Language War Corrupts Bronner

"The Bullets in My In-Box"
WK1, Sunday 1/25/09, Gaza Notebook: Op-Ed
By Ethan Bronner

Ethan Bronner says he's "confounded" in trying to "narrate the [Arab-Israeli] conflict in a way both sides can accept as fair." Bronner should be piercing through all the propaganda. In misunderstanding his responsibilities as a reporter, he winds up pleasing no one, and foments misunderstanding of the conflict.

The problem, of which Bronner seems unaware, can be seen in his Husseini anecdote. The late Palestinian leader "had no idea [one] could be a proud Zionist" because he “never heard” good things about them. The unanimity in which Israel's legitimacy is denied, the world Husseini illustrates, is why both side’s language cannot be viewed with blithe equivocation.

Dissent, complexity or alternative narratives are not just discouraged, but dangerous. Do the Jews have national rights? Is there room in Palestine for these rights and those of the Arabs? Questions like these are asked among Israelis and their supporters, but unasked among Palestinians and those who support their cause.

Bronner is accurate in saying for Israeli Jews "there is no higher value than Zionism." Yet Bronner uses different language for others in the region, for which Zionisim “stands for “oppression”. Has Zionism has actually oppressed them, or is that how it’s presented?

The double-speak among both sides’ mainstreams is beyond compare. “Resistance” and the Palestinian “right to resist” masks the bombing of children; the “occupation” refers to Israel. “Collaborator” is anyone not just actually working with Israel’s Shin Bet, but anyone who dissents from the view that Israel must be destroyed. Because much of the west accepts – more or less – Israel’s legitimacy, anti-Israel partisans are forced to use deceptive and loaded language.

Bronner inadvertently demonstrates this point, writing “the barrier snaking across and inside the West Bank is a wall to Palestinians, a fence to Israelis”. [95% of the barrier is a fence; the rest is a wall.]

Bronner offers a "set of assumptions" from either side, but they're assymetrical. He describes the Gaza fighting as reaffirming for “opponents of Israel” that “Israel is a kind of Sparta that dehumanizes the Palestinians and will do anything to prevent their dignified self-determination.”

Meanwhile, “those for whom Israel is the victim and never the aggressor,” [why not simply write “proponents of Israel”?] saw Gaza as reaffirming their belief that Hamas is Islamic terrorists, hides behind civilians and the Israeli army shows restraint and is moral.

That Bronner sees the sides here as mirroring each other in their perceptions of reality is troubling, and reflects his paper’s false and simplistic equivalence.

Bronner channels the anti-Israel view of Israel’s goal – to prevent Palestinian self-determination. Yet he doesn’t channel the pro-Israel view of the Palestinians’ goal – to destroy Israel, if not militarily, politically.

Bronner gets hate mail, the “bullets in his in-box”. He’s called “scum” by someone concerned that he’ll describe as “random” Israel’s killing of hundreds. He contrasts this with a concern for Israelis, from someone who writes of “poor filthy Arabs.” This isn’t the only selective reference to Israel and racism. Earlier, citing what “opponents of Israel” might say, he referenced “the racist graffiti left on the walls” in Gaza. Of course, the anti-Jewish bigotry rampant in
Palestinian and Arab culture, dwarfing anything produced by Israel, is unmentioned, even from Bronner’s fictitious Israel partisans.

Bronner praises Taghreed el-Khodary, who stood down Hamas intimidation because she was reporting on its executions of “collaborators”. For this, she’s called a Zionist, “fully complicit in Israel’s atrocities, so say Arab bloggers.

These ludicrous accusations are ostensibly on a similar level with Israel’s supposed justification of its media ban, as Bronner states it, “because no independent journalism could possibly occur in an area run by Hamas.” Bronner responds “have any of these people ever read Taghreed’s work? Or any of our work out here”?

First, Israel’s media ban was likely due to the possibility that the press would’ve been used by Hamas as shields and that they would’ve broadcast Israeli troop movements (intentional or not) as happened during the 2006 Lebanon war.

Second, Bronner glosses over how independent journalism is very difficult in Gaza, notably if a journalist is outwardly critical of the regime and questions Gazans on the ills Hamas brings. It’s unclear from one case if el-Khodary reports critically of Hamas and its tactics. Clearer is her unwillingness (or possible inability) to critically question Gazans.

In falsely assuming that one cannot weigh the merits and facts of each narrative, Bronner ultimately proves himself incapable of properly reporting this conflict.