CSM column on Shatila
With all my travels I failed to post anything here before now about the column I had in the CSM November 29, under the title Revisiting the gritty symbol of Palestinian survival - Shatila.
Well, I wouldn't have given it that title since the whole way the story was written was so that the name of the camp wouldn't be disclosed till about one-third the way down.
Ever since the column came out, the near-rabid "watchdog" group CAMERA has been snapping at the heels of my editors at the CSM, focusing on where I described the terrible 1982 massacre in the camp as "Israeli-orchestrated".
The CSM is one of 14 "print media" outlets that CAMERA has on its watchlist, according to this page on their website. They also have a lengthy watchlist of individual journos, too. Shucks, I didn't make that one!
You can get a good idea of how this operation, CAMERA, works if you check their website out a bit. For example, on one page there they have a so-called Dictionary of Bias.
I suppose their intent in calling it that is to show their "activists" how to identify what CAMERA judges to be anti-Israeli bias? But what they recommend there, in terms of "acceptable" terminology, would embody a high degree of pro-Likud bias... So yes, you could indeed say it is a "Dictionary of Bias".
(See in particular what they have to say about the terms "occupied territories", "settlements", etc... )
Oh well. I think my editors are trying to fight the good fight. At least, I hope so.
Thanks for keeping the conscience of the world alive in relation to Shatila.
I con't scroll to the bottom of the Islam and Democracy discussion. My browser is Internet Explorer.
Note, though, that CAMERA includes "militant" among its recommended terms for "Palestinian who commits a violent act." The next time someone complains that "militant" is insufficiently tough on terrorism, maybe you should point them CAMERA's way.
On the underlying issue of whether Sabra and Shatila were "Israeli-orchestrated," wouldn't you say that this understates the role of the Phalangists who (1) actually carried out the massacres and (2) were no strangers to murder even before? Whatever your views on Israel's role, the fact that you don't mention the Phalangists at all in connection with the 1982 massacre is, I think, over the top.
I've sometimes noticed a tendency in you to regard the Palestinians as essentially passive participants in the conflict with Israel. Not that you ignore Palestinian violence - you frequently mention and condemn it - but you don't really seem to acknowledge their partial responsibility for perpetuating the conflict. I'm seeing something similar in your characterization of Shatila; i.e., that the Phalangists were mere agents of the Israelis without moral agency of their own. Israel was certainly guilty of culpable negligence and probably of acquiescence, but I don't think it's fair or accurate to leave the Phalangists out or to dismiss them as puppets without an agenda of their own.
Jonathan, hi. I think, on reflection, that you're probably right that I should have mentioned the primary, actual-actors' role that the Phalangists played in the S&S massacre. Yes, they were sentient agents who made their own decisions to participate in the plan.
What happened there would not, i think, have happened without both essential parts of the "agency" involved: the Phalangists ready and eager to engage in the massacre; and the Israeli military decisionmakers and lower-rank people who made and undertookthe plan to take the Phalangists to the camp and support their presence there as they continued (for around 40 hours, I think) the massacring.
So to mention one without the other was probably not optimal. There were, as always, constraints of space. In addition, when I'm writing in the media of a country that then as now continues to give extremely generous financial and other aid to Israel but no overt aid to the Phalangists, I feel a continuing need to help educate Americans about the nature of the government to which my tax dollars are so generously given. US citizens are far, far more morally implicated in the actions of the Israeli government than we are in the actions of either Phalangists or Palestinians.
Regarding the responsibility of various Israeli parties for what happened in S&S, I conclude from a close reading of not only the Kahan Comm report but also of many of the documents the Comm drew on that in the case of Sharon and and Eitan in particular their responsibility went far beyond "culpable negligence" and "acquiescence". They knew as well as anyone at the time what the behavior of the Phalangists was likely to be. Some other Israeli officers demurred at the idea of deploying the Phalangists into the camps, precisely because of their well-documented concerns over this behavior... But Sharon and Eitan over-rode all such concerns and insisted on deploying the Phalangists anyway... Most likely, in pursuit of Sharon's much longer-standing plan to use the IDF's presence in Lebanon to try to "empty" the country of all of its remaining Palestinian refugee population, through administrative means and by sowing terror among them. (Read Schiff and Ya'ari's book "Israel's Lebanon War" for many references to such a plan that predat september 1982.)
In any really adequate description of the S&S massacres I think it would also be very important to note the instinctive moral stand adopted by the 400,000-plus Israelis-- over 10 percent of the population!-- who came out onto the streets to protest almost immediately after the first news of the massacres started seeping out. What an inspiring moment. Without them, there'd have been no Kahan Commission.
The CSM is one of 14 "print media" outlets that CAMERA has on its watchlist, according to this page on their website.
And they have two whole items dealing with CSM, one just a correction about a location that CSM got wrong. Man, when will those "pressure groups" stop harrassing the independent media!?!?!
Free Speech! Censorship! Chilling effect! Blah, Blah, Blah.
Ridiculous.