Dear Mr. Hoyt,
In her valedictory from the Middle East, Deborah Sontag wrote “Quest for Mideast Peace: How and Why it failed.” In it she tells a story:
But Palestinians drove away from that dinner with something else on their minds — Mr. Sharon’s coming visit to what Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary and Jews know as the Temple Mount. Mr. Arafat said in an interview that he huddled on the balcony with Mr. Barak and implored him to block Mr. Sharon’s plans. But Mr. Barak’s government perceived the planned visit by Mr. Sharon, then the opposition leader, as solely an internal Israeli political matter, specifically as an attempt to divert attention from the expected return to political life by a right-wing rival — Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister. On the heels of very intricate grappling at Camp David over the future status of the Old City’s holy sites, Mr. Sharon’s heavily guarded visit to the plaza outside Al Aksa Mosque to demonstrate Jewish sovereignty over the Temple Mount set off angry Palestinian demonstrations. The Israelis used lethal force to put them down. The cycle of violence started, escalated, mutated and built to a peak between mid-May and June 1 with the Israeli use of F-16 fighter jets in Nablus and the terrorist bombing outside a Tel Aviv disco.
Let’s go back to September 27, 2000 and see another report also written by Sontag, Arafat’s Visit to Barak’s Place Broke the Ice, Both Sides Say:
It was just a little suburban dinner party, nothing fancy. The host and his guest of honor cracked jokes. They strolled in the garden for an intimate chat. And then the host kissed his guest goodbye, walked him to a waiting Israeli military helicopter and waved as the guest, wearing his trademark kaffiyeh, flew back to Gaza City. A senior adviser to Yasir Arafat said the late-night supper, at Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s private home in Kochav Yair on Monday, was the single best meeting ever between the Palestinian and Israeli leaders.
Does that sound like Arafat “implored” Barak to prevent Ariel Sharon’s walk on the Temple Mount? Or put differently, if Arafat had expressed such a concern and Barak had ignored it, would Arafat have described the meeting as the “best” one he ever had with Barak?
Of course not. The later account was Arafat’s revisionism. Sontag reported it uncritically. Sharon’s walk on the Temple Mount wasn’t a concern. In retrospect it became an alibi for Arafat. The so-called “Aqsa intifada” wasn’t a spontaneous response to the Sharon walk, but an organized war (or mini-war) against Israel organized by Arafat. His historical revisionism, abetted by the New York Times reporter was his way of evading the blame for his responsibility.
Do you remember Tuvia Grossman? Tuvia Grossman was a young man who at the beginning of the “Aqsa intifada” was set upon by an Arab mob and beaten. Yet when his picture appeared on the front page of the Times, he was identified as a Palestinian. The picture seemed to show a young man who had just been beaten by an Israeli policeman. In fact, it was Tuvia Grossman and the policeman had been chasing off his attackers. Once one of Grossman’s relatives recognized him and informed media outlets a correction was made. Still the initial impression of most news organization led to an erroneous caption. The organization HonestReporting was founded in response to this journalistic error.
In both these cases, a narrative governed the reporting of the Times. The narrative in short was: the violence of the “Aqsa intifada” started in response to Ariel Sharon’s walk on the Temple Mount and Israel responded with disproportionate an lethal force.
There was another event that marked the early days of the violence. That was the killing of Mohammed al-Dura by Israeli troops. Al-Dura’s death became a focal point of much of the violence and tension. Or as Ms. Sontag’s husband, William Orme reported, he became A Young Symbol of Mideast Violence.
A few hours later Muhammad was dead, shot in the stomach as he crouched behind his father on the sidelines of an intensifying battle between Israeli and Palestinian security forces. The father, shouting that his boy had been killed, was also hit, taking four bullets in a volley that he later said had come from Israeli soldiers. A local ambulance driver, Bassam al-Bilbeisi, who was trying to come to the aid of the wounded father and son, was also killed by the gunfire. The entire horrific scene was filmed at close rage by a France 2 television crew.
Shown repeatedly on the Saturday evening news programs in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Israel, and throughout the Middle East, the shooting turned the 12-year-old boy into a potent new symbol of what angry Palestinians contend is their continued victimization by Israeli occupiers.
Though 11 other Palestinians were killed in the day’s fighting — most of them while taking part in the rock-hurling clashes with Israeli troops — the enduring image of the violence was a terrified Muhammad al-Durrah trapped by Israeli gunfire and then slumping lifeless into his father’s lap.
But now the narrative of Mohammed al-Dura has been called into question. A media watchdog named Phillipe Karsenty alleged that the whole scene was staged and didn’t happen. He was sued by the station that taped the scene and first reported the shooting, France 2. Karsenty was found to have libeled France 2 and its reporter Charles Enderlein. But yesterday, Karsenty’s appeal was accepted and a Paris court threw out the judgment against him.
There’s a lot to this case, not just its implications to the Middle East. For one thing, Karsenty showed during his appeal that France 2 had lied in court. There is plenty in this case that is newsworthy. And yet the New York Times has not seen fit to report on it except in its blog, even though the paper’s current Paris correspondent just completed his tour in the Middle East.
The Times’s oversight is troubling. As I’ve shown above the Times accepted a narrative that shaped a lot of its reporting at the time. One piece of that narrative was exposed quickly. In another case a Times reporter used a highly suspect statement of an interested party to support the narrative. Now another part of the narrative has been shown to be suspect. At least in the name of accuracy one would hope that the Times would look into the case and what it implies.
In addition to the immediate issue of the origins of the “Aqsa intifada“, the case calls into question the widespread use of local stringers who may be more interested in promoting an agenda than in accuracy. The Times’s lack of curiosity in this case reflects poorly on its commitment to getting the story correct.
Sincerely,
David Gerstman
ps I have posted this on my blog. If I receive a substantive response, I will post it unedited.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
