*Media bias influences not only how events in the Middle East are perceived, but how they unfold. *
…Indeed, the Times report that accompanied the wrongly captioned picture of Tuvia [Grossman] pretty much offered up the Palestinian Authority line: The violence had been “provoked” and “set off” when “Ariel Sharon, the rightist opposition leader, visited the Muslim compound on Thursday to assert Jewish claims to the site.” That the site of the biblical Jewish temple is strictly a “Muslim compound” is hardly obvious. Nor would there seem to be anything “rightist” or extreme in the idea that the Jews might have some claim to the site, which is buttressed by the famous Western Wall.
Even more telling, perhaps, are the strangely similar collection of empty verbs the Times and legions of others have used to describe what happened that day. Searching a database of major American and international papers earlier this week, I found some 50 other articles that said Mr. Sharon’s visit had “set off” the violence. More than two-dozen said it was “touched off” by him. And more than 120 said he had “sparked” the riots.
For a newspaper like the Times that prides itself on political correctness, and indeed agonized over the potential insensitivity to Asian-Americans of its Wen Ho Lee coverage, such language is strangely dehumanizing – implying that the Palestinians are a bunch of automatons whose actions can be influenced with nearly as much causative assurance as lighting an actual fire. But removing an entire class of human beings from the realm of moral discourse does serve a purpose if you’re convinced Mr. Sharon is at fault: It effectively shuts off debate. After all, you can evaluate the actions of people who choose to respond to perceived provocations with violence. But who can blame folks who were merely “set off”?
In fact, the evidence that the riots were almost entirely premeditated – that Mr. Sharon’s visit was a pretext, not a “spark” – is almost impossible to denyIsraeli forces had been on high alert for some time before the outbreak, in answer to intelligence reports that Yasser Arafat had given the shock troops of his Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization – the Tanzim, or “organization” – the green light for serious violence.
The Tanzim has branches everywhere in the Palestinian territories, and is responsible for getting demonstrators out into the street. They were the prime movers behind the riots over the Temple Mount archaeological tunnel that erupted in 1996, as well as those that broke out in the spring of this year.
Ever since the Oslo Accords, Tanzim members have been increasingly armed with automatic weapons, which have helped make these recent riots so deadly. Even if most demonstrators are only throwing stones, the presence of a few guns in the crowd puts Israeli soldiers in an infinitely more precarious position.
The existence and role of the Tanzim are no secret to anyone reporting from the region. Indeed, they seem to have featured in nearly every statement from the Israeli government since the fighting broke out. But their existence is inconvenient for those who want to portray this as a spontaneous uprising of oppressed people, and the dead and injured as entirely innocent victims. So it’s little surprise their name hasn’t appeared in any but a handful of recent reports in the U.S., even to rebut Israeli government claims.
The organized nature of the violence casts a slightly different light on the most famous photos yet to emerge: those of 12-year-old Muhammed Durrah… It’s very unlikely that anyone might have wandered into Muhammed’s position just in front of the Palestinian outpost in the middle of a firefight merely by accident. That makes Muhammed’s death no less tragic – but one starts to wonder if more of the blame lies with Palestinian children’s shows that praise the virtues of martyrdom, or the PA’s terrorist training camps for children (something the Times has reported on)…