VIEWPOINT: Media responses to Israeli blamelessness

 

by Carmel Gould

 

The Lebanon border clashes have provided us with an unusual case study opportunity: how do hostile elements of the media cope when Israel's version of events is thoroughly vindicated? The answer seems to be: some better than others.

After the heated exchange of fire on Tuesday, four people were left dead: an Israeli colonel, two Lebanese soldiers and a Lebanese journalist. Lebanon claimed Israel had violated its territory and that its army fired warning shots which were answered with direct Israeli fire. Israel claimed that it had been carrying out maintenance on its own territory in co-ordination with UNIFIL and that the LAF opened fire at its soldiers first.

The following day, UNIFIL confirmed that Israel had been operating on its own side of the international border and the Lebanese army admitted opening fire at the Israelis first "to defend Lebanon's sovereignty."

In the straight news reporting, some publications took the bull by the horns. The New York Times' 'U.N. Supports Israeli Account of Border Clash' led:

'The United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, Unifil, said Wednesday that it had concluded that Israeli forces were cutting trees that lay within their own territory before a lethal exchange of fire with Lebanese Army troops, largely vindicating Israel's account of how the fighting started.'

The BBC responded similarly, in 'Israeli troops on own side in Lebanon clash, UN says'.

Others, such as The Guardian, dragged their feet somewhat, with the notably titled, 'Israel continues uprooting trees on Lebanon border after fatal clash' (renamed on Wednesday evening, 'Tree that sparked deadly border clash on Israeli side, says UN'). The original piece included a minor reference to UNIFIL's stance that the tree was in Israeli territory, so the decision to emphasise Israel's ongoing mischief-making in the original version of the article was deliberate.

Other British publications simply changed the subject once Israel's blamelessness had been established. In 'Lebanon and Israel need a proper border agreement,' Guardian commentator Brian Whitaker blamed the border fence itself for the clash. However, the writer did not take long to establish that this was, of course, Israel's fault:

'The problem with the fence is that when the Israelis erected it following their withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, they did not follow the border line exactly…

'The underlying problem here is that in 2000 Israel withdrew from Lebanon unilaterally, without an agreement…

'Regardless of whether Israel should have been occupying southern Lebanon in the first place, pulling out without an agreement was stupid. But Israel does have a propensity for this sort of unilateral action (witness the "disengagement" from Gaza).'

Even when the facts had been established, Robert Fisk of The Independent demonstrated extreme reluctance to accept the reality that Israel had not invaded Lebanon. In the encouragingly titled, 'UN: Israel was on its own side before border clash' the lead was, however, somewhat skewed:

'So was the tree inside Israel? The UN implies that the shrubbery that ultimately cost the lives of five men on Tuesday was on the Israeli side of the "Blue Line".'

Why use the word 'implied' when your very next sentence is a quote from UNIFIL which reads:

'"Unifil established... that the trees being cut by the Israeli army are located south of the Blue Line on the Israeli side," said a Unifil military spokesman.'

Fisk also added – contrary to widely publicised fact – that 'Israel had apparently not co-ordinated its gardening expedition with the Lebanese via the UN.' Senior political adviser at UNIFIL Milos Strugar's statement that Israel had informed UNIFIL of its intentions to carry out the works and that 'we had passed that on to the Lebanese army' must, of course, have passed him by.

Like Whitaker at The Guardian, Fisk went on to identify the 'real problem' as the positioning of the Blue Line. I wonder whether this would still have been the 'real problem' had Israel been found by UNIFIL to have been on the Lebanese side of the border on Tuesday.

 

Carmel Gould

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.