26 Jun 2007 | Comment
I’ve got to admit I was thrilled when Alan told me he was thinking of putting in for the Gaza job. I’d left the Strip about a year earlier, and was missing it terribly. Alan is rightly described as a journalist’s journalist – and discovering he wanted to be a correspondent there was akin to discovering your younger sister just got the best and most inspiring teacher on staff at her school.
It’s not a job for everyone. Gaza is after all the world’s most crowded city state. Its situation is perennially desperate. It’s prone to intense bouts of violence. And psychologically, it can do very strange things to an outsider who settles there.
I had shell shock nightmares when I left. Of a vast archangel, trapped in my room, whose wing span stretched across the breadth of the room, so that its tips scratched the walls. I would lie asleep, imagining I was awake, with this terrifying creature lying in a downy cocoon next to the bed.
I was told it was a shell shock dream, because it was the kind of dream soldiers had after World War One. The kind of dream when you imagine something beautiful and good turned to evil. The kind of dream that I guess makes sense when you’ve seen children shot, buildings flattened by vacuum bombs, and every funeral comes with a cortege of masked men, and a hail of gunfire.
But it’s the seeing of these things that makes it so important that there are correspondents who work and live there.
When I first began working there, I was shocked that Palestinian journalists never seemed to contact the Israelis to get the other side of the story. I thought at first it was a wilful denial of balance, and poor journalism. I urged the younger journalists I was working with to call the Israel Defence Forces – so that when Hamas or Islamic Jihad faxed out a press release revealing a border skirmish, they could tell the other side of the story as well. But of course, as one of my much wiser colleagues explained, any Palestinian found to be calling Israel on their mobile phones left themselves open to charges of collaboration. And no job was worth the response that would bring.
Balance is a strange beast. As an outsider in Gaza, you can be immune to charges that you’ve become to close to one group or another. Of course, all kinds of things are probably happening that you’re unaware of. Friends, who you think are only that, in fact become sponsors, or at least their clan can form a protective shield about you. The mukhabarat (intelligence) will have a file on you, but their reach is limited, which means that you can operate successfully. You can exist on the fringes, and observe.
Of course, there’ll always be claims of bias, purely by virtue of your reporting from inside the Palestinian territories. But that’s no reason to stop. All kinds of things go on in Gaza which we need to know about. The only way that can happen is if journalists, both Palestinian and foreign, are able to work there.
What’s happened to Alan Johnston is a tragedy. An appalling abuse against a good man, who does his job with grace, humility and courage. He and his family need our support.
But the last thing I’d imagine he would want is for us to let the situation in Gaza drift from our front pages, and from our television screens. Now more than ever is the time to support those who continue to work there, and recognise the vital importance of the work they do.
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19 Jun 2007 | Comment
Lord knows, I’ve had my differences with Ken Livingstone, especially when it comes to the politics of the Middle East – but there’s one issue he’s got absolutely right. Last week, to the enormous surprise of much of London’s Jewish community, the mayor agreed with them – and came out against an academic boycott of Israel.
Unfortunately, his intervention came too late. The very next day, Britain’s University and College Union voted to promote the call for a boycott. Now, I was raised to be respectful of teachers and positively reverential towards academics. Which is why it pains me to say that this decision is almost laughably stupid. But it is. If a student had come up with it, he would find it daubed with a thick red line, from top to bottom.
First, it lacks all logical consistency. Let’s say you accept, as I do, that Israel is wrong to be occupying the territories it won in the Six Day war, whose 40th anniversary is being marked this week. Let’s say that that is your reason for boycotting Israel. Then why no boycott of China for its occupation of Tibet? Or of Russia for its brutal war against the Chechens? Or of Sudan, for its killing of hundreds of thousands in Darfur, a murderous persecution described by the US as genocide?
If it’s the ill-treatment of Palestinians in particular that concerns you, then why no boycott of Lebanon, whose army continues to pound the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared, killing civilians daily? True, the Lebanese government is not a military occupier. But if occupation is the crime that warrants international ostracism, then why no boycott of American universities? After all, the US is occupying Iraq and Afghanistan. So, for that matter, is Britain. Why do the good men and women of UCU not speak out, by boycotting, say, Oxford, Cambridge and London universities? Why do they not boycott themselves?
Maybe academic freedom is their chief concern. That would make sense, given that they’re academics. But if that was the issue, there would surely be boycotts of Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iran and Saudi Arabia, to name just a few places where intellectual freedom remains a fond dream. (The awkward truth is that the freest place in the Middle East for an Arab scholar is Israel.) Yet the UCU sees no “moral implications,” to use the language of last week’s resolution, in institutional ties with Damascus, Cairo or Tehran. Only Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
For some reason, the activists pushing for this move believe Israelis should be placed in a unique category of untouchability. Never mind the 655,000 the US and Britain have, on one estimate, killed in Iraq. Never mind the two million displaced in Darfur. Never mind the closed, repressive societies of the Middle East. The Israelis are a people apart, one that must be shunned.
But let’s be charitable and forgive the boycotters their inconsistency. Surely any tactic, even an inconsistent one, is forgivable if it does some good. This, though, is where the combined geniuses of the UCU have really blundered. For a boycott will be hugely counter-productive.
For one thing, Israeli academics are disproportionately represented in Israel’s “peace camp.” The UCU will be boycotting the very people who have done most to draw the Israeli public’s attention to the folly of the occupation, to the very people working to bring an end to this desperate conflict. By their actions, the UCU will embolden the Israeli right who will be able to say, ‘Look, the world hates and isolates us: this is exactly why we have to be militarily strong.’
The second error is more subtle. One of the few things that might make Israel change course would be a shift in diaspora Jewish opinion: those campaigning for Palestinian rights and an end to the occupation need to win over Jewish allies. Yet no tactic is more likely to alienate Jews than a boycott. That’s because the very word has deep and painful resonances for Jews: a boycott of Jewish business was one of the Nazis’ opening moves. No one is equating the current plan with that. But of all the tactics to have chosen, a boycott is the very dumbest one.
Advocates say there’s nothing to worry about, this will be a boycott of institutions, not individuals – a necessary move because no Israeli institution has ever taken a stand against the occupation. This, too, is numb-skulled. When do academic institutions ever take a collective stand against anything? Did Imperial College declare itself against the Iraq war? What was the British Museum’s view of UK policy in Northern Ireland? Of course there was no such thing. Institutions of learning don’t take a stand; individuals do.
Which is why it will be individuals who are ostracised by this action. When you boycott the Hebrew University, you’re not boycotting bricks and mortar but the men and women who teach there. The “institutional” talk is just a ruse designed to make this boycott more palatable. It will still end in the shunning of individuals.
And why? Simply because they are citizens of the wrong country, born with the wrong nationality. In 2003 the Linguistic Society of America declared itself against blacklisting scholars simply because of the actions of their governments. “Such boycotts violate the principle of free scientific interaction and cooperation, and they constitute arbitrary and selective applications of collective punishment.” They also amount to a pretty crass form or discrimination: you can’t come to this conference, because you’ve got the wrong colour passport.
Oh, but none of these arguments stopped the boycott of South Africa, say the pro-blacklisters. Except these situations are completely different. In South Africa, the majority of the people were denied a vote in the state in which they lived. Israelis and Palestinians are, by contrast, two peoples locked in a national conflict which will be resolved only when each has its own, secure state.
Ken Livingstone is right: to launch a boycott of Israel now would hurt, not help the search for the peace that might end this Middle East tragedy. And that, when all the posturing is put to one side, is all that should matter.
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17 May 2007 | Comment
It is unlikely that the contents of the memo leaked by David Keogh and Leo O’Connor, for which the two men were jailed last week, will ever be disclosed. The British government has a long tradition of covering up its Middle East embarrassments. O’Connor’s barrister remarked during the trial that the war in Iraq was the most controversial foreign affairs involvement of this country since Suez, but more than 50 years since Anthony Eden invaded Egypt, there are still documents which Whitehall refuses to release.
While working last year on a BBC series about the Suez crisis, I applied to the Cabinet Office under the Freedom of Information Act for the release of all withheld documents. It was a bit of a fishing expedition (just the sort of journalistic abuse of FoI that Lord Falconer despises) but well worth doing. I hoped that the Cabinet Office might consider the 50th anniversary of Suez an important enough occasion for putting all documents in the public domain. Some documents were released, after a six-month wait, but nothing revelatory. I was also told that a number of documents would not be disclosed as they related to “security matters” or would “prejudice” international relations.
“We acknowledge that release of information relating to the Suez crisis may add to the understanding and knowledge of this subject,” wrote the Cabinet Office’s Histories, Openness and Records Unit. “However, in favour of withholding this information we consider that, in this case, the effective conduct of the UK’s international relations, and its ability to protect and promote its interests abroad, would be compromised if we released the information … it is strongly against the public interest to damage our international relations in this way.” It appears the same mixture of imperious and Alice-in-Wonderland logic which led the judge to censor reporting of the trial last week is also at work in the Cabinet Office.
It took years before the full truth of Suez emerged, and decades before the document revealing the secret agreement between France, Israel and Britain to invade Egypt was disclosed – and that was only because the Israelis still had a copy. But it seems remarkable that there could be documents whose content is so inflammatory that it could still damage international relations. Suez, clearly, cannot yet be consigned to history. It’s still live – at least as long as Britain meddles in the Middle East.
The irony is that Anthony Eden did not just discuss the possibility of bombing an Arab broadcaster – as President Bush was once reported to have contemplated – he actually did it. Eden was obsessed with the influence of the Voice of the Arabs, the most popular radio station at the time in the Arab world. It transmitted from Cairo and Eden believed that it was damaging British interests in the Middle East. The one and only time he met President Nasser, he asked him to tone down the propaganda.
As Britain prepared to invade Egypt in 1956, the Voice of the Arabs was one of Eden’s first targets. Planners hesitated when they believed it would mean bombing the heart of Cairo and killing civilians. But when they realised that the transmitters were outside the city, they went ahead. They didn’t, however, do a very efficient job: the Voice of the Arabs was up and running again within days. Eden’s plan was to broadcast his own propaganda in Arabic from Cyprus. He requisitioned another Arab radio station and a number of inexperienced Foreign Office Arabists were flown in to man the station – renamed the Voice of Britain – but it was not a success.
History repeats itself, tragic and farcical both times around. Little is learned except that embarrassing and illegal activity must be kept out of the public domain, apparently for all time.
1 May 2007 | Comment, News
The BBC have fought me from ditch to ditch using a top class legal team and every litigation tactic available. This is an organisation of enormous repute devoted to providing impartial news coverage and comment to Britain and indeed the world. How strange that it is fighting so vigorously to keep its secrets to itself. What is going on?
The simplest answer is that given by David Davies MP, who said the BBC was guilty of ‘shocking hypocrisy’. It uses the Freedom of Information Act widely in pursuit of its own journalism but is unwilling to accept its own responsibility, as a public body paid for by the public, to publish material critical of its own standards of impartiality. In fact, it’s a bit more complicated than that and the complications expose some important issues about the BBC and about public policy on freedom of expression more generally.
First, I should explain why I have been willing to fight this case personally for the last two years, representing myself before the Information Commissioner, the Information Tribunal and the High Court. Although I am a lawyer, my field is not public law and I do not present cases in court. So I have been through a pretty steep learning curve. Why have I taken this on and what do I seek to achieve?
The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is of great concern to me. I am Jewish, and although my Jewish background has been only of peripheral significance during most of my life, I have strong feelings that the world owes the Jewish people the right to live in their own country in peace and security. But for the whole 50 years of its existence Israel has been threatened with annihilation by its enemies. Of course, the Palestinians must have their state too. It is tragic that the obvious two-state solution has been so hard to achieve.
Public opinion in the world outside the US has shifted strongly against Israel since 2000. Many people say that this is the consequence of Israel’s actions. Israel’s defenders say it has not received a fair hearing in the media. They are especially worried by the BBC’s coverage. The BBC is trusted throughout the world as an institution devoted to the highest standards of impartiality and so BBC coverage adverse to Israel is perceived as particularly threatening.
And I mean physically threatening. Threatening to Israelis certainly, but also to European Jews who have experienced a much increased level of anti-semitism over recent years. Anyone going to a synagogue in the UK for the first time is shocked by the level of physical security deemed necessary. A recent Parliamentary report on anti-semitism in the UK called on media organisations to reflect on their responsibilities.
Whatever your views on Israel and on the BBC’s coverage of the conflict, everyone must surely agree that it really does matter whether that coverage has or has not been impartial. But sadly the BBC has so far responded to criticism of its impartiality on this subject in a way which has been more political than professional. First it reacted simply by defending its journalists in general terms without descending into the detail. Three serious reports by BBC Watch submitted in 2002-3 went largely unanswered. Finally, it did the right thing and brought in a senior TV news editor, Malcolm Balen, to conduct a serious review. The BBC’s top Journalism Board considered his report in 2004-5 and took a number of important decisions in response to his critique. But the BBC has repeatedly refused to publish Mr Balen’s report – although it had publicised his appointment.
Instead of publishing the Balen report, the BBC Governors appointed a group of the great and good to do a quick report, which was published, on three months’ current coverage during a relatively uneventful period in the Middle East – they were not asked to go back to the critical period of 2000-4. They asked for the Balen report and eventually the BBC reluctantly gave it to them but they were forbidden to tell the public about it.
It is hardly surprising that all this has created mistrust and cynicism about the BBC’s motives. That is what secrecy does. The BBC of all institutions really should know better.
The BBC’s ideological, intellectual and legal defence of its position is full of irony. All turns on the freedom to impart and receive ideas guaranteed by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The public policy purposes of Article 10 are the same as those of the Freedom of Information Act. The BBC says these same public policy purposes support the exception on which they rely in declining to release the Balen report. This exception is for information held for the purposes of journalism. The BBC says this covers not just primary information collected by journalists and unpublished editorial material but reviews of broadcast output considered by those charged with maintaining the BBC’s standards of impartiality. The BBC says that this is necessary in order to protect BBC journalists’ freedom of expression.
But it cannot possibly be right that the BBC’s obligation to ensure impartial coverage must be policed only in secret for fear of prejudicing the BBC’s own editorial independence. If that was right we should have no public reports at all on the subject – maybe we shouldn’t even be talking about it. It would mean that there is a fundamental contradiction between the public’s right to know what the BBC, as a public body, is doing and the BBC’s editorial independence. Maybe the whole idea of a public sector broadcaster is a contradiction. It gives ammunition to those who think the BBC is an arrogant, unaccountable bureaucracy which cannot reform itself and should be abolished.
So far the Information Commissioner, the Information Tribunal and the High Court have all looked at this case. The Commissioner was against me – but he did not know that the Balen report had gone up to the Journalism Board and may have thought it was primarily a tool to help practising journalists. The Tribunal was in my favour. But now the High Court has decided on a literal interpretation of the statute that I did not have a right of appeal to the Tribunal after all – ‘most odd’ said the Judge. So the matter goes back to the Commissioner. In the meantime I have asked the new chairman of the new BBC Trust, Sir Michael Lyons, to intervene.
This issue is important for the health and the reputation of the BBC in the long run and indeed for the global reputation of Britain as the land of ‘fair play’. Certainly I have received a fair amount of internet and email support from those who see the whole thing as the work of perfidious Albion or of engrained European anti-semitism. Not that it is easy to wholly discount some underlying element of this. The reactions of a couple of my colleagues were interesting. One said knowingly – ‘You’ll never get it you know!’ Another – ‘I hope this doesn’t mean you’re turning into a Zionist nutter!’
I live in hope that this saga will prove to be a bit of a British muddle which will finally get sorted out in a suitably British way rather than some Kafkaesque conspiracy of which I, and freedom of information, are victims.
