Review 22.7
11 May - 5 Jun , 1997

The tone of the interview was telling. The BBC interviewer sounded positively bored as she asked her respondent his opinion of a legislative proposal on which he would be casting a vote.

On learning he supported the proposal, and hearing his rationalisation, she thanked him politely and concluded the interview, with the host of the news broadcast sounding similarly uninterested when reiterating the name of the interviewer, interviewee and subject.

The topic under discussion, however, was not in the realm of administrative trivia or relatively mundane matters such as taxation rates, public transport schedules or party politicking.

The interview was on, quite literally, a life and death matter, with a senior PLO official being questioned on his attitude to the decision by the Palestinian Authority to impose the death penalty on Palestinians who sell land to Israelis.

In most circumstances, an announcement by any group, let alone one with the power of the Palestinian Authority, of an intention to use capital punishment would result in outrage, with vocal protests by civil liberties and human rights organisations. Objectively, for journalists, it is a story which requires very little creativity to promote. Further, very few editors would call to task a reporter who left the path of reportage to include negative editorial comment on such an affront to liberal sensitivities. In this instance, the response was the very opposite. Very few of the legion of Australian foreign editors selected the story from the myriad of news services to which they have access.

Generally, those who did print the story did so in such a way as to imply acceptance of, verging on sympathy for, the rationalisation provided by the PLO.

The Australian, which led its Middle East reportage with the item, quoted Freih Abu Meddien saying "there has been a decision to ban it [the sale of land to Israelis] by putting anyone who sells even a centimetre on swift trial and to seek the death penalty against them." Meddien asserted that punishment applied to anyone "implicated directly or indirectly in the sale of land," which he justified on the grounds that "these people are traitors."

Two days later, the Canberra Times included reference to the decision in the tail end of an article titled "Israel, PLO work on mutual trust," reporting that "Mr Arafat's security forces had arrested at least one person in recent days under the order." Hobart's Mercury reported that the Palestinian Authority had "started enforcing" the law. A week after the Palestinian Authority's decision, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald carried reports of the new law, its first possible victim and the fact that the Palestinian Authority was pursuing Armenian Archbishop Ajamian, who had allegedly sold property on the Mount of Olives to a Jewish purchaser, and the following day The Australian reported Israeli claims that a 70-year old Palestinian citizen of Israel, Farid Bashiti, had been murdered by Yasser Arafat's bodyguard, Force 17, under the law.

None of the reports explained that the law, according to Abu Meddien, applied equally to Arab citizens of Israel as to those under the administration of the Palestinian Authority, and that the land referred to included every centimetre of Israel.

Also excluded were references to the PLO's justification for the decision on the basis that this was simply a reactivation of Jordanian law, which had allegedly resulted in capital punishment for more than 200 Jordanians who had sold land to Jewish purchasers.

The reportage was reminiscent of the coverage, during the years of the Intifada, to the on-going campaign of brutal murders of so-called "collaborators."

The "collaborators" ranged from individuals who advocated Jewish-Palestinian co-existence while the PLO was publicly advocating the destruction of Israel, to individuals against whom someone with a weapon had a vendetta.

The victims of summary executions by Intifada gangs included "anti-socials" such as drug addicts, relatives of Arab Israelis who maintained friendly relations with the enemy of the day and a lesser number of individuals who, for whatever reason, wanted the Intifada to end.

By the time this policy of murder began to receive general media coverage it had been raging for years, although damning information concerning the activities of the hit squads had been openly available to any journalist interested in more than the simple demonisation of Israel.

It is legitimate to question why the recent pronouncement of policy received such scant and uninformative coverage in the Australian media, despite its ready availability via news agencies and reporters based in Israel.

Was it a matter of an unpleasant and brutal policy of the Palestinian Authority being perceived as hurtful to the image of the Palestinian as victim of Israel?

Could it be that the story was seen as simply too mundane to rate a mention even as a single paragraph on international pages (compared to, eg. earth-shattering items such as the tally of security guards accompanying the Israeli PM to the movies, which gained far wider coverage)?

Both of these scenarios are disturbing, the former as it indicates the ability of editors to distort understanding by their choice of what to keep from their readers/audience, and the latter because it is grounded in a racist outlook which characterises Palestinians (and Arabs generally) as the "sort of people" who will execute one another for making a decision as to whom to sell their property, who will kidnap, torture and punish political opponents or otherwise behave in an anti-democratic manner .