Seeing the World Through an Airbrush

By David Warren
July 16, 2004 
Ottawa Citizen
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/index.html http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/index.html 

An Israeli friend gives a good description of what I call the gliberal worldview presented in our media, and elsewhere. It is, in the strictest sense, puzzling. This is not only because it lacks any kind of logical consistency -- for the people who subscribe to it do not confuse us by even attempting such a thing. Rather, it presents a view of the world in an endless series of journalistic pictures, from each of which the obvious has been -- sometimes carefully and sometimes carelessly -- airbrushed.  
From each word picture, the reader must guess what has been left out. Since it's often the same obvious thing that was omitted from the last word picture, many readers have little difficulty supplying the missing link for themselves. But many more are confused.  
The media seldom make anything up; they seldom add anything imaginary; and they seldom remove anything -- except the obvious. Perhaps this will become clearer by using a big example.  
The U.S. and Israel have mortal enemies. Every living American, and Jew, is at personal risk because of it. That much is obvious. But airbrush that reality out of every picture, and a lot of American and Israeli behaviour becomes incomprehensibly malicious.  
It becomes possible, for instance, to have an endless argument about whether the U.S. should have invaded Iraq, based not on the obvious fact of Saddam Hussein (who wasn't exactly concealing his animus), but rather on various arcane aspects of the interpretation of pre-war intelligence data.  
The obscene judgment against Israel handed down on the weekend by the International Court of Justice in the Hague, was built on the same media principle. Israel was instructed to immediately remove the Wall it has been building -- the one designed to prevent Palestinian terrorists from getting at defenceless Israeli civilians.  
At the root of the Hague decision -- and the reason why I call it obscene -- was the splitting of a legal hair, down through skull and brain tissue. Israel does not have the right to defend itself against Palestinian terrorists under international law, according to the majority of the judges, because Israel has not recognized Palestine as a legitimate state. Or in its own words, the Court contended that, as the uses of force emanate from occupied territory, it is not an armed attack 'by one State against another'.  
To call this disingenuous would be too respectful. We won't go, yet again, into the reasons why the Palestinians don't have a state; only remind that they have several times declined a state, when one was offered. The Court speaks for a United Nations many of whose agents have been implicated in Palestinian terror strikes on the ground. The Court's judges were overwhelmingly of established, anti-Israel background. And the court knew, as its Dutch Chief Justice acknowledged, that its decision could have no effect on reality; it was merely moral suasion -- i.e., a propaganda stunt.

Yasser Arafat immediately yelped in triumph. He has thrived on this kind of propaganda, as well as on terror, throughout his career. His sagging fortunes as godfather of the perpetual Intifada immediately recovered, as he basked in the verbal support of politicians and diplomats all over the world.  
A kind of celebratory bombing immediately followed in south Tel Aviv, claiming the life of Sgt. Maayan Na'im, a beautiful young woman army technologist. Mr. Arafat claimed the Israelis had performed this bombing themselves -- and the world media reported that with a straight face.  
They did not report the words of Sammi Masrawa, an Israeli Arab injured in the blast who had watched a pregnant woman's legs get blown off, even while receiving his own glass shrapnel. Mr. Masrawa, who had himself been campaigning against the Wall, now fully supports it.  
There was no official response from the Israeli prime minister's office, but a spokesman said unofficially that the ICJ decision would find its place in the garbage can of history. The wall will continue to be built, because Israelis as a species prefer being alive in defiance of fatuous ICJ judgments, to being dead in obedience to them.  
Yet the Court has correctly, if accidentally, diagnosed the problem, or rather a limitation, of the Wall. By inevitably cutting off some Palestinians from others (as it also cuts off some Israelis from others), it leaves a fifth column of radicalized Palestinians still on the Israeli side of the barrier, especially within east Jerusalem. It may thus concentrate remaining terror incidents in that most politically sensitive place. The Wall is thus not an end, but a beginning.