Posted: 17 Aug 2014 11:47 AM PDT
Writing about Israel
is a booming field. No news agency, be it ever so humble, can avoid embedding
a few correspondents and a dog's tail of stringers into Tel Aviv and
Jerusalem, to sit in cafes clicking away on their laptops, meeting up with
leftist NGO's and the oppressed Muslim of the week.
At a time when
international desks are being cut to the bone, this is the one bone that the
newshounds won't give up. Wars can be covered from thousands of miles away,
genocide can go to the back page, but, when a rock flies in the West Bank,
there had better be a correspondent with a fake continental accent and a
khaki shirt to cover it.
Writing about Israel isn't hard. Anyone who has consumed a steady diet of
media over the years already knows all the bullet points. The trick is
arranging them artistically, like so many wilted flowers, in the story of
this week's outrage.
Israel is hot, even in the winter, with the suggestion of violence brimming
under the surface. It should be described as a "troubled land."
Throw in occasional ironic biblical references and end every article or
broadcast by emphasizing that peace is still far away.
It has two types of people; the Israelis who live in posh houses stocked with
all the latest appliances and the Arabs who live in crumbling shacks that are
always in danger of being bulldozed. The Israelis are fanatical, the Arabs
are passionate. The Israelis are hate-filled, while the Arabs are embittered.
The Israelis have everything while the Arabs have nothing.
Avoid mentioning all the mansions that you pass on the way to interviewing
some Palestinian Authority or Hamas bigwig. When visiting a terrorist
prisoner in an Israeli jail, be sure to call him a militant, somewhere in the
fifth paragraph, but do not mention the sheer amount of food in the prison,
especially if he is on a hunger strike. If you happen to notice that the
prisoners live better than most Israelis, that is something you will not
refer to. Instead describe them as passionate and embittered. Never ask them
how many children they killed or how much they make a month. Ask them what
they think the prospects for peace are. Nod knowingly when they say that it's
up to Israel.
Weigh every story one way. Depersonalize Israelis, personalize Muslims. One
is a statistic, the other a precious snowflake. A Muslim terrorist attack is
always in retaliation for something, but an Israeli attack is rarely a
retaliation for anything. When Israeli planes bomb a terrorist hideout,
suggest that this latest action only feeds the "Cycle of Violence"
and quote some official who urges Israel to return to peace negotiations--
whether or not there actually are any negotiations to return to.
Center everything around peace negotiations. If Israel has any domestic
politics that don't involve checkpoints and air strikes, do your best to
avoid learning about them. Frame all Israeli politics by asking whether a politician
is finally willing to make the compromises that you think are necessary for
peace. Always sigh regretfully and find them wanting. Assume that all
Israelis think the same way. Every vote is a referendum on the peace process.
A vote for a conservative party means that Israelis hate peace.
The Israelis can also be divided into two categories. There are the good
Israelis, who wear glasses, own iPads and live in trendy neighborhoods. They
are very concerned that the country is losing its soul by oppressing another
people. They strum out-of-date American peace songs on guitars that they play
badly, but which you will describe them as playing "soulfully", and
they show up at rallies demanding that the government make peace with the
Palestinians.
Your good Israelis invariably volunteer or work for some NGO, a fact that you
may or may not mention in your article, but you are not to discuss who funds
their NGO, particularly if it's a foreign government. Write about them as if
they are the hope of an otherwise brutish and unreasonable Israel too
obsessed with killing and destroying to listen to the hopeful voices of its
children.
When writing about them, act as if they are representative of the country's
youth and its best and brightest, which for all you know they might be,
because you rarely meet anyone who isn't like them, because you rarely meet
anyone who isn't like you. When you do it's either a taxi driver, repairman
or some working-class fellow whom you have nothing in common with, and who
turns out to be a raving militant when it comes to the terrorism question.
These are the other Israelis. The big swarthy men who have no interest in
alternative art exhibits. If you have to deal with them at all, get a quote
from them about their hopes for peace and how much they dislike the
government. Pretend that the two things are connected, and that everything
that your friends, who are aspiring artists and playwrights, as well as
volunteer humanitarians, told you about the country being ready to rise up
against right-wingers like Barak and Netanyahu, to demand peace, is
absolutely true. Don't ask yourself why the country keeps electing
right-wingers; if you do, turn it into an essay that touches on Holocaust
trauma and biblical hatred.
At some point, you
will have to write about the thin bearded men in black hats rushing through
the streets on their inscrutable errands. Describe them as
"Ultra-Orthodox", even if the word does not seem to mean anything,
and pretend that they're all the same. If anyone tries to explain the
distinctions to you, ignore them. When writing about them, be sure to imply
that they are ignorant and fanatical. Mention their growing numbers as a
danger to the survival of the state, associate them wrongly with the right
wing and throw in some of the complaints from your friends about the
"Schorim", the blacks, moving in and destroying secular
neighborhoods.
Israeli soldiers should be depicted looming menacingly over children. Your
stringers are already experienced at urging a child into camera range, then
getting down on one knee and tilting the camera up just as an Israeli soldier
walks into the frame. If there isn't time to set up the shot, get what you
can. The photo can be cropped afterward to show just the Israeli soldier and
the Palestinian child, even if the two are not actually interacting in any
way.
In print, contrast the bored detachment of the soldiers with the prolonged
miserable suffering of the Arab Muslims. Checkpoint lines should consist
entirely of old and pregnant women waiting to visit their families. If you
are Jewish then mention that the soldiers have given you special treatment on
account of your race, even if the actual reason is because you are a
journalist and your kind doesn't set off bombs, your kind acts as the propaganda
corps for those who set off bombs.
When visiting "settlers," a term that currently covers a sizable
portion of the country, describe them as "dogged" and
"fanatical." Dwell on their beards and on their assault rifles.
Find some American ones and disarm them with hometown mentions of Brooklyn or
Baltimore and then dig for a hateful comment. If you can't get a properly
damning quote from one of them, get it from one of their children. If you
have no luck there, hit up one of your NGO friends, preferably with a degree,
to give you a quote on the danger that they pose to peace.
Convey to the reader that there is something disturbing about the tenacity
with which they cling to the land, while making it clear that they will have
to be ethnically cleansed from the land for there to be peace. Do not use the
word "ethnic cleansing," use "evacuation," it sounds
cleaner. Be sure to mention that they believe G-d gave them the land. Mention
something about the Caananites and the Amalekites. Talk to the girls and contrast
their fresh youthful faces with their unwillingness to make peace with their
neighbors.
Pay a visit to Jerusalem. Mention a place or two that you like to eat, make
sure that it is owned by Arabs, accept their tale of being here for thousands
of years with complete credulity. If they mention that they are worried about
East Jerusalem being taken over by the Palestinian Authority, don't report
that. Do report any complaints that they have about the Judaization of
Jerusalem. Draw a picture of the neighborhood as a wonderfully multicultural
place dating back to when the Jordanians expelled all the Jews—that is now
under assault by the returning Jews. Mourn all the tourists and the Jewish
families who are getting in the way of your orientalism. Be sure to remind
readers that the Muslim name of the city, or as you will write, the Arab
name, is Al-Quds, and that it is holy to three great religions.
Visit with politicians. Israeli Prime Ministers will invariably be unpleasant
obstructionist types, if they make jokes, describe it as a transparent effort
to curry favor with you. Generals are even worse. Press them about the
separation wall, checkpoints, misery and deprivation in the territories. Then
get your NGO friends to introduce you to friendly left-wing pols who will
commiserate with you about the state of the peace process and the leap of
faith that needs to be taken to make peace. Get a quote from them about the
next generation and describe them as saddened by their government's unwilling
to make peace.
Palestinian politicians are always willing to make peace, even when they
aren't. Work at it and you will get a hypothetical quote about their
willingness to one day live in peace with the Jews. Turn that quote into the
centerpiece of your article. Contrast it with Israeli leaders who still
refuse to come to the table. Never ask them any tough questions about the
budget, their support for terrorists or why they refuse to negotiate. Instead
feed them softball questions, take their talking points and plug them into
the template for the same article that your predecessors have been writing
since the seventies.
If an Israeli tells you that there is no such thing as Palestinians, that
they're gangs of Muslim militias who have no interest in running their own
country, or that Jordan is the actual Palestinian State, ignore him. Details
like that don't matter and you're not here to litigate history, you're here
to tell a story. The same story that has been told for generations about
villainous Israelis and the heroic resistance fighters battling against them.
Don't dig into the relationships between Arab clans, the depth
of nepotism within the Palestinian Authority or the lack of elections. Don't
discuss Israeli poverty except when your NGO friends ask you to write about
their work. Don't mention the epidemic of car thefts or land seizures. Don't
try to understand what all the different religious subgroups are really all
about. You were sent here to tell a simple story and your job is to tell that
story.
Write about the hills and the blood-red sunsets, mention all the armies that
probably passed over them in a history you never bothered to learn. Talk
about your mixed feelings as a Jew or part-Jew or someone who has Jewish
friends, at the sight of Jews oppressing another people. Describe the black
soulful eyes of a Palestinian leader or terrorist or terrorist leader. Write
up the settler children who are taught to hate. Write about how all the guns
make you uncomfortable. Close with an old man who expresses hope that one day
peace will come to this troubled land.
Then go home.
Daniel Greenfield is a New York City based writer and blogger
and a Shillman Journalism Fellow of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
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