DON’T LET THE MEDIA SCRAMBLE YOUR BRAIN, CIVILIZATION DEPENDS ON IT.

Letter to a Friend in America

By Miriam Carabok

[Ce texte ne peut pas mieux tomber dans le délire actuel d'accusations et de condamnation qui pleuvent sur un peuple, coupable de se défendre contre ses assassins. Une traduction française est demandée d'urgence. Ecrire à traduction@reinfo-israel.com. menahem).


You said the Israeli army was doing terrible things and when I told you not to believe the atrocity stories you replied that you had to believe them because of the pictures.

Pictures can lie: they can be deliberately faked to lie, and they can be manipulated by the media to lie. All TV reports and virtually all newspaper reports demonize Israel and whitewash the Palestinians. And they lie. I'll give you some examples. All the pictures of destruction in Jenin were accompanied by commentary suggesting the whole camp, or even town, was destroyed and inviting horror at the massive extent of damage caused by brutal Israelis. A lie. In fact, an area about the size of a soccer pitch was destroyed where the terrorists were concentrated. There are aerial photographs which confirm this absolutely. This could have been reported from the beginning but wasn't although it was clear to those on the spot. By the time the aerial photo was broadcast, your judgment has been manipulated. First impressions aren't easily overcome.

The other implied lie is that the Israelis were responsible for all of the destruction. In fact, the terrorists laid booby traps everywhere, in every house, alley, and manhole and even on bodies. The booby trap that killed thirteen Israeli soldiers brought down the whole four-storey building. If there were civilians in it they were killed by Palestinian booby traps, not by Israelis. And that goes for other buildings too. And have you heard anything of this in the media? Perhaps you've heard "The Israelis SAY...the emphasis implying that our word can't be trusted (whereas Arafat is George Washington?).

There are lots of media games. There's the emotive picture game for one: pictures of sobbing Palestinian women or a wounded child on every possible occasion. But where are the emotive pictures of sufferi! ng Israelis? Where are the funeral pictures of a l3 year old girl brought in her hospital stretcher to the funeral of her parents and two siblings? Where are the photographs of her younger sister, too ill to come, who has painful treatment for her wounds and screams for her dead mother? Where is the picture of a Russian mother burying her two teenage daughters after the Dolphinarium bombing, silent, white, and with an expression of such indescribably agony on her face that even the intrusive Israeli cameras couldn't linger. Or the grandmother who buried her daughter, son-in-law and five, yes five, grandchildren in one day because the suicide bomber walked into a crowd of mothers and children to detonate himself. Their suffering is obliterated by the media. You see only Palestinian suffering and the cause/effect sequence is deliberately obscured. We retaliate because they send in suicide bombers. No suicide bombers no retaliation. You are never, never invited to consider this. Instead, your emotions are directed and manipulated by means of pictures that are not factually a lie but lie by selection and implication. (Only Palestinians suffer violence.)

Then there’s the subliminal suggestion game: twice last week I saw on BBC an Israeli army spokesman giving details about Jenin. In both cases while he was talking the camera left him completely and showed pictures of tanks and destruction. Pictures are more powerful than words. All advertising agencies know this. The media know it too. I have seen the cameras flash pictures of dead Palestinians onto the screen when the reports have been about something else entirely. This is not reporting, it is propaganda.

And there are games that don’t involve images. There's the numbers game: a deliberate distortion of fact by omission of the one crucial detail. The numbers of Palestinians killed are compared to the number of Israelis. There are more Palestinians. But they ! are men with guns in their hands or explosives on their bodies out to kill. The Israelis are unarmed civilians. A false comparison. A lying comparison.

Another version of this. "Three Palestinians killed and two Israelis" but no information that the Palestinians were terrorists and the two Israelis were mother and child, or young teenagers or mothers of large families. This kind of information is suppressed over and over and over again if it is about Israelis. But if Palestinians are involved, it is played to the hilt. The purpose - to manipulate your emotions and through that, your judgment. And then there's the rational justification game" The Palestinians send suicide bombers because of the occupation. They are frustrated because of the occupation. What occupation? 95% of Palestinians have lived under Arafat's full jurisdiction, including security, since l993. They have had full autonomy since l993 so I ask again, what occupation? Their towns are closed off now because of suicide bombers. When the suicide bombers stop the closure will stop. But the "occupation" justification is never questioned. By constant repetition it has become a "fact". When it comes to truth and propaganda, propaganda wins every time.

And just by the way. You know Arafat is the democratically elected leader of the Palestinians, don’t you? (We'll overlook that the election was corrupt). Well, in l999 when there should have been another election, Arafat cancelled it and declared himself President for life.

But the main point is the Big Lie. I would really like to know why you are so ready to believe that Israeli soldiers will massacre people. You know that we have a civilian army, that people were called up out of their usual lives and sent into battle. The Left and the foreign media speculated that men wouldn't answer the call up but they did. 96% from all political persuasions, because they knew they were defending their families and that it had to be done. ! But most important of all, every single one of them carries a cellphone. Which he uses. The public here always know what has happened before the media broadcast it because soldiers phone home constantly. If anything illegal had been done, some one of them, or more, would have screamed through his cellphone to the parliament or the Israeli press.

It didn't happen because it didn't happen. And then, if your son had been in Israel he would have been in the army. I have to ask you, would your son massacre people? Would mine? Would your sisters’? Why your belief in a demonic Israel? Yes, a rogue unit did it once in the early days of the state when there was no strong centralized control. You are a Rabbi's daughter and a lifelong Zionist, so where is your faith in our beliefs, our values, in what, as a nation and as a people, we are? The only heartening thing is that people are coming out to demonstrate their support for us (although it's played down in the media). That's truly heartening. They are not all Jewish either which is even more so. And we have received many letters of support from non-Jews whose minds are unclouded by propaganda. People who have a strong hold on their own decency. I can't tell you how much we appreciate this when the whole world is spitting in our face.

But from Jews we want something more. Faith in us, belief in us. Yes, we do stupid things and make mistakes like anyone else and we are not a nation of angels and neither is any other nation on the face of the earth. But we are fundamentally sound. Fundamentally civilized. And we need
other Jews not just to know it, but to affirm it.

Proof of the pudding? Since beginning this letter we have been told by aid-workers that, surprise, surprise, there was no massacre. I didn’t need aid-workers to tell me. But now, oh evil evil evil, we are guilty of human rights abuses! Using human shields! A lie like all their other lies. The Palestinians are angling for a foreign force here to pro! tect them, i.e. to tie our hands while they kill us freely. And the media further their agenda. Why the media act as propaganda agents for the PLO instead of neutral reporters is a question I'd very much like answered. I suppose, finally, that what I'm saying, in one sentence, is: Don’t let the media scramble your brain, civilization depends on it.

Source:Original article submitted by IHC Member, Miriam Carabok, 2 May 2002

Sur le site de Israel Hasbara Committee :
www.infoisrael.net/cgi-local/text.pl?source=6/d/020520021

[Merci à Elodie Aidan de nous avoir communiqué cette information.]