Barghouti's N.Y. Times Article Met by Israeli Ritual of Diversion and Denial
Comparing article to terror attack and suggesting sanctions against the Times, as Michael Oren did, is more damaging to Israel’s image
At the end of his opinion piece in
the New York Times about the Palestinian prisoners’ strike, Marwan Barghouti
was originally described as “a Palestinian leader and parliamentarian.” After
24 hours of outrage and condemnation, an editor’s note conceded that further
context was needed, pointing out that Barghouti had been convicted on “five
counts of murder and membership in a terrorist organization.” News of the
clarification spread like wildfire on social media. It was described in glowing
terms as yet another historic victory of good over evil and of the Jewish
people over its eternal enemies.
It was another example of the
time-tested Israeli ritual of accentuating the insignificant at the expense of
the essence, the results of which are well known in advance. First you
manufacture righteous indignation over a minor fault in an article or the
problematic identity of its writer, then you assault the newspaper or media
that publicized it and cast doubt on its motives, then you demand to know how
this was even possible and who will pay the price. In this way, the Israeli
public is absolved of the need to actually contend with the gist of the article
or public utterance, in this case Barghouti’s claims that he was physically
tortured, that almost a million Palestinians have been detained over the years,
that their conviction rate in the Israeli military court system is absurdly
high, whether it’s really wise to hold as many as 6,500 security prisoners in
custody at one time and so on.
The
guiding principle of this perpetual war waged by Israel and its supporters
against the so-called hostile press - to paraphrase a legendary John Cleese
episode about a visit by German visitors to Fawlty Towers - is “Don’t mention
the occupation!” After one spends so much energy on protestations and
exclamations of how unthinkable, how outrageous and how dare they, there’s very
little enthusiasm left to consider eternal control over another people or the
malignant status quo that many Israelis view as the best of all possible worlds
or how is it even possible that someone who is defined by former Israeli
Ambassador and current deputy minister Michael Oren as a terrorist and a
murderer on a par with Dylann Roof, who killed nine African American
worshippers in a church in Charleston, is considered by many people around the
world, including those at the New York Times, as an authentic leader whose
words should be read and heard.
In an interview with IDF Radio on Tuesday, Oren put the ingenious diversionary
strategy on full display. He described Barghouti’s op-ed as nothing less than a
“media terror attack.” To this he added a pinch of conspiracy theory with a
dash of anti-Semitism by claiming that the Times purposely published
Barghouti’s article on Passover, so that Israeli and Jewish leaders wouldn’t
have time to react. Then he approvingly cited the wise words of his new oracle,
Donald Trump, describing the publication of
the article and its content as “fake news.” And for his grand finale, Oren
intimated that the proper Zionist response would be to close down the Times’
Israel office, no less.
In this way, anyone who wants to
address Barghouti’s claims substantively, even if it’s to criticize them, is
seen as collaborating with a terrorist and enabling terror. It’s the same
system by which anti-occupation groups such as Breaking the Silence are tarred
as traitorous, backstabbing informants so that no one dares consider the actual
testimonies they present about the hardships of occupation and the immorality
of forcing the IDF to police the West Bank. What’s hilarious, however, is that
so many Israelis and Jews are convinced that articles such as the one written
by Barghouti, which most readers probably view as yet another tedious polemic
about an intractable Middle East conflict, somehow causes more harm to Israel’s
image than a senior government official who compares a news article to a terror
attack and who recommends closing down the offices of the most widely respected
news organization in the world, a la Putin or Erdogan.
AFP PHOTO / HAZEM BADER
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