The contrast between the perspectives of Arab media and Western media is disproportionate, writes Gamal Nkrumah They may never view it as injustice. For American viewers Israel can do no wrong. Arabs, on the other hand are invariably portrayed as the evil ones. "Hizbullah rockets are meant to kill and maim," CNSNews.Com naively declared -- prompting the question, what are rockets meant to do? They're not exactly fireworks, are they? Moreover, the brutish Israeli aggression in Lebanon was conjured up as an unmitigated disaster. A typical CNN or FoxNews headline highlights the Israelis as victims of Arab aggression and plays down Israeli heavy-handedness and barbaric aggression in Lebanon. "A 15-year-old girl was killed, several people were hurt and a man died of a heart attack as Hizbullah rockets rained down on northern Israel," ran a characteristic CNN headline on Tuesday. On the same day, Israel had stepped up its aerial bombardment of Lebanon -- a fact that was conveniently overlooked. The aim, obviously, is to focus on the Arab threat as embodied in the demonisation of Hizbullah, and to pretend that Israel is the vulnerable party. It is difficult to conceal images of wanton destruction in Lebanon and the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the country pounded daily by Israel. Pinned to this execrable riposte, the Lebanese were supposed to bear the cross stoically. A series of reports so perfidious set the tone of the American media coverage of the Israeli aggression in Lebanon. CNN, in particular, has been so biased in favour of Israel that the viewer could not tell who exactly was responsible for the killing of four United Nations observers in southern Lebanon from the misleading headline "UN observers die in air raid" -- the fact that it was an Israeli air raid was conveniently omitted. The BBC was more honest in its reportage of the incident. "Israeli observers are killed in an Israeli air strike in southern Lebanon". At least you know who the culprit was. Even more disturbing is the manner in which reports are edited and changed. According to blogger Tom Murphy, Associated Press reporter Joseph Panossian changed his story three times in a matter of less than six hours on 12 July. The change might appear insignificant to the gullible, but they actually have great significance because the "where" is the most important aspect of the story. He first explained that the war started when Hizbullah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon. An hour later the venue of the crime was changed to "along the Lebanese border". Later in the day the venue was changed yet again: Hizbullah militants crossed into Israel to kidnap the Israeli soldiers. Crossing the border is a serious breach of international law, of course. There is also a negative ring to the headlines when it comes to Arabs or even Arab- Americans. "Arab-American group sues US for slow Lebanon evacuation," read a FoxNews headline on Tuesday. "Lebanon's Parliament Speaker rejects Rice proposal," read another. The impression conveyed is of an uncooperative and problem-creating Arab world. When referring to Arabs, terms like "terrorism" are abundantly used, while terms with a positive connotation like "resistance fighters" are eschewed. The politics of terminology is at play. It is as if the very land where 400 Lebanese died as a direct result of Israel's savage punitive strikes is stained by fanaticism and religious hatred. "Israeli ground troops hunting Hizbullah," ran an ABC News headline. Israel is always portrayed in a positive light both as valiant victor or valorous victim. "Israel allows relief flights to Beirut," trumpeted the New York Times. Thank God, indeed, for small mercies. "The bias in the American media stems from this incomprehensible matter-of-fact acceptance of a religious Jewish state in the region, as if there was nothing wrong about that," Ramez Maluf, head of the media department at the Lebanese American University, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "Alleged champions of the separation of church and state, the West and particularly the US, fail to recognise the irony of their support for a nation whose very constitution is the Torah," he explained. Israel, like Britain, doesn't have a written constitution. However, Maluf was speaking figuratively. Israel is, after all, the only state in the world where nationality and citizenship are conferred by an individual's religion. Jews anywhere have automatic rights to Israeli citizenship. In a defiant last bark, the Israeli authorities clamped down on Arab journalists. One of the first acts of curtailing media freedom was the detention of the Pan-Arab satellite television channel Al-Jazeera's reporters Ilias Karam and Walid Al-Imary in northern Israel. "The Arab media is less biased, because on the whole it treats the war on Lebanon from a more secular perspective," Maluf added. Not surprisingly, Arab pundits all agree that Israel must account to God for the bloodshed. But even Western news agencies that are seen as sympathetic to the Arab perspective are subjected to a point-by-point rebuttal. The BBC came under intense fire because of its ostensibly sympathetic coverage of the cause of Hizbullah. "If you watched yesterday's Andrew Marr programme on BBC1, you'd have seen a British landmark. To judge from its contents, the programme was the first to have been edited by the leader of Hizbullah, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah," wrote Stephen Pollard in The Times. In his column entitled "The BBC marred by Hizbullah" Pollard wonders why "We [presumably the British taxpayers] are forced to pay for such propaganda." Pollard's views are characteristic of many commentators in the British and American media. He cannot see why Israel is being vilified for its gross atrocities and mass destruction in Lebanon. In his own words, "as if the Israelis are on some kind of willful destruction spree, dropping bombs for the sheer hell of it, rather than taking action to destroy Hizbullah's capacity to murder any more Israelis". One is left to wonder whether the killing of Lebanese civilians is not also considered murder.
