Fisk or no Fisk...
Ivo Skoric
ivo at reporters.net
Sat Apr 20 21:15:22 CEST 2002
Fisk or no Fisk, mainstream ("big") American media are
desperately biased in favor of Israel. The fact that Palestinian
principal method of resisting the Israeli occupation - suicide
bombers - is the same as the Al Qaeda's primary modus operandi
against the US targets, perhaps does not help to change that.
Obviously, Fisk beginning his lectures in the US with a quote from
Osama Bin Laden, was an intention to provoke. For better or
worse, I guess. Fisk, being a Lord, has a luxury to behave as an
eccentric.
When I see Israeli tanks plowing through the rubble of Palestinian
townships, it strikingly reminds me of Srebrenica. The differences
being that there are no Dutch or French soldiers that Israelis need
to strike deals with in order to shell Palestinians, that Serbs
allowed passage to red cross marked ambulance vehicles and that
Bosnian Muslims failed to produce a single suicide bomber. So, I
am not at all surprised that Ashrawi sounds like Silajdzic did in
1994.
And the reaction of American media is pretty much the same: then
in 1994, they used to call Bosnia "an interesting country" - still
seeing Milosevic as "a man of peace"....
Here is an excerpt from MSNBC (4/9/02, 10:40 pm):
anchor: Is U.S. the only hope today to mediate between Israelis
and Palestinians?
Ashrawi: <a very long argument of a NO>
anchor: AN INTERESTING POINT.
The point is that the US is widely seen in the Arab world as the
part of the problem not as the solution. And that comes as a
consequence to the decades of the US uncritical support of Israel.
Actually, Arafat, Sharon and Bush are all parts of the problem, and
cannot bring peace to the region, yet they patronizingly exclude
other voices in their respective societies from contributing to the
solution. THAT is the real tragedy.
ivo
More information about the Syndicate
mailing list