By Mike Karajis
SYDNEY — "The worst round of violence between Israel and Lebanon-based guerillas in 11 years continued unabated despite a drive by the US for a cease-fire. The fighting has killed more than 122 people." This was how the Sydney Morning Herald, in a front-page article, described the recent Israeli attack on Lebanon.
How many lies can be fit into one small paragraph? This is what this paragraph tells us was happening:
Firstly, there was a step-up in the fighting between Israel and some guerillas in Lebanon. The truth is that there was a massive Israeli air and sea attack on Lebanese civilians throughout southern Lebanon, obliterating their villages and forcing 500,000 out of their homes.
Secondly, we are told of the existence of "Lebanon-based" guerillas. Perhaps the guerillas who have been fighting Israel's illegal 15-year occupation of southern Lebanon are not really Lebanese?
Thirdly, there was a US drive for a ceasefire. Come on, pull the other one!
Fourthly, between Israeli troops and "Lebanon-based" guerillas, there have been 122 killed. This is the way the slaughter of 122 Lebanese civilians by Israeli bombing is described.
You have to turn to the continuation of the article on page 17 to find the information that 500,000 people had been expelled from their homes (no big deal apparently) — in the very last paragraph. Yet, back on the front page, we find the apparently more important information that the guerillas, in response, had launched 275 Katyusha rockets into "Israel and the security zone". In fact, this information was repeated twice in two paragraphs.
The rockets were fired into "Israel and the security zone"? This piece of information suggests they were mainly hitting Israel and some strip along the border. However, "security zone" is simply newspeak for the chunk of Lebanon up to the Litani river which Israel has occupied since 1978. The great bulk of the rockets were fired at occupation troops in this zone. Indeed, the "pretext" for the invasion was the death of eight occupation troops.
"Security zone" implies that Israel needs security from outside attack. However, the massive bombing of Lebanese villages by Israel since 1968 has been well-documented by people such as Jewish-American writer Noam Chomsky, but it is almost never reported by the media. The fact that since that time, the number of Lebanese and Palestinian civilian deaths is literally hundreds of times higher than the number of Israeli civilian deaths says something about who has the security needs.
That this "security zone" is in fact an occupation zone is also obscured in other ways. For example, in a full page Herald article by ren Osmond (when has an anti-Zionist point of view ever had a full page?), a map of the area can even be contorted in such a way as to make this occupation zone look minuscule. Australian Lebanese from the town of Machgara confirm that the occupation reaches the outskirts of their town, whereas the map showed nothing of the sort.
Another type of bias is revealed in an article that is much more supportive of the Lebanese side, that by Robert Fisk in the July 31 Herald. Tucked in a paragraph describing various faces of suffering in Lebanon, he writes "an 80 year-old woman with almost all her skin burnt off by an Israeli phosphorous shell, naked and dying in a hospital ward".
An Israeli phosphorous shell? That is usually called chemical warfare, and if used by any opponent of the US would rate screaming front-page headlines, demanding action, etc. Here it's an obscure sentence towards the end of an article.
This blatant disregard for any balance on this issue is the rule in the incredibly monopolised Australian media. For example, when National Party leader Tim Fischer made some quite mild criticisms of Israeli policy and merely called on Israel to respect UN resolutions, he was hammered by the Liberal and Labor parties, and all sections of the capitalist media gave prominent coverage to the reactions of the Israeli ambassador and other leading Zionists. Yet no such coverage was given to the views of the ambassador of Lebanon, the country being occupied and invaded.
Compare this to Australian government participation, with full media backing, in the US economic embargo of Iraq, resulting in the death of over 200,000 Iraqi children, under the pretext of enforcing Iraqi compliance of UN resolutions (two years after the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait).
While hundreds of thousands were being driven out of their wrecked homes in Lebanon, the bulk of television footage concerned the suffering of infinitely smaller number of civilian victims in Israel.
Meanwhile, a demonstration called on July 30 outside the Israeli consulate received no media coverage whatsoever, despite the ABC, SBS and the Herald being informed. The same occurred with a demonstration outside the Sydney Town Hall the following day.
While the Israeli ambassador and other leading Zionists (whether Jewish or not) have been given plenty of coverage, the views of those Jewish Australians opposed to the Israeli government's actions were meticulously kept out of the media until four members of the Women in Black put a paid advertisement into the Herald on August 4.
The advertisement read: "The Israeli government claims to represent Jews worldwide. As Australian Jews we cannot abide Israel's bombing of southern Lebanon and the deliberate creation of more than 300,000 refugees, the continuing occupation of Palestinian land and the appalling human rights abuses against the Palestinian people. We urge other Australian Jews — break your silence".
Vivienne Porzsolt, one of the signatories, told Green Left the group was very heartened by the response to their ad. While a subsequent Herald article concentrated on the couple of hate calls they received, around half of those who rang up were supportive. Of the other half, while being strongly opposed to the advertisement, gave serious debate.
"By talking and breaking through, it has produced positive discussion with many people who would not have spoken to us before", Porzsolt said.
The advertisement also forced some of the "mainstream" media to take them seriously. On Andrew Ollie's morning show on 2BL, Marta Romer from Women in Black and Jeremy Jones representing a pro-Israeli position were interviewed together. In the subsequent discussion a very prominent Jewish Australian feminist rang in support of Women in Black's position, complaining that the reason she hadn't been involved in the issue was because of this stifling of debate by the media.