American Media Vocabulary, Use of Passive Voice Exacerbate Israeli-Palestinian Imbalance

By Emadeddin J. Fraitekh

A new vocabulary has sprung up in the American media’s reporting of the current events in occupied Palestine that is threatening the media’s already suspect claim to “impartial” and “balanced” reporting. Whether the selective vocabulary is intentional or not, it is contributing to the American public’s distorted perception of the situation, the parties and nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The new vocabulary has only magnified the military, economic and political imbalance between the Palestinians and Israelis, heavily weighted in Israel’s favor.

Militarily, Israel is the undisputed superpower of the Middle East—with 200-plus nuclear warheads, 100-plus Jericho mid-range missiles, 220 surface-to-surface missiles, 945 surface-to-air missiles, 1,450 tanks and 4,300 artillery machines, 257 of the most technologically advanced jet fighters, 296 helicopters including Apaches, and a naval force that includes 73 ships.

Israel is also empowered by its annual $1.8 billion in U.S. military aid. As the current events proved, Israel has not shied away from using its tanks, helicopters and F-16 jet fighters against Palestinian cities, villages, and refugee camps.

The Palestinian arsenal, on the other hand, consists of M-16 and AK-47 assault rifles, hand grenades, homemade mortars, cocktail bombs, slingshots, and stones. In several interviews, Israeli soldiers described Palestinian fire power as “pathetic.”

Economically, Israel has an average gross domestic product (GDP) of $97 billion, an average per capita income of $16,468, and a highly developed infrastructure. In contrast, one-third of the Palestinians live in dismal poverty, earning less than $2 a day, with an overall real per capita income of approximately $1,390. The Palestinian unemployment rate currently is 48 percent. By besieging Palestinian cities and villages, Israel has unilaterally imposed de facto economic sanctions on the Palestinians, resulting in a loss of $12.7 million a day.

Politically, Israel’s upper hand with the American Congress can be measured in dollar amounts. Over the years, Congress has pledged an annual $3 billion in U.S. economic and military aid to Israel. That’s an average of $575 per year per Israeli citizen. (Compare that to Bush’s new tax rebate, which proposes only an additional $1,200 for each American taxpayer.) The Palestinians, who desperately need to rebuild their social, health, education and transportation infrastructure after 30-plus years of Israeli occupation, received less than $500 million over a 5-year period (1994-1998) in U.S. economic aid.

Unfortunately, the American media’s reporting is only exacerbating this imbalance.

When Israelis are killed, they have been “murdered.”

Note, for example, when Palestinian civilians are killed by Israeli soldiers, they are “caught in the crossfire.” When Israelis are killed, they have been “murdered.” “Bystanders” refers to Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers during “crossfire” with Palestinian “terrorists,” while the word “victims” is used exclusively to describe Israeli Jews killed by Palestinians. It may not be long before the word “Palestinian” once again becomes synonymous in the American mind with the word “terrorist.”

“Brutal, cowardly, and ghastly” are adjectives used to describe Palestinian attacks on Israelis, while the Israelis apparently act only with “self-restraint.” If helicopters and tanks are used against the Palestinian civilian population, the Israeli “military action” is sometimes called “excessive use of force.” When U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell urgently phoned Israel after it sent its troops and armor across the border, demolishing Palestinian homes and buildings, Israel was quick to respond that it was only a “limited engagement.” Rarely do we hear such actions referred to as Israeli “acts of aggression.”

Israel justifies any act of violence it commits as “self-defense.” Interestingly, Israeli officials often seem almost apologetic: “we were forced to act,” “we had to retaliate,” “we have no choice but to fire.” In contrast, Palestinian acts of violence are “deliberate,” “instigated,” “orchestrated.”

As if the very nature of the Israeli occupation is not provocative enough to the Palestinians, the word “provocation” is used to describe any Palestinian act of resistance. Yet, “retaliation” is used when Israeli soldiers or settlers attack Palestinian civilian areas. The areas where Palestinians live— “Palestinian positions and targets”—happen to be Palestinian buildings, homes, mosques, churches, schools, hospitals, and young activists slated for political assassination by Israel’s death squads.

The Most Dangerous Term

Perhaps most dangerous of all, however, is the term “economic and security measures.” That phrase is being used to describe Israeli actions committed against the general Palestinian population. These Israeli measures include besieging of Palestinian towns and villages while shelling them from the outskirts, uprooting of over 25,000 olive and other fruit trees, bulldozing 44,000 acres of Palestinian agricultural land, preventing food and medical supplies from reaching the besieged areas, facilitating the campaigns of terror carried out by Jewish settlers against the besieged villages, and the destruction of 44 water wells used to serve the Palestinian population.

In other parts of the world, such actions taken by a dominant regional power in an effort to control a civilian population would be called “aggression,” with the occupying power unhesitatingly referred to as the “aggressor.” In Kosovo, the Serbian effort to induce the civilian population to leave the land was rightfully called “ethnic cleansing,” and Serbian leaders were charged with war crimes.

Use of the passive voice also contributes to the subliminal vilification of the Palestinians. If a violent action is committed by Israelis, generally most American reporters use the passive voice in their reporting: “two Palestinians were killed, one of them a young boy.” Conversely, if the action is committed by Palestinians, these same reporters make a 180-degree turnaround and use an active voice accompanied by powerful emotional adjectives: “At 10 o’clock this morning, Palestinian snipers killed a Jewish child. The apple-cheeked, 10-month-old baby girl was shot to death in her stroller.”

More often than not, names and autobiographies are included in news stories of
Israeli “victims” of Palestinian violence. Pictures of family and friends often accompany the emotionally charged stories. The faces of grieving Israeli “loved ones” become etched in the American psyche.

If Americans cannot put a human face on the Palestinians, it is because the media too often portrays the Palestinians as faceless and nameless. In many news stories, the identity of Palestinians killed or wounded consists of no more than “bystander,” “terrorist,” or “stone-thrower.” More often than not, the dead Palestinians are referred to by numbers: “four Palestinians died today and tens more were injured in stone-throwing clashes.” Such statements dehumanize Palestinian individuals. Robbed of their names and faces, the Palestinians lose their human identity.

The American public is deprived of any personal knowledge or human identification with the Palestinian victims, including their ages, how they were killed, who killed them, and whether they were apple-cheeked or cherry-cheeked. The media’s approach to Palestinian lives has convinced many observers of American media that what is being called “objective coverage” of events is nothing less than political deception.

This form of American journalistic coverage has given credence to the Palestinian belief that the U.S. media share responsibility with the Israelis. The latter kills Palestinians with bullets, and the former by turning a blind eye or mimicking Israeli military broadcasts, whether due to fear of being labeled anti-Semitic, political and career pressure, or preconceptions and prejudices.

Whatever the reason, the U.S.media is willingly deceiving the American public with a predefined Israeli agenda at the expense of Palestinian lives. Since last Sept. 28 alone, 33 percent of the 710 Palestinians killed so far by Israeli forces have been children under the age of 16. This is in addition to 22,000 injured Palestinians, 1,900 of whom have been disabled for life.

For the U.S. media to retain its claim of “objectivity,” American journalists need to be more aggressive in their coverage of the events and more balanced in reporting the imbalances that keep the region in turmoil.

While the Palestinian image in the American media is growing more and more negative, hostile and violent, the root cause of Palestinian behavior—the Israeli occupation—has not changed. If anything, during the period from the signing of the Oslo accords in September 1993 to the current “outbreak of Palestinian violence” in September 2000, the Palestinians saw more of their homes demolished, their freedom of movement restricted, their lands confiscated, Israeli settlements built and their overall situation deteriorate.

The irony—literally a fatal one—is that Israel, with its clear military, economic, and political superiority as an occupying power, is not portrayed as the aggressor, or even as violent. Instead Israel is presented as the party “desiring peace.” Of course, there is nothing “peaceful” about a military occupation forcefully imposed on a civilian population against its will. Occupation and apartheid are historical realities that have been repeated around the globe. The Palestinian struggle is in no way, shape, or form different from the struggle of other nations for freedom and independence.

The Palestinian narrative of 53 years of dispossession inflicted on them as a result of Israel’s creation in 1948, and 34-plus years of brutal Israeli military occupation, deserves at least an honest coverage from the American media. Given the new administration’s emphasis on faith, perhaps the media will take to heart the words, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”

Emadeddin J. Fraitekh is the executive Web producer for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.