The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem
January 16, 2007
by Nur Masalha
Pluto Press, 304 pp., October 2003, 978-0745321202
Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, Spinwatch
Mainstream discourse on the question of Palestine confines itself largely to the land occupied by Israel in ‘67 and the fate of the people living therein. In the various peace processes convened under American aegis, the refugees of ’48 and their right of return, enshrined in UNGAR 194, received scant attention. This trend, curiously, has been replicated on the left by even some of its luminaries. Some have arrogated themselves the right to decide whether the fate of more than four million Palestinians living in the squalor of refugee camps is a “realistic” consideration to burden Israel with in a prospective settlement. In The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem, Nur Masalha lays to rest the notion that sustainable peace in the region is possible without addressing the rights of the Palestinian refugees. Masalha also exposes concerns that inform Israel’s persistent denial of its responsibility in creating the refugee problem and its history of foiling attempts at repatriation and restitution.
Masalha’s scrupulously researched analysis of the Palestinian refugee question begins with the early twentieth century arrival of Jewish settlers who are accompanied by an ideology that aims to, and to a large degree succeeds in, ridding the land of its native population. Zionism seeks self determination for its people on a land inhabited by another; hence it must not only expel the native population, but also deny the reality of their dispossession. Thus are laid the foundations of the Palestinian tragedy.
Beginning with Ahad Ha’am’s description of the abuse of Palestinian peasants by the early Zionist settlers, Masalha reconstructs the story of the colonization of Palestine, culminating in al Nakba, the Palestinian tragedy of 1948. In discussing the contributions of Israel’s “New Historians” towards the understanding of the events of ’48, Masalha exposes the egregious shortcomings in the work of the most famous among them: Benny Morris. Contrary to Morris’s claims, Masalha reveals that the expulsion of Palestinians was born not of war, but of designs going back all the way to Herzl, the founder of political Zionism. Referred to euphemistically as “transfer” the idea of ethnic cleansing remained central to the Zionist project.
With painstaking attention to detail, and copious documentation Masalha deconstructs the myths surrounding the expulsion of Palestinians in ’48 and the subsequent expropriation of their lands. He describes the massacres, intimidation, armed eviction and destruction of villages that precipitated the Palestinian flight. There were fifty major and a hundred minor massacres committed by the Zionist forces. Operation Dalet, which preceded the creation of the state of Israel, was responsible for the widespread panic which was exploited by the Zionist military to drive out the Palestinians. Operation Hiram took care of those left behind.
The most important part of this study deals with the mechanisms employed by the Jewish state to expropriate Palestinian lands. The Jewish National Fund – an organization that still retains tax-deductible charitable status in Britain, Canada, US and Australia – worked in conjunction with the Transfer Committees to pave the way for the ultimate ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Operating as a quasi government, the JNF and Jewish Agency had already established the structure of a government before the formation of the State. On partition, the Zionists therefore had an advantage over the Palestinians whose organizations and institutions had been destroyed by the British colonial authorities during earlier uprisings.
Once Palestinians were driven out, Israel sold Palestinian lands to the JNF to stave off anticipated international pressure to repatriate the refugees. Israel could then claim that the land was now owned by a private organization over which it had no authority, except that JNF is a quasi governmental organization, and more importantly, its charter prevents the land it owns from ever being sold or leased to someone who is not a Jew. Although the JNF itself owns only 13% of Israeli land, it appoints half the board members on Israel Land Authority which controls most of the rest of Israel’s lands. Through this mechanism, the Jewish state conceals its Apartheid policies.
There were also 220,000 of those who were internally displaced, i.e. they were driven from their homes but they remained within the borders of Israel. Absurd legal designations like “Present-Absentees” were invented to keep them from their lands. Many were expelled in the following years.
The emergency regulations enacted have remained in place since and military expropriation of their lands continues to date. Restitution and repatriation was strictly prevented for the fear that it might set a precedent.
Having denied dispossessed Palestinians the right to return to their homes after the end of hostilities, Masalha documents the various proposals that were floated to resettle the refugees – in neighboring Arab countries, Libya, even South America. Attempts were also made to link the Palestinian refugee issue with the issue of the Jews who immigrated to Israel from other Arab countries. What is generally overlooked in these cases of course is the role of Mossad-B in precipitating their flight through acts of sabotage and intimidation to encourage them to immigrate to Israel.
Come ’67 another 250,000 Palestinians found themselves homeless as a result of Israel’s latest offensive which inter alia destroyed many ancient sites in Jerusalem. Destroyed Palestinian villages of Imwas, Yalu and Bayt Nuba were helpfully concealed under the Canada Park, developed through funds donated to the JNF by Canadian Jews to “make the desert bloom” (elsewhere, the British Park conceals evidence of a similar atrocity). Denial of the Palestinian reality was necessary to the Zionist project, and the ruins bore witness to the ugly crimes sustaining it.
In the immediate aftermath of the war, another 200,000 were expelled from the West Bank. By now the idea of “transfer” had entered the mainstream and even espoused by liberal Zionist authors, poets and intellectuals. Various plans were mooted to take care of Israel’s “demographic problem”, the alternatives being “transfer” (ethnic cleansing) or Apartheid (isolated Bantustans). The Oslo peace process conformed to the latter with Israel refusing to accept any responsibility for creating the refugee problem.
In Madrid, and subsequently in Oslo, the Palestinian negotiator’s failure to link the refugee question to UNGAR 194 made it easy for Israelis to relegate it to a secondary status. At Camp David, Masalha reveals there was “no progress on the issue, in fact no real negotiations on the subject”. For this, and its numerous other shortcomings, the process was doomed to failure. However the death of the “peace process” has once again revived the question of the Right of Return and Israeli responsibility in creating the refugee problem. As Masalha rightly concludes, there is no possibility o f a just and lasting peace, or for that matter negotiation towards that end, unless Israel acknowledges its responsibility in creating this the refugee problem.
The Power Of Israel in the United States
January 15, 2007
by James Petras, Clarity Press, 191pp., £ 8.79, November 2006, 978-0932863515
Review by Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
The ruckus occasioned by the publication of the Mearsheimer & Walt paper in the London Review of Books — specifically, their claim that the war against Iraq would not have happened absent pressure from the Israel Lobby — would have one believe that their thesis is in some way novel. It is not. What is new, however, is that for the first time someone from the heart of the establishment is making an argument that had hitherto remained confined to the margins. Many, like Robert Fisk, wrote persuasively about it, but there were few takers. Only old school conservatives, foreign policy realists – James Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft, Anthony Zinni et al — and sections of the Left recognized that the neocon plan for reshaping the Middle-East had for its primary aim extending Israel’s regional hegemony by eliminating a potential Arab deterrent.
While many welcomed Mearsheimer & Walt’s contribution, objections were immediately raised about its provenance. As loyalists of the US imperial project, their conclusions may be accurate, but there are legitimate reasons to be wary of their motivations; as proponents of US “national interest” they see Israel as a liability insofar as it hampers US relations with right-wing Arab regimes and consequently its hegemonic ambitions. Rather than dismissing their conclusions, therefore, it is necessary that the issue be looked at from the perspective of universally recognized principles of justice and human rights. This service, at last, has been rendered by James Petras in his new book The Power of Israel in the United States.
James Petras, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Binghamton University, is an author of 62 books and numerous articles in professional journals, national press, magazines and the web. With an exceptional reccord of confronting some the most challenging questions of our times, James Petras now brings his superlative analytical skills to bear on the most pressing contemporary issue: the conflict in the Middle East. With a bloody disaster unfolding in Iraq, Lebanon in ruins and a creeping genocide in Palestine, some elements of the American political elite, even now, are determined to drag the country into a potentially apocalyptic confrontation with Iran. With business, military and diplomatic elites all opposed, only the Israel Lobby and its vanguard, the neocons, are egging the Bush administration on towards a new war. It is imperative then that the methods and composition of this pernicious political force be exposed, confronted and neutralized . It is the first of these tasks, that Petras undertakes with remarkable alacrity – and effectiveness — in this book.
Petras dispatches the popular myth that Big Oil dragged the United States into the war against Iraq. His research of hundreds of articles, industry journals and press releases reveal no evidence that big oil had an interest in the prosecution of this war. Far from it, the industry had been urging the US government to lift sanctions in order to secure new concessions. There is also no evidence that Iraq had any reservations about selling oil to its erstwhile patrons in the US and UK.
As Petras demonstrates, the policy was mostly formulated by a small group of unaccountable neoconservative political appointees and rammed through in the face of strong resistance from career civil and military professionals in the State and Defence departments. The architects of the war in the administration were Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, who have no connections to the oil industry. Their devotion to Israel, however, is well established. The same is true of Elliot Abrams and Douglas Feith, strong proponents of “Jewish Purity” and Israeli expansion and settlement policy.
Petras offers a lucid description of the structure of this parallel system that was developed to bypass normal channels of checks and balances. The intelligence used in the case for war was furnished by the Office of Special Plans, established by Wolfowitz and Feith at the Pentagon’s Near East and South Asia affairs section. OSP was headed by Abram Shulsky who ran it with fellow neocon William Luti. The unit cherry picked intelligence and used uncorroborated evidence to prepare talking points which were then passed on to the vice-Presidents office via Irving “Scooter” Libby – another Zionist zealot.
At the State Department, another neocon John Bolton was strategically located to coordinate with the Pentagon and the vice-President’s office. The case was further reinforced by Richard Perle , chairman of the Defense Policy Board, and other neocons on the board, such as Kenneth Adelman, Eliot Cohen and James Woolsey, .
Outside, an eco-chamber consisting of influential think-tanks – such as WINEP, JINSA, CSP, Brookings Institution, AEI, and well placed columnists and commentators – such as Charles Krauthammer, George Will, William Safire, Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, further amplified the threat of the non-existent WMDs and Saddam-Al-Qaidah link with a deluge of alarmist reports and widely circulated op-eds. The warnings were further echoed by mainstream Jewish organizations such as ADL, CPMJO, AJC, ADL and ZOA and their activists – doctors, dentists, philanthropists, real estate magnates, financiers, journalists, media magnates and academics. In the end, as Petras argues, the relentless campaign waged by what he describes as the Zionist Power Configuration overwhelmed resistance.
The first part of The Power of Israel in the United States is an analytical tour de force that exposes the manner in which Zionist interests have embedded themselves in the US political system and manipulate its processes. Many important issues from which other intellectuals have hitherto shied away are dealt with compellingly in successive chapters. Beginning with the pertinent and timely question of the real beneficiaries of the Iraq war, Petras proceeds to demolish the conventional view of Israel as a proxy for US imperialism. Far from behaving as a loyal surrogate, he reveals, Israel has used its clout in the US to draw a massive annual tribute and ensure its regional hegemony. It receives the latest in American military technology and benefits from the R&D to bolster its own burgeoning military industry. Massive loan guarantees, resettlement assistance and loan waivers are other channels through which money has been siphoned to Israel. The labour movement in the US is also beholden to Israeli interests as the retirement funds of the AFL-CIO are invested in Israel Bonds, thus making the retirement benefits of American workers conditional on the health of Israeli economy.
Petras reveals that the Zionist Power Configuration is intent on creating a US-Israeli co-prosperity sphere in the middle-east, and towards this end, it doesn’t just influence US foreign policy but often formulates it – as in the case of the war against Iraq. Shedding further light on the composition of the Lobby he shows that it is more than just AIPAC, CPMJO, AJC, ADL or ZOA; there are many federations and councils at the State, City and Local level all of which identify US interests with Israel’s interests. Money plays an important role as close to 60% of the funds for the Democratic Party and 35% for the Republican Party come from pro-Israel Jews. But for every dollar spent, Israel receives $50 in aid. This influence is also pervasive in the media and academy where it gets to set the parameters of debate on all issues bearing on Israel. Dissenting voices are discredited through charges of anti-Semitism and debate is stifled through censorship and intimidation. The country’s major media, such as New York Times and Washington Post manifest a discernible pro-Israel bias.
Through his analysis of the Libby affair and the AIPAC spy trial, Petras reveals that resistance to the Zionist encroachment on the US political system is already manifesting itself with FBI using the opportunity provided by the debacle in Iraq to start investigating the role of key Zioncons in manufacturing the case against Iraq. The pace and scope suggest however that FBI has to tread carefully as a single misstep could bring powerful friends of the lobby in the Congress and Washington – who, even then, were flocking to the AIPAC annual conference en masse – down hard on the investigation. The Mearsheimer & Walt paper in itself is a sign of the growing disenchantment with America’s compromised political system.
In the second part of the book, Petras focuses his attention on the brutal wars waged by Israel that the Lobby helps facilitate. Beginning with America’s own wars in Central America and elsewhere, Petras shows a line of continuity between the house of horrors of yore with the torture, assassination and genocide of today. While the horror show employs many of the same actors, Petras argues, the directors and producers have change. In the past it was fanatic anti-Communism and defence of corporate interests that provided the agency, today it is Zionist militarism. Many of the apologists for today’s horrors come in the respected garbs of academics, intellectuals and lawyers from some of americas most prestigious institutions.
Petras describes in vivid detail the recent assault on Gaza – “Israel’s Final Solution” – as destroying the elementary conditions of Palestinian survival. The horrors were then replicated in Lebanon with large scale indiscriminate destruction killing more than 1300 innocent people. These atrocities were not just supported, but cheered on from the sidelines as Israel’s supporters in the United States rushed shipments of new weapons and secured resolutions of support. The mainstream media abetted the crimes with uncritical reproduction of the official Israeli narrative. Petras’s brief review of the BBC – considered a reputed media organization – is telling.
Petras proceeds to expose present machinations by Israel and the lobby to manufacture pretexts for a war against Iran. As the different components of the Israel lobby and their adjuncts in the media ratchet up the fear of an Iranian nuclear threat, they face growing resistance within and outside the administration. The military establishment and sectors of the State Department and CIA in particular are reluctant to sign on, but more importantly, even financial and oil interests have expressed reservations. Only Israel stands to benefit from such a war – as lined out by the neocons in the famous “A Clean Break” document and the Israel Lobby is alone in pushing for this war. As things stand, war seems unlikely since there seems to be no domestic support for it. However, as revealed in the analysis of the Danish cartoons controversy, such support can be easily manufactured. More alarming is the virtual absence of any active opposition to this inexorable push towards war.
Petras is at his finest in the third section of the book where he takes on the “terror experts” (TE) and explores the moral basis of resistance. He exposes these experts as the setup people who provide the vocabulary for war and ideological justifications for torture and rape – by projecting the psycopathy of the executioner onto the victims in a ludicrous combination of old school Orientalism with junk-psychology. Verbal assassins whose credibility is always proportionate to the consistency with which they overlook the rape and torture of their patron states. The systematic failure to establish a causal relationship between the depredations and violence inflicted and the desperate reactions bestows authority. The TE thus were horrified by the pictures of Abu Ghraib, but not by acts, since they showed the homo and heterosexual rape and sequential genital mutilation as merely an extension of their expert prescriptions.
Most of these experts originate of course from the same prestigious think-tanks and institutions that constitute the lobby. Petras’s indictment is lucid, penetrating and passionate. He ends by posing some questions to the TE’s themselves, and in doing so, he unravels the whole intellectual foundation of their trade.
Unlike the media terrorologists Petras’s analysis of the Suicide Bombing phenomena offers a holistic view of the political as well moral basis of such actions. Petras shows that in the course of waging a “total war” the aggressor eliminates the distinction between military and civilian targets. The physical as well as the spiritual universe of the victims is under assault. Borrowing from the doctrine of Israeli colonial occupation, the Anglo American practitioners of total war have stripped the victims of that which sustains the spiritual self. In the end, Petras argues, Suicide Bombing is more than just reciprocal violence, its an attempt to redeem the sacred from the desecrators.
The last part of the book is essentially a recap of the arguments made earlier and a call to arms to all who are serious about confronting the crimes of Zionism. Petras argues that the effectiveness of the anti-War movement has been greatly hampered by the views of one of its greatest icons, Noam Chomsky, who has historically downplayed the role of the lobby. In a point-by-point refutation of Chomsky’s “15 erroneous theses” Petras reveals the same shortcomings in his analysis that he has routinely criticized others of. Petras asserts that specious arguments absolving the Israel Lobby of its role in the machinations for war the anti-War movement is denied the clarity necessary to know the enemy and foil its designs. Ritualistic denunciations of “Big Oil” are convenient and cost-free, and also eminently ineffective. Unless the real source of the war-agenda is identified and challenged, it is unlikely that the next war could be averted. Petras has made an indispensable contribution in this respect by opening up the debate and making a compelling case.
The book is not without its flaws. Many chapters in the book are updates of articles previously published elsewhere and they vary in quality and documentation. Some chapters clearly lack the analytical depth and impeccable scholarship that one has come to expect from Petras. Others, like the chapter on the cartoon controversy makes assertions which are not backed up by evidence. The critiques of BBC and Seymour Hersh are not rigorous – although understandable since they are not central to the book’s thesis. There is considerable repetition and other important things such as the composition of various think-tanks, which are central to the Lobby, remain unexplored. There are, however, enough facts packed into this small book to encourage further exploration and open up a more constructive debate.
A Mushy Tale
January 10, 2007
Pervez Musharraf’s memoir, In the Line of Fire, has received considerable attention in Western mainstream media and for the most part, it is surprisingly positive. It has appealed to different people for different reasons: while White Man’s favorite Arab, Fouad Ajami, likes Musharraf for his love of dogs and his service to the common master; Tariq Ali is only mildly critical because of shared secular values. The best review by war came from Ziauddin Sardar, which I’ll reproduce below in its entirety. But first, some quotes from Ajami and Ali.
“My love of dogs began in Turkey,” Musharraf writes. “We had a beautiful brown dog named Whiskey. I loved him. He was killed in a road accident but left with me a lifelong love of dogs.” No zealous Muslim believer would write this way of dogs, for to the faithful dogs are unclean. And then there is the dog’s name, another transgression.
It is hard, however, to argue with Ajami’s conclusion that “Pakistan could do worse than having Musharraf at its helm — and has repeatedly done so in the past.”
If there is a single consistent theme in Pervez Musharraf’s memoir, it is the familiar military dogma that Pakistan has fared better under its generals than under its politicians… In the Line of Fire gives the official version of what has been happening in Pakistan over the last six years and is intended largely for Western eyes. Where Altaf Gauhar [ghost writer on President Ayub's memoir] injected nonsense of every sort into Ayub’s memoirs, his son Humayun Gauhar, who edited this book, has avoided the more obvious pitfalls. The general’s raffish lifestyle is underplayed but there is enough in the book to suggest that he is not too easily swayed by religious or social obligations…
The score-settling with enemies at home is crude and for that reason the book has caused a commotion in Pakistan…In fact, there was more state interference in the media during Nawaz Sharif’s tenure than there is under Musharraf and the level of debate is much higher than in India, where the middle-class obsession with shopping and celebrity has led to a trivialisation of TV and most of the print media.
Musharraf’s unstinting support for the US after 9/11 prompted local wags to dub him ‘Busharraf’, and was the motive behind the attempts on his life…Musharraf tells us he agreed to become Washington’s surrogate because the State Department honcho, Richard Armitage, threatened to bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age if he didn’t. What really worried Islamabad, however, was a threat Musharraf doesn’t mention: if Pakistan refused, the US would have used Indian bases.
Musharraf was initially popular in Pakistan and if he had pushed through reforms aimed at providing an education…for all children, instituted land reforms which would have ended the stranglehold of the gentry on large swathes of the countryside, tackled corruption in the armed forces and everywhere else, and ended the jihadi escapades in Kashmir and Pakistan as a prelude to a long-term deal with India, then he might have left a mark on the country…
Musharraf is better than Zia and Ayub in many ways…
In his book he expresses his detestation of religious extremists and his regrets over the murder of Daniel Pearl. He suggests that one of those responsible, the former LSE student Omar Saeed Sheikh, was an MI6 recruit who was sent to fight the Serbs in Bosnia…
Next year there will be an election and rumours abound that Musharraf is offering Benazir Bhutto’s People’s Party a deal, but one that excludes her…
Pakistan’s first military leader was seen off by a popular insurrection. The second was assassinated. What will happen to Musharraf?
President Pervez Musharraf, the last action hero who moonlights as the military dictator of Pakistan, dedicates his midterm memoirs to “the people of Pakistan”. The poor, long-suffering denizens of that country deserve “selfless leadership” and a “better future”. That they certainly do. But unfortunately for Musharraf, they do not see him either as selfless or as much of a leader. They do, as he states, spend a great deal of time praying – but they are actually praying for his quick exit; and they know a better future cannot be ushered in as long as the military is in power. On the evidence of this hastily dictated book, their prayers are in vain.
The book begins with an explosion. Indeed, several explosions. On his way to Army House, evildoers try to kill our hero. They blow up his heavily protected car. Once. Twice. He escapes by the proverbial skin of his teeth. It seems that destiny always smiles on him. He reflects on his military career, and we are treated to flashbacks of the times he has cheated death. He misses a helicopter ride to play bridge: the helicopter crashes. He is left behind by the plane that carries the military ruler General Zia-ul-Haq to his explosive death. He manages to engineer a coup while on a flight from Colombo to Karachi, and lands minutes before his plane runs out of fuel. Yes, indeed: God knows which side the bread is buttered.
The book cuts to “Fifty Years Before” and we discover that, “in His Mercy”, God made the young Pervez a highly gifted and talented lad. He was born in Delhi, ready to stand up to bullies the moment he arrived. His elder brother was born a genius, complete with a civil service examination certificate in his hand. His father was blessed with a lineage that went right back to the Prophet Muhammad. After partition his family migrated to Karachi, where the young Pervez enjoyed playing hoaxes. Then the family moved to Turkey. In Ankara, our star learns to shoot, love dogs and admire Atatürk. Soon he learns how to make a simple bomb. Given these experiences and this pedigree, and a mystical belief in himself, he could only go up. And up and up he went.
A good story needs a string of nefarious villains, and Musharraf meets all kinds – the former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, a belligerent India, terrorists of all shades, and a series of jealous officers from his own army determined to thwart his progress and bring him down. But he disposes of them all, with the agility and cunning of James Bond. In the summer of 1999, for example, he senses that India is planning another of its regular encroachments into Pakistan in the mountainous region of Kargil. Quick as a flash, our Pakistani Bond organises his band of warriors and marches his men up the hill. This quick thinking and military acumen not only put a stop to Indian aggression, but also produce an unparalleled opportunity for settling the Kashmir dispute and establishing permanent peace between India and Pakistan.
Unfortunately, there are always ungrateful sods who refuse to acknowledge a messiah. Even the clear demonstration of his divine calling by helping the poor, improving the lot of women and fighting terrorism fails to convince them. The unbelievers doubt his account of Kargil. Indian politicians and journalists have dismissed it as the delusions of an epileptic mind. Nawaz Sharif claims he was duped by Musharraf, who was running his own private war. Others have pointed out that it is Musharraf’s antics that brought the countries to the brink of nuclear war.
Worse: a chorus of retired generals has come out of occultation to accuse the divinely ordained one of “numerous lies, half-truths and misleading statements”. Lieutenant General Ali Kuli Khan Khattak, for example, has pointed out that it is a patent lie that Musharraf was one of four cadets at the Pakistan Military Academy who were shortlisted to go to Sandhurst. Nor was he among the top ten on his course.
Musharraf’s assertion that the coup against Nawaz Sharif was planned at a series of four conferences is dismissed with equal disgust. He was not even present at two, and the subject of the conferences had nothing to do with an army takeover. Similarly, his claims to be the most accomplished, most successful, most respected, most clever, most decorated and most senior army officer in the history of Pakistan are being laughed at.
They may laugh, but Musharraf, like a true messiah, anticipated this kind of scorn. He leaves them with some questions to ponder. Who else but a man chosen by fate could reverse Pakistan’s policy towards the Taliban regime in Afghan istan? Who else but a man of destiny could have stood up to the Americans when they threatened to bomb Pakistan into the Stone Age? Who else but a battle-worn general specialising in cheating death can lead the fight against Bin Laden, Mullah Omar and other terrorists? Prop hets are always ridiculed at the start, he seems to be saying. But the people always come round, once they have seen genuine miracles.
Pervez Musharraf’s detractors also misunderstand the objectives of this all-important text. The goal of In the Line of Fire is not to write history – or, indeed, to revise it, as some sceptics have suggested – but to spin a good Boy’s Own yarn. The aim is to lay claim to immortality. Truth has nothing to do with it. That is why it is written like an apocalyptic thriller, with a firm eye on the film rights. I recommend that Arnold Schwarzenegger come out of retirement to play General Musharraf.
Authors: Howard Friel & Richard Falk
Publisher: Verso
Hardback: 320 pages
In May 2003 when it was revealed that Jayson Blair, a staff reporter, had fabricated and plagiarized many of his domestic human interest stories, a 7000-word front-page report in the New York Times described it as ‘a profound betrayal of trust and a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper’.
About the same time in Iraq a bloody invasion had failed to uncover the Weapons of Mass Destruction that served as the rationale for the paper’s endorsement of the war. No apologies were forthcoming. Whereas in the Blair case it was only the credibility of the paper that suffered, the latter has since translated into hundreds of thousands of deaths. When the paper did issue an apology, it was a year later, was only 1,100 words long and was tucked safely away from intruding eyes in the inner pages.
Unlike Blair, serial fabricators like Judith Miller and Michael Gordon were never mentioned by name and the role of the editorial page in reinforcing government propaganda was overlooked entirely. In their scathing study, The Record of the Paper: How the New York Times Misreports US Foreign Policy, Howard Friel and Richard Falk reveal that far from a lapse, this behavior is consistent with the paper’s coverage of past conflicts which were avoidable had International Law been used as a standard for judging the merits of foreign policy.
The New York Times has been variously described as the ‘paper of record’, the ‘agenda setting newspaper’ and the ‘most important newspaper in the world’. Its influence, at least within the United States, is undeniable. It is often held up as the paragon of journalistic excellence within the US. This reputation confers responsibilities best articulated in the words of Supreme Court justice Hugo Black who in the wake of the publication of the Pentagon Papers described the media’s role as one of ‘bar[ing] the secrets of government and inform[ing] the people’.
But as Friel & Falk demonstrate, the New York Times, since its birth, has adopted a policy of ‘impartiality’ and ‘non-crusading…centrism’ which frequently amounts to mere positioning with little regard for fact or law. The only consistency is in accommodating both the liberal and conservative point of views, regardless of merit, in a peculiarly American notion of ‘balance’. Through various case studies and examples Friel & Falk expose the deleterious effects of this policy on the country’s foreign policy.
Friel & Falk show the egregious absence of the International Law dimension in debates on contemporary foreign policy. The paper has consistently refused to publish International Law arguments against a given policy, however, column space is indeed provided so long as the legal expert’s views are consistent with current government policy. The paper invokes international law only when an official enemy is in breach, but in the case of the US government it simply does not apply. This trend is reinforced in the paper’s editorial pages which, true to its policy of ‘non-crusading…centrism’, acknowledge the merits of international law, but prescribe unilateral action if the laws do not accommodate US foreign policy.
Tracing back the genealogy of this editorial line, Friel & Falk expose the recurring patters in the paper’s coverage of earlier conflicts where the failure to consider the legality of foreign policy options removed the single check which may have helped avoid disaster. Vietnam and Iraq are the obvious examples. They argue that even if the paper had no way of knowing if the Gulf of Tonkin incident were real, and whether Iraq possessed WMD’s, had the paper emphasized the illegality of US actions in both cases, the truth of both claims could have been ascertained in due time without needless loss of life.
But as they demonstrate, this constitutes the least of the paper’s concerns. Far from exercising its constitutional role of holding the government’s feet to the fire and creating an informed citizenry, the paper offered its pages to propagandists like Kenneth Pollack and liberal apologists like Michael Ignatieff, Anne-Marie Slaughter, George Packer and Ruth Wedgwood. Whereas Ignatieff, a leading scholar on human rights used the paper’s pages to argue in favor of torture, Ruth Wedgwood, its resident International Law expert, used her column space arguing the irrelevance of international law.
Friel & Falk use the Geneva Conventions and the Nuremberg principles to emphasize the enormity of the crimes committed in the US-UK invasion of Iraq. They meticulously expose the bloodier side of ‘democracy promotion’ as the US-UK juggernaut rolled over the Iraqi population. True to its character, the New York Times endeavored to cast maximum doubt over reports of the atrocities committed by the occupiers. With an emphasis on detail and a dearth of facts – easily verifiable in most instances, as demonstrated with examples from the British press – the paper tried to balance its need to convey journalistic rigor with its long standing policy of “non-crusading…centrism”.
In three excellent case studies – Vietnam, Nicaragua and Venezuela – Friel & Falk further illustrate the paper’s record vis-à-vis international law as it endorsed foreign policy despite the fact that it was in clear breach of international law. This, they argue, is symptomatic of the media’s failure in the world’s most powerful democracy to fulfill its role in the system of checks and balances. Integrating international law as a standard for judging foreign policy into the editorial practices is the only way, they argue, that future catastrophes could be avoided.
Friel & Falk’s incisive analysis comes as a searing indictment of the America’s most reputed media organization which has so often facilitated the breach of the constitution and international law by providing cover to government excesses. Not given to polemics or hyperbole the authors let the sheer weight of their evidence incriminate the mediocre journalism that emanates from the ill-conceived notion of ‘balance’. This book could not be recommended highly enough. At a time when a menacing storm looms over Iran and the threat of nuclear apocalypse is all too real, journalists and concerned citizens would do well to internalize these arguments.
