As a retired Research Associate at the “Harry S Truman, Institute for Research into the Advancement of Peace”, of The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, I would like to provide the following short comment on the CNN coverage of the current situation in the Middle East.

The pattern of repeated usage of certain key phrases by your commentators invokes an immediate negative emotional and cognitive response towards Israel and Israeli policy, particularly on international listeners who may have few or no other news sources.

For example “Violence Erupted”, or “Hostilities broke out…when Israeli troops started firing on Palestinians who had been throwing stones. ” (as reported by CNN on Oct 6 00). The first impact on the listener is that of “Violence”, or “Hostilities” followed a fraction of a second later by the impact of “Israelis” so that the two are immediately linked in the listeners’ mind as Israelis shooting at Palestinians. Only after that comes the information that the Palestinians initiated this by stone-throwing. With listeners continuing to follow the commentary, the mental backtracking necessary to place these events in the sequence of their prior occurrence while listening to new material, is likely to be absent or erroneous. Violence of itself does not simply ERUPT. A human action CAUSES it to happen, and this terminology permits the linkage of VIOLENCE/ISRAELIS, even though the initial violence in the given example was of Palestinian stone-throwing, in this case on Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall from the Temple Mount.

(This device has been used repeatedly by authors describing the outbreak of those Arab-Israeli wars initiated by Arabs, to de-emphasize the fact of Arab aggression.)

Another devise is the use of the word “Victims”. For example, on October 9, 2000, after Mr Barak’s demand for an end to violence or the threat of strong measures to contain it if it continued beyond 48 hours, CNN reported an exchange of fire which during this 48 hour lull was supposed according to the conditions imposed on the I.D.F., to not involve the use of live ammunition. CNN stated however that scraps of bullets and shrapnel removed from the Palestinian “victims” appeared to have come from live ammunition. Since this episode occurred in the context of stone-throwing, why were the Palestinians labelled as victims?. Why were they not labelled as INJURED or WOUNDED?. This has been a repeated misuse of the word “victim”, which is innately derogatory to the Israeli soldiers. “Injured”, or “Wounded”, is neutral with no condemnatory significance and no connotation of causality. It is inherently more accurate reporting. Yet “victims” is always used synonymously with the Palestinians. Since on many occasions we have clearly seen numerous Palestinians attacking Israeli posts with numerous simultaneously hurled stones, followed by shooting from the Israeli post, why is CNN not using a neutral terminology?

In the name of not making a future settlement more difficult, there has been on the part of the international bodies a concerted effort not to lay blame, and not to encourage this on the part of the antagonists. In general. This policy has been used, or has resulted in, staying away from clear-cut reporting of events and has been obfuscating matters. This in the long run is not conducive towards the encouragement of any honest peace process.

Over these techniques, CNN clearly has control.

A more dubious situation arises regarding the responsibility of CNN when Palestinians are being interviewed, as on Oct 5 or 6 00. At that time Hannan Ashrawi talked about Israeli soldiers “shooting innocent [Palestinian] civilians”. What is she talking about? Repeatedly we have seen rock-hurling mobs, mostly of young Palestinian boys, later followed by Israeli countermeasures. So these are not simply innocent civilians. Such statements should be publicly questioned and refuted; individual events which do indeed fulfill Mrs Ashrawi’s description should be specified as to time and place instead of presented as a blanket description of Israeli behavior.

I trust that you will seriously consider these remarks in terms of setting future policy.

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