A READER'S QUERY
Defining News in The Middle East
Amid all the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is the press missing a certain kind of story that really ought to be reported? A few examples:
• In 1994 Yitzhak Frankenthal's son was murdered by Hamas. Instead of calling for violent reprisal, he reached out to Palestinians who had suffered similar losses. He created a group called the Bereaved Families Forum, and today 150 Palestinian and 250 Israeli families are members. Representatives of the forum opened a fourteen-city U.S. tour on October 14, 2002. On that day, I watched a middle-aged female employee of the Palestinian Authority embrace an Israeli man, as he told of his son's death in a bombing two months earlier. No major newspaper or television station covered the forum's meetings, or the acts of mutual support that they engendered. Last fall, Frankenthal started a phone service that allows any Palestinian to be randomly connected to an Israeli, and vice-versa. More than 130,000 calls were made in the first three months of operation. Have you heard about it?
• On September 3, 2002, two unlikely partners issued a joint peace proposal that they believed represented the views of the majorities in both their communities. The authors of the proposal: Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al Quds University and formerly the PLO's chief representative in Jerusalem; and Ami Ayalon, former head of Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service and a former admiral in Israel's navy. The proposal calls for two states along 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as a shared-governance open city, and financial compensation for displaced Palestinians. Support for the proposal has been growing ever since. On March 19 the Israeli newspaper Ha'Aretz reported that dozens of Fatah leaders, including top members of the Palestinian Authority's security forces, met and announced their support for the plan. Why haven't the editors of most American newspapers and television news programs considered this more newsworthy?
• On January 21, 2002, prominent Christian, Muslim, and Jewish leaders issued The First Alexandria Declaration of the Religious Leaders of the Holy Land, which called violence in that region "evil," and proclaimed their desire to "live together as neighbors, respecting the integrity of each other's historical and religious inheritance." The declaration was the result of a meeting co-hosted by the archbishop of Canterbury and Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, the most senior Islamic figure in Egypt. Signatories included an impressive list of top Jewish, Muslim, and Christian religious leaders. In the last four years, no other statement has been approved by both the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government. Still, many of the reporters who attended the first day of the two-day meeting left before the second day. How many Americans heard anything of the declaration? A Nexis search for that day turned up only three stories.
These are not inconsequential matters. Press coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict creates, reflects, and sustains a sense of irreconcilable difference that leaves little reason for hope. The public receives passionate sound bites from partisan Palestinian and Israeli spokespersons.
A few of us are making an effort to amplify the "underheard" third voice of Israelis and Palestinians working together in mutual respect. Along with Andrew Young, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former mayor of Atlanta, I have created an organization called A Different Future (www.adifferentfuture.org). It is an interfaith, international, and nongovernmental organization to promote peace in the Middle East. We have identified more than fifty organizations in which Palestinians and Israelis, or Arabs and Jews, are working together. My query is: Why are these activities not more newsworthy?
I have my theories. For one thing, these organizations lack the public relations expertise and resources to compete with official government sources for press attention. A symbiotic dance has developed between the governments and the press. Many American correspondents have large areas of the Middle East to cover. It's rare for a day to go by without a political event, an act of violence, or a handout from government offices. It's easier to deal with officialdom.
For another, news editors tend to think about the Middle East in terms of such (very real) problems as the governance of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees, and the future of the Israeli settlements. These are important and newsworthy, but the problems can be understood in other equally real terms. For example: Why have these diplomatic issues been so difficult to resolve? Part of the answer is the deep distrust between most Israelis and Palestinians, and the difficulty each has in seeing the other as fully human. So, doesn't the paucity of news coverage of these efforts to reach across the divide help perpetuate the conflict?
Recent polls commissioned by Search for Common Ground (an organization that promotes interethnic peace) underscore these issues. Palestinians and Israelis were asked if they would support a two-state solution and an end to violence if the 1967 borders were reinstated. Among Palestinians, 42 percent said yes, and another 30 percent said they would support it — if the Israelis would agree, and stop the violence. Among Israelis, 51 percent supported the proposition and another 21 percent said they would if they thought the Palestinians would go along with it.
Clearly, there is a base to build upon. But a free press in a free-market economy seems to prefer to cover the all-too-frequent acts of violence and hatred, instead of efforts to build bridges between the two sides. Is this a minor flaw in a generally outstanding system of reporting? Or is it a serious lapse that needs correcting?
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