CNN's reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict falls into one of the standard media traps.
Dear CNN,
Your April 24th report, "Israel seals off Gaza, West Bank until Friday" -- found at: http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/meast/04/24/mideast.talks.03/ -- perpetuates an inaccurate account of the Israeli closure:
"Israel imposed a blockade in Gaza and the West Bank, preventing Palestinians from traveling to jobs in Israel until Friday, an Israeli army spokesman said."
To assert as this article does, that Israel has sealed off or blocked the occupied territories, implies that normally they are open. They are not.
There has been a full closure of Israel and Jerusalem to every single Palestinian man, woman, and child for over 8 years.
The event you are reporting as closure is in fact a cancellation of current permits to enter these areas.
Between 1994 and 1998, when I lived in the country, the total number of these permits granted at any one time to Palestinians was in the region of 8,000-35,000. I expect the current figure is as minimal.
In other words, 99 percent of the 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank have continuously been denied access to both Jerusalem and Israel for the majority of the last decade.
This is how the system of occupation works. CNN is reporting this as if it were the Mayor of Cincinnati ordering a curfew for a couple of nights, rather than the final drips being shut off from the sole trickling tap in the middle of a famine.
Mike Hanna will remember from his time in South Africa how the permit system worked there. The Israeli permit system basically works the same way.
CNN's report of this closure reads as ridiculously as if you were reporting, "The United States closed the border with Mexico, preventing Mexicans from travelling to jobs in the US until Thursday".
As if Mexicans as a whole were entitled to pass unfettered through US border checkpoints on every other day.
An accurate description of the opening sentence of this report would be:
"Israel revoked permits for the one percent of Palestinians currently allowed to travel to jobs in Israel and Israeli-occupied Jerusalem. There has been no change in Israel's total closure policy for the other 99 percent of Palestinians since March 1993."
This isn't Palestinian propaganda.
It is an accurate description of reality on the ground.
CNN is arguably the most influential international media network in human history, headquartered in a country renowned for its constitutional protection of freedom of speech.
Is there something I am missing? What's the worst that can happen?
More of the relentless Israeli government faxes calling for the public flogging of Rula Amin? More eminent Jewish delegations, parroting with a straight face Nachman Shai's mid-October 2000 conference call briefing request for "more objective pro-Israeli journalists" on CNN? More of the Amazon basin clear-cut to produce those glossy New York PR agency 'briefing' papers? More baseless, accusatory electronic baa-ing from the CAMERA-herded spam sheep?
CNN, tell it like it is. If the Israelis don't like you reporting it like that, perhaps the solution is for them to start actually changing the reality on the ground, instead of angrily demanding that the world continue to conceal it for them.
Sincerely,
Nigel Parry