Friday, July 6, 2012

Why publicize what Arabs say in Arabic?


Why publicize what Arabs say in Arabic?


By DAVID BEDEIN

We witnessed generation of mellifluous words of peace that emanated from nascent Palestinian Authority in foreign languages.

More than 40 years ago, my first boss in Israel, Rabbi Dr. Jack Cohen, head of Hillel in Jerusalem, who died recently at 93, was the leading pioneer of Jewish-Arab dialogue in Jerusalem.


I would often ask Jack how he could trust what the Arabs were saying. Jack’s response was that his credo was that “the test of interfaith dialogue is to discern what the other side is telling their own people in their own language.” The same principle should apply to the media coverage of Middle East negotiations.


We have witnessed a generation of mellifluous words of peace that have emanated from the nascent Palestinian Authority in foreign languages. Isn’t it time for newspaper readers and TV watchers across the globe to hear what the PA conveys in Arabic to its own people? After all, with the inception of the Oslo process, if a few of us had not not independently taped and translated Yasser Arafat’s harangues in Arabic, would people know today that there is a consistent dissonance between the message of peace conveyed by the PA in English and the daily warlike message communicated by the PA in the Arabic language? Yet the mainstream media seems to have made it a matter of policy to not do so.


A case in point: At the annual American Jewish Press Association (AJPA) Conference, held recently in Philadelphia, Chemi Shalev, newly appointed US correspondent for the English language edition of Haaretz, provided an insightful account of the state of Israeli politics and Middle East negotiations today.


After hearing Shalev’s news analysis, our news agency posed a question to Shalev: “Why does Haaretz not report what the Palestinian Authority communicates to their people in their language, on the PBC TV, the PBC radio, Palestinian Authority newspapers and [in] the Palestinian Authority schools”? AFTER ALL, over the past few weeks, PBC TV has conducted daily features that promote the armed struggle to liberate all of Palestine, praise for those who martyr themselves while murdering Jews, transforming Israeli cities into Arab cities, and worse.


And then there are the new schoolbooks of the PA, which indoctrinate the next generation to liberate all of Palestine by the force of arms, while the theme of PA education remains the “right of return” to Arab villages from 1948 within the Green Line which no longer exist.


Fifteen years ago, access to PBC TV and to PA schoolbooks was difficult. Our agency would dispatch messengers to the heart of Ramallah or Gaza to buy DVDs of PBC telecasts or purchase new PA schoolbooks and then commission translations of both.


Today, all a journalist has to do to view PBC TV is to peruse the PMW or MEMRI web sites, or do what our agency did: pay a technician 125 shekels to adjust your TV.


TODAY, ALL you have to do to see the new PA schoolbooks is to buy the ones that are sold on Salah A Din Street in Jerusalem.


And the textbooks can now be seen online.


Shalev’s candid response to this query was: “We do not have room to cover all of that.”


The follow-up question was simpler: In the context of articles that Haaretz runs on Middle East negotiations, why not mention what PA spokespeople say that day to their media and in their own language? Shalev: “As an editor, I would recommend not covering that.”


In other words, a respected senior editor of a major Israeli newspaper admitted to a gathering of journalists that as a matter of policy, Haaretz will not report the consistent message that the PA conveys in Arabic.


And it’s not only Haaretz. You will not find a single Israeli media outlet, across the political and religious spectrum, that will provide coverage of what the PA communicates to the Arabs in the Arabic language.


The foreign press who cover Israel also adhere to this no-look/ no-report policy.


At the AJPA conference, our agency asked the JTA, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, why it does not report what the PA conveys in Arabic. JTA has not responded to this question, which our agency has been posing to JTA for more than a decade, without any answer.


All this begs the question; Do newspaper readers and TV watchers not deserve to know what the PA conveys in Arabic, at a time when reports of renewed Middle East negotiations continue to dominate the news? 


http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=276272

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