Writing the narratives

Editorial

A series of recent events reminds us that it is often difficult to know whom to believe in a world where diverse ideas are exchanged faster and more easily than ever before. A primary example is when Israeli officials talk about the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak have come across as extremely hawkish. Israeli military action against Iran has been the top topic in very undiplomatic diplomatic circles for months. But several former high-ranking Israeli officials are urging their government to cool down.

Yuval Diskin, the former head of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, said he did not trust Netanyahu and Barak to act effectively on the issue. Meir Dagan, former head of Mossad, echoed Diskin’s comments. Gabi Ashkenazi, former chief of staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, has urged against unilateral Israeli action.

Then, last weekend, former prime minister Ehud Olmert came out swinging at a New York conference, drawing repeated heckles and catcalls for saying that an ill-timed attack could be a disaster. Olmert added to the chorus, saying he does not trust the current leadership, and took a swipe at the Israeli government’s seemingly dismissive attitude to multilateralism.

Olmert was also booed when he told the crowd they must respect U.S. President Barack Obama. On Monday, however, a new poll suggested that the New York conference malcontents do not reflect broader American Jewish opinion. An American Jewish Committee poll says 61 percent of American Jews say they will vote for Obama, 28 percent say they’ll cast a ballot for Republican Mitt Romney and 11 percent are undecided. Evidently, those Jewish voters who disapprove of Obama are a vocal minority, which challenges the narrative that Jewish Americans are extremely unhappy with Obama’s approach.

Olmert poked a sharp jab at the audience. “As a concerned Israeli citizen who lives in the state of Israel with his family and all of his children and grandchildren, I love very much the courage of those who live 10,000 miles away from the state of Israel and are ready that we will make every possible mistake that will cost lives of Israelis,” Olmert said, according to the New York Times.

So there is disagreement among top Israeli experts about the severity of the threat and appropriate responses. But the fact that all of this is taking place in the public discourse is, on the one hand, a testament to Israel’s vibrant and verbal democracy and, on the other, infuriatingly typical of a country where everyone is a potential prime minister. Especially with elections apparently imminent in Israel, now is hardly the time to take at face value every word of individuals with a stake in the game. Politics is at play as much as genuine diplomacy. The narrative, which until recently had been almost universally apocalyptic, has suddenly cooled slightly.

The larger narrative of Middle East conflict, however, remains largely unchanged. For example, the Quebec Press Council rightly rapped the knuckles of a media outlet for a slanted headline about the Gaza Strip. Cyberpresse.ca, a subsidiary of La Presse, last year ran a story that buried an Israeli rebuttal under a headline blaming Israel for a loss of electricity in the Hamas-controlled area.

The press council noted that the story relied on unattributed sources and left the impression that electrical outages were a deliberate strategy by the Israeli military, adding that Cyberpresse “presented as fact that Israel is responsible for the loss of electricity, which the article goes on to deny.”

The outlet issued a correction last month.

It was a fairly minor affair, but typical of a distorted narrative when it comes to the global reporting about Israel. A far more egregious assault on reality occurred on the American news program 60 Minutes, which last month aired a hatchet piece blaming Israel for the sorry state of Christians in the Middle East.

Israel, in reality, is the only place in the Middle East where the Christian population is growing and thriving in safety. Elsewhere in the region, Christians are being terrorized and churches burned. 60 Minutes doesn’t link the decline of Christians living in Bethlehem to the violence of the fraternal war among Palestinians or to the long history of persecution of religious minorities under both Fatah and Hamas: in the 60 Minutes fantasia, it’s because of Israel’s security barrier.

Journalism is as much about storytelling as anything else. Some journalists wear their subjectivity on their sleeve – Cyberpresse and 60 Minutes seemingly preferring the starkly false narrative of evil Israelis and innocent Palestinians, for example. But objectivity is an elusive ideal even for writers dedicated to reporting “the truth,” and the inherent complexities of human society make black and white conclusions nearly impossible to draw – media is a tool, after all, used by those wanting the spotlight and for those shining it on them.

All considered, the lesson for today may simply be for everyone to think more critically and to understand that the storyteller/reporter and protagonists/subjects influence how the story/news is told. Being a relentlessly skeptical consumer of news and constant vigilance by groups like Honest Reporting Canada, which made the complaint in the Quebec case, are tiresome but necessary burdens.

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