Following
the latest in semantics on the news? Journalism and the Israeli government are
in love again. It's Islamic terror, Turkish terror, Hamas terror, Islamic Jihad
terror, Hezbollah terror, activist terror, war on terror, Palestinian terror,
Muslim terror, Iranian terror, Syrian terror, anti-Semitic
terror...
But I am doing the Israelis an injustice. Their lexicon, and that of
the White House most of the time and our reporters' lexicon, is the same. Yes,
let's be fair to the Israelis. Their lexicon goes like this: Terror, terror,
terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror,
terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror,
terror.
How many times did I just use the word "terror"? Twenty. But it might
as well be 60, or 100, or 1,000, or a million. We are in love with the word,
seduced by it, fixated by it, attacked by it, assaulted by it, raped by it,
committed to it. It is love and sadism and death in one double syllable, the
prime time-theme song, the opening of every television symphony, the headline of
every page, a punctuation mark in our journalism, a semicolon, a comma, our most
powerful full stop. "Terror, terror, terror, terror". Each repetition justifies
its predecessor. -- Robert
Fisk
By Robert Fisk
Following the latest in semantics on the news? Journalism and the
Israeli government are in love again. It's Islamic terror, Turkish terror, Hamas
terror, Islamic Jihad terror, Hezbollah terror, activist terror, war on terror,
Palestinian terror, Muslim terror, Iranian terror, Syrian terror, anti-Semitic
terror...
But I am doing the Israelis an injustice. Their lexicon, and that of
the White House most of the time and our reporters' lexicon, is the same. Yes,
let's be fair to the Israelis. Their lexicon goes like this: Terror, terror,
terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror,
terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror,
terror.
How many times did I just use the word "terror"? Twenty. But it might
as well be 60, or 100, or 1,000, or a million. We are in love with the word,
seduced by it, fixated by it, attacked by it, assaulted by it, raped by it,
committed to it. It is love and sadism and death in one double syllable, the
prime time-theme song, the opening of every television symphony, the headline of
every page, a punctuation mark in our journalism, a semicolon, a comma, our most
powerful full stop. "Terror, terror, terror, terror". Each repetition justifies
its predecessor.
Most of all, it's about the terror of power and the power of terror.
Power and terror have become interchangeable. We journalists have let this
happen. Our language has become not just a debased ally, but a full verbal
partner in the language of governments and armies and generals and weapons.
Remember the "bunker buster" and the "Scud buster" and the "target-rich
environment" in the Gulf War (Part One)? Forget about "weapons of mass
destruction". Too obviously silly. But "WMD" in the Gulf War (Part Two) had a
power of its own, a secret code genetic, perhaps, like DNA for something that
would reap terror, terror, terror, terror, terror. "45 Minutes to
Terror".
Power and the media are not just about cosy relationships between
journalists and political leaders, between editors and presidents. They are not
just about the parasitic-osmotic relationship between supposedly honourable
reporters and the nexus of power that runs between White House and State
Department and Pentagon, between Downing Street and the Foreign Office and the
Ministry of Defence, between America and Israel.
In the Western context, power and the media is about words and the
use of words. It is about semantics. It is about the employment of phrases and
their origins. And it is about the misuse of history, and about our ignorance of
history. More and more today, we journalists have become prisoners of the
language of power. Is this because we no longer care about linguistics or
semantics? Is this because laptops "correct" our spelling, "trim" our grammar so
that our sentences so often turn out to be identical to those of our rulers? Is
this why newspaper editorials today often sound like political
speeches?
For two decades now, the US and British and Israeli and Palestinian
leaderships have used the words "peace process" to define the hopeless,
inadequate, dishonourable agreement that allowed the US and Israel to dominate
whatever slivers of land would be given to an occupied people. I first queried
this expression, and its provenance, at the time of Oslo although how easily we
forget that the secret surrenders at Oslo were themselves a conspiracy without
any legal basis.
Poor old Oslo, I always think. What did Oslo ever do to deserve this?
It was the White House agreement that sealed this preposterous and dubious
treaty in which refugees, borders, Israeli colonies, even timetables were to be
delayed until they could no longer be negotiated.
And how easily we forget the White House lawn though, yes, we
remember the images upon which it was Clinton who quoted from the Koran, and
Arafat who chose to say: "Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr President." And
what did we call this nonsense afterwards? Yes, it was "a moment of history"!
Was it? Was it so?
Do you remember what Arafat called it? "The peace of the brave". But
I don't remember any of us pointing out that "the peace of the brave" was used
by General de Gaulle about the end of the Algerian war. The French lost the war
in Algeria. We did not spot this extraordinary irony.
Same again today. We Western journalists used yet again by our
masters have been reporting our jolly generals in Afghanistan, as saying their
war can only be won with a "hearts and minds" campaign. No one asked them the
obvious question: Wasn't this the very same phrase used about Vietnamese
civilians in the Vietnam War? And didn't we didn't the West lose the war in
Vietnam? Yet now we Western journalists are using about Afghanistan the phrase
"hearts and minds" in our reports as if it is a new dictionary definition,
rather than a symbol of defeat for the second time in four
decades.
Just look at the individual words we have recently co-opted from the
US military. When we Westerners find that "our" enemies al-Qa'ida, for example,
or the Taliban have set off more bombs and staged more attacks than usual, we
call it "a spike in violence".
Ah yes, a "spike"! A "spike" is a word first used in this context,
according to my files, by a brigadier general in the Baghdad Green Zone in 2004.
Yet now we use that phrase, we extemporise on it, we relay it on the air as our
phrase, our journalistic invention. We are using, quite literally, an expression
created for us by the Pentagon. A spike, of course, goes sharply up then sharply
downwards. A "spike in violence" therefore avoids the ominous use of the words
"increase in violence" for an increase, of course, might not go down again
afterwards.
Now again, when US generals refer to a sudden increase in their
forces for an assault on Fallujah or central Baghdad or Kandahar a mass movement
of soldiers brought into Muslim countries by the tens of thousands they call
this a "surge". And a surge, like a tsunami, or any other natural phenomena, can
be devastating in its effects. What these "surges" really are to use the real
words of serious journalism are reinforcements. And reinforcements are sent to
conflicts when armies are losing those wars. But our television and newspaper
boys and girls are still talking about "surges" without any attribution at all.
The Pentagon wins again.
Meanwhile the "peace process" collapsed. Therefore our leaders or
"key players" as we like to call them tried to make it work again. The process
had to be put "back on track". It was a train, you see. The carriages had come
off the line. The Clinton administration first used this phrase, then the
Israelis, then the BBC. But there was a problem when the "peace process" had
repeatedly been put "back on track" but still came off the line. So we produced
a "road map" run by a Quartet and led by our old Friend of God, Tony Blair, who
in an obscenity of history we now refer to as a "peace envoy". But the "road
map" isn't working. And now, I notice, the old "peace process" is back in our
newspapers and on our television screens. And earlier this month, on CNN, one of
those boring old fogies whom the TV boys and girls call "experts" told us again
that the "peace process" was being put "back on track" because of the opening of
"indirect talks" between Israelis and Palestinians. This isn't just about
clichés this is preposterous journalism. There is no battle between the media
and power; through language, we, the media, have become
them.
Here's another piece of media cowardice that makes my 63-year-old
teeth grind together after 34 years of eating humus and tahina in the Middle
East. We are told, in many analysis features, that what we have to deal with in
the Middle East are "competing narratives". How very cosy. There's no justice,
no injustice, just a couple of people who tell different history stories.
"Competing narratives" now regularly pop up in the British
press.
The phrase, from the false language of anthropology, deletes the
possibility that one group of people in the Middle East, for example is
occupied, while another is doing the occupying. Again, no justice, no injustice,
no oppression or oppressing, just some friendly "competing narratives", a
football match, if you like, a level playing field because the two sides are are
they not? "in competition". And two sides have to be given equal time in every
story.
So an "occupation" becomes a "dispute". Thus a "wall" becomes a
"fence" or "security barrier". Thus Israeli acts of colonisation of Arab land,
contrary to all international law, become "settlements" or "outposts" or "Jewish
neighbourhoods". It was Colin Powell, in his starring, powerless appearance as
Secretary of State to George W Bush, who told US diplomats to refer to occupied
Palestinian land as "disputed land" and that was good enough for most of the US
media. There are no "competing narratives", of course, between the US military
and the Taliban. When there are, you'll know the West has
lost.
But I'll give you an example of how "competing narratives" come
undone. In April, I gave a lecture in Toronto to mark the 95th anniversary of
the 1915 Armenian genocide, the deliberate mass murder of 1.5 million Armenian
Christians by the Ottoman Turkish army and militia. Before my talk, I was
interviewed on Canadian Television, CTV, which also owns Toronto's Globe and
Mail newspaper. And from the start, I could see that the interviewer had a
problem. Canada has a large Armenian community. But Toronto also has a large
Turkish community. And the Turks, as the Globe and Mail always tell us, "hotly
dispute" that this was a genocide.
So the interviewer called the genocide "deadly massacres". Of course,
I spotted her specific problem straight away. She couldn't call the massacres a
"genocide", because the Turkish community would be outraged. But she sensed that
"massacres" on its own especially with the gruesome studio background
photographs of dead Armenians was not quite up to defining a million and a half
murdered human beings. Hence the "deadly massacres". How odd! If there are
"deadly" massacres, are there some massacres which are not "deadly", from which
the victims walk away alive? It was a ludicrous tautology.
Yet the use of the language of power of its beacon words and its
beacon phrases goes on among us still. How many times have I heard Western
reporters talking about "foreign fighters" in Afghanistan? They are referring,
of course, to the various Arab groups supposedly helping the Taliban. We heard
the same story from Iraq. Saudis, Jordanians, Palestinian, Chechen fighters, of
course. The generals called them "foreign fighters". Immediately, we Western
reporters did the same. Calling them "foreign fighters" meant they were an
invading force. But not once ever have I heard a mainstream Western television
station refer to the fact that there are at least 150,000 "foreign fighters" in
Afghanistan, and that all of them happen to be wearing American, British and
other NATO uniforms. It is "we" who are the real "foreign
fighters".
Similarly, the pernicious phrase "Af-Pak" as racist as it is
politically dishonest is now used by reporters, although it was originally a
creation of the US State Department on the day Richard Holbrooke was appointed
special US representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the phrase avoids the
use of the word "India" whose influence in Afghanistan and whose presence in
Afghanistan, is a vital part of the story. Furthermore, "Af-Pak" by deleting
India effectively deleted the whole Kashmir crisis from the conflict in
south-east Asia. It thus deprived Pakistan of any say in US local policy on
Kashmir after all, Holbrooke was made the "Af-Pak" envoy, specifically forbidden
from discussing Kashmir. Thus the phrase "Af-Pak", which completely avoids the
tragedy of Kashmir too many "competing narratives", perhaps? means that when we
journalists use the same phrase, "Af-Pak", which was surely created for us
journalists, we are doing the State Department's work.
Now let's look at history. Our leaders love history. Most of all,
they love the Second World War. In 2003, George W Bush thought he was Churchill.
True, Bush had spent the Vietnam War protecting the skies of Texas from the
Vietcong. But now, in 2003, he was standing up to the "appeasers" who did not
want a war with Saddam who was, of course, "the Hitler of the Tigris". The
appeasers were the British who didn't want to fight Nazi Germany in 1938. Blair,
of course, also tried on Churchill's waistcoat and jacket for size. No
"appeaser" he. America was Britain's oldest ally, he proclaimed and both Bush
and Blair reminded journalists that the US had stood shoulder-to-shoulder with
Britain in her hour of need in 1940.
But none of this was true. Britain's oldest ally was not the United
States. It was Portugal, a neutral fascist state during the Second World War,
which flew its national flags at half-mast when Hitler died (even the Irish
didn't do that).
Nor did America fight alongside Britain in her hour of need in 1940,
when Hitler threatened invasion and the Luftwaffe blitzed London. No, in 1940
America was enjoying a very profitable period of neutrality, and did not join
Britain in the war until Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbour in
December 1941. Similarly, back in 1956, Eden called Nasser the "Mussolini of the
Nile". A bad mistake. Nasser was loved by the Arabs, not hated as Mussolini was
by the majority of Africans, especially the Arab Libyans. The Mussolini parallel
was not challenged or questioned by the British press. And we all know what
happened at Suez in 1956. When it comes to history, we journalists let the
presidents and prime ministers take us for a ride.
Yet the most dangerous side of our new semantic war, our use of the
words of power though it is not a war, since we have largely surrendered is that
it isolates us from our viewers and readers. They are not stupid. They
understand words in many cases I fear better than we do. History, too. They know
that we are drawing our vocabulary from the language of generals and presidents,
from the so-called elites, from the arrogance of the Brookings Institute
experts, or those of those of the Rand Corporation. Thus we have become part of
this language.
Over the past two weeks, as foreigners humanitarians or "activist
terrorists" tried to take food and medicines by sea to the hungry Palestinians
of Gaza, we journalists should have been reminding our viewers and listeners of
a long-ago day when America and Britain went to the aid of a surrounded people,
bringing food and fuel our own servicemen dying as they did so to help a
starving population. That population had been surrounded by a fence erected by a
brutal army which wished to starve the people into submission. The army was
Russian. The city was Berlin. The wall was to come later. The people had been
our enemies only three years earlier. Yet we flew the Berlin airlift to save
them. Now look at Gaza today: which Western journalist since we love historical
parallels has even mentioned 1948 Berlin in the context of
Gaza?
Instead, what did we get? "Activists" who turned into "armed
activists" the moment they opposed the Israeli army's boarding parties. How dare
these men upset the lexicon? Their punishment was obvious. They became
"terrorists". And the Israeli raids in which "activists" were killed (another
proof of their "terrorism") then became "deadly" raids. In this case, "deadly"
was more excusable than it had been on CTV nine dead men of Turkish origin being
slightly fewer than a million and a half murdered Armenians in 1915. But it was
interesting that the Israelis who for their own political reasons had hitherto
shamefully gone along with the Turkish denial now suddenly wanted to inform the
world of the 1915 Armenian genocide. This provoked an understandable frisson
among many of our colleagues. Journalists who have regularly ducked all mention
of the 20th century's first Holocaust unless they could also refer to the way in
which the Turks "hotly dispute" the genocide label (ergo the Toronto Globe and
Mail) could suddenly refer to it. Israel's new-found historical interest made
the subject legitimate, though almost all reports managed to avoid any
explanation of what actually happened in 1915.
And what did the Israeli seaborne raid become? It became a "botched"
raid. Botched is a lovely word. It began as a German-origin Middle English word,
"bocchen", which meant to "repair badly". And we more or less kept to that
definition until our journalistic lexicon advisors changed its meaning.
Schoolchildren "botch" an exam. We could "botch" a piece of sewing, an attempt
to repair a piece of material. We could even botch an attempt to persuade our
boss to give us a raise. But now we "botch" a military operation. It wasn't a
disaster. It wasn't a catastrophe. It just killed some
Turks.
So, given the bad publicity, the Israelis just "botched" the raid.
Weirdly, the last time reporters and governments utilised this particular word
followed Israel's attempt to kill the Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, in the
streets of Amman. In this case, Israel's professional assassins were caught
after trying to poison Meshaal, and King Hussain forced the then Israeli prime
minister (a certain B Netanyahu) to provide the antidote (and to let a lot of
Hamas "terrorists" out of jail). Meshaal's life was saved.
But for Israel and its obedient Western journalists this became a
"botched attempt" on Meshaal's life. Not because he wasn't meant to die, but
because Israel failed to kill him. You can thus "botch" an operation by killing
Turks or you can "botch" an operation by not killing a
Palestinian.
How do we break with the language of power? It is certainly killing
us. That, I suspect, is one reason why readers have turned away from the
"mainstream" press to the internet. Not because the net is free, but because
readers know they have been lied to and conned; they know that what they watch
and what they read in newspapers is an extension of what they hear from the
Pentagon or the Israeli government, that our words have become synonymous with
the language of a government-approved, careful middle ground, which obscures the
truth as surely as it makes us political and military allies of all major
Western governments.
Many of my colleagues on various Western newspapers would ultimately
risk their jobs if they were constantly to challenge the false reality of news
journalism, the nexus of media-government power. How many news organisations
thought to run footage, at the time of the Gaza disaster, of the airlift to
break the blockade of Berlin? Did the BBC?
The hell they did! We prefer "competing narratives". Politicians
didn't want I told the Doha meeting on 11 May the Gaza voyage to reach its
destination, "be its end successful, farcical or tragic". We believe in the
"peace process", the "road map". Keep the "fence" around the Palestinians. Let
the "key players" sort it out. And remember what this is all about: "Terror,
terror, terror, terror, terror, terror."
Source: The Independent
5:34 AM
Sultan Shahin
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