Posted on 07/19/2002 4:09:52 PM PDT by knighthawk
If terrorism is the deliberate use of violence against civilians to advance political or religious aims, then Palestinian suicide-murderers and gunmen who kill and maim Israelis going about their lives are terrorists. But try telling that to the CBC.
CBC news journalists consistently cast perpetrators of savage attacks on Israeli civilians as Palestinian "militants," "gunmen," even "assailants." They carefully avoid the terrorist label. Does a principle underlie this practice? I put this question to David Bazay, the CBC ombudsman, recently.
In response, Bazay sent a memo detailing his view of "CBC policy and practice in describing events in the Middle East." (Give him and other CBC journalists credit: They will write you back.) Bazay states that to insist that the CBC should speak of Palestinian terrorism amounts to asking the public broadcaster "to take sides and to embrace the Israeli government's position and its definition of terrorism, which denies the legitimacy of Palestinian resistance."
In other words, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Elsewhere, however, Bazay himself sets forth clear criteria for defining an act as terrorist. It's just that CBC journalists balk at applying these when the perpetrators are Palestinians.
In a memo prepared for internal circulation at the CBC, Bazay distinguishes between the term "militant," which he sees as a "generic expression referring to all the Palestinians who are actively resisting Israeli occupation," and the term "terrorist," which he believes should be invoked only "after the fact" of an attack. At that point, "the public broadcaster's journalists are entitled to make conclusions on their own based on the facts." In short, nothing prevents CBC journalists from calling "a terror attack a terror attack."
Given these principles and Bazay's acceptance of the definition of terrorism provided above, one should have expected countless CBC stories about Palestinian terror over the past 18 months. Clearly the murders and maimings of teenagers at a disco, families in a pizzeria, Holocaust survivors at a Passover Seder or kids on their way to school are violent acts deliberately aimed at civilians. Why, then, do CBC journalists consistently fail to call Palestinian terrorists by their name? Bazay's policy statement unwittingly suggests an answer to this question by pointing to a morally repulsive pretense to journalistic evenhandedness that ultimately involves far more than semantics. To take an especially disturbing example, the ombudsman addresses the difficulty that Yasser Arafat himself has condemned, on at least one occasion, "the attacks carried out by terrorist groups against Israeli citizens." Faced with the dilemma that the Palestinian leader has described Palestinian "militants" and "gunmen" as terrorists, Bazay takes cover by noting that Arafat's statement "was quickly denounced by Hamas." Apparently it doesn't matter that the governments of the United States, the European Union, and yes, even Canada have declared Hamas a terrorist organization. Canada's public broadcaster will show due deference to this murderous group in order to avoid "taking sides." The upshot is that where Palestinians are concerned, no act will be described as terrorist unless those who commit it describe it as such.
Bazay concludes that given the contentiousness of the term terrorism, it is little wonder that "leading news organizations, the CBC included, tend to employ such shoot-to-kill words only with attribution to either side." But type "CBC Terrorism" into a search engine and CBC's inconsistency on this score quickly becomes apparent. The search yields scores and probably thousands of CBC reports which refer to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and "war on terrorism" being waged by U.S., Canadian and British forces against al-Qaeda. In fact, an entire CBC Web page entitled "Target: Terrorism" explores the U.S.-led coalition's battle against al-Qaeda and similar groups. There are no attributions (they don't write "Target: Terrorism, According to Donald Rumsfeld") nor, in the spirit of Bazay's ecumenism regarding Hamas, is there an additional title reflecting an al-Qaeda perspective ("Target: Islamic Martyrs Acting in Self-Defence Against American Occupiers of Muslim Holy Soil"). In America's war on terrorism the CBC "takes sides" (as well it should) while, to paraphrase Bazay, "denying the legitimacy of al-Qaeda resistance." What is more, CBC reporters regularly identify al-Qaeda members as terrorists "before the fact" of their participation in attacks on civilians.
Dick Cheney, the U.S. Vice-President, sees "a real possibility" that suicide-murderers will come to North America if they succeed in changing the Middle East political landscape. If barbaric attacks of the sort now so hideously familiar in Israel's streets and malls do occur here, CBC journalists will presumably call "a terror attack a terror attack." They should do the same when innocent civilians are slaughtered elsewhere.
ML/NJ
This is leftist anti-semetism.
Well then Bazay is morally bankrupt. Killing civilian passengers on a bus or in diners at a religious meal is not "resistence" it is a wanton act of premeditated mass murder.
What would Bazay say if Israel "resisted" Palestinian "resistence" with similar assaults? Say, every time an Israeli bus was blown up, Israel bombed a mosque full of people, or a Palestinian diner? Don't answer that, we already know what he'd say. But the he puts himself into a moral vaccuum that is both shameful and disgraceful.
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