Israel's Wars, Oil, and the Media

 Nov. 16, 2014, CIJR Colloquium, Sally Zerker paper

 

Those 50 days of the war between Gaza and Israel this past summer were, to say the least, very stressful here, although, of course,  it was nothing compared to that of the Israeli people’s stress, who are in the line of fire and whose sons, daughters, husbands are in mortal danger in Gaza. Nevertheless, we do experience stress when Israel is at war, and it was heightened by our daily exposure to outright lies about Israel’s part in the war, and if not that, intentionally unfair handling of the news. You know what I mean by that; the story’s opening word are “Israel bombed etc. et., and end with “in retaliation to Hama’s missile attack.” You know, first Israel’s “vicious” deed, and only as an afterthought the actual cause of the attack, Hamas unrelenting missiles targeting Jewish civilians and using their own children as shields for their missiles. Of course NYT, or any of the other guilty media, know what they’re doing, what their objective is in distorting the reporting to make Israel the aggressor, when all the time they know exactly who the aggressor really is.

Well, I’m here to tell you that this experience with media distortions, lies, and vilifications against Israel is not new. Like most things, there’s a history of its evolution, and it’s that history that I want to talk about today.

The turning point was the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Some of you have recollections of desperation and fear as we witnessed that war that almost led to disaster for Israel. But in the end the IDF, Israel Defense Forces, under Ariel Sharon, saved the day, rather saved the country, and just about destroyed the Egyptian army that was caught and surrounded by the IDF in the Sinai.

By 1973 the western world was already totally addicted to oil for its energy needs and the US had become a net importer of oil instead of an exporter. Also, by 1973, unfortunately, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries , OPEC the oil cartel, was firmly in the driver’s seat. And OAPEC, the Arab members of OPEC , (there were 8 Arab members out of 13, plus two additional Muslim members, leaving only Venezuela, a very sympathetic ally, Ecuador and Gabon) decided that the Arab defeat in 1973 was a good time to use oil as a political weapon against Israel, and hence also a great opportunity to raise the price drastically, so drastically that it has come to be called the price revolution.

How did they manage that? By a triple whammy decided on at an AOPEC oil ministers’ meeting on October 17, 1973. One, embargo the United States and the Netherlands, both seen by the Arabs as having supported Israel before and during the war. According to the thinking of the Arabs, the US in particular had to have been the cause of the defeat of the Egyptian army; the Arabs could not then, before, or later believe, or want to believe, that the “inferior” Jews alone could have overcome the Muslims.

2. All consuming nations were subjected to supply constraints, as OAPEC members pledged to cut production 10% the first month and 5% per month thereafter until we all altered our policies to support Arab demands in their conflict with Israel; ie., Israel would return all Arab lands it had occupied since the 6-day war, including Jerusalem, and the all the rights of the Palestinians were guaranteed. The announced cuts in production turned out to be more propaganda than truth because such deep cuts never happened, but the psychology worked,  nevertheless.

3. The price of oil was quadrupled in 3 months, from $3.01 a barrel in mid-October  to $11.65 on January1, 1974.

Well, the western world went into shock. Of course the quadrupling of the price of the essential ingredient to their modern way of life was no small matter. But it was more than that.  So-called oil experts were spinning a line that the world was running out of oil, and this was meant to defend the Arab tactics, since the price increase would make us all conserve the finite resource. As you can see, we weren’t then and aren’t now running out of oil, although that talk never dies completely. But it had negative policy effects everywhere, and the media reflected those negative views. I remember when we (CPPME leaders) had a meeting in Ottawa with Alan Gotlieb, amb. to US, who claimed that Canada’s policy re. Israel under the Liberals had to be sensitive to Arab interests because of the dependency of  Canada on supplies from OPEC.  That was pure ignorance on his part.

And all this turmoil and danger to our way of life, whose fault was it? A consensus emerged, at first subdued, but then louder, that it was Israel’s fault. It was the “mighty” Israel, that military victor of the 6-DW, which had now beat up the Egyptian army. So, it’s those troublesome Jews once again.

That is not to say that all was glorious and light before 1973 with regard to media attitudes to Israel. No. But from the establishment of Israel until the six-day war in 1967 this has been analyzed (Neil Lewis) as the “Exodus” period, identified by the book by Leon Uris and the movie starring Paul Newman, where the overall impression was one that the media finds comfortable with regard to Jews, ie, crying over us (Naomi Ragan). It’s about the holocaust survivors, the struggling little country miraculously overcoming the thrust of five or more Arab armies, a pitiable but valiant existence.!!

The Six-Day War was the first step away from this sympathetic view. The press reports depict Israel as a powerful military force.  It’s a fact that journalists like to write sympathetically about the underdog, but after the 6-day War, Israel no longer is the underdog convincingly. It was then also, that the sentiment begins to shift more and more towards the Palestinian refugees, indeed the emergence of the recognition of the Palestinians as a distinct political body, not simply Arab. Furthermore, Palestinian terrorism which was heightened worked, because it focused the media on the supposed peoplehood of the Palestinians.

Which brings me back to the oil price revolution of 1973 and its effect on the media and on us, ie., professors. It was this changed and worrisome environment that was the motivating factor for the founding of the Canadian Professors for Peace in the Middle East, which was initiated by Irwin Cutler, but was carried forward by Professor Harry Crowe of York University, with the excellent management of the executive director, Dr. Eva Dessen, my late sister. CPPME became necessary and, I must say effective for a time. I’m not here to talk about when or why this influence disintegrated.

What intensified the pattern of negativity to Israel occurred in conjunction with and following outbreak of hostilities. The Lebanese invasion in 1982 was a huge source of condemnation and falsehoods about Israel’s practices in the war, so much so that it was the inspiration for the founding of C.A.M.E.R.A, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, an organization now based in Boston that monitors the media for what it perceives as anti-Israel bias. Since the NYT editors regard CAMERA “as harsh, angry, and usually unreasoning” (Neil Lewis), they must be doing something absolutely necessary and right.

Then we learn a lot from a very interesting study by Marvin Kalb and Carol Saivitz on the media and the 2006 war between Hezbolla and Israel.(Joan Shorenstein Centre for Press, Politics and Public Policy), I can tell you that what they say about that conflict can very rationally applied to the conflicts between Gaza and Israel. This type of war they call “an asymmetrical war, the new prototype of Middle East conflict, between a state (Israel) and a militant, secretive, religiously fundamentalist sect or faction, such as, in the case of Lebanon, Hezbollah, the “Party of God,” often referred to as a “state within a state”.  Applied to Hamas and the Gaza strip, we see this idea of an asymmetrical war, on the one side is Israel, a state,  and on the other the radical wing of the Palestinian movement and associate of the Islamic Brotherhood, also a partial state, one that refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist.”

The sub-title of the Kalb/Saivits paper is very telling; “the media as a weapon in an asymmetrical conflict”. And so it was in the recent Gaza war. You will recall how Hamas ordered people to remain in their houses even though Israel had warned that these were targeted. Well, that was the media weapon at work, since they fully expected Israel to be condemned for killing civilians, and they were right, and it was an arm of Hamas.

 

Also this article on Hezbolla-Israel war discloses something very relevant to all asymmetrical wars. They demonstrate that Israel, an open society, is victimized by its own openness because it can’t control the image and the message it wishes to convey to the rest of the world, while the closed society, Hezbolla, Hamas, can and does retain almost total control of the daily message of journalism and propaganda. In the course of which, it becomes evident that the journalist in the closed society becomes an advocate, not an unbiased observer. And we were able to observe this whenever we saw and heard reporters coming to us from Gaza as the war raged. And notice too that very soon after the start of the fighting, we never heard the truth from commentators that Hamas started the war (Hezbolla the same). From the perspective of media as a weapon, Hamas had the advantage almost from the start.

 

How then do some or rather many complain about Israel’s hasbara. What chance does Israel have when the decks are stacked against it? It’s a constant struggle. And that’s why we here in the diaspora have to help wage this media weapon on behalf of Israel. Israel can’t do it alone. I know some people think that what we’re doing here, today, is merely speaking to the convinced, and that we should be taking our message to churches rather than synagogues. Right! But our task also involves mobilizing the convinced to be responsible and active, making sure our diaspora Jewish community makes the case for Israel on all levels. If you listen to Melanie Philips, and I agree with her, we aren’t doing a good job in that respect.