They missed the story

They missed the story
By NICK COHEN
04/06/2011 23:43

Prejudiced world of Middle Eastern commentary went up in flames when the Arab revolutionaries threw their first Molotov. Whatever happens next, its loss will be no loss at all.



Former US ambassador to the UN Daniel Patrick Moynihan composed an aphorism as he watched dictatorships pile opprobrium on democracies: “The amount of violations of human rights in a country is always an inverse function of the amount of complaints about human rights violations heard from there.” Journalists, lawyers, academics and opposition politicians can investigate the injustices of democracies, and because they can investigate, injustice is kept in check. They can’t expose the greater atrocities of dictatorships because there is no freedom to report, and hence those greater crimes pass unnoticed.

I have my doubts about the universal jurisdiction of Moynihan’s Law – America was responsible for many great crimes while he was its good and faithful servant. But his insight explains why Jeremy Bowen is blinking at his cameraman in Tripoli like some startled, uncomprehending mammal who has been shaken by the convulsions around him from a hibernation that has lasted for most of his career. The BBC’s Middle East editor is not the only expert whose expertise now looks spurious. The Arab uprising is annihilating the assumptions of foreign ministries, academia and human-rights groups with true revolutionary élan.

In journalistic language, it is showing they had committed the greatest blunder a reporter can commit: They missed the story. They thought the problems of the Middle East were at root the fault of democratic Israel, or more broadly the democratic West. They did not see, and did not want to see, that while Israelis are certainly the Palestinians’ problem – and vice versa – the problem of the Arab world was the tyranny, cruelty, corruption and inequality Arab dictators enforced.

PUT STARKLY, it sounds as if the charges of double standards and anti-Semitism habitually directed at liberal Westerners are justified. But liberal prejudice – “antiliberal prejudice” is a more accurate description – is a process as well as an ideology. Dictatorial states and movements shepherded liberal opinion into a one-way street by exploiting the logistics of news gathering.

more...
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=215454

...LOGISTICS AS much as infantile leftism produced the ideology of Middle Eastern commentary. Israel was the only story in the region journalists could cover daily. Rather than stop pretending to be omniscient and admit their limitations to the viewer, rather than show common human feeling and thinking of the silenced millions, journalists pretended Israel was the region’s only story.

The effect was anti-Semitic because ‘the Jew’ was once again depicted as a supernatural figure with the diabolic power to create suffering on an epic scale. That narrow, prejudiced world of Middle Eastern commentary went up in flames when the Arab revolutionaries threw their first Molotov. Whatever happens next, its loss will be no loss at all.

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Nick Cohen's article dovetails nicely with Ari Shavit's latest and applies not only to the press but some of the biggest Human Rights organizations on the planet...


http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/israel-s-left-needs-to-wise-up-to-middle-east-reality-1.354548

Used and abused by the world powers? You too participate in the folly.

I do not believe that a post colonial complex makes the west ignore injustices.....the west ignores injustices - as long as that nation keeps the oil pumping and selling it in US dollars....and IF THAT NATION HAS NO OIL....the west barely acknowledges it even exists.

The middle east has been central to US interests....since 1945.

Forget governments - the article isn't about governments - we all know that governments ignore injustice and only care about their own self-interest.

The question is - what about enlightened Western liberal thinkers? Do they (we?) pick and choose which injustices to focus on and which to ignore? If so, how are those determinations made? If not, why do those voices sometimes seem so quiet on some topics and so loud on others? Hasn't the internet opened platforms up to those who wish to mobilize and express their opinions?

Surely we must be. Are we not asked/tasked to choose sides in whatever conflict flavour of the day is? We are asked to choose given the information or propeganda provided. I believe the internet HAS changed the dialogue in ways that are unpredictable, both good, and not so good.

What does it mean to be enlightened? I am not sure I would consider myself to be enlightened. I try to find the truth...and sometimes what I consider to be the truth holds merit...and sometimes it does not.

So, when there is no information forthcoming...such as in the case of Saudi Arabia.....how shall we formulate our opinion? Why are we not outraged that their troops have laid waste to a democratic appeal in Bahrain? Why are there no stories condemning their public beheadings and stonings? How is it we are utterly silent at their abhorrent religious intolerance and illegality for anyone to practice christianity....and to forbid any jew from entering the nation, let alone live there? We were outraged, and rightly so, when informed that Libya was allowed on the UNHRC....but not a peep, not so much as a squeak, when Saudi Arabia was also allowed.

I can't help but wonder if, in the case of Israel, given all the information - again we are used and abused as pawns, and Israel itself is used and abused as a pawn in the great game. My growing skepticism takes into consideration the rising call/threat of "an evil" pervading the muslim world as it included the muslim brotherhood, hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, etc, etc.....and the accompanying lack of public outrage that more has not been stated about the recent Clinton paper stating that Saudi Arabia continues to be the main financial backer of Al Quaeda....that small(?) terrorist group that enabled 911 and has cost the US treasury hundreds, if not thousands of BILLIONS to fight against.

Since 1945, the middle east has been central to US foreign policy...and yet, while there are more guns and weapons there than people - freedom, self determination, equal rights and democracy are stunningly absent except for Israel...the one state that seems to get more flack than all the rest.....do you think that is just happenstance?

And if the Arab Spring continues to overthrow despots, and replace them with democratic models.....how shall that work out for little Israel? Clearly, we have our work cut out for us. Is it our, being the enlightened western liberal thinkers fault, that the media ignored the plight of the average Arab citizen....or is it our governments fault that they chose to support despots over democracy? I am talking in terms of "missing the story."

I suppose, in the end, it does not matter who to blame....only to work towards a long term strategy that would somehow enable peace to take root. So far....the gun runners have won the debate.

I do appreciate your thoughtful response. You make some very good points.

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Also, why do you prefer Hezbollah TV and "al-Manar" to Nick Cohen?

Hezbollah and al-Manar are more leftist in your opinion?

The whole left-right paradigm of politics goes back to the French Revolution, and is quite out of date. As Hannah Ahrendt points out in "On Revolution", politics has been stuck in that mode ever since, and I think it's time we moved on, there are bigger issues afoot, mostly ecological in nature. We can get our shit together and save the world or wind up fighting over scraps in the rubble.

:hi:

Opinions are just that, not academic dialogs. I have no doubt some people think it's great stuff, and others will agree with me, but it doesn't make a tinker's damn either way what we think, and I have no idea of changing your mind about anything.

Coming up with a formal proof that it is illogical tripe would be much more labor intensive than just forming an opinion, which anyone can do, as you so ably demonstrate.