its enemies, the whole Arab-Israeli conflict could have been resolved
decades ago.
Or consider more contemporary democracies. A year ago, when
rioting broke out in Venezuela over government-imposed price increases,
more than 300 were killed in less than one week. In 1984, the army of
democratic India attacked rebellious Sikhs in the Golden Temple, killing
300 in ONE DAY. And yet these democracies were not remotely as
threatened as Israel. Venezuela was threatened with disorder; India, at
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worst, with secession. The Sikhs have never pledged to throw India into
the sea.
"Israel", opines "The Economist", "cannot in fairness test itself
against a standard set by China and Algeria while still claiming to be
part of the West." This argument, heard all the time, is a phony.
Israel asks to be judged by the standard not of China and Algeria, but
of Britain and France, of Venezuela and India. By that standard, the
standard of democracies facing similar disorders, Israel's behavior has
been measured and restrained.
Yet Israel has been treated as if this were not true. The thrust
of reporting and, in particular, the commentary is that Israel has
failed dismally to meet Western standards, that it has been particularly
barbaric in its treatment of the Palestinian uprising. No other country
is repeatedly subjected to Nazi analogies. In no other country is the
death or deportation of a single rioter the subject (as it was for the
first year of the intifada, before it became a media bore) of front page
news, of emergency Security-Council meetings, of full page ads in the
"New York Times", of pained editorials about Israel's lost soul, etc.
Why is that so? Why is it that of Israel a standard of behavior is
demanded that is not just higher than its neighbors', not just equal to
that of the West, but in fact far higher than that of any Western
country in similar circumstances?
For most, this double standard is unconscious. Critics simply
assume is appropriate to compare Israel with a secure and peaceful
America. They ignore the fact that there are two kinds of Western
standards, and that fairness dictates subjecting Israel to the standard
of a Western country at war.
But other critics openly demand higher behavior from the Jewish
state than from other states. Why? Jews, it is said, have a long
history of oppression. Thus, they have a special vocation to avoid
oppressing others. This dictates a higher standard in dealing with
others.
Note that this reasoning is applied only to Jews. When other
people suffer -- Vietnamese, Algerians, Palestinians, the French Maquis
-- they are usually allowed a grace period during which they are judged
by a somewhat lower standard. The victims are, rightly or wrongly (in
my view, wrongly), morally indulged. A kind of moral affirmative action
applies. We are asked to understand the former victims' barbarities
because of how they themselves suffered. These has, for example, been
little attention to, and less commentary on, the 150 Palestinians
lynched by other Palestinians during the intifada. How many know that
this year as many Palestinians have died at the hands of the
Palestinians as at the hands of the Israelis?
With Jews, that kind of reasoning is reversed: Jewish suffering
does not entitle them to more leeway in trying to prevent a repetition
of their tragedy, but to less. Their suffering requires them, uniquely
among the worlds sufferers, to bend over backwards in dealing with their
enemies.
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Sometimes it seems as if Jews are entitled to protection and equal
moral consideration only insofar as they remain victims. Oriana Fallaci
once said plaintively to Ariel Sharon, "You are not more the nation of
the great dream, the country for which we cried." Indeed not: in
establishing a Jewish state, the Jewish people made a collective
decision no longer to be cried for. They chose to become actors in
history, and not its objects. Historical actors commit misdeeds, and
they should be judged like all nation-states when they commit them. It
is perverse to argue that, because this particular nation-state is made
up of people who have suffered the greatest crime in modern history,
they, more than any other people on earth, have a special obligation to
be delicate with those who would bring down on them yet another national
catastrophe.
That is a double standard. What does double standard mean? To
call it higher standard is simply a euphemism. That makes it sound like
a compliment. In fact, it is a weapon. If I hold you to a higher
standard of morality than others, I am saying that I am prepared to
denounce you for things I would never denounce anyone else for.
If I were to make this kind of judgement about people of color -
say, if it were demanded that blacks meet a higher standard in their
dealings with others, that would be called racism.
Let's invent an example. A city newspaper studies a white
neighborhood and a black neighborhood, and finds that while both are
messy the black neighborhood is cleaner. But week in, week out, the
paper runs front-page stories comparing the garbage in the black
neighborhood to the pristine loveliness of Switzerland. Anthony Lewis
chips in an op-ed piece deploring, more in sadness than in anger, the
irony of blacks, who for so long had degradation imposed on them, should
now impose degradation on themselves.
Something is wrong here. To denounce blacks for misdemeanors that
we overlook in whites -- that is a double standard. It is racism.
The conscious deployment of a double standard directed at the
Jewish state and at no other state in the world, the willingness to
systematically condemn the Jewish state for things others are not
condemned for -- this is not a higher standard. It is a discriminatory
standard. And discrimination against Jews has a name, too. The word
for it is anti-Semitism.
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| (parts of the following reply are reprinted without permission from "The
Media, The Message and the Middle East Conference Summary/CAMERA)
Although I have been a member of CAMERA for a couple of years, it is only
recently that I have been exposed to some of the local activities of that
organization, and I thought I'd share a bit here in this note; it seems
particularly appropriate (Charles Krauthammer, the author of Mr. Feinberg's
last entry from TIME, is on the National Board of Advisors of CAMERA).
CAMERA - the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America -
"is a non-profit grassroots volunteer organization, composed of Christians
and Jews and devoted exclusively to combatting distortion, misrepresentation
and bias in reporting on Israel and the Middle East. CAMERA is an apolitical
organization that does not advocate a particular solution to the Mideast
conflict but seeks only fair and accurate reporting of events"
Although it has been mentioned in this conference in conjunction with various
articles of interest (see, for example, 644 on the distortion of Mideast
reporting by the Boston Globe), there hasn't been a lot of exposure. I'm not
going to do a sell job on the organization here, but will type in articles
of interest if I get response to do so.
The material I'd be most interested in sharing is from the national conference
held recently (Oct '89) in Boston called THE MEDIA, THE MESSAGE AND THE MIDDLE
EAST. I did not attend myself, though I now wish I had. However, I have a
collection of summary presentations and have seen a video of many of the
speakers. I am impressed with most of what I've read, which is why I hope you
will want to share it with me. Below I have listed the speeches I have which
can be entered in Notes:
Introduction to the Conference by Maxine Wolf
(Maxine Wolf is Associate Director of the Boston branch of CAMERA)
Speaks to the importance of the media's influence over the public opinion, and
the resultant accountability and responsibility inherent in this role. Sees
CAMERA as watchdogs calling the media to account that the reporting on the
Mideast has not been balanced and that this bias can lead to anti-semitism.
Lament From the Future? by Norman Podhoretz
(Norman Podhoretz is the editor-in-chief of Commentary magazine)
Primarily discusses the true aims of the PLO, as their charter, their speeches,
and their terrorist behavior show. He paints a "what if" scenario based on the
implementation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza.
The Boston Globe: A study in Press Bias by Andrea Levin
(Andrea Levin is Executive Director of the Boston branch of CAMERA)
Ms. Levin's presentation of the Globe problem was very well written up in 644.
[I attended a lecture on this subject recently, and the actual slides with
pictures and visual capture of article size/distortion is really more than the
written word alone can impress.]
"All the News that's Fit to Print"? Thomas Friedman and the New York
Times by Jerold Auerbach
(Jerold Auerbach is Professor of History at Wellesley College)
Analyses Thomas Fiedman's coverage/admitted bias of Mideast coverage when he
worked for the Times, as well as his successors (Joes Brinkley, Anthony Lewis).
Also presents a historical perspective of the Times' record on the Jewish
"superstory" going back to before WWII (an interesting record for a paper owned
by Jews...).
Romancing the Stones: Network TV Coverage of the Intifada
by Reuven Koret
(Reuven Koret is a member of the Boston branch of CAMERA)
"I reviewed every video clip from the evening news broadcasts of ABC, NBC and
CBS that deal with the first year of the intifada. That's twelve hundred
minutes in all, more than eight hundred stories, more than any other foreign
event during that period." This is how his analysis begins. He goes on to
discuss language ("administered" vs "occupied" territories/ "protestors",
"terrorists"\"soldiers", "youths"...), historical perspective, geography, and
actual factual inaccuracies.
Media Bias and Public Policy by Alan Keyes
(Alan Keyes is president of Citizens Against Government Waste and is former
ambassador to the United Nations)
Points to how the issues have shifted from ones of War/Peace to a human
rights paradigm, to an issue of Palestinian self-government and
self-determination. Goes into the reality of human rights situation in the
Arab lands and how this double standard helps to support the "character
assassination of Israel". Tries to evaluate why this has come to be, and,
most interesting to me, presents his daydream of a Jordanian option of a
consitutional monarchy.
Inverting History and Events: The Campaign to Deligitimize Israel
by Ruth Wisse
(Ruth Wisse is Professor of Yiddish Literature at McGill University)
How did the Jewish underdogs of the 40's, 50's and 60's turn into the Nazi
opressors of the 80's? How did the 22 bad Arab nations trying to drive the
Jews to the sea become the Palestinian victims who only want a place to call
their own? This is a fascinating article which helps us understand the
shift we all feel in public opinion about Isreal and about Jews.
PBS-WGBH-NPR by Alan Dershowitz
(Alan Dershowitz is Professor of Law at Harvard Law School)
In recognizing CAMERA's goals, Mr. Dershowitz says "private media monitoring
and exposing is in the highest tradition of the First Amendment and freedom
of speech....The media want every important institution in this country to be
scrutinized except the media." After sharing his disappointment about current
media presentations, he proposes some of the reports he'd like to see on TV.
"...let's see a two-hour report on Palestinian justice..."; "let's see a show
on the true story on the refugees...". He lists over 20 such ideas.
Arab and Jew: The PBS Teachers' Guide by Charles Jacobs
(Charles Jacobs is Deputy Director of the Boston branch of CAMERA)
In discussing the special that PBS ran on David Shipler's book, "Arab and Jew:
Wounded Spirit in the Promised Land", Mr. Jacobs describes how heavily biased
the program's companion teaching materials are. "The guide is propaganda. On
every question about the Arab-Jewish conflict, it teaches the Arab position."
"If anti-Semitism is a light sleeper, then PBS has just placed forty thousand
alarm clocks in American school rooms."
Ominous Echoes by David Wyman
(David Wyman is Professor of History at UMASS/Amherst; he is the author
of "The Abandonment of the Jews")
Mr. Wyman's field of expertise is the American response to the Holocause. He
speaks to the importance of the State of Israel as a refuge to Jews in time of
trouble and as a legitimizer to the voice of Jews to world forums. His
particular point is in reviewing how the media coverage of the horrible news
that began to arrive from Europe in 1942 (practically no coverage...) and the
hyper coverage of today's situation in the Mideast have a common cause -
"[un]intentional...latent anti-Semitism".
(Also, if anyone wants hardcopy of these summaries, send me mail to Social::Waky
with your mail stop, etc...Copies of the Conference Summary itself can be
purchased through myself or by writing to CAMERA, P.O. BOX 428, Boston, MA.
02258 (617)789-3672)
Waky
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