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        <h1><a href="/" title="From Occupied Palestine"><span>From Occupied Palestine</span></a></h1>        </div>

                                                    
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          <div class="breadcrumb"><a href="/">Home</a></div>                              <h2>Beyond hypocrisy: Decoding the news</h2>                                                  <div class="clear-block">
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    <p><b>Beyond hypocrisy: Decoding the news</b><br />
EDWARD HERMAN and DAVID BARSAMIAN<br />
<i>Alternative Radio</i>, 14 July 1993</p>
<p><b>David Barsamian</b>: In 1973 you and Noam Chomsky wrote a monograph entitled "Counterrevolutionary Violence." It was to be published by Warner Modular Publications, a subsidiary of Warner Communications. 20,000 copies of "Counterrevolutionary Violence" were printed. An ad appeared in the New York Review of Books. What happened to the book?</p>
<p><b>Edward Herman</b>: The top brass got wind of this little document and was so horrified pained by it and that they insisted that it not be advertised any further or circulated. The thing was essentially not sold. Warner Modular was disbanded, that little suborganization was destroyed. The interesting thing about that incident is that one of the two principles of Warner was Stephen Ross, who recently died. He was the entrepreneur in the Time-Warner merger. This man who carried out this huge suppressive act, became the head of the biggest media organization in the world. The other thing about it that I've always found interesting is how it never got any publicity. Ben Bagdikian (The Media Monopoly) mentioned this story. A number of the civil libertarians, to whom we brought this information, said, Oh, they're not very interested. It's not a First Amendment issue. It's only a private act. I thought that was intriguing. A private act of suppression is not of interest to civil libertarians. It's only the government doing it.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> What happened to the 20,000 copies that were printed?</p>
<p><b>EH:</b> They were transferred over to some other organization after Warner Modular was disbanded. This other organization never sold them, as far as I know. They were essentially destroyed.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> However, "Counterrevolutionary Violence" did have an afterlife, as it were, because it was translated and published abroad.</p>
<p><B>EH:</b> That's true. Also, it inspired us to update it later. We turned it into a much larger work, a book called The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, which was a very large book, part of a two-volume set on the political economy of human rights, which we published in 1979. That did sell fairly well for a dissident work. [According to South End Press the book has sold 40,000 copies.]</p>
<p><B>DB:</b> In the world of media manipulation, control and censorship in the United States, this kind of incident, the pulping of a book, is rather atypical, is it not?</p>
<p><b>EH:</b> Yes, I think it is. There was a recent article in <i>The Nation</i> about the recent development of book suppressions based on the fact that the media conglomerates now are so complex and have so many interconnections with other organizations that if one finds that a book coming out is offensive to some powerful party elsewhere, the thing can be suppressed. There are a number of incidents where books in gestation or practically in print have been stopped. But I don't think that's anywhere near as important as the fact that the book business and the big media conglomerates are interested only in a very narrow range of books. They've been less interested in books that dig very deeply and criticize the establishment very seriously. So the fundamental suppression in America comes from the fact that books that would be really critical aren't entertained. They're not commissioned by the major publishers. They must come through South End Press or Sheridan Square Press or outfits like that.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> These presses that you mentioned and others like Common Courage Press, Open Magazine Pamphlet Series are "organizations" that have very limited resources and find great difficulty in reaching a larger audience.<br />
I'm very interested in the whole process of how books are reviewed and get circulation. I'm very impressed with the fact that the small publishers don't get their books reviewed very often. This is partly for political reasons, but also partly for reasons of strict commerce, that is, a big potential bestseller gets a lot of advertising. The publishers send the authors around on book tours and they get a lot of circulation. Frequently they're interested in selling books by people who are already TV names so that they have an automatic sale of 200,000 right off the bat. These books, the <i>New York Times Book Review</i> and the other book reviews will review partly because people will want to know about them because they're already well advertised, through money and knowledge of TV. So I think there's a political bias too. I'm doing a study of the book review process focusing on the <i>New York Times</i>. I'm convinced there's a political agenda. But it's complicated by the fact that the market makes large numbers of people interested in these potential bestsellers.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> Also in terms of books and magazine articles, dissidents find their manuscripts are returned with regrets and perhaps a line about the piece being "unmarketable."</p>
<p><b>EH:</b> Yes, that sometimes happens. They may say "unmarketable." They may be reasonably honest about the fact that the sales potential is limited. They sometimes are not frank about that. Sometimes I think that's a cover for the fact that they don't like the political message. These big conglomerate publishers don't put forth an effort with advertising to have really good, important works put before the public. When the commercial imperative becomes so critical, the bottom line becomes critical, what happens is that these books that could sell, maybe even pay for themselves, maybe even have some positive rate of return, like 6% instead of 30%, they simply won't bother with them. So you have a marginalization process in which really serious critical works that would upset people simply will not make it into the media, into the bookselling business and thus into the conglomerate system.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> There has been quite a bit of documentation about the increasing concentration of newspapers in the hands of fewer and fewer corporations. Most recently the <i>Times</i> bought the <i>Boston Globe</i>. Is the same trend discernible in book publishing?</p>
<p><b>EH:</b> Oh, yes. I don't have any numbers, but the concentration process is going on. The book business has not been a big growth industry. Therefore the bottom line oriented companies put more and more pressure on editors and publishers to come through, which means more and more constraints for profitability considerations to be dominant.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> As this trend accelerates, there's also this countertrend that's going on, the aforementioned small presses, like South End, Common Courage, etc. How do you account for those little breakthroughs?</p>
<p><b>EH:</b> The system is not monolithic. Personally, I don't think it's that much of a breakthrough. South End Press has been in existence since 1978 or 1979. This is a big country. There are lots of little presses. There always were and always will be. I'm not sure that they have increased greatly in importance insofar as they do survive and to some extent prosper. South End Press, I think, has been doing fairly well because the big boys are leaving all the good dissident stuff to the small presses. They're the residuals. There are a lot of good books coming through for them.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> In Beyond Hypocrisy, you quote George Orwell from his essay "Politics and the English Language." "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. ... Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer, cloudy vagueness." What is the relationship between politics and language?</p>
<p><b>EH:</b> That pretty well captures it. The politicians are trying to please an awful lot of people. They therefore are really opportunistic users of language. In a country like the United States the press is not doing a very good job. The use of Orwellian language has been allowed to proliferate. If you had a really first class media, an adversary media, a really good one, the use of Orwellian language would be under real constraints. When they talk about "collateral casualties" and "self-defense" in bombing Iraq, an honest media would attack this with frenzy and with a lot of laughter, too. But they accommodate very well to language that is supportive of the ongoing establishment. So Orwellian language can be effective.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> You also comment in your preface that, "Media collaboration with the government in fostering a world of doublespeak is essential, and this collaboration has been regularly forthcoming." Given the political economy of the media and the propaganda model that you outlined in Manufacturing Consent, can you realistically expect anything else?</p>
<p><b>EH:</b> No, you can't.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> So aren't you beating a dead horse, in a sense?</p>
<p><b>EH:</b> Yes, you're beating a dead horse. But most people aren't aware that the horse is dead. In a brainwashed society I certainly think the constructive role of the critical intellectual in America is very easy, because the media and the government are doing terrible things and they're very vulnerable. But the public is not informed of this. It's our function to call these things by their right names. The fact that this scene is so blatant makes it extremely easy for us to do devastating work. It's easy. But the problem is it's very hard to get it across. Access is very limited. But nevertheless I still think it's very useful to keep pointing these things out and to show the contradictions on issue after issue and to explore them. The hope is that we will be able to reach people, new people as well as people whose biases we're merely supporting. But this educational function is fundamental.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> You say that Beyond Hypocrisy is about doublespeak. Is that a term from Orwell's 1984?</p>
<p><b>EH:</b> I think he talks more about "doublethink," the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your mind at the same time.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> As part of your dictionary, you define advocacy journalism as "reporting which does not merely transmit government and corporate press releases." A couple of others are aggression: "invasion of another country by someone other than ourselves without our approval." Also "providing aid and comfort to the side that we oppose in the civil conflict." Also "resisting a U.S. attack." You have naked aggression: "an invasion and occupation of another country that threatens our interests. Morally, legally and politically intolerable, this calls for immediate and complete ouster, reparations, and the teaching of a Lesson." You define terrorism as "the killing of civilians retail." What do you mean by that?</p>
<p><b>EH:</b> What I mean is the killing of small numbers of civilians, the joke in the definition of terrorism that I use is to distinguish between terrorism of the sort that the Western propaganda system attends to, that is, by the Red Brigade and people who hijack airplanes, where individuals and groups do the terrorizing and therefore very few people are killed. The contrast that I would make, for example, is with the killing by the Argentine government from 1976 to 1983, where they had sixty detention centers where they engaged in torture and killed large numbers of people, or even the U.S. war against Nicaragua, where thousands of people are killed. This is state terrorism, or state sponsored terrorism. I refer to this as "wholesale" terrorism as opposed to retail. The point is to show that the terrorism that the West has focused on has been relatively small scale retail compared to wholesale.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> But you do acknowledge those acts as being acts of terror.</p>
<p><b>EH:</b> Yes, I do. I certainly think they're bad and terrible things and one has to try to control them. What impresses me is how when in the West, in the United States, all this energy and indignation are expressed at these retail terrorist acts, like these recent ones in New York, there's so little attention given to the root causes of these things. There's also this huge indignation which is not applied to the wholesale terror which may be going on simultaneously.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> You write in The Real Terror Network that, "Retail non-state terrorists are frequently transitory and are often produced by the very abuses that state terror is designed to protect." Could you explain that?</p>
<p><b>EH:</b> Take the current situation, where we have this new threat of Muslim-based terrorism. A lot of the Muslim reaction is based on the fact that Arabs have been treated badly by the West. The Arab cultures of the Middle East, North Africa and elsewhere have been misused by the West. The West is supporting states like Saudi Arabia to its convenience; Egypt and of course Israel and whatever actions it's doing. Israel has been engaged in what I would definitely call state terrorism for years. A lot of the terrorism in the 1980s came out of the Lebanese war: Sabra Shatila and other terrible acts that I would call state terrorism, state-supported terrorism. A lot of the retail acts that followed in the Middle East in the 1980s were rooted in the background of state terrorism. The Muslim reactions in the world now are connected to general policies that have been shattering to Arab prestige and in some cases even they involve terrorism.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> The State Department has a list of terrorist states. I believe without exception that they are all Middle Eastern countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, etc. Is the United States on that list?</p>
<p><b>EH:</b> I don't think the State Department has put us on the list. They also have North Korea. Don't forget North Korea. That's one of the favorites. For years, it's been kind of a U.S. enemies list. It's been incredibly arbitrary. They have systematically excluded the states, which would include the United States, but even more intriguing is that while it includes Libya over the 1980s it never included South Africa, which was carrying out terrorist acts against its indigenous population but even more, South Africa fit so perfectly the definition of state-sponsored terrorism because it was sponsoring RENAMO in Mozambique and Savimbi in Angola. These are close border insurgents who were supported by a foreign government. South Africa was going across its own borders with armed forces all the time. It killed vast numbers of people directly and through its proxies compared to Libya and yet it never made it to this list. That is true wholesale terrorism, by South Africa. But the double standard is really spectacular. I think that's a most illuminating example.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> Often in the mainstream media the term "terrorism" is paired with "Arab" or "Palestinian." It's hard to separate the two. What ideological function does that serve?</p>
<p><b>EH:</b> In the lineup in the Middle East, Israel is our ally, and there are certain Arab states that are our clients. The Palestinians and the dissident Arabs are enemies. They are a threat. The ideological function is quite clear. In the Soviet Union days we had the Evil Empire and communism. Now in the struggles in the Middle East the enemies are those opposed to Israel and to Western hegemony in the region. The Palestinians and the PLO fit the criterion of the needs of the West right now very nicely.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> You've charted in one of your books the number of Israelis killed by acts of PLO terrorism vs. the number of Arabs and Palestinians killed by Israeli state terrorism.</p>
<p><b>EH:</b> I used a figure that was produced by the Israeli police from 1968 to 1980. The number of Israelis killed by Palestinians was something like 282. If you look at the number of Palestinians and Lebanese killed in Israeli acts in that period, it comes to a vastly larger number. I put up a table that just used certain incidents, assembled individual incidents, and that table itself yielded a ratio of something like 25 to 1. The Israeli actions that have killed civilians have been quantitatively vastly more important than the Palestinian actions. Of course, the treatment of them is rather different. The West is pretty settled that there are terrorists among the Palestinians but Israel only retaliates. That's a strictly ideological position. If you go back in the whole history of the affair, it's very hard to see who started the business, whether the chicken or the egg came first. In terms of the numbers, it's clear that Israel outdoes the PLO and the Palestinians by a huge factor. It carries out what I would call wholesale terror. Palestinians carry out retail terror operations.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> There are two media watch organizations in the United States called FLAME (Facts and Logic about the Middle East) and CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America). They are very critical of mainstream media coverage, particularly National Public Radio news reporting, for example, contending that it's very biased and anti-Israel. To what extent are the media anti-Israel?</p>
<p><b>EH:</b> The media are not anti-Israel at all. They've been extremely pro-Israel. Israel is an ally. Israel is supported by the United States. It gets more than three billion dollars a year in U.S. aid. The test of the media treatment of Israel is, to what extent do they allow a discussion of the budget which gives Israel 3+ billion dollars a year. This is a time of budget crunch, and limits on money and foreign aid. The media don't discuss it. They don't put that forward when the budget time comes around. It's completely secret. I consider that a sign of tremendous support and media connivance with the State Department and forces supportive of the state of Israel.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> Talk more about media connivance with the State Department. How does that work? Does the Assistant Secretary of State for Middle East affairs call up Abe Rosenthal of the New York Times and say, Abe, we need an editorial supporting Israel and our policy?</p>
<p><b>EH:</b> It doesn't work that way at all. It works very naturally. The press simply accepts State Department views and passes them on and also is very generous in handling Israeli news releases. What the Israeli government says and wants to get across, the U.S. media usually supplies. It does not usually pay much attention to what the Arab states say or what the Palestinians say. Then of course many of the commentators in the media are very fanatically pro-Israel.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> Can you give some examples?</p>
<p><b>EH:</b> Of course in the <i>New York Times</i> you've got Rosenthal and Safire as principal columnists. They're fanatical on the subject. In the Philadelphia <i>Inquirer</i> you've got George Will and Charles Krauthammer, who are also fanatical on the subject. You have nobody on the other side, almost nobody. I don't think of a single pundit in the U.S. who is a serious critic of Israel. You've had some who want Israel to behave more modestly and to do business with the Palestinians. But it's almost a completely one-sided picture. The editors go along with this. What they do is to accept sourcing from the U.S. and Israeli governments very generously and uncritically. They don't do much in the way of alternative sources. In the commentators' sphere, the bias is extraordinary. But I think that the whole thing is greatly affected by pressure groups, Israeli pressure groups, supporters of Israel who are very well organized in the U.S. They put on enormous pressure. In Pennsylvania Arlen Specter was running against a woman named Lynn Yeakel in the 1992 Senate election. The Israeli lobby was in a state of frenzy. They gave Specter a lot of money. The local supporters of Israel went all out for Specter. They wrote continuous streams of letters to the paper, they visited the Philadelphia <i>Inquirer</i>. The pressure was intense. The local head of the Zionist Organization of America, I was informed by an <i>Inquirer</i> insider, communicated with the paper every day by fax. He was always criticizing them for being anti-Israel. Every single day this man would fax a criticism. He terrorized them. He had many allies. It was a policy that got the paper in line. The paper had a reporter reporting on the Specter campaign who I think was incredibly biased in favor of Specter. He never reported on the AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) campaign, which gave Specter at least $120,000. They lined up a lot of PACs to give him money. There were all kinds of mailing campaigns put out by the Specter campaign claiming that Yeakel was virtually an anti-Semite. They tried to raise money on that. All these campaigns were extremely powerful. The news coverage was very seriously biased. Specter's role in the Anita Hill hearings and especially getting Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, his support of capital punishment, he had done a lot of pretty bad things, but they were hardly discussed at all. They weren't raised by the local media. They did put huge attention on the allegation that Yeakel and her Presbyterian church were anti-Semitic because it had debates on the Middle East where anti-Israel statements had been made. This was converted into her or her church's anti-Semitism. It was amazing. But the pressure put on by this lobby and its individual members was intense. In my opinion the Inquirer really caved in.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> From what you are saying, it sounds like you object to this campaign because the bias is not one that you support.</p>
<p><b>EH:</b> Not quite, no. People should write letters and complain. But this was incredibly large-scale and bullying. It had a genuine bullying quality, with threats. Its result was very biased reporting. I'm all for people writing letters and doing their thing. But this was one of such intensity and bullying character that it was twisting arms. The result was pernicious. I don't mean the result that Specter won. The result that the news coverage was really bad. It was not impartial, not quality news that addressed the issues.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> Some years ago I was interviewing an official of the Anti-Defamation League in Denver. I asked him if by definition criticism of the state of Israel was anti-Semitic. His response was that since Israel is the state of the Jewish people, criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. Have you heard that argument?</p>
<p><b>EH:</b> Usually it's not admitted to be so. Usually the defenders of Israel will say, No, it's not anti-Semitic to criticize Israel. It's only anti-Semitic to do it unfairly, to tell lies about Israel, to attack Jews and Jewish organizations. I find that's not too common, although I think it's a valid picture of what supporters of Israel really believe and feel and act on. In the <i>New York Times</i> recently Thomas Friedman actually mentions that there's been a change in attitude along that line in that when the Likud government was in, the view of Norman Podhoretz and others was that you shouldn't criticize Israel, this is bad business. Now that the Rabin government is in and is engaging in certain accommodations, not very great, but it's talking and maybe doing business with the Palestinians and the PLO, the position of Podhoretz is that we should criticize Israel. So it appears that for them this powerful right-wing faction criticism of Israel is OK when the Israeli government is not fitting their particular vision of how Israel ought to be behaving, which is very hard line. But getting back to your point on anti-Semitism, there's a book by the Perlmutters called The New Anti-Semitism. It came out in the early 1980s. I haven't read it for a long time, but I remember that that book in fact defined anti-Semitism that would be hurtful to Israel across the board. If you're against the military budget, they were suggesting that since that might hurt Israel that might be classified as anti-Semitic. I think there has been this implicit new definition of anti-Semitism to be not hating Jews but doing something damaging to Israel. I think this has become very important. But it's not usually openly admitted. I find that statement that you quoted pretty remarkable. That's a terrible position. I think it's even terrible for Israelis or supporters of Israel to take the position that you can't criticize Israel. It's damaging to Israel's welfare. Israel should be capable to being subjected to criticism at home and abroad. I think that is one of the real problems of the world now, that because of that kind of attitude, that Israel can't be criticized, and the pressure put on American papers and politicians, Israel has had too much of a free hand. I think it would be much healthier if it could be openly criticized.</p>
<p><b>DB:</b> There's much discussion in the media about U.N. Security Council resolutions vis-</p>
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  <div class="content"><p>&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/182" title="A broad overview of the key issues of the Israel-Palestine conflict.">Issues introduction</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/89" title="The second, or al Aqsa, intifada began on 28 September 2000, when Ariel Sharon provoked Palestinians by visiting the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount accompanied by some 1,500 Israeli soldiers and security personnel. The soldiers fired on the demonstration that followed, killing 7 and wounding several hundred.">al Aqsa <i>intifada</i></a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/158" title="Formed at beginning of the second intifada, al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are a military wing of Fatah - though functioning independently of formal leadership. They are committed to the peace process on the condition of complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza.">al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades</a><br />
&nbsp;&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/232" title="al Aqsa Brigades West Bank Commander, based in the Jenin refugee camp.">Zacharia Zubeidi</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/110" title="Anti-semitism and the exploitation of Jewish suffering for political ends.">anti-semitism</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/113" title="An official policy of racial segregation involving political, legal, and economic discrimination.">apartheid</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/111" title="The impact on, and role of, children in the conflict.">children</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/96" title="Official policy of curfews, closures and military checkpoints imposed by Israel.">closures</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/94" title="Palestinian housing and property destruction by Israel as an official policy of collective punishment for 'terrorist support'. ">demolitions</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/90" title="Officially refered to as 'transfer' by Israel, it is the systematic process of expelling Palestinians from so-called Greater Israel across the river Jordan. Because, in Sharon's words there already exists a Palestinian state: 'Jordan is Palestine'. ">ethnic cleansing</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/152" title="Founded in 1959, al-Fatah is a backwards Arabic acronym: The Movement for the National Liberation of Palestine. It is the largest, and principle constituency in the Palestinian Liberation Organization.">Fatah</a><br />
&nbsp;&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/159" title="The popular grassroots leader of Tanzim, a faction of Fatah - Barghouti was considered a leading successor to Arafat. He was arrested, jailed and on trial in Israel for his alleged role as the leader of al Aqsa Brigades.">Marwan Barghouti</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/149" title="Founded in 1987, Hamas is an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood, providing military resistance to the occupation as well as crucial and substantial social aid - including welfare, schools, clinics, and daycare. Hamas is an acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement. Widely considered the strongest element of the Palestinian resistance at present.">Hamas</a><br />
&nbsp;&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/224" title="Rantisi (or Rantissi) is the political leader of Hamas. ">Abdel Aziz Rantisi</a><br />
&nbsp;&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/223" title="Yassin is the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas. He was assassinated in March of 2004 by Israeli attack helicopters.">Ahmed Yassin</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/105" title="Articles providing historical context, in publication date as well as scope, for the current situation.">history</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/160" title="The human rights consequences of the conflict.">human rights</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/91" title="Violations of the Geneva Conventions, UN Resolutions and other internationally recognized standards of conduct.">international law</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/156" title="Formed in 1979 by Palestinian students living in Egypt, Palestinian Islamic Jihad is soley a military organization fighting to free Palestine from the 'sea to river'. ">Islamic Jihad</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/99" title="The International Solidarity Movement is a Palestinian-led movement formed in 2001 to facilitate the growth of an international, non-violent movement against the occupation.">ISM</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/210" title="">Israeli politics</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/161" title="For two weeks in March and April 2002, Jenin was the site of the most intense fighting of Israel's largest military escalation against the Palestinians since the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, 'Operation Defensive Shield'. Jenin was a battle of near-complete destruction and stubborn Palestinian resistance.">Jenin</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/100" title="The role of the (predominantly western) media in the conflict.">media</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/225" title="Israel's 'secret' nuclear weapons cache, and the politics of nuclear attack">nuclear weapons</a><br />
&nbsp;&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/226" title="Israel's 'nuclear whisteblower' who was released from Israeli prison after 18 years, the majority of which was spent in solitary confinement. He was released on 21 April 2004. ">Mordechai Vanunu</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/115" title="The faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization that accepted and implemented the 1993 Oslo Accords, and assumed leadership of the provisional Palestinian government in the West Bank and Gaza, headed by Yasser Arafat.">Palestinian Authority</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/104+153+212+155+211+220" title="The internationally brokered peace process.">peace process</a><br />
&nbsp;&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/153" title="Also known as the Declaration of Principles, the Accords were signed between Yithak Rabin and Yasser Arafat in Oslo, Norway in 1993.">Oslo Accords</a><br />
&nbsp;&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/212" title="">one state solution</a><br />
&nbsp;&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/155" title="The 2002 peace proposal brokered by the 'Quartet' (US, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations) and agreed upon by Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon in Aqaba, Jordan in June of 2003.">Road Map</a><br />
&nbsp;&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/211" title="">Geneva Accord</a><br />
&nbsp;&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/220" title="Unilateral disengagement is the one-sided arrangement whereby Israel draws the borders, builds an 8-metre high wall around the Palestinian areas and calls it 'peace'. The plan, first articulated by Deputy PM Ehud Olmert, if for Israel to have 'maximum Jews, minimum Arabs'. ">'unilateral disengagement'</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/148" title="The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a revolutionary organization engaged in the political and armed struggle for national liberation, the 'right of return' and an end to the illegal Israeli military occupation of Palestine. PFLP is the second largest PLO constituency and is committed to a democractic, secular state.">PFLP</a><br />
&nbsp;&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/162" title="PFLP leader assassinated by Israel in August 2001">Abu Ali Mustafa</a><br />
&nbsp;&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/164" title="Ahmed Saadat is the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He was arrested and jailed by Israel in January of 2002, following the PFLP's assassination of far-right Israeli cabinet minister Ze'evi - itself a response to the helicopter gunship assassination of PFLP leader, Ali Abu Mustafa. ">Ahmed Saadat</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/205" title="">political prisoners</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/176" title="Key white papers, official reports and international resolutions dealing with the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict.">primary documents</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/229" title="Located in the southernmost Gaza Strip, Rafah's 120,000 refugees bare the full force of the Israeli army. Suffering some of the IDF's most brutal offensives, Rafah is truly the epicentre of the occupation and its attendant crimes.">Rafah</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/103" title="Palestinian refugees and the 'right of return' associated with their displacement.">refugees</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/227" title="Conscientious objectors from Israel's mandatory three-year military service and Israeli soldiers who refuse service in the West Bank and Gaza.">refuseniks</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/102" title="">separation wall</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/165" title="">settlements/settlers</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/233" title="The politics and practice of suicide bombing.">suicide bombing</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/98" title="">targeting journalists</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/95" title="The political, economic, and military involvement of the United States in the conflict.">U.S role</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/222" title="The role of the United Nations in the conflict">United Nations</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/92" title="">war crimes</a><br />
&nbsp;&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/163" title="Israel's illegal policy of 'targeted killings' of Palestinian activists.">assassination</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/168" title="water distribution and shortages in the Occupied Territories">water</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/216" title="">women</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/109" title="A movement that arose in the late 19th century to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. ">Zionism</a></p>
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  <div class="content"><p>&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/69" title="Uri Avnery is founder of Gush Shalom and frequent commentator in Israel and around the world. ">Uri Avnery</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/177" title="Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies">Phyllis Bennis</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/62" title="Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of numerous books and hundreds of articles on the conflict.  ">Noam Chomsky</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/118" title="Alexander Cockburn is editor of Counterpunch">Alexander Cockburn</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/234" title="Is a British journalist living in Nazareth, Israel; his work appears regularly in al-Ahram Weekly.">Jonathan Cook</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/59" title="Jon is a freelance photojournalist">Jon Elmer</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/114" title="Kristin Ess is a freelance journalist living in Gaza. She writes regularly for Electronic Intifada. ">Kristin Ess</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/24" title="Based in Beirut for the past 26 years, Fisk is Middle East and war correspondent for the Independent of London. ">Robert Fisk</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/179" title="Gaouette is the Middle East correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor - she has been reporting from the region since 2000. ">Nicole Gaouette</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/181" title="Ghazali is a Palestinian journalist who has reported for the Boston Globe, Cox News, the Associated Press and the Independent (UK).">Sa'id Ghazali</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/180" title="Goldenberg has won several international awards for her work as Guardian correspondent in Israel and the Occupied Territories until 2002 - earning her a complete boycott by Israeli government officials.">Suzanne Goldenberg</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/64" title="Jeff Halper was a professor of anthropology at Ben Gurion University until 2002. He is founder of The Israeli Committee Against Housing Demolitions (ICAHD). ">Jeff Halper</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/25" title="Since 2000, Amira Hass has been the only Jewish Israeli reporter living in Occupied Palestine - formerly in Gaza City, and now based out of Ramallah. She is a correspondent for the Israeli daily Ha'aretz. ">Amira Hass</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/70" title="Edward Herman is professor of economics at University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School and the author of many books, including Manufacturing Consent and The Political Economy of Human Rights (2 vols.), both with Noam Chomsky. ">Edward Herman</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/217" title="Guardian Middle East correspondent from 1963-2001. Author of the recently updated classic Gun and the Olive Branch.">David Hirst</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/66" title="Justin Huggler has been the Jerusalem correspondent for the Independent since 2002.">Justin Huggler</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/218" title="An Israeli journalist at the le Monde Diplomatique">Amnon Kapeliouk</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/145" title="Levy is a columnist for the liberal Israeli daily Ha'aretz">Gideon Levy</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/175" title="Loewenstein is a freelance journalist and lecturer at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.">Jennifer Loewenstein</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/108" title="Jerusalem correspondent for the Guardian.">Chris McGreal</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/219" title="Justin Podur is a frequent commentator and adminstrator at Znet">Justin Podur</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/65" title="Tanya Reinhart is professor of philosophy at Tel Aviv University, and columnist with Yediot Aharonot in Israel. ">Tanya Reinhart</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/117" title="Danny Rubinstein is a commentator for Ha'aretz, he has been covering the Israel-Palestine conflict since 1967">Danny Rubinstein</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/230" title="Sara Roy is a senior research scholar at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and author of The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development (IPS, 1995). ">Sara Roy</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/112" title="Edward Wadie Said, writer and academic, born November 1 1935; died September 25 2003.">Edward Said</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/221" title="Usher is Palestine reporter for The Economist and Middle East International, and is published across the world. He is the author of Dispatches from Palestine: The rise and fall of the Oslo Process (Pluto Press). ">Graham Usher</a><br />
&middot; <a href="/taxonomy/term/71" title="Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics at San Francisco University. He also serves as Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project.">Stephen Zunes</a></p>
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