<nettime> Fisk or no Fisk...

["Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>]

Fisk or no Fisk, mainstream ("big") American media are 
desperately biased in favor of Israel. The fact that Palestinian 
principal method of resisting the Israeli occupation - suicide 
bombers - is the same as the Al Qaeda's primary modus operandi 
against the US targets, perhaps does not help to change that. 
Obviously, Fisk beginning his lectures in the US with a quote from 
Osama Bin Laden, was an intention to provoke. For better or 
worse, I guess. Fisk, being a Lord, has a luxury to behave as an 
eccentric.

When I see Israeli tanks plowing through the rubble of Palestinian 
townships, it strikingly reminds me of Srebrenica. The differences 
being that there are no Dutch or French soldiers that Israelis need 
to strike deals with in order to shell Palestinians, that Serbs 
allowed passage to red cross marked ambulance vehicles and that 
Bosnian Muslims failed to produce a single suicide bomber. So, I 
am not at all surprised that Ashrawi sounds like Silajdzic did in 
1994.

And the reaction of American media is pretty much the same: then 
in 1994, they used to call Bosnia "an interesting country" - still 
seeing Milosevic as "a man of peace"....

Here is an excerpt from MSNBC (4/9/02, 10:40 pm):
anchor: Is U.S. the only hope today to mediate between Israelis 
and Palestinians?
Ashrawi: <a very long argument of a NO>
anchor: AN INTERESTING POINT.

The point is that the US is widely seen in the Arab world as the 
part of the problem not as the solution. And that comes as a 
consequence to the decades of the US uncritical support of Israel. 
Actually, Arafat, Sharon and Bush are all parts of the problem, and 
cannot bring peace to the region, yet they patronizingly exclude 
other voices in their respective societies from contributing to the 
solution. THAT is the real tragedy.

ivo

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