Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Israele avveleno' Arafat?

Lo dice uno dei giornalisti Israeliani piu' famosi e quotati: Il
corrispondente di Ha'aretz dai territori occupati, Danny Rubinstein  (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Rubinstein
 )
http://www.keshev.org.il/siteEn/FullNews.asp?NewsID=96&CategoryID=22
Danny Rubinstein: In My Estimation, Israel Poisoned Arafat
Danny Rubinstein talks about himself, the Palestinians, the media and
the political establishment.
Danny Rubinstein, born in Jerusalem and a graduate of The Hebrew
University, has been working as a journalist since 1967, first for
Davar, then for Ha'aretz. He teaches communications at The Hebrew
University and at Sapir Academic College.
Keshev: Hello, Danny Rubinstein. We wanted to begin this interview with
a personal question: What made you decide to be journalist, and to
cover Palestinian society?
Danny Rubinstein: It all began by chance. At university, I studied
sociology, Middle East and Arabic as well, then went on for my Master's
in sociology. And then, in 1967, the war broke out. When I came back
from the war, I began writing for Davar [newspaper]. At that time the
Palestinian issue was not considered a field of coverage in its own
right. The issue was covered primarily as a geographical subject, and
was thought to be temporary. Then, unexpectedly, they needed someone
who knew Arabic, and I liked the writing, because it gives you the
illusion of being free.
Keshev: Why 'illusion'?
DR: Because after all, a journalist is subject to many bosses, just
like any clerk. But you have the material, and I thought people would
judge me for what I write. I couldn't adapt to work in an office, to
fighting for respect and prestige, and I thought - I was very naïve
- that this was the most important thing. That's how I got into
journalism. The media of those days was completely different from
today's media. It was much more loyal. There was only one paper whose
coverage was unbiased: Ha'olam Ha'zeh. There was no investigative
reporting. I worked at Davar, which had to be super-loyal, because it
was the Histradrut [Labor Federation] mouthpiece.
Keshev: Reporting from the Territories, how did you handle the paper's
allegiances?
DR: Very quickly Mapai [Israel Worker's Party], as well as the paper's
editorial staff, began to split up into "hawks" and "doves". We
conformed with Yigal Alon's hard line, which was the Labor Party's
dominant line. We didn't really care what the Arabs said or did. This
was also related to the trauma of '67, to the feeling that we could
face annihilation. The Arabs were being compared to Hitler. So why
should we take them into consideration?
Keshev: Were any of your reports changed, or left unpublished?
DR: Yes. They did allow reporting of humanitarian cases. But they
didn't like the word "Palestine", for example. Whenever I wrote "the
Palestinian mayor", they would change that to "the Arab mayor". Also,
this was when the first attacks began. They were very "anemic" compared
with today's attacks. A dummy charge, a grenade somewhere, almost no
casualties. But they made a huge impression, because suddenly people
began to understand that there could be the possibility of resistance.
Of course, it was called "terror". They did not perceive it, like
today, as "they don't want us here".
Keshev: At what stage did you realize that, for you, journalism was a
career, and when did you begin to shape your journalistic perceptions
about coverage of "the other side"?
DR: Slowly, I began to understand that there is no big difference
between "news" and "views". Writing a report equals expressing your
opinion. If you're writing, as I did in the beginning, "The shabab
rioted at Rachel's Tomb", rather than "Young people demonstrated at
Rachel's Tomb", you're stating your position. When I understood the
difference, I began to be very careful, choosing between passive and
active voices, between "was shot" and "found his death", "was killed"
and "was murdered". But that took me a very long time, two, three
years.
Keshev: In this context, how do you view the media's role in covering
the "other side"?
DR: The coverage, the media, are part of society, just like the courts.
If the Court had refrained from intervening in house demolitions, or
settlement building, we could at least say that these were decisions by
the state that never received legal/moral approval. The same is true
for the media: the media gave its approval for seizing the territories,
for settling there, for confiscating. It provided the justifications
for these actions, which in retrospect I see wrong, certainly immoral.
Israeli society in its entirety, including us, stood humbled before
Gush Emunim's people. We nearly bowed down before their devotion, their
idealism and self-sacrifice. The only one who spoke of them differently
was Yeshiyahu Leibovich. In one of his lectures, that I will never
forget, Leibovich said that the biggest idealists of this century were
the SS agents, who, by force of their devotion to Hitler and to the
Nazi philosophy, dominated almost the whole world. That hit me like
lightning. But Leibovich was ostracized. The media collaborated with
the ugliest aspects of the establishment.
Keshev: Has that changed?
DR: The big change in mood did not happen until the first intifada, in
1987. Until then, it was believed that there would be some kind of
arrangement east of the Jordan, or, as Dayan believed, that we would
give them autonomy and they would be satisfied. Only in 1987, 1988,
after the big settlement campaign of 1980-1981, did the public begin to
understand that we could not stay there forever. This shift was
expressed in the media as well. Suddenly, the media began to highlight
the suffering, the Palestinians' nationalist sentiments, and mine and
others' writing was taken seriously. Suddenly people said, there's a
problem here, we can't stay in the Territories.
Keshev: And ever since, the media has changed.
DR: No doubt. For me, the most dramatic development had to do with the
attempt to erase the existence of the Palestinian people, or that of
the PLO, expressed in the outlawing of interviewing or making contact
with members of the PLO, which seems alarming today. It was a reaction
to the recognition of the Palestinian problem. Afterwards, when the
Palestinian Authority was created, I explicitly wrote less and less
about their plight. Since the Oslo Accords, I saw the Palestinian
administration as responsible for taking care of these things. In one
of my conversations with Arafat [for the writing of his biography,
"Arafat", among other things - Keshev], I said to him, "They closed
the checkpoint? You tell them you are stopping negotiations with
Israel. It's your duty, the duty of your journalists, your
institutions, to stand up for your rights and to fight for every last
detail." But Arafat preferred to give his people VIP cards, because
that was his governing style.
The problem today is different. The media has many fewer political
allegiances, but is not taken so seriously. The attitude is: so what if
they stole a little from an Arab, beat an Arab up a little? They come
in and blow us up, and then they expect that we respect their property?
In this regard, the reports have become less and less relevant. You're
troubled, it's difficult writing about what they deserve, when a
murderer, a suicide bomber, does what he does.
Keshev: You mentioned Arafat. Keshev published a report on the Israeli
media's coverage of Arafat. How do you view the Israeli media's
treatment of him?
DR: Both during his lifetime and after his death, Arafat has been
regarded as the devil. I once wrote that the problem is that when he
was alive, he was called a terrorist. Today Abu Mazen is called weak.
In either case, there is no one to talk with. But what is interesting
is that they do not want to talk. Clearly, talking means making
concessions. Otherwise, what is there to talk about? About annexing
territory? Building settlements? You have to talk about making
concessions.
Keshev: Clearly, there are political interests. But what is the media's
role?
DR: Overall, in these aspects the media serves the establishment almost
entirely. Today, I am concerned that the massive campaign portraying
Abu Mazen as weak has a purpose. When you write something that
coincides with the administration's position, it immediately gains new
momentum, like the portrayal of Arafat as a terrorist. It's hard to say
how this trend began. Part of it is the quality of the Israeli
intelligence agencies. At one time I was a kind of source, providing
information about what happens there. Today, there has been a huge
change in the balance of powers between journalists and the Israeli
intelligence agencies. The Israeli intelligence system that deals with
the territories employs thousands of people. Electronic means enable
them to hear, see and bomb. How can I, by talking with someone and
reading the papers, compete with these people?
Keshev: But we have also seen disagreement and contradictory theories
within the security establishment.
DR: Correct. I believe they are drowning in a sea of information that
is difficult to manage, that's true. And that's why my ability to make
judgments is still valid.
Keshev: What about the structural issue - the journalist's role and
interests vs. those of the military man, the military perspective vs. a
more civilian perspective - in your view, are they on the same level?
DR: In my view, every person, whether intelligence agent, soldier or
journalist - must first of all be a decent human being, faithful to
the basic values of human dignity. I am less inclined to view it as a
function of interests. I have broader considerations on all these
issues.
Keshev: Nonetheless, when Chief of Intelligence Ze'ev Farkash estimated
for the government that "Arafat will either live or die", the ministers
were astonished by this lack of knowledge. Until then, in all of the
years of the second intifada, government ministers and the media never
publicly doubted the capabilities of Israeli Intelligence. Amos Gilad's
approach, which maintained that we know that Arafat planned everything,
controlled everything and was responsible for all the events,
predominated.
DR: Correct. And the media collaborated with that.
Keshev: So from your point of view, is the security/political
establishment's narrative compatible with the media's narrative? Has
the media been able to present its own independent premise?
DR: No. In most cases, after all is said and done, the media follows
the establishment. You mentioned the Arafat example. In my personal
estimation, based on several findings and testimonies, we poisoned
Arafat. Writing that today seems like an exercise in futility: 'those
Arabs, with their imagination, and their conspiracy theories, etc.'. It
is so opposed to our narrative and so identified with theirs, that I
can't put that in. I think that's true for today's media in general:
it's careful not to target sacred cows. In the end, all the systems
adopt an approach held by part or most of the establishment.
Keshev: What you've said raises an internal complexity: on the one
hand, you have strong professional connections, and perhaps also
personal ones, to Palestinian society, and on the other hand, you seem
to come from the heart of Israeli society. How do you reconcile these
two sides?
DR: I grew up in what was known as Working Israel, in a very Zionistic
environment. And now the post-Zionist era is upon us, and you say,
something has to be changed. The state of Israel exists, and needs to
be a normal state. We have to start rethinking the Law of Return, the
Citizenship Law... these are things that are hard for me to grasp. But
they are beginning to trickle into me, from a journalistic standpoint
as well. Maybe this is not just the beginning, these things have
already become quite established. Even Zionism has its boundaries. The
Law of Return needs to be restructured, because the Arabs have rights
in this land too.
Keshev: We've talked a lot about the Israeli media. What can you tell
us about the Palestinian media's coverage of Israel?
DR: Their allegiance to the establishment is ten times greater than
ours in their reports. That's not all- they know that the primary
struggle between us and them is not military but political, with the
media as the primary battleground. They cannot allow themselves to pass
self-criticism, or to justify us, and they will be very wary of
expressing sympathy, in reports on the Park Hotel, for example. On the
other hand, there is the phenomenon of translations, that I am
discovering now. They translate us, almost pathologically. Tens of
articles a day. This surprised and fascinated me, especially since we
do no such translating at all. In Israel, if we run one article a year
by a Palestinian, people say, "Why are you giving him a forum?" while
the Palestinians give twenty a day. I am investigating this phenomenon.
Usually, Palestinians know us much better than we know them. They are
very curious to know why they lag behind us. Why is their average
income per capita $1,000 and ours $17,000? They also translate us a lot
in Egypt, as well as in the entire Arab world. That is, out of
curiosity. Therefore they are sometimes taken in by irrational things.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, for example. It gives them some
kind of explanation why we are doing well and they're not. We are not
that curious about them. When I ask my students, "Why don't we
translate them?" they say, "Why do we need to hear those idiots?" or
"What can we learn from them? Then we'll be like them."
We don't understand them because we don't understand their values.
Their society behaves differently than ours. They're not so concerned
about the rights of the individual, similar to the ultra-Orthodox Jews.
In these societies, there is a kind of social pact, that sometimes
appeals to me: you hand your individual rights over to the sheikh or
the rabbi, your family or hamullah, in exchange for security, refuge
from loneliness and helplessness -the ills of the Western world.
Among the Palestinians there are no homeless people, no nursing homes.
When I see this I envy them a great deal. We can't understand this; it
astounds us. I can't understand how they run the family, the
housekeeping, what the status of women is like. But now I do know what
things I don't understand. There are things you can never understand.
Keshev: In view of all this, how do you see the role of Keshev in
locating problematic patterns in coverage of the conflict? What advice
can you give us?
DR: As for text analysis, the content vs. the headlines and so on, the
fact that everyone sees only the headline, that's clear. Whatever is
written in small print, almost no one sees. A huge proportion of people
walk down the street and only see the headline, they don't even buy
the paper. Today, it's considered "awkward" to write a positive
headline about Arabs. The perception of "they're there, we're here",
separation and disengagement, is very popular. So the paper's editor
puts in a negative headline on Abu Mazen, knowing it's incorrect. He
wants to sell the paper. Over time, to make the journalist happy, they
put the truth in too, so they can say, "we are faithful to the truth
too". There are consistent reporting patterns that have corrupted the
language. For example, they always talk about "Arab" and "village". You
never hear about "the villagers of Kfar Vitkin" [a Jewish Israeli
village - Keshev], or about "respected" or "educated" people, as the
Arab leaders and intellectuals are referred to by the Israeli media.
Not long ago I witnessed the uprooting of a large orchard near Beit
Hanoun. Afterwards I heard the IDF Spokesperson report that "the IDF
cleared away vegetation that served as a hiding place for terrorists".
'Cleared away vegetation'? You might think they had placed a bunch of
trees to conceal terrorists. Simply a corruption of the language. A
corruption of consciousness.
Keshev: We started out with your start in journalism. To come full
circle: what advice would you give journalists who are just starting
out?
DR: First, know the language. Without the language you are totally
disabled. Second, I would stress broad values. I would say to a
journalist, you don't need a license to be a journalist. You need a
license to drive people around. Anyone who writes something beautiful,
and good as well, is doing journalism. But, no less important: to be a
journalist, you have to be a decent human being.
Keshev: Thank you very much.

 corrispondente di Ha'aretz dai territori occupati, Danny Rubinstein  (
non si è ancora scoperto di cosa è morto arafat per cui è probabile un
avvelenamento

corrispondente di Ha'aretz dai territori occupati, Danny Rubinstein
Un gran coglione tra i piu' famosi e quotati .... fino a quando non
sapra' mostrare al mondo le fantasiose
====
based on several findings and testimonies
====
di cui ciancia :)
-Stefano