An exercise in propaganda

Letters

Editor: Before Pat Johnson is allowed to conduct another review pertaining to the Middle East, he should be instructed in the difference between propaganda and honest commentary. Anyone who read his alleged review of John Pilger's film Palestine is Still the Issue ("Movie takes aim at Israel," Bulletin cover, Feb. 14) will know what I mean. Without offering any evidence or engaging Pilger's views in any substantive manner, Johnson denigrated the film as one-sided "propaganda" and cast aspersions on Pilger's main arguments. In so doing, Johnson perpetrated a journalistic lynching.

Between Nov. 29, 1947, when the UN General Assembly passed the non-binding Partition Plan, and May 15, 1948, Jewish forces – in accordance with plans Gimmel and Dalet – had dispossessed at least 300,000 native Muslims and Christians, most of whom ended up living under dreadful conditions in overcrowded refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and neighboring Arab countries.

During the war, an additional 400,000 to 450,000 Palestinians were driven out and more than 400 of their towns and villages were demolished. By December 1948, according to Walter Eytan, then director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, "the real number [of refugees] was close to 800,000." (As quoted in Dr. Norman Finkelstein's, "Debate on the 1948 Exodus," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. XXI, Autumn 1991, p. 86.)

As Moshe Dayan declared in a speech to the Technion in 1969: "There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."
Does Johnson deny that this dispossession took place? Does he take issue with Eytan, Dayan and other Israeli leaders? On what basis does he impugn Pilger's film?

Regarding Pilger's parallels between Israel and Nazi Germany, for example, these are also valid. Each is an expansionist, colonizing entity based on lebensraum for the master "race" and the use of state terror.

In fact, an Israeli officer told the Israeli daily Ha'aretz in March 2002 that his men should study how the Nazis operated in the Warsaw ghetto. This point also validates Pilger's parallel, but Johnson glibly dismisses it based on ... what?

One-sided? Unnuanced? Sure, but these terms do not apply to Pilger's excellent documentary, which is entirely accurate. These terms do apply to Johnson's feeble "review," which bore no sign of research or journalistic merit. It was, however, an interesting exercise in propaganda.

Greg Felton
New Westminster

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