*LA ANNIVERSARY*

*ISRAEL SHUFFLE*

*DANNY DOES DALLAS*

Today we mark the tenth anniversary of the LA Riots or rebellion, depending on your point of view. The President is due in LA to unveil some faith-based initiative to mark the occasion, which was triggered by the refusal to convict white policemen caught on videotape in the act of beating motorist Rodney King. Writes. Marc Cooper in the LA Times:

“Author Mike Davis, crowned as the “millennial interpreter of Los Angeles” by historian Kevin Starr, still calls our city the ‘most undemocratic, most unreformed polity’ in the United States. ‘There’s been a consensus since 1992 not to dig deeper,’ says Davis. ‘But relative poverty has only increased since then.’ A report issued in 2000 by the United Way concluded, rather glumly, that ‘Los Angeles is the nation’s poverty capital with the largest number of poor of any metropolitan area.’ A UCLA analysis released that same year ranked Los Angeles County 100th among 318 U.S. urban areas in personal income — down from 36th place a decade before.’”

Faith-based initiatives?

REREAD THE KERNER COMMISSION

For a real refresher course on these realities, one might dip into history a bit and look at the Kerner Commission Report, released in the aftermath of the urban insurrections in the l960s. It contains his grim analysis of two America’s, a divided nation, unable to hear each other. That report came complete with an appendix indicting the role of the media for not spotlighting the underlining issues on any regular basis. .”We have found, ” it concluded, “a significant imbalance between what actually happened in our cities and what the newspapers, radio and television coverage told us happened. This may be understandable but it is excusable in an institution that has a mission to inform and educate the whole of society.”

That was l968!

MIDDLE EAST DEAL,WAR NOT OVER

Back to 2002: A deal has been done in the Middle East. The siege on Yasser Arafat, pictured by the Israelis, for months, as the Terrorist in Chief and the one-man-cause of all the violence, is to go “free,” while the prisoners that Israel demands he hand over are to be released into the custody of British and American “monitors” who may or may not be armed peacekeepers. This is the deal that Sharon nixed in his meetings with Colin Powell, but it was revived after the visit of the Saudi leader to President Bush’s ranch. He apparently brought along videos and pictures to show the President of alleged damage inflicted by the IDF.

Just to show who is in charge, Sharon relaxed his stand on one front, only to escalate it on another by dispatching tanks into Hebron. This, in effect, expanded a military thrust justified as necessary to catch and punish terrorists. This follows the killing — murder, really — of Israeli settlers, including a young child, by people, presumably Palestinians, wearing Israeli military uniforms. In a feature story that detailed the continuing growth of such settlements, that continue to inflame the crisis, I found an explanatory paragraph that offers insight into the use of language that defines this conflict.

DOES ISRAEL SPEAK FOR ALL JEWS?

I have always been troubled when I have heard Palestinians refer to Israelis simply as “the Jews,” as if all Jews uncritically support the Israeli government. (There are Palestinians with Israeli citizenship!) I always took that to indicate a confusion between religion, race and nation that obscures the issues and reinforces a prejudiced and antisemitic analysis. To me, Israelis pursue what they define (however wrongly, in my view) as their national interests and function as a state, not a religion or as representatives of a people.

Now, I discovered that this distorted view of the conflict is shared by many Israelis who prefer this “us vs them” frame, and lump all Jews into one category which they claim, falsely, to represent and all “Arabs” into another. This conveniently denies the legitimacy of a Palestinian identity just as the other view rejects the legitimacy of Israel, even though the Palestinians as a political entity have recognized Israel in any number of agreements, as have Arab states. These hard line right-wing settlers refuse to reciprocate, and they are a growing and powerful force in Israel who Sharon represents and refuses to impose limits on. This is one crux of the crisis.

As for the settlers, reports James Bennet of the New York Times, “this is a war not between Israel and Palestinians, but between Jews and Arabs.” There you have it: a mirror image of the other view which leads to the delegitimation of the other, and contempt for their rights. It is in this context that Israeli critics of Sharon’s policies must be viewed, even as the media in our country refuses to do so. Here’s the latest take from Uri Avinery, the eloquent columnist in Ma’ariv: (I find it fascinating that Israelis are exposed to these views but Americans are not:)

AVNERY: SHARON WAS NOT AFTER TERRORISTS

“The real aim of “Operation Defensive Shield” was not to “destroy the infrastructure of terrorism”.

“This was merely a good slogan for uniting the people of Israel, who are angry and afraid after the suicide bombings. It is also a good political device, allowing Sharon to ride on the bandwagon of President Bush’s “war against international terrorism”. Under the umbrella of “destroying the infrastructure of terrorism” one can do practically anything.

” If Sharon had really intended to “destroy the infrastructure of terrorism”, he would have acted very differently. He would have given the Palestinian masses hope of achieving their national freedom in the near future. He would have fortified the position of Yasser Arafat, the only effective partner for peace. He would have strengthened the Palestinian security forces and radically improved economic conditions in the Palestinian territories.

“But destroying the infrastructure of terrorism is not Ariel Sharon’s aim. His program is far more radical: to break the backbone of the Palestinian people, crush their governmental institutions, turn the people into human wreckage that can be dealt with as he wishes. This may entail shutting them up in several enclaves or even driving them out of the country altogether….

WHAT DOES SHARON WANT? IS HE CLOSE TO “THE END?”

The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz even suggests that Sharon is acting virtually alone without much coordination with his own cabinet. If true, this suggests that all the media chatter about this being an Israeli –Palestinian clash is only true on the surface. It seems to be a personal vendetta as well. Yoel Marcus writes:

“Conversations with a number of ministers yield a sorry picture of thesituation: None has a clue what Sharon wants or what is his final goal. Hedoes not involve them in any strategic moves, and more than once, they’vefound out from the media what they are supporting. Cabinet-shmabinet, saidone cabinet member, Sharon’s acting by himself and nobody understands themechanism. Here and there, the cabinet vetoes some operation - like twosuggestions for drastic moves in the north - but in such cases, there’ssuspicion that Sharon actually wanted to be restrained.

“What Sharon does do is report about a lot about things that are convenientfor him to do so - like his “far-reaching coordination” with the Americanadministration. But not all the ministers are convinced about the accuracyof his reports… The two peoples and their leaderships are in a boxer’s clinch, that classicpose of exhaustion when the two fighters cling to one another in the hope ofgaining some time. Sharon’s proposal for a regional conference is also anattempt to buy some time just as long as we don’t reach the real point - thenecessary move of ending the occupation and dismantling the settlements.

“A military operation’s success is measured by the change in the politicalreality - and that’s not on the horizon as long as Sharon doesn’t upgradefrom the mentality of a paratroop officer to that of a statesman of thecaliber of Menachem Begin, who against the wishes of his party, set thestandard of peace in exchange for land and settlements. In the test of theresults of his national leadership, Sharon is very close to his end.”

ISRAEL TO UN: DROP DEAD

Israels’ Cabinet has agreed on something — not to allow the UN probe of what happened in Jenin to take place, despite the UN agreeing to postpone the mission and add military men to it, at Tel-Aviv’s request. Said an official spokesman: “This awful United Nations Committee is out to get us and is likely to smear Israel and to force us to do things which Israel is not prepared even to hear about…”What a choice of words!. “Not prepared even to hear about….” This “awful United Nations Committee” is not a committee, but a mission appointed by the UN Secretary General, originally with Israel’s “green light.” and is made up of a former President of Finland, a UN High Commissioner for Refugees and a former head of the Red Cross. Awful? The last time I looked, it has no Palestinian or Arab representation, no critics of Israel, and would most likely, given the UN’s track record, prepare a diplomatic even handed and wishy-washy report, That’s why Israel agreed to it. What has changed? Why this insult to Kofi Anan?

What happened in Jenin has been under a cloud of media spin and external pressure. Israel has already bullied the UN to add two more military members to the body, while pro-Sharon groups take out full-page ads to obscure the issues. Israel insists there was no massacre although had yet to comment on other allegations of such war crimes as withholding food or indiscriminately shooting civilians as opposed to lining them up and moving them down.

HOW DO YOU DEFINE MASSACRE? OR ANTI-SEMITISM?

At issue now: how to define massacre? The Israelis called the terror bombing in Natanya a massacre. They insist Jenin was not a massacre, Why? Because there was no “INTENT” to kill large numbers of civilians, according to Israel. That is a tricky definition. During the Vietnam war, the units that mowed down civilians in the My-Lai massacre aid they did not intend to shoot civilians, but merely to cleanse areas of Viet Cong guerriillas who they believes were being harbored by villagers and included children. Intent!?!

An Israeli solider told the Washington Post Friday that he was ordered to shoot into people’s homes in Jenin whether or not he could see gunmen there. He said he questioned the order but apparently carried it out He also said that there was no massacre. Israeli Ambassador Alon Pincus said that many of the men killed wore uniforms.

Some questions: What uniforms? Were they terrorists or Palestinian security forces? Are security forces , trained incidentally by the CIA, legit or not. Were all these “gunmen” terrorist free-lancers? Do the Palestinians have a right to self-defense just as Israel insists it does? Can terrorism be committed by states as well as individuals? By the way, personally, I am prepared to believe that there was no massacre per se — but there were brutal killings and major violations of humanitarian law. Can one legitimately condemn suicide/homocide bombings and the murder of civilians AND abuses by the Israeli Defense Forces?

And does one become an antisemite for raising these questions? Outside the United States, they are raised frequently in the media. Here is Eduardo Galeano, the great writer from Uruguay making this point in his latest essay on Z-NET: “….Palestinians–who are Semitic–turn out to be “antisemitic.” For more than a century they have been condemned to atone for the sins of European antisemitism, and to pay with their land and their blood for a Holocaust they did not perpetrate.”differently.

WEEKEND REPORT FROM WASHINGTON AND DALLAS

SATURDAY: It is April 27, South African Freedom Day, the eighth anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s election to office. Yesterday I was in Washington filming a memorial service for Peter Biehl, an American businessman whose daughter Amy (who would have been 35 today) was lost to a racially and politically motivated murder in South Africa during the tumult in that country’s transition to democracy.

When Amy’s parents visited the country they were expected to lash out at the perpetrators with a call for vengeance. Instead, they looked into the lives and impoverished backgrounds of the perpetrators, and opted to take “the high road” in hearings before South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and agree to amnesty. They then set up the Amy Biehl Foundation to work with folks in the townships to improve their lives. The Foundation won the support of South Africans and Americans alike, led by Peter’s self-effacing but sincere leadership. His death was mourned by South Africans and Americans alike and President Bush sent along a greeting that was published in a memorial booklet that also included a statement by Bill Clinton. The service at the National Cathedral was moving a fitting reminder of how the fight against apartheid unified and inspired so many worldwide.

THREE WEEKS “WITHOUT DELAY”

It is April 27. It has been 23 days ago, three weeks plus, since President Bush first made his tough sounding call on the Israelis to “withdraw without delay.” Some say it really a wink and a nod, and that the Bush Administration had given Sharon its own version of a green light, or as the New York Times reported once, but never again, had an ” understanding” in place with the Israeli military. Such an understanding likely had three components. The US would complain. Israel would hear and acknowledge the concern, express respect for President Bush and then, continue the operation, interpreting the word “withdrawal” to mean “redeploy.” (ie. Not withdraw.)

On Friday, Bush again said to Israel “It is time to end this.” A day before, he called on Israel to “finish” Friday’s Washington Post featured a page one report suggesting that these confusing signals actually reflect a deep split within the Administration between State, under Colin Powell, trying to restart negotiations while Defense, under Donald Rumsfeld (and pro-Israel hardliner Paul Wolfowitz) pressing to leave Israel alone. This internal “war” in Washington is fueling the external war in Israel that has now won Sharon unprecedented popularity. On top of it, the former Exterminator from Texas, Tom Delay, wants to get the Congress to pass a resolution supporting Israel — a gesture that the Christian right is pushing along with the hard-core Israel lobby — while the Bush Administration is trying to gut the measure less it totally blow away the pretense of US even handedness in this conflict.

The upsurge in Israeli public opinion is not surprising. There is always a rally around the flag sentiment during wars. (This was, it should be remembered,during the Vietnam was as well despite protracted and noisy protests) The Israelis, who believe they are “winning” now back Sharon by a 65% margin (up from 35% in mid March) What no one seems to be talking about is what is happening to the Israeli economy in the meantime — a collapse of the tourist industry, no foreign investment and the need for social service cutbacks which will soon be felt by Sharon’s most zealous backers

THE EYES OF TEXAS WERE UPON ME

SUNDAY: I am in Dallas for the USA Film festival at the beautiful Angelika theater which puts its namesake in New York to shame. The Middle East has followed me here. The Dallas Morning News is reporting that an aide to Saudi leader Crown Prince Abdullah asked that only men be assigned to air traffic control duties to handle flights when he dropped in on President Bush on his ranch. Saudi officials are saying ” I don’t know where this news came from calling it “absolute nonsense” Some FAA employees say it is true, and call it an “outrage.”

Is this story true? The US government also says there was no such official request. Can this be a ‘dirty trick” of some kind to discredit the Saudis even further in American eyes. or to deflect attention from Abdullah’s call on the US to force Sharon to withdraw.

Ironically, while Israeli public opinion backing its alleged terror war is up, US public confidence in the winability of our terror war is down, according to CNN’s Gallup Poll. It was 65% earlier this year. It is now 47%. Perhaps that is why there were new reports announced today about planning for that attack on Iraq that is expected after the upcoming UN session on Iraq’s compliance or lack of it with UN demands. A pretext will likely be found, or invented, for this new war. But also likely is that must wait for the conclusion of the Israeli war. Hence, Crown Prince Abdullah is staying on the ranch in Texas for another day.

“HIGH SECURITY”

While the Pres and his guest continue their “friend raising” exercise, down in Gitmo, as the military now calls Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the Afghan prisoners have the earmuffs back on over their eyes to be moved to a new permanent air-conditioned high security unit by the Caribbean sea. The good news of them is that their new “homes” will have toilets in the cells. The bad news is that the cells are SMALLER than the ones they left. Bear in mind, these men have yet to be charged with any crime. The press was once again not allowed to film the transfer. “Operational ” security concerns. (Just a note on high security units: when I was a producer for 20/20. I did a story on the federal government’s high security prison at Marion Ill where prisoners are confined in their cells 23 hours a day, a practice condemned by Amnesty International as a violation of UN rules on the treatment of prisoners. Our investigation found that a majority or the “dangerous” prisoners there did not meet the governments’ own classification criteria for being confined this way.)

LIVING OFF THE DEAD

Back to Dallas: the Sunday paper’s TV Week section offers a cover story on CBS’s new show called “LIVING WITH THE DEAD featuring Ted Danson. After revisiting Dealey Plaza, I realized that Dallas is still living OFF the dead. ( I filmed an earlier doc years ago here about the issues in Oliver Stone’s movie JFK. It is called BEYOND JFK) The city’s Sixth Floor Museum located at what was once the Texas School Book Depository is packing them in at $10 a pop to see the corner window through which Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly assassinated President Kennedy in the street below. The museum’s exhibits support the Warren Commission view that Lee, who denied the myrderous deed, and called himself a “patsy” acted alone. Down in the street, in the Plaza, on the infamous grassy knoll, Robert Groden, a photo analyst and conspiracy theorist holds forth for the tourists selling his own videos and a new magazine challenging the official view.

I first met Groden as one of Stone’s advisors during the making of JFK. He’s still at it, eleven years later, debunking the official view, and like the city, living off the dead. It was hard for me to come to terms with the fact that that century defining event took place almost 40 years ago. 2/3 of the American people still believe that Oswald was not a lone gunman.

SCREENING AT SMU

While I was in town, an incredibly effective local activist, Molly Rooke, organized a preview screening of our new film about a more recent political assassination, COUNTING ON DEMOCRACY. This film offers the story of what happened during the Florida election to send a former Texas Governor to the White House. The screening was held on Sunday morning at Southern Methodist University, a school that had been described to me as a nest for Bush adoring Republicans. I was told that on Friday night, a humongous choir called “THE VOCAL MAJORITY” was at SMU singing a medley of patriotic songs.

Undeniably, they would have questioned my patriotism for this expose of the ‘Flori-duh’fiasco. Anyway, to my delight, the room was packed, on just 24 hours notice. The reception was enthusiastic even though the bathrooms in the Student Center had been flooded the night before and were closed to the public. A bone-chilling siren even went off before the screening began, an omen that made me fear that we were under attack. Happily, it wasn’t true. Clearly, there are many Texans who share my frustration with the coverage of that election. Incidentally, a Florida court has just found that there were illegal practices in Leon County and elsewhere — issues the film explores.

IN THE EMAIL: FROM SOUTH AFRICA

Boaz Gosher writes: “I am a regular reader of your dissector weblog. Your constant references to S.A. are really starting to annoy me. Describing S.A. as a beacon of democratic light, and using the “relatively peaceful” transformation from Afrikaner Apartheid to the present day ANC govt. as a yardstick shows how shallow and superficial your understanding is of life in S.A. on a daily basis is. Yes, Apartheid was an evil system and had to be destroyed. But ask yourself what it has been replaced with. Eight years later our Rand has devalued by approx. 75%, crime is at an alltime high, unemployment is at an alltime high, corruption is rife at ALL levels of society, roads, schools, hospitals and police stations have deteriorated and there is NO ACCOUNTABILITY. The Aids pandemic (and the denial therof by the govt.) is the most visible example of how inept, stubborn and ruthless (and uncaring ) the ANC really is. MILLIONS of people are dying from Aids in Southern Africa (far more than ever have died/suffered under Apartheid) yet you still continue singing praises about transformation. Please try to give a more balanced dissection in future…”

ABOUT MY COVERAGE OF ISRAEL ,

Maria Mancini writes:

“Just wondering why you wrenched Naomi Klein’s remarks so entirely out of context (as you seem to do in all your kneejerk anti-Israeli comments) so as to criticize only Sharon when her point was that antisemitism is the business of everyone & everyone –left & right– is complicit & to be criticized for it. Not just Sharon, for heaven’s sake! You seem to think that anyone who supports Israel’s right to exist is both a fascist and duped by Sharon. Excuse me, but that is so stupid as to be dishonest.

“Klein also wrote: no mention was made of attacks on Jewish synagogues, cemeteries and community centers. Or about the fact that every time I log onto activist news sites such as Indymedia.org, which practice ‘open publishing,’ I’m confronted with a string of Jewish conspiracy theories about 9-11 and excerpts from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. (which she followed –ludicrously — by saying the ‘The globalization movement isn’t anti-Semitic’

“Please read her column again and try harder in the future not to take people’s remarks out of context. It is beneath you & does your opinions & positions no good whatsoever.”

THANKS, MARIA:…..Incidentally, I am as alarmed as anyone about the upsurge in antisemitic attacks and incidents. They seem to be linked to what is happening in Israel, which does not excuse them, but does help to explain them. To me, they are inexcusable but the context cannot be ignored. Hate thrives in environments where distinctions are not made and people of good refuse to speak out against abuses against people of all nationalities and backgrounds.

PRAISE FOR THE WEB LOG

Finally, I was pleased to read that the TV critic of the Kansas City Star, the distinguished Aaron Barnhart, spared some kind words for this column in his always informative website TVBarn.com:

“I don’t read very many Weblogs, but time and time again I keep coming back to Danny Schechter’s News Dissector Web Log. Schechter, a well-known progressive newsie who made “South Africa Today” for Globalvision and most recently, the “Making of ‘We Are Family’” documentary, writes prolifically in his blog, digesting news from around the globe and offering his take on it, based on three decades in electronic media.

“He’s not the world’s best speller, but man, he reads a lot, and a knows a lot. His April 25 entry, to give one example, notes the 10th anniversary of the end of apartheid and what it might augur for the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict; reports a hopeful sign in the South African government’s handling of the AIDS crisis; updates us on the Falun Gong situation in China; offers more details on the alleged massacre in the Jenin refugee camp; comments on anti-Semitism in Europe; critiques the media’s coverage of the Moussaoui pre-trial hearing; responds to readers and throws in tidbits found in publications belonging to Schechter’s vast Mediachannel.org consortium (TV Barn belongs, too). Throughout Schechter relays insights and information you are unlikely to find in the mainstream press. ”

Thanks Aaron. I will try to do better with spelling. It is just my haste and two finger typing but that is no excuse. I expect to be arrested by the grammar police as well. Thanks to all who wrote and continue to send it items and critical comments. Please keep them coming. Write: dissector@mediachannel.org