Getting A Story Right

[Annie]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20008429-7583,00.html

Michael Costello: Israel is not the bully here
Television footage doesn't always provide the real story of war, writes Michael Costello
04aug06

THE most powerful influences on global opinion are television pictures. An experienced TV journalist will tell you that the picture is the story. No picture, no story. Those same journalists will tell you that a powerful picture will overwhelm reality. The picture becomes reality.

That's why there is such a global outcry for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon. The pictures of death and injury, of lives ruined and property destroyed, are horrifying. All decent human instinct demands a ceasefire immediately. The pictures say that what Israel is doing is out of all proportion to the injury done to it and the threat posed to it. Global opinion seems to be solidifying around the view that it's all Israel's fault.

The trouble is that these reactions, understandable given the power of the images, do not stand up to sober analysis. They contain within them the seeds of greater strife in the future.

Let's start with Israel's ostensibly disproportionate response. It would be disproportionate if Israel were responding just to the kidnapping of two of its soldiers and the deaths of eight others. This was just one small incident, however, in an almost 25-year war conducted by Hezbollah to obliterate Israel. Iran boasts publicly that it founded Hezbollah, is its greatest supporter and supplies it through another of Israel's enemies, Syria.

Many of the same people who accuse Israel of a disproportionate response recount in the same breath, some with barely hidden pleasure, that Israel is having trouble dealing with Hezbollah, which is turning out better armed, better trained, better disciplined and in much larger numbers than expected.

Why hasn't anyone recognised the profound inconsistency of alleging on the one hand that Israel is acting disproportionately to the threat, while stressing that this so-called disproportionate action is barely dealing with that threat.

It's illogical, but logic plays little part when emotion rules and images flood our TV screens with horror.

Next, the question of an immediate ceasefire. Who benefits? Hezbollah, of course. Hezbollah will proclaim that it has fought Israel to a standstill and will immediately begin to rebuild and rearm, even if expressly prohibited by the UN from doing so. If Israel were to take military action to stop this happening, it would be back to the present situation with horror TV pictures of artillery bombardments and bombings, plus this time being vilified for allegedly breaching a ceasefire.

That's why France's insistence on a ceasefire first, before the sending in of credible forces able to enforce it and the beginning of substantive negotiations, would equally be a victory for Hezbollah. Once such a ceasefire begins. there will be no agreement on a serious peacekeeping force, no negotiations on a real solution.

Even stout-hearted figures such as British Prime Minister Tony Blair are joining the chorus that solving the Palestinian problem is the only way to bring peace.

If only the US would exert itself to the maximum, so the argument goes. If only Israel would be reasonable and accept its 1967 borders, we could have a two-state solution, Israel and Palestine side by side.

Why do otherwise intelligent people perpetuate this myth? It wouldn't matter if the US exerted every ounce of its being. It would not matter if Israel went back to the 1967 borders or even to the 1948 borders. Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, most likely Syria, certainly the Islamic fundamentalist world, would not regard this as in any way acceptable. Here's what former Hezbollah leader Hassan Massawi said about Israel and negotiations: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."

On October 22, 2002, Hezbollah's present leader Hassan Nasrallah, said: "If they (the Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."

This is the true heart of the problem. The Palestinian issue cannot be resolved because a significant part of the Arab and Muslim world still do not accept Israel's right to exist. They will not accept the two-state solution beloved of analysts because they do not accept the existence of one of those two states, Israel. This is just not a matter of politics to them; it is a matter of religion. It is non-negotiable.

Until this changes, Israel will remain as it has for 60 years: under siege. Those who seek Israel's elimination will engage in conflict and terrorism against Israel and its friends.

So what are we to conclude? That Israel is just too much trouble? That it causes all of us too much grief? That in defending itself against these implacable enemies Israel offends our sensibilities by the manner in which it feels compelled to use force?

Already there are growing whispers from the so-called realist school of international relations that it would be a really smart thing if we just quietly walked away from Israel because it has become an embarrassment and inconvenience to our larger interests. Such is the consequence of privileging the power of the TV image over reason.