Jeremy Bowen, the BBCs Middle East Editor (a position he’s held since it was created in 2005) is in trouble with some for a recent internal memo he sent to colleagues regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Here is the offending document, entitled, `Mini briefing on the Israeli (sic) and Palestinians`:
`—Original Message—
From: Jeremy Bowen
To: Editorial Board; Newsg World-Bureaux-Eds; Newsg World Asseds; News Leadership Group; Mark Byford & PA; Simon Wilson-NEWS; Jerusalem Bureau;
Newsg World-Affairs-Unit
Sent: Fri Jan 05 15:16:16 2007
Subject: FW: Mini briefing on the Israeli and Palestinians2007 has started as unpromisingly as 2006 ended. The outlook is bleak because of fundamental instabilities and weaknesses on both sides.
Israel’s major military incursion into Ramallah on Thursday, killing four Palestinians after a botched arrest operation, was a reminder of the non stop pressures of the Israeli occupation.
What is new in the last year, and will be one of the big stories in the coming twelve months, is the way that Palestinian society, which used to draw strength from resistance to the occupation, is now fragmenting.
The reason is the death of hope, caused by a cocktail of Israel’s military activities, land expropriation and settlement building – and the financial sanctions imposed on the Hamas led government which are destroying Palestinian institutions that were anyway flawed and fragile.
The result is that internecine violence between Hamas and Fatah is getting worse. On Thursday six people were killed in clashes between them in Gaza. The death of a major figure on either side would spark something much more serious.
In Israel the political turmoil that followed the inconclusive war with Hezbollah last summer continues unabated.
There are signs that PM Ehud Olmert is trying to set up his coalition partner Amir Peretz as a scapegoat for Israel’s problems during the war and since, by ousting him from the defence ministry. Olmert may be hoping he’ll get away with it because Peretz’s position as Labour leader is already under attack from within his own party. Peretz’s people say that if Olmert tries it, the government will fall.
Even if does manage to demote Peretz, he probably won’t improve his parlous position in the polls. It is exactly a year since Ariel Sharon’s stroke, so Israelis are comparing their lost leader with the one they have now, and finding him wanting. An air of incompetence hangs around Olmert when it comes to military matters. Typical was the timing of the raid in Ramallah, which ruined yesterday’s summit with Mubarak which was supposed to bring closer the release of the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
Olmert wants to replace Peretz at the defence ministry with Ehud Barak, the former Prime Minister. Barak is a retired general, former head of the Israeli army and its most decorated soldier. (Among his many exploits was disguising himself as a woman during a raid in Beirut to kill various Palestinians). The feeling in Israel is that 2007 will be a year of wars, so aside from coalition politics Olmert wants to have a warrior next to him when they make the tough decisions. The intray could include whether or not to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Another serious problem for Olmert is that yet another corruption scandal is lapping close to him. This time the head of the PM’s office in Jerusalem is under house arrest for her alleged role in corruption in Israel’s tax authority. Olmert is not yet implicated, though he’s already been under investigation over separate allegations.
The political crises in Israel – and violent political disintegration among the Palestinians – are not just internal matters. They make it impossible for the Israelis and the Palestinians to engage in a meaningful political dialogue, assuming that their protestations that they want one are true. (The one meeting that Olmert has had with Mahmoud Abbas can hardly be called a process.)
Only strong Israeli and Palestinian leaders would be able to make the tough choices necessary to relieve the serious pressures that are building up in the holy land. To persuade their people to make the necessary concessions, they would need a strong political base, which neither Olmert nor Abbas possess.
Because they are weak – many would say lame ducks – don’t expect any progress. And since an uneasy status quo cannot hold, no political progress will equal more violence.’
Not exactly what one would call a radical analysis, and yet this internal briefing has led to calls for Bowen to be fired.
Andrew Balcombe, chairman of the Zionist Federation of Britain and Ireland, has written to the chair of the BBC Trust declaring,
“This simply does not represent balanced reporting and does not contribute to BBC viewers’ understanding of the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this way Bowen is doing a disservice to the BBC’s customers.”
Firstly, it should be noted that Andrew Balcombe is absolutely right: this internal memo doesn’t represent balanced reporting. Indeed, it doesn’t represent reporting of any sort, because it is an internal memo. Ditto Balcombe’s complaint that Bowen’s briefing doesn’t contribute to “viewers’ understanding” of the Israel/Palestine conflict. More importantly, what does Balcombe mean by “balanced reporting”? The view expressed by Bowen – that the growing civil war in Gaza is due primarily to the external pressures the Palestinians have been subjected to by Israel and the international community – is shared by virtually every serious analyst of the conflict, from prominent Israeli journalists to high-level UN officials to respected scholars. It is also plain common sense: if you starve, bomb and humiliate the Palestinian people relentlessly for close to a year, all the while blaming the Hamas government and arming Fatah, what do you think is going to happen? As Amira Hass writes,
“The experiment was a success: The Palestinians are killing each other. They are behaving as expected at the end of the extended experiment called `what happens when you imprison 1.3 million human beings in an enclosed space like battery hens.`”
Israel has played the “divide and rule” strategy very well. Bowen is correct to say that “Palestinian society, which used to draw strength from resistance to the occupation, is now fragmenting”. Indeed, the stated aim of the suicide bombing in Eilat a few days ago was to try and re-unite Palestinian resistance movements against the occupation, as opposed to fighting each other.
And yet, despite being a reasonable conclusion based on the evidence, Bowen’s views are criticised as not being “balanced”? What, then, is “balanced”? For Balcombe, it seems, being “balanced” essentially boils down to not being critical of Israel, or, at the very least, being at least as critical of the Palestinians as of the Israelis.
In reality, however, that’s not “balanced” at all. There is no symmetry whatsoever in this situation – Israel is the occupier, the Palestinians are the occupied. Israel is the fourth ranking military power in the world, backed by the unrivalled global military superpower, whilst the Palestinians are essentially defenceless. Israel is the aggressor, whereas the Palestinian resistance movements are fighting in self-defence. The fundamental dynamic of the conflict is one of an occupier and the occupied, an oppressor and the oppressed. To treat Israel and the Palestinians with equal criticism (or to make equal demands of them) would be utterly absurd, and yet that is what Balcombe is demanding of Bowen.
Stephen Pollard, a “respected” journalist according the Jerusalem Post (I don’t see how anyone who describes Melanie Phillips’ blog as “peerless” and Oliver Kamm as “the master” could possibly be “respected” by anyone, but I suppose it’s possible), was also critical of Bowen, writing,
“If this is what passes for high-level analysis at the BBC, is it any wonder its reporting is so poisonous?”
Pollard’s main problem, it seems, lies with the following section of Bowen’s memo:
“Israel’s major military incursion into Ramallah on Thursday, killing four Palestinians after a botched arrest operation, was a reminder of the non stop pressures of the Israeli occupation.
What is new in the last year, and will be one of the big stories in the coming twelve months, is the way that Palestinian society, which used to draw strength from resistance to the occupation, is now fragmenting.
The reason is the death of hope, caused by a cocktail of Israel’s military activities, land expropriation and settlement building – and the financial sanctions imposed on the Hamas led government which are destroying Palestinian institutions that were anyway flawed and fragile.”
According to Pollard, this shows that in Bowen’s view, “Israel is to blame for almost everything. The Palestinians are not responsible for anything; Israel is the culpable party.” The fact that Bowen explicitly mentions the “fundamental instabilities and weaknesses on both sides (my emphasis)” is evidently not enough – what Pollack wants is for Bowen to focus on Palestinian responsibility at a length comparable to his focus on Israeli responsibility. Anything less is simply “poisonous”. In reality, as I say, there is no symmetry between the two sides, and more coverage should be given to Israeli crimes and atrocities than to the crimes of the Palestinian resistance (not least because we are complicit in Israel’s actions in a way that we are not with Palestinian actions).
Another mainstream commentator to have jumped on Bowen’s memo as proof of anti-Israel bias at the BBC is The Times` comments editor, Daniel Finkelstein, who is “astonished” at the “unbelievable degree of bias” required to “blame Palestinian civil strife entirely on the Israelis.” “Are the doctrines and behaviour of the groups themselves not part of the explanation”?, Finkelstein asks. “The murderous militancy of Hamas? The corruption of Fatah?”
The answer is that of course the Palestinians bear some responsibility for the civil conflict. To think that Bowen, by pointing out in a brief memo (it was entitled “Mini” Briefing, remember) the main cause of the inter-factionary violence (undoubtedly the policies of Israel and sections of the international community), is denying this is absurd.
In an interview in today’s Independent, Bowen spells it out:
“We all come from somewhere; we all have a prism through which we see the world; we all have an education, and views and experiences. It’s a false objective to be objective.
“But I think I can be impartial by trying to disentangle all the threads that make up a story. That’s an ambitious thing to do in two and a half minutes on TV. You have got to be aware of what your own prejudices and principles are and put them to one side in a box.”
It is, however, impossible to deny that the BBC’s coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict is biased – it is biased, contrary to what Finkelstein, Pollard and Balcombe would have you believe, towards Israel. This bias results from the very idea of what constitutes “balance” that Balcombe and co. are criticising Bowen for departing from. This faux sense of journalistic “balance” holds that simply reporting what those in power say without comment is “neutral”, whilst reporting the views of ordinary people who are affected by the decisions of power constitutes “bias”, unless accompanied by opposing views. However, the views of ordinary people only have to be accompanied by opposing views if we as a society are supposed to disagree with what they say, or if our views on the matter are not particularly important to the establishment agenda. Thus, it would be almost inconceivable to quote a Palestinian doctor describing the suffering Israel’s policies are causing without also quoting an Israeli official talking, for example, about the threat of terrorism. It would be entirely acceptable, however, to quote an Iraqi civilian describing the suffering he endured under Saddam Hussein without providing a counter-quote by a member of Saddam Hussein’s government (and the same is true with all official enemies). Another big no-no is to include relevant factual information, such as international law or the conclusions of official bodies (e.g. the UN) or relevant history, to allow the reader to evaluate for themselves the accuracy and sincerity of the opinions quoted. This is true across the board, with one qualification: when it comes to reporting on official enemies, the media suddenly switch their critical faculties back on, and treat everything with a healthy degree of skepticism (even cynicism). Rational analysis and attempts to discuss the bigger picture also become permissable. Hence, for example, it is considered acceptable to call North Korea a “client state” of China, whilst the term is never used to describe Israel’s relationship with the U.S.
The BBC subscribes wholeheartedly to this false sense of “balance”, which inevitably results in it becoming little more than a mouthpiece for establishment propaganda. This also applies to its coverage of the Middle East. Take, for example, this article on the Israel/Palestine conflict by Jeremy Bowen from July 2006. Although not a bad piece, he creates a false sense of symmetry between each side by constantly repeating phrases like “it is usually a tale of two stories” and “neither side has been prepared to pay what is needed in lost dreams and hard choices”. The truth it has nothing to do with “dreams” and everything to do with rights. The Palestinians have been willing to make huge compromises on their rights to achieve a peace, whereas Israel has compromised on nothing.
Bowen writes that,
“The Israelis and Palestinians are levelling the same accusations against each other, accusing each other of terrorism and oppression. Both believe that they are acting in self defence.”
Perhaps – but that doesn’t mean both sides’ accusations are of equal merit. It is impossible to judge for ourselves because Bowen neglects to include the relevant information to allow us to do so. And what makes Bowen so sure that the Israeli government believes it is acting “in self-defence”? The fact that the government says so is surely irrelevant, since governments claim to be acting in self-defence even when they demonstrably are not all the time. The evidence would appear to point the other way – indeed, Bowen himself notes further down the article that the Palestinian resistance has never, “not for a second”, threatened the existence of the Jewish state. In Bowen’s view, which side is right is not important; what matters, he says, is that “the people who hold these views believe that they are true”. But, again, what makes him say that, other than the meaningless proclamations of government officials?
Towards the end of the article, Bowen once more creates an artificial symmetry between the two sides, writing that,
“The most important lesson for Israel is that force does not work”
and, similarly,
“The most important lesson for the Palestinians is that force does not work.”
Whilst it can be sensibly argued that the use of terrorism is currently harming the Palestinian cause, how can the same be said about Israel? Massive use of violence has enabled Israel to perpetuate the occupation, in defiance of international law and the overwhelming majority of the international community, for close to 40 years, continuing to build illegal settlements and annex more land to this day. Is that not a clear indication that, for Israel (or, more accurately, for Israel’s leadership), violence most certainly does work? The only way one could avoid this conclusion is by ignoring all the evidence and treating, as Jeremy Bowen does, Israel’s stated motives as sincere.
It is this kind of subtle bias, that works to restrict debate to within “acceptable limits” (so, for example, you are allowed to criticise certain policies but not to question the sincerity of the stated motives behind them) that permeates throughout the establishment press (BBC included), and which gives lie to the claims by pro-Israel advocates of a media bias against Israel. The truth, as is so often the case with mainstream coverage of the Middle East, is the exact opposite.
Cross-posted at The Heathlander