Role of Palestinian Politics In Israel
Submitted To: Prof. A.K. Pasha
Submitted By: Ayyoob Thayyil Karuvadi
Dated: 25-11-08
Centre for West Asian and African Studies
School of International Studies
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi- 67
The role of Arab politics in Israel ever since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 was not a subject of major academic attention and this was not considered to be a major factor in any of the negotiations held to solve the Arab Israeli conflict until recently. In this paper I propose to study the status of the Arabs in Israel in terms of their political role. Here a number of important questions arise including the nature of the state of Israel, its treatment of Arab minorities and the political space available to the people. In the course of this study I would place the formation of Arab identity in a historical context and would analyze relation of the State with the Arab population and their relation with the State. For a proper understanding of this question one has to see the historical background that has led to the minority status of the Arab in Israel. Constitutional rights and their actual enjoyment of the rights enshrined in the Basic Law would also come to the discussion.
Background
The question of ‘role of Palestinian in Israeli politics’ has attracted the interest of the political analysts and academicians since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and its entry into the UN was one of the much debated topics in both academic and decision making level. The very creation of the state of the Israel in Palestine has virtually made the indigenous Arabs, refugees in their own native land where they lived for generations. When the state was formally established the Jewish leaders were at lose as they were not able to take any decision regarding the Arab population who remained inside the Jewish State as they were accustomed to thinking only in terms of the Jewish population. However, the very nature of the state of Israel, as a homeland for the Jews and hence the existential threat that the indigenous non Jewish people posed made the issue all the more complicated. But the new state was compelled to take the issue of the Palestinians seriously by the international community and its recognition and global legitimacy would be dependent on its treatment of the Arabs inside its territory. This led to granting all political rights to the Arabs. Despite these rights on paper the people were virtually made politically impotent due to the very nature of the state of Israel as a Jewish State and all the people were not Jews. However, by the passage of time the Arab population have developed their own political parties and tried their level best to express their grievances and tried to exert maximum pressure possible. But demographic structure and the hostile relation between the two made the relation complicated and any kind of productive engagement was absent throughout these decades. Though the Jews were opposed to any form of accommodation of the Arabs as the very existence of the Jewish state required the negation of whatever is Arabic they albeit grudgingly allowed them to participate in their electoral activities from 1949 itself when the first election took place.
To develop a clear-cut understanding of the political engagement of the Arabs in the political system that is hostile to them one has to look how they were treated in the newly formed nation. The question of citizenship and equal right is at the core of any meaningful political engagement in any given society. Here a little more background would be in place. Ever since the establishment of the Zionist movement in 1880s its leaders were consistently looking for the creation of a homeland for the Jews who were subjected to the prosecution of the Europeans for centuries for a variety of reasons.1 However, the Belfour declaration of 1917 and its incorporation to the League of Nations goals later gave the Zionist leaders the hope that their long cherished dreams are coming true. But the global powers that time didn’t address properly the question of the indigenous Arab people in the proposed ‘homeland’ for the Jews. Systematic expulsion of the majority Arabs and inviting Jews from all over the world to come and settle in Palestine was one of the major action plans of the Jewish lobby. This was facilitated by the British government who was given the mandate in this region following the defeat and disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in the World War I. The final decade of the British rule in Palestine witnessed further decline in Palestine fortune2. the effort of the Zionists culminated in the formation of the State of Israel in 1948 and the expulsion of the majority of the Arabs and reducing their presence to a minority. During the mandate period through different organizations including the Jewish Agency and Jewish National Fund the Zionists managed to develop a full-fledged system of governance. But the question of Palestine in the Promised Land has never come to their consideration until the question of coexistence with the Arabs became a reality after the establishment of Israel.
Early engagement in political activities
Due to a number of reasons the Arabs who were reduced to a minority in the newly formed Jewish state were not organized to form any meaningful political organization. Five major reasons are cited for their inability of political organization in any significant degree. (1) The shock of turning from a majority into a minority, dispersed in several separate regions; (2) the absence of an experienced political leadership (which found itself outside the frontiers of the new state); (3) unfamiliarity with Hebrew as well as with the new rules of the political game on a country-wide scale; (4) The Military Administration; (5) that most Jewish parties and organizations have not encouraged Arabs to join their ranks.3 This was against the rapid development in the political arena among the Jews. But the second generation emerged with a deep understanding of their predicament to find that without political mobilization they could not assert their own identity that was formed by a number of local and regional developments. The lifting of the Military Administration in 1966 was a major turning point in the political history of the Israeli Arabs. A number of developments in the country as well as in the region has directed and dictated the course of their political activities.
During the most difficult period of the Arabs life in Israel, since 1948 to 1966, the Arabs were compelled to join some of the political parties with a Zionist thrust against their own will. This phase was one of the disastrous one as the political leadership was imposed on the Arabs by the military rule and they were chosen on account of their support of the Zionist cause which has caused all the predicaments of the Arabs. All their ventures to constitute as a national minority ran into all sorts of obstacles. The Israeli government put tremendous barriers on them that virtually made movement beyond once own family or village impossible.4 Ilan Peleg argues that the imposition of the military rule was aimed at sidelining the Arab population economically, politically and to ghettoize them. The Arabs were also seen as an existential threat to the State of Israel. 5 In the first few decades of the State, the Israeli authorities regarded the Arab minority as a threat, a fifth column and a group that would join Israel's enemy in any future war. This negative attitude was reflected in hostile policies toward the minority, including significant expropriation of land and, above all, the imposition of a military government, Ilan Peleg6 comments. The growth of a wider political awareness among the Arab has resulted in the rise of a new enlightened leadership with both intellectuals and practical politicians, who stood for the equal rights and even treatment of all citizens of the country.
Arabs were included in the political activities of the state since the very beginning. In the first election in 1949 Mapai was the major political party active among the Arabs. As one of the eminent Arab writers Sabri Jiryis says ‘Mapai has always set the standard for political activity among the Arabs while the other parties merely reacted to Mapai’s enterprise.’7 In the first interim election itself the party has sponsored two Arab lists and one of them won two seats in the Knesset. But the decision of the Mapai to make itself politically active among the Arabs was taken not out of any compassion but to thwart any attempt of forming an exclusive Arab party. It is evident from the fact that it was hesitant to accept the Arabs initially and there was nothing in its manifesto that would attract the Arabs to it8. One of the major twists in this direction was the decision to draw a special list before each election on the basis of residence and religious sect from among the Arabs who supported the party. However, until the party merged with Achdut Havooda and formed the Israeli Labour Party in 1969 Mapai continued its policy of accommodating and addressing the Arab issues outwardly without taking up any of the important questions.9
Other important political platform available for the Arabs was the Israeli Communist Party and in the first election one Arab leader was elected to the parliament from its list. This party has remained for a long time the only party for the Arabs to air their objection to the discriminative state policy. In a marked departure from the Mapai or Mapam Communist party showed a genuine interest in these issues. The authorities were careful enough to check the growing influence of the communist party through intimidation of the Arab population. The military government had asked the Arabs not to support the Communist Party and threatened to cancel the license if they defied the government order. This was the case for any sympathetic approach from the Arabs to any of the anti Zionist movements. But due to the lack of fund the party was not in a position to advance the cause of the Arabs. The reason why many of the Arabs were attracted to the Communist party despite the repressive government warning was the very policies of the successive government with the consent of Mapai that have jeopardized the livelihood of the Arabs through the confiscation of their lands and other measures. The communist members in Knesset have shown greater interest in any problem involving Arabs and this has led to the increasing support of the Arabs to this party.
Mapam has also tried to garner the support of the Arabs and tried to play the vote bank politics. All the attempts by Mapam to indoctrinate and convert the Arabs to accept the socialist Zionism made the party unpopular and the support of the Arab showed a downward trend.10 This attempt of the party to go beyond the material benefit from the association with the Arab masses was an undoing of itself.
But the political dispensation under the premiership of Ben-Gurion was accused for taking a number of coercive measures and fielding only those candidates who have collaborated with the Jewish authorities to expropriate the Arab lands and cheated the aspirations of the Arabs at large. Though the Arabs were elected to each Knesset they were having no role in any of the major decision making especially when it is anything related to the security of the nation including the question of return of the Palestinian Arabs. The members were also seen in a suspicious manner as they are potential challengers of the state of Israel and questioning the very basis of its creation. Apart from these three major parties other parties also tried to win the support of the Arabs in the eve of the election but none of them have any major promise to the Arabs at large because all of them were extreme Zionist parties.
However, in this period, one of the major charges leveled against all the political parties in the country is that it had never supported the formation of an exclusive Arab party and some of the parties wanted the involvement of the Arabs in their party just to prevent the formation of any Arab political party that would be vocal enough to challenge the policies of the successive government in favor of the Jews. The Arabs were also not in a position to form a party of their own in 1948 because of their lack of political experience and the departure of those who have some experience in the field. However by the passage of time the Israeli Arab people gradually became cognizant and wanted to form a party of their own. This move might invite widespread opposition as it would be a blow to the unquestioned unilateral decision making of the Jews. The political awareness and the loosening hold of the military government and its withdrawal have made the Arabs bold and some of their leaders came forward to form a political party of their own.
Major Assertive Involvement
Both ideologically and practically the Arabs matured since the 1967 war as the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza facilitated contact between the Palestinian people and it contributed to the increasing political consciousness, both in general and in the context of Palestinian nationalism. This led to more organized political action and involvement. A number of political movements and activities were launched by the new generation leadership in 1970s. The mass movement could be separated into two broad categories that of secular nationalist and the other Islamist. The former was seeing their predicament as a direct fall out of the confrontation between the patently colonialist political Zionist ideology and the colonized while the latter looked at it as a religious one and irreconcilable.11 The growing political assertiveness sent a wave of fear to the Zionist leaders and they were devising novel methods to curb this growing threat. One of the direct results was the implementation of a Basic Law that stipulates that a list of candidates shall not participate in the election for the Knesset if its aim or action points implicitly or explicitly deny the existence of State of Israel as the state of Jewish people. The change at this phase has come in both leadership and community level.12 In 1970s a political consensus emerged lagging behind more than two decades of political vacillation and confusion. The leadership has a clear cut idea about their own status and identity and places both Israel and their fellow Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank and the larger Arab Israeli conflict in its correct position. There was a growing realization that they can achieve their political goals and make their voice heard only through the correct political tools. The communication gap between the Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza was bridged after the six day war and this led to recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization as representative of Palestinian cause.13 The war of 1973 further made them bold to respond vociferously against the Israeli suppression and unequal treatment of the Arabs. The most important and vocal political action came in the form of a document calling for the immediate cessation of the highhandedness in Gaza and West Bank.14 Continuing loss of agricultural land due to the expropriation by the government and marginalization of the Arab populated area from industrialization and attendant hardships resulted in further political mobilization.15 Thanks to these developments a new political culture emerged with new modes of political activity and organization. The National Committee for the Defense of Arab Lands, the National Committee of Arab Heads of Local Councils, and the National Committee of Arab Students came into being in this particular socio economic and political developments. This was in addition to more hardliner political ideologies like the Sons of the Village and the National Progressive Movement. The first intifada in 1987 has ushered in new vigor to the vein of the Israeli Arab and the emergence of the Islamic Movement was a result of it. Though its seeds were planted in the six day war of 1967 which eroded support for the secular nationalist movement.16 The founding of the Arab Democratic Party (ADP) by the Arab MK Abdel Wahab Darawshi who was affiliated with Labor and launched the new party in protest of the inhuman Israeli suppression of rebellion in Gaza and West Bank.
Intifada in itself was a major massive political statement and it should also be mentioned in the context of the Arab Israeli politics despite the fact that it took place in West bank and Gaza. This is because the collective political action without participation in elections and established political parties led to the formulation of consensus in both Palestinian camps on specific issues that have paramount importance to the future of Palestine as a nation. The formulation of consensus among the Palestinians in Israel and in occupied territories over the necessity of a Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza, as a key measure to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict was a major development. In addition, the importance of the Arab equality inside Israel and struggling to achieve it through nonviolent manner was also a part of the consensus.
Arab Political Parties
There are a number of Arab political parties in the Israeli political scene. Despite their limited influence and role a number of parties were formed to express the concerns of the one fifth of the Israeli community.
Al-Ard
Al-Ard meaning the "the Land" could be called as the first attempt of the Arab to form a party of their own. It was established in 1959 as a pan-Arab nationalist movement. The party challenged the legitimacy of the State of Israel and demanded sweeping changes in the leadership of the Palestinian community. Al-Ard emerged as an alternative to the communists, who have promised to deliver on a number issues including the refugee return and abolishing absentees land law had dominated and attracted a large number of Arab politicians and the mass in Israel. The party was banned in 1964 citing its anti national character and its pan Arabism. It tried to come in another name “the Arab Socialist Party but it was also banned from contesting to the Knesset. Leading members of the party are Sabri Jiryis, Habib Qahwaji, Salih Baransi, Mansur Qardawsh and Muhammad MiÊ¿ar.
Hadash
It is an acronym for the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality in Hebrew 'Hazit Democratit Leshalom ul'Shivyon. It was an alliance of the Israel Communist Party and some other factions sympathetic to the Arab cause. Hadash was formed in 1977 by Meir Vilner of Rakach among others. The anti-Zionist party has a number of progressive demands including, the return of Israel to June 1967 borders, and establishing an Arab state alongside Israel and the Palestinians should be given the right to return to Israel or should be given compensation. The party also demands for granting equal citizenship to the Israeli Arabs. It also stands for ensuring the rights of individuals and separation of religion from state.
Balad Party
It is an acronym for Brit Le'umit Demokratit meaning National Democratic Assembly it also means homeland in Arabic. This party was found by Azmi Bishara one of the vocal representatives of the Arab aspirations in 1995. The Arab nationalist political party Balad has the objective of turning the state of Israel into a democracy for all its citizens, irrespective of national or ethnic identity.' it has other major stated aims including the recognition of Palestinian Arabs in Israel as a national minority and to grant autonomy in education, culture and press. It also demand the implementation of the UN Resolution 194 that entitles the right of return to the Palestinian in addition to demanding the withdrawal of Israel to its 1967 border and form an Arab state comprising West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.
Major impediments for the Arab participation in Politics
Arab citizens of Israel enjoy the right to vote and the right to get elected to the Knesset. But they have a very limited role in determining the policy of the nation especially those critical of the government and the State policy.17 The contradiction in the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic was a puzzle and one of the major predicaments for the Arabs in Israel. This was in addition to the fact that the Arabs were always seen as a security threat to the nation. The identity crisis of the Israeli Palestinian was compounded with another factor too. The Israeliness of these Arabs was looked down suspiciously and smelled betrayal by the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. It was only after the six day war in 1967 that these Palestinian were also accepted in the larger Palestinian universe.18 The major problem was that it is not citizenship or membership in the state system that determines the extent of services and privileges that the state bestows on the individual and the group; the determining factor is membership in the dominant ethnic group. Citizenship, therefore, is relegated to a less important status than belonging to the national groups that compose the state.19 The very nature of the state as a Jewish one has made the Israeli Arabs indifferent to the State but in order to reclaim their right as a national minority and raise their voice against the injustice meted out against them it was inevitable to take into politics. “Because Israel officially defines Jewishness and not Israeli citizenship as the criterion for inclusion in the state definition, it constitutionally (not only by policy and practice) excludes from its identity all citizens who are non-Jews. At the same time, it includes all non- citizens who are Jewish, regardless of any ideological commitment, sentimental attachment, national consciousness, or indeed desire on their part to be part of the state, but just on the basis of the single criterion of fitting the state's definition of who is a Jew-a definition drawn from traditional Halachic principles.”20 The meaning of Jewish state is expressed not only in national, cultural, religious and social symbols alone but in the very perception of the mainstream Jews.21 The very participation in the political activities seemed to be meaningless. When they did attend Knesset sessions the Arab members limited their activity to making generalized speeches about problems experienced by the Arabs and humbly asking the authorities to find some solutions.22 But their role was restricted to the issues that never raised the major issues related to the Arabs like the repatriation of Palestinian refugees and those which questioned the injustice meted out to the Arabs by the state apparatus including the confiscation of the land or the inferior status of the Arabs in the country. But all the while the Arabs were not given any say in the executive branch of the government whose functionaries are committed to Zionism. The contradiction lies in the fact that the Israeli government also supports the Zionism that is based upon the assumption of expelling all the Arabs from the Promised Land and airlift the Jews from all over the world in their stead.23 This basic contradictory factor is never taken into account, let alone solving it. It is a fact that since the creation of the state of the Israel few Arabs have occupied any influential posts in the government and not a single Arab has ever served in the cabinet despite the fact that they constitute roughly 20% of the total population. Arabs have faced military rule and the hardships under this rule. One governor has summed it up; the military government interferes in the life of the Arab citizens from the day of his birth to the day of his death. It has the final say in all the matters concerning workers, peasants, professional men, merchants and educated men, with schooling and social services….. Often too it arbitrarily interferes in the affairs of political parties, in political and social activities and in local and municipal councils.24
Another important point is that the demographic advantage of the Arabs in Israel was turned in favor of the Zionist ideology through a number of measures including the massive expulsion in 1948 followed by a number of other measures to keep the number on check. The authorities were systematically carrying out their plan in lieu with the Zionism that include the gathering of the Jews in the Promised Land that was captured after ousting its legitimate residents and owners.
These facts should be viewed against a number of attempts by the alternative governments to tackle the question of Arabs and their direct attempt to erode any Arab attempt to form a political platform worth its name. The Koing report of 1976 is an eye opener as it documents the recommended containment and discrimination policies of the then government of Prime Minister Yithzak Rabin. The report sheds light on the systematic planning and deliberation in the decision making circle to tackle the Arab question inside Israel including demographic challenge that the Arab poses in addition to the containment of the increasing political leverage and other economic and educational issues.25 The report recommended to “prevent the establishment of independent Arab political parties or nationwide organization. In this respect the state was successful in preventing the establishment of political parties, like the attempts which were made by Elias Kussa, the Popular Front, Al Ard Movement. We have succeeded in the prevention of such endeavors during 20 years.”
In the political field the Arabs were compelled to vote for the ruling Mapai during the military rule in the first one decade and the dependence of the Arabs in economic matters on Arabs made their case all the more volatile. The Mapai, in its turn accepted the Arabs in its fold to prevent any political power concentration in an exclusively Arab centre. The authorities imposed strict control of the elections in the local Arab areas in order to prevent the election of any Arab leader who maintains a hostile view towards the Jews. IN some cases the municipal councils were dissolved just because the Arabs who were deemed to be hostile were elected.
Conclusion
From what we have discussed it is clear that the Palestinian Arabs living in Israel have emerged as a formidable political power over a period of time which challenge and wield pressure on subsequent Israeli governments to make amendments and build a true democracy. It would be correct to assume that the political mobilization and empowerment of the Arabs have grown enough to compel one of the powerful military regimes in the world to turn into itself and resolve its contradiction. The very concept of democracy could not go hand in hand with the Jewishness of Israel. Unequal and unjust treatment of a people who are the original inheritors of the land and expropriating their land to accommodate anyone living in any part of the world just because of his ethnic similarity is nothing more than a racist one. The very function the Israeli Arabs are doing is that of questioning this ideology and working hard to build a true democratic nation based on justice equality and liberty. The study has also shown that the Arabs have over a period of time developed a political consensus, organization and leadership with substantial legitimacy and popular support. These institutions and consensus are not aimed at achieving the rights of Arabs in Israel alone but to solve the whole Palestinian question while it stood first and foremost for achieving their rights using proper political tools.
Bibliography
*Kimmerling, Baruch& S Migdal, Joel (2003) The Palestine People A History, Harvard University Press, London.
*Burzl, John Islam, (2004) Judaism and the Political Role of Religion in the Middle East, University Press of Florida, Gainessville.
*Edwards, Beverley Milton (1996) Islamic Politics In Palestine, Tauris Academic Studies London
*Rubin, Barry (2007) Political Islam Routledge, London
*Ahmad H Sa’di, ‘The Keonig Report and Israeli Policy Towards the Palestinian Minority, 1965-1976: Old Wine In New Bottles, Arab Studies Quarterly Volume 25, Number 3, Summer 2003.
*Jiryis, Sabri (1976), The Arabs in Israel, Monthly Review Press, New York.
*Nadim Rouhana and Ascad Ghanem The Crisis Of Minorities In Ethnic States: The Case Of Palestinian Citizens In Israel, Source: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Aug., 1998)
*Rouhana, Nadim, The Political Transformation of the Palestinians in Israel: From Acquiescence to Challenge, Source: Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Spring, 1989)
*Jones, Clive & C Murphy, Emma (2002) Israel Challenges to identity, Democracy and the State Routledge, London
*Jacob M. Landau, (1993) The Arab Minority in Israel, 1967-1991, Clarendon Press Oxford
*Rouhana, Nadim The Political Transformation of the Palestinians in Israel: From Acquiescence to Challenge Source: Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Spring, 1989)
*Mark Tessler and Audra K. Grant ‘Israel's Arab Citizens: The Continuing Struggle Source: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 555, Israel in Transition (Jan., 1998)
*Ahmed Bsoul, Labeed (2006) The Status of Palestinian in Israel: 1948-Oslo, Arab Studies Quarterly, Volume 28, Number 2, Spring 2006.
*Kimmerling, Baruch & S. Midgal, Joel (2003) The Palestinian People-a History
*Nadim Rouhana and Ascad Ghanem The Crisis Of Minorities In Ethnic States: The Case Of Palestinian Citizens In Israel, Source: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Aug., 1998)
*Rouhana, Nadim, The Political Transformation of the Palestinians in Israel: From Acquiescence to Challenge, Source: Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Spring, 1989)
* Karsh, Efraim Israel (2000) Israel: The First Hundred Years, Frank Cass London
Tuesday 25 November 2008
Role of Palestinian Politics In Israel
Submitted To: Prof. A.K. Pasha
Submitted By: Ayyoob Thayyil Karuvadi
Dated: 25-11-08
Centre for West Asian and African Studies
School of International Studies
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi- 67
The role of Arab politics in Israel ever since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 was not a subject of major academic attention and this was not considered to be a major factor in any of the negotiations held to solve the Arab Israeli conflict until recently. In this paper I propose to study the status of the Arabs in Israel in terms of their political role. Here a number of important questions arise including the nature of the state of Israel, its treatment of Arab minorities and the political space available to the people. In the course of this study I would place the formation of Arab identity in a historical context and would analyze relation of the State with the Arab population and their relation with the State. For a proper understanding of this question one has to see the historical background that has led to the minority status of the Arab in Israel. Constitutional rights and their actual enjoyment of the rights enshrined in the Basic Law would also come to the discussion.
Background
The question of ‘role of Palestinian in Israeli politics’ has attracted the interest of the political analysts and academicians since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and its entry into the UN was one of the much debated topics in both academic and decision making level. The very creation of the state of the Israel in Palestine has virtually made the indigenous Arabs, refugees in their own native land where they lived for generations. When the state was formally established the Jewish leaders were at lose as they were not able to take any decision regarding the Arab population who remained inside the Jewish State as they were accustomed to thinking only in terms of the Jewish population. However, the very nature of the state of Israel, as a homeland for the Jews and hence the existential threat that the indigenous non Jewish people posed made the issue all the more complicated. But the new state was compelled to take the issue of the Palestinians seriously by the international community and its recognition and global legitimacy would be dependent on its treatment of the Arabs inside its territory. This led to granting all political rights to the Arabs. Despite these rights on paper the people were virtually made politically impotent due to the very nature of the state of Israel as a Jewish State and all the people were not Jews. However, by the passage of time the Arab population have developed their own political parties and tried their level best to express their grievances and tried to exert maximum pressure possible. But demographic structure and the hostile relation between the two made the relation complicated and any kind of productive engagement was absent throughout these decades. Though the Jews were opposed to any form of accommodation of the Arabs as the very existence of the Jewish state required the negation of whatever is Arabic they albeit grudgingly allowed them to participate in their electoral activities from 1949 itself when the first election took place.
To develop a clear-cut understanding of the political engagement of the Arabs in the political system that is hostile to them one has to look how they were treated in the newly formed nation. The question of citizenship and equal right is at the core of any meaningful political engagement in any given society. Here a little more background would be in place. Ever since the establishment of the Zionist movement in 1880s its leaders were consistently looking for the creation of a homeland for the Jews who were subjected to the prosecution of the Europeans for centuries for a variety of reasons.1 However, the Belfour declaration of 1917 and its incorporation to the League of Nations goals later gave the Zionist leaders the hope that their long cherished dreams are coming true. But the global powers that time didn’t address properly the question of the indigenous Arab people in the proposed ‘homeland’ for the Jews. Systematic expulsion of the majority Arabs and inviting Jews from all over the world to come and settle in Palestine was one of the major action plans of the Jewish lobby. This was facilitated by the British government who was given the mandate in this region following the defeat and disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in the World War I. The final decade of the British rule in Palestine witnessed further decline in Palestine fortune2. the effort of the Zionists culminated in the formation of the State of Israel in 1948 and the expulsion of the majority of the Arabs and reducing their presence to a minority. During the mandate period through different organizations including the Jewish Agency and Jewish National Fund the Zionists managed to develop a full-fledged system of governance. But the question of Palestine in the Promised Land has never come to their consideration until the question of coexistence with the Arabs became a reality after the establishment of Israel.
Early engagement in political activities
Due to a number of reasons the Arabs who were reduced to a minority in the newly formed Jewish state were not organized to form any meaningful political organization. Five major reasons are cited for their inability of political organization in any significant degree. (1) The shock of turning from a majority into a minority, dispersed in several separate regions; (2) the absence of an experienced political leadership (which found itself outside the frontiers of the new state); (3) unfamiliarity with Hebrew as well as with the new rules of the political game on a country-wide scale; (4) The Military Administration; (5) that most Jewish parties and organizations have not encouraged Arabs to join their ranks.3 This was against the rapid development in the political arena among the Jews. But the second generation emerged with a deep understanding of their predicament to find that without political mobilization they could not assert their own identity that was formed by a number of local and regional developments. The lifting of the Military Administration in 1966 was a major turning point in the political history of the Israeli Arabs. A number of developments in the country as well as in the region has directed and dictated the course of their political activities.
During the most difficult period of the Arabs life in Israel, since 1948 to 1966, the Arabs were compelled to join some of the political parties with a Zionist thrust against their own will. This phase was one of the disastrous one as the political leadership was imposed on the Arabs by the military rule and they were chosen on account of their support of the Zionist cause which has caused all the predicaments of the Arabs. All their ventures to constitute as a national minority ran into all sorts of obstacles. The Israeli government put tremendous barriers on them that virtually made movement beyond once own family or village impossible.4 Ilan Peleg argues that the imposition of the military rule was aimed at sidelining the Arab population economically, politically and to ghettoize them. The Arabs were also seen as an existential threat to the State of Israel. 5 In the first few decades of the State, the Israeli authorities regarded the Arab minority as a threat, a fifth column and a group that would join Israel's enemy in any future war. This negative attitude was reflected in hostile policies toward the minority, including significant expropriation of land and, above all, the imposition of a military government, Ilan Peleg6 comments. The growth of a wider political awareness among the Arab has resulted in the rise of a new enlightened leadership with both intellectuals and practical politicians, who stood for the equal rights and even treatment of all citizens of the country.
Arabs were included in the political activities of the state since the very beginning. In the first election in 1949 Mapai was the major political party active among the Arabs. As one of the eminent Arab writers Sabri Jiryis says ‘Mapai has always set the standard for political activity among the Arabs while the other parties merely reacted to Mapai’s enterprise.’7 In the first interim election itself the party has sponsored two Arab lists and one of them won two seats in the Knesset. But the decision of the Mapai to make itself politically active among the Arabs was taken not out of any compassion but to thwart any attempt of forming an exclusive Arab party. It is evident from the fact that it was hesitant to accept the Arabs initially and there was nothing in its manifesto that would attract the Arabs to it8. One of the major twists in this direction was the decision to draw a special list before each election on the basis of residence and religious sect from among the Arabs who supported the party. However, until the party merged with Achdut Havooda and formed the Israeli Labour Party in 1969 Mapai continued its policy of accommodating and addressing the Arab issues outwardly without taking up any of the important questions.9
Other important political platform available for the Arabs was the Israeli Communist Party and in the first election one Arab leader was elected to the parliament from its list. This party has remained for a long time the only party for the Arabs to air their objection to the discriminative state policy. In a marked departure from the Mapai or Mapam Communist party showed a genuine interest in these issues. The authorities were careful enough to check the growing influence of the communist party through intimidation of the Arab population. The military government had asked the Arabs not to support the Communist Party and threatened to cancel the license if they defied the government order. This was the case for any sympathetic approach from the Arabs to any of the anti Zionist movements. But due to the lack of fund the party was not in a position to advance the cause of the Arabs. The reason why many of the Arabs were attracted to the Communist party despite the repressive government warning was the very policies of the successive government with the consent of Mapai that have jeopardized the livelihood of the Arabs through the confiscation of their lands and other measures. The communist members in Knesset have shown greater interest in any problem involving Arabs and this has led to the increasing support of the Arabs to this party.
Mapam has also tried to garner the support of the Arabs and tried to play the vote bank politics. All the attempts by Mapam to indoctrinate and convert the Arabs to accept the socialist Zionism made the party unpopular and the support of the Arab showed a downward trend.10 This attempt of the party to go beyond the material benefit from the association with the Arab masses was an undoing of itself.
But the political dispensation under the premiership of Ben-Gurion was accused for taking a number of coercive measures and fielding only those candidates who have collaborated with the Jewish authorities to expropriate the Arab lands and cheated the aspirations of the Arabs at large. Though the Arabs were elected to each Knesset they were having no role in any of the major decision making especially when it is anything related to the security of the nation including the question of return of the Palestinian Arabs. The members were also seen in a suspicious manner as they are potential challengers of the state of Israel and questioning the very basis of its creation. Apart from these three major parties other parties also tried to win the support of the Arabs in the eve of the election but none of them have any major promise to the Arabs at large because all of them were extreme Zionist parties.
However, in this period, one of the major charges leveled against all the political parties in the country is that it had never supported the formation of an exclusive Arab party and some of the parties wanted the involvement of the Arabs in their party just to prevent the formation of any Arab political party that would be vocal enough to challenge the policies of the successive government in favor of the Jews. The Arabs were also not in a position to form a party of their own in 1948 because of their lack of political experience and the departure of those who have some experience in the field. However by the passage of time the Israeli Arab people gradually became cognizant and wanted to form a party of their own. This move might invite widespread opposition as it would be a blow to the unquestioned unilateral decision making of the Jews. The political awareness and the loosening hold of the military government and its withdrawal have made the Arabs bold and some of their leaders came forward to form a political party of their own.
Major Assertive Involvement
Both ideologically and practically the Arabs matured since the 1967 war as the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza facilitated contact between the Palestinian people and it contributed to the increasing political consciousness, both in general and in the context of Palestinian nationalism. This led to more organized political action and involvement. A number of political movements and activities were launched by the new generation leadership in 1970s. The mass movement could be separated into two broad categories that of secular nationalist and the other Islamist. The former was seeing their predicament as a direct fall out of the confrontation between the patently colonialist political Zionist ideology and the colonized while the latter looked at it as a religious one and irreconcilable.11 The growing political assertiveness sent a wave of fear to the Zionist leaders and they were devising novel methods to curb this growing threat. One of the direct results was the implementation of a Basic Law that stipulates that a list of candidates shall not participate in the election for the Knesset if its aim or action points implicitly or explicitly deny the existence of State of Israel as the state of Jewish people. The change at this phase has come in both leadership and community level.12 In 1970s a political consensus emerged lagging behind more than two decades of political vacillation and confusion. The leadership has a clear cut idea about their own status and identity and places both Israel and their fellow Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank and the larger Arab Israeli conflict in its correct position. There was a growing realization that they can achieve their political goals and make their voice heard only through the correct political tools. The communication gap between the Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza was bridged after the six day war and this led to recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization as representative of Palestinian cause.13 The war of 1973 further made them bold to respond vociferously against the Israeli suppression and unequal treatment of the Arabs. The most important and vocal political action came in the form of a document calling for the immediate cessation of the highhandedness in Gaza and West Bank.14 Continuing loss of agricultural land due to the expropriation by the government and marginalization of the Arab populated area from industrialization and attendant hardships resulted in further political mobilization.15 Thanks to these developments a new political culture emerged with new modes of political activity and organization. The National Committee for the Defense of Arab Lands, the National Committee of Arab Heads of Local Councils, and the National Committee of Arab Students came into being in this particular socio economic and political developments. This was in addition to more hardliner political ideologies like the Sons of the Village and the National Progressive Movement. The first intifada in 1987 has ushered in new vigor to the vein of the Israeli Arab and the emergence of the Islamic Movement was a result of it. Though its seeds were planted in the six day war of 1967 which eroded support for the secular nationalist movement.16 The founding of the Arab Democratic Party (ADP) by the Arab MK Abdel Wahab Darawshi who was affiliated with Labor and launched the new party in protest of the inhuman Israeli suppression of rebellion in Gaza and West Bank.
Intifada in itself was a major massive political statement and it should also be mentioned in the context of the Arab Israeli politics despite the fact that it took place in West bank and Gaza. This is because the collective political action without participation in elections and established political parties led to the formulation of consensus in both Palestinian camps on specific issues that have paramount importance to the future of Palestine as a nation. The formulation of consensus among the Palestinians in Israel and in occupied territories over the necessity of a Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza, as a key measure to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict was a major development. In addition, the importance of the Arab equality inside Israel and struggling to achieve it through nonviolent manner was also a part of the consensus.
Arab Political Parties
There are a number of Arab political parties in the Israeli political scene. Despite their limited influence and role a number of parties were formed to express the concerns of the one fifth of the Israeli community.
Al-Ard
Al-Ard meaning the "the Land" could be called as the first attempt of the Arab to form a party of their own. It was established in 1959 as a pan-Arab nationalist movement. The party challenged the legitimacy of the State of Israel and demanded sweeping changes in the leadership of the Palestinian community. Al-Ard emerged as an alternative to the communists, who have promised to deliver on a number issues including the refugee return and abolishing absentees land law had dominated and attracted a large number of Arab politicians and the mass in Israel. The party was banned in 1964 citing its anti national character and its pan Arabism. It tried to come in another name “the Arab Socialist Party but it was also banned from contesting to the Knesset. Leading members of the party are Sabri Jiryis, Habib Qahwaji, Salih Baransi, Mansur Qardawsh and Muhammad MiÊ¿ar.
Hadash
It is an acronym for the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality in Hebrew 'Hazit Democratit Leshalom ul'Shivyon. It was an alliance of the Israel Communist Party and some other factions sympathetic to the Arab cause. Hadash was formed in 1977 by Meir Vilner of Rakach among others. The anti-Zionist party has a number of progressive demands including, the return of Israel to June 1967 borders, and establishing an Arab state alongside Israel and the Palestinians should be given the right to return to Israel or should be given compensation. The party also demands for granting equal citizenship to the Israeli Arabs. It also stands for ensuring the rights of individuals and separation of religion from state.
Balad Party
It is an acronym for Brit Le'umit Demokratit meaning National Democratic Assembly it also means homeland in Arabic. This party was found by Azmi Bishara one of the vocal representatives of the Arab aspirations in 1995. The Arab nationalist political party Balad has the objective of turning the state of Israel into a democracy for all its citizens, irrespective of national or ethnic identity.' it has other major stated aims including the recognition of Palestinian Arabs in Israel as a national minority and to grant autonomy in education, culture and press. It also demand the implementation of the UN Resolution 194 that entitles the right of return to the Palestinian in addition to demanding the withdrawal of Israel to its 1967 border and form an Arab state comprising West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.
Major impediments for the Arab participation in Politics
Arab citizens of Israel enjoy the right to vote and the right to get elected to the Knesset. But they have a very limited role in determining the policy of the nation especially those critical of the government and the State policy.17 The contradiction in the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic was a puzzle and one of the major predicaments for the Arabs in Israel. This was in addition to the fact that the Arabs were always seen as a security threat to the nation. The identity crisis of the Israeli Palestinian was compounded with another factor too. The Israeliness of these Arabs was looked down suspiciously and smelled betrayal by the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. It was only after the six day war in 1967 that these Palestinian were also accepted in the larger Palestinian universe.18 The major problem was that it is not citizenship or membership in the state system that determines the extent of services and privileges that the state bestows on the individual and the group; the determining factor is membership in the dominant ethnic group. Citizenship, therefore, is relegated to a less important status than belonging to the national groups that compose the state.19 The very nature of the state as a Jewish one has made the Israeli Arabs indifferent to the State but in order to reclaim their right as a national minority and raise their voice against the injustice meted out against them it was inevitable to take into politics. “Because Israel officially defines Jewishness and not Israeli citizenship as the criterion for inclusion in the state definition, it constitutionally (not only by policy and practice) excludes from its identity all citizens who are non-Jews. At the same time, it includes all non- citizens who are Jewish, regardless of any ideological commitment, sentimental attachment, national consciousness, or indeed desire on their part to be part of the state, but just on the basis of the single criterion of fitting the state's definition of who is a Jew-a definition drawn from traditional Halachic principles.”20 The meaning of Jewish state is expressed not only in national, cultural, religious and social symbols alone but in the very perception of the mainstream Jews.21 The very participation in the political activities seemed to be meaningless. When they did attend Knesset sessions the Arab members limited their activity to making generalized speeches about problems experienced by the Arabs and humbly asking the authorities to find some solutions.22 But their role was restricted to the issues that never raised the major issues related to the Arabs like the repatriation of Palestinian refugees and those which questioned the injustice meted out to the Arabs by the state apparatus including the confiscation of the land or the inferior status of the Arabs in the country. But all the while the Arabs were not given any say in the executive branch of the government whose functionaries are committed to Zionism. The contradiction lies in the fact that the Israeli government also supports the Zionism that is based upon the assumption of expelling all the Arabs from the Promised Land and airlift the Jews from all over the world in their stead.23 This basic contradictory factor is never taken into account, let alone solving it. It is a fact that since the creation of the state of the Israel few Arabs have occupied any influential posts in the government and not a single Arab has ever served in the cabinet despite the fact that they constitute roughly 20% of the total population. Arabs have faced military rule and the hardships under this rule. One governor has summed it up; the military government interferes in the life of the Arab citizens from the day of his birth to the day of his death. It has the final say in all the matters concerning workers, peasants, professional men, merchants and educated men, with schooling and social services….. Often too it arbitrarily interferes in the affairs of political parties, in political and social activities and in local and municipal councils.24
Another important point is that the demographic advantage of the Arabs in Israel was turned in favor of the Zionist ideology through a number of measures including the massive expulsion in 1948 followed by a number of other measures to keep the number on check. The authorities were systematically carrying out their plan in lieu with the Zionism that include the gathering of the Jews in the Promised Land that was captured after ousting its legitimate residents and owners.
These facts should be viewed against a number of attempts by the alternative governments to tackle the question of Arabs and their direct attempt to erode any Arab attempt to form a political platform worth its name. The Koing report of 1976 is an eye opener as it documents the recommended containment and discrimination policies of the then government of Prime Minister Yithzak Rabin. The report sheds light on the systematic planning and deliberation in the decision making circle to tackle the Arab question inside Israel including demographic challenge that the Arab poses in addition to the containment of the increasing political leverage and other economic and educational issues.25 The report recommended to “prevent the establishment of independent Arab political parties or nationwide organization. In this respect the state was successful in preventing the establishment of political parties, like the attempts which were made by Elias Kussa, the Popular Front, Al Ard Movement. We have succeeded in the prevention of such endeavors during 20 years.”
In the political field the Arabs were compelled to vote for the ruling Mapai during the military rule in the first one decade and the dependence of the Arabs in economic matters on Arabs made their case all the more volatile. The Mapai, in its turn accepted the Arabs in its fold to prevent any political power concentration in an exclusively Arab centre. The authorities imposed strict control of the elections in the local Arab areas in order to prevent the election of any Arab leader who maintains a hostile view towards the Jews. IN some cases the municipal councils were dissolved just because the Arabs who were deemed to be hostile were elected.
Conclusion
From what we have discussed it is clear that the Palestinian Arabs living in Israel have emerged as a formidable political power over a period of time which challenge and wield pressure on subsequent Israeli governments to make amendments and build a true democracy. It would be correct to assume that the political mobilization and empowerment of the Arabs have grown enough to compel one of the powerful military regimes in the world to turn into itself and resolve its contradiction. The very concept of democracy could not go hand in hand with the Jewishness of Israel. Unequal and unjust treatment of a people who are the original inheritors of the land and expropriating their land to accommodate anyone living in any part of the world just because of his ethnic similarity is nothing more than a racist one. The very function the Israeli Arabs are doing is that of questioning this ideology and working hard to build a true democratic nation based on justice equality and liberty. The study has also shown that the Arabs have over a period of time developed a political consensus, organization and leadership with substantial legitimacy and popular support. These institutions and consensus are not aimed at achieving the rights of Arabs in Israel alone but to solve the whole Palestinian question while it stood first and foremost for achieving their rights using proper political tools.
Bibliography
*Kimmerling, Baruch& S Migdal, Joel (2003) The Palestine People A History, Harvard University Press, London.
*Burzl, John Islam, (2004) Judaism and the Political Role of Religion in the Middle East, University Press of Florida, Gainessville.
*Edwards, Beverley Milton (1996) Islamic Politics In Palestine, Tauris Academic Studies London
*Rubin, Barry (2007) Political Islam Routledge, London
*Ahmad H Sa’di, ‘The Keonig Report and Israeli Policy Towards the Palestinian Minority, 1965-1976: Old Wine In New Bottles, Arab Studies Quarterly Volume 25, Number 3, Summer 2003.
*Jiryis, Sabri (1976), The Arabs in Israel, Monthly Review Press, New York.
*Nadim Rouhana and Ascad Ghanem The Crisis Of Minorities In Ethnic States: The Case Of Palestinian Citizens In Israel, Source: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Aug., 1998)
*Rouhana, Nadim, The Political Transformation of the Palestinians in Israel: From Acquiescence to Challenge, Source: Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Spring, 1989)
*Jones, Clive & C Murphy, Emma (2002) Israel Challenges to identity, Democracy and the State Routledge, London
*Jacob M. Landau, (1993) The Arab Minority in Israel, 1967-1991, Clarendon Press Oxford
*Rouhana, Nadim The Political Transformation of the Palestinians in Israel: From Acquiescence to Challenge Source: Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Spring, 1989)
*Mark Tessler and Audra K. Grant ‘Israel's Arab Citizens: The Continuing Struggle Source: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 555, Israel in Transition (Jan., 1998)
*Ahmed Bsoul, Labeed (2006) The Status of Palestinian in Israel: 1948-Oslo, Arab Studies Quarterly, Volume 28, Number 2, Spring 2006.
*Kimmerling, Baruch & S. Midgal, Joel (2003) The Palestinian People-a History
*Nadim Rouhana and Ascad Ghanem The Crisis Of Minorities In Ethnic States: The Case Of Palestinian Citizens In Israel, Source: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Aug., 1998)
*Rouhana, Nadim, The Political Transformation of the Palestinians in Israel: From Acquiescence to Challenge, Source: Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Spring, 1989)
* Karsh, Efraim Israel (2000) Israel: The First Hundred Years, Frank Cass London
Submitted To: Prof. A.K. Pasha
Submitted By: Ayyoob Thayyil Karuvadi
Dated: 25-11-08
Centre for West Asian and African Studies
School of International Studies
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi- 67
The role of Arab politics in Israel ever since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 was not a subject of major academic attention and this was not considered to be a major factor in any of the negotiations held to solve the Arab Israeli conflict until recently. In this paper I propose to study the status of the Arabs in Israel in terms of their political role. Here a number of important questions arise including the nature of the state of Israel, its treatment of Arab minorities and the political space available to the people. In the course of this study I would place the formation of Arab identity in a historical context and would analyze relation of the State with the Arab population and their relation with the State. For a proper understanding of this question one has to see the historical background that has led to the minority status of the Arab in Israel. Constitutional rights and their actual enjoyment of the rights enshrined in the Basic Law would also come to the discussion.
Background
The question of ‘role of Palestinian in Israeli politics’ has attracted the interest of the political analysts and academicians since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and its entry into the UN was one of the much debated topics in both academic and decision making level. The very creation of the state of the Israel in Palestine has virtually made the indigenous Arabs, refugees in their own native land where they lived for generations. When the state was formally established the Jewish leaders were at lose as they were not able to take any decision regarding the Arab population who remained inside the Jewish State as they were accustomed to thinking only in terms of the Jewish population. However, the very nature of the state of Israel, as a homeland for the Jews and hence the existential threat that the indigenous non Jewish people posed made the issue all the more complicated. But the new state was compelled to take the issue of the Palestinians seriously by the international community and its recognition and global legitimacy would be dependent on its treatment of the Arabs inside its territory. This led to granting all political rights to the Arabs. Despite these rights on paper the people were virtually made politically impotent due to the very nature of the state of Israel as a Jewish State and all the people were not Jews. However, by the passage of time the Arab population have developed their own political parties and tried their level best to express their grievances and tried to exert maximum pressure possible. But demographic structure and the hostile relation between the two made the relation complicated and any kind of productive engagement was absent throughout these decades. Though the Jews were opposed to any form of accommodation of the Arabs as the very existence of the Jewish state required the negation of whatever is Arabic they albeit grudgingly allowed them to participate in their electoral activities from 1949 itself when the first election took place.
To develop a clear-cut understanding of the political engagement of the Arabs in the political system that is hostile to them one has to look how they were treated in the newly formed nation. The question of citizenship and equal right is at the core of any meaningful political engagement in any given society. Here a little more background would be in place. Ever since the establishment of the Zionist movement in 1880s its leaders were consistently looking for the creation of a homeland for the Jews who were subjected to the prosecution of the Europeans for centuries for a variety of reasons.1 However, the Belfour declaration of 1917 and its incorporation to the League of Nations goals later gave the Zionist leaders the hope that their long cherished dreams are coming true. But the global powers that time didn’t address properly the question of the indigenous Arab people in the proposed ‘homeland’ for the Jews. Systematic expulsion of the majority Arabs and inviting Jews from all over the world to come and settle in Palestine was one of the major action plans of the Jewish lobby. This was facilitated by the British government who was given the mandate in this region following the defeat and disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in the World War I. The final decade of the British rule in Palestine witnessed further decline in Palestine fortune2. the effort of the Zionists culminated in the formation of the State of Israel in 1948 and the expulsion of the majority of the Arabs and reducing their presence to a minority. During the mandate period through different organizations including the Jewish Agency and Jewish National Fund the Zionists managed to develop a full-fledged system of governance. But the question of Palestine in the Promised Land has never come to their consideration until the question of coexistence with the Arabs became a reality after the establishment of Israel.
Early engagement in political activities
Due to a number of reasons the Arabs who were reduced to a minority in the newly formed Jewish state were not organized to form any meaningful political organization. Five major reasons are cited for their inability of political organization in any significant degree. (1) The shock of turning from a majority into a minority, dispersed in several separate regions; (2) the absence of an experienced political leadership (which found itself outside the frontiers of the new state); (3) unfamiliarity with Hebrew as well as with the new rules of the political game on a country-wide scale; (4) The Military Administration; (5) that most Jewish parties and organizations have not encouraged Arabs to join their ranks.3 This was against the rapid development in the political arena among the Jews. But the second generation emerged with a deep understanding of their predicament to find that without political mobilization they could not assert their own identity that was formed by a number of local and regional developments. The lifting of the Military Administration in 1966 was a major turning point in the political history of the Israeli Arabs. A number of developments in the country as well as in the region has directed and dictated the course of their political activities.
During the most difficult period of the Arabs life in Israel, since 1948 to 1966, the Arabs were compelled to join some of the political parties with a Zionist thrust against their own will. This phase was one of the disastrous one as the political leadership was imposed on the Arabs by the military rule and they were chosen on account of their support of the Zionist cause which has caused all the predicaments of the Arabs. All their ventures to constitute as a national minority ran into all sorts of obstacles. The Israeli government put tremendous barriers on them that virtually made movement beyond once own family or village impossible.4 Ilan Peleg argues that the imposition of the military rule was aimed at sidelining the Arab population economically, politically and to ghettoize them. The Arabs were also seen as an existential threat to the State of Israel. 5 In the first few decades of the State, the Israeli authorities regarded the Arab minority as a threat, a fifth column and a group that would join Israel's enemy in any future war. This negative attitude was reflected in hostile policies toward the minority, including significant expropriation of land and, above all, the imposition of a military government, Ilan Peleg6 comments. The growth of a wider political awareness among the Arab has resulted in the rise of a new enlightened leadership with both intellectuals and practical politicians, who stood for the equal rights and even treatment of all citizens of the country.
Arabs were included in the political activities of the state since the very beginning. In the first election in 1949 Mapai was the major political party active among the Arabs. As one of the eminent Arab writers Sabri Jiryis says ‘Mapai has always set the standard for political activity among the Arabs while the other parties merely reacted to Mapai’s enterprise.’7 In the first interim election itself the party has sponsored two Arab lists and one of them won two seats in the Knesset. But the decision of the Mapai to make itself politically active among the Arabs was taken not out of any compassion but to thwart any attempt of forming an exclusive Arab party. It is evident from the fact that it was hesitant to accept the Arabs initially and there was nothing in its manifesto that would attract the Arabs to it8. One of the major twists in this direction was the decision to draw a special list before each election on the basis of residence and religious sect from among the Arabs who supported the party. However, until the party merged with Achdut Havooda and formed the Israeli Labour Party in 1969 Mapai continued its policy of accommodating and addressing the Arab issues outwardly without taking up any of the important questions.9
Other important political platform available for the Arabs was the Israeli Communist Party and in the first election one Arab leader was elected to the parliament from its list. This party has remained for a long time the only party for the Arabs to air their objection to the discriminative state policy. In a marked departure from the Mapai or Mapam Communist party showed a genuine interest in these issues. The authorities were careful enough to check the growing influence of the communist party through intimidation of the Arab population. The military government had asked the Arabs not to support the Communist Party and threatened to cancel the license if they defied the government order. This was the case for any sympathetic approach from the Arabs to any of the anti Zionist movements. But due to the lack of fund the party was not in a position to advance the cause of the Arabs. The reason why many of the Arabs were attracted to the Communist party despite the repressive government warning was the very policies of the successive government with the consent of Mapai that have jeopardized the livelihood of the Arabs through the confiscation of their lands and other measures. The communist members in Knesset have shown greater interest in any problem involving Arabs and this has led to the increasing support of the Arabs to this party.
Mapam has also tried to garner the support of the Arabs and tried to play the vote bank politics. All the attempts by Mapam to indoctrinate and convert the Arabs to accept the socialist Zionism made the party unpopular and the support of the Arab showed a downward trend.10 This attempt of the party to go beyond the material benefit from the association with the Arab masses was an undoing of itself.
But the political dispensation under the premiership of Ben-Gurion was accused for taking a number of coercive measures and fielding only those candidates who have collaborated with the Jewish authorities to expropriate the Arab lands and cheated the aspirations of the Arabs at large. Though the Arabs were elected to each Knesset they were having no role in any of the major decision making especially when it is anything related to the security of the nation including the question of return of the Palestinian Arabs. The members were also seen in a suspicious manner as they are potential challengers of the state of Israel and questioning the very basis of its creation. Apart from these three major parties other parties also tried to win the support of the Arabs in the eve of the election but none of them have any major promise to the Arabs at large because all of them were extreme Zionist parties.
However, in this period, one of the major charges leveled against all the political parties in the country is that it had never supported the formation of an exclusive Arab party and some of the parties wanted the involvement of the Arabs in their party just to prevent the formation of any Arab political party that would be vocal enough to challenge the policies of the successive government in favor of the Jews. The Arabs were also not in a position to form a party of their own in 1948 because of their lack of political experience and the departure of those who have some experience in the field. However by the passage of time the Israeli Arab people gradually became cognizant and wanted to form a party of their own. This move might invite widespread opposition as it would be a blow to the unquestioned unilateral decision making of the Jews. The political awareness and the loosening hold of the military government and its withdrawal have made the Arabs bold and some of their leaders came forward to form a political party of their own.
Major Assertive Involvement
Both ideologically and practically the Arabs matured since the 1967 war as the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza facilitated contact between the Palestinian people and it contributed to the increasing political consciousness, both in general and in the context of Palestinian nationalism. This led to more organized political action and involvement. A number of political movements and activities were launched by the new generation leadership in 1970s. The mass movement could be separated into two broad categories that of secular nationalist and the other Islamist. The former was seeing their predicament as a direct fall out of the confrontation between the patently colonialist political Zionist ideology and the colonized while the latter looked at it as a religious one and irreconcilable.11 The growing political assertiveness sent a wave of fear to the Zionist leaders and they were devising novel methods to curb this growing threat. One of the direct results was the implementation of a Basic Law that stipulates that a list of candidates shall not participate in the election for the Knesset if its aim or action points implicitly or explicitly deny the existence of State of Israel as the state of Jewish people. The change at this phase has come in both leadership and community level.12 In 1970s a political consensus emerged lagging behind more than two decades of political vacillation and confusion. The leadership has a clear cut idea about their own status and identity and places both Israel and their fellow Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank and the larger Arab Israeli conflict in its correct position. There was a growing realization that they can achieve their political goals and make their voice heard only through the correct political tools. The communication gap between the Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza was bridged after the six day war and this led to recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization as representative of Palestinian cause.13 The war of 1973 further made them bold to respond vociferously against the Israeli suppression and unequal treatment of the Arabs. The most important and vocal political action came in the form of a document calling for the immediate cessation of the highhandedness in Gaza and West Bank.14 Continuing loss of agricultural land due to the expropriation by the government and marginalization of the Arab populated area from industrialization and attendant hardships resulted in further political mobilization.15 Thanks to these developments a new political culture emerged with new modes of political activity and organization. The National Committee for the Defense of Arab Lands, the National Committee of Arab Heads of Local Councils, and the National Committee of Arab Students came into being in this particular socio economic and political developments. This was in addition to more hardliner political ideologies like the Sons of the Village and the National Progressive Movement. The first intifada in 1987 has ushered in new vigor to the vein of the Israeli Arab and the emergence of the Islamic Movement was a result of it. Though its seeds were planted in the six day war of 1967 which eroded support for the secular nationalist movement.16 The founding of the Arab Democratic Party (ADP) by the Arab MK Abdel Wahab Darawshi who was affiliated with Labor and launched the new party in protest of the inhuman Israeli suppression of rebellion in Gaza and West Bank.
Intifada in itself was a major massive political statement and it should also be mentioned in the context of the Arab Israeli politics despite the fact that it took place in West bank and Gaza. This is because the collective political action without participation in elections and established political parties led to the formulation of consensus in both Palestinian camps on specific issues that have paramount importance to the future of Palestine as a nation. The formulation of consensus among the Palestinians in Israel and in occupied territories over the necessity of a Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza, as a key measure to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict was a major development. In addition, the importance of the Arab equality inside Israel and struggling to achieve it through nonviolent manner was also a part of the consensus.
Arab Political Parties
There are a number of Arab political parties in the Israeli political scene. Despite their limited influence and role a number of parties were formed to express the concerns of the one fifth of the Israeli community.
Al-Ard
Al-Ard meaning the "the Land" could be called as the first attempt of the Arab to form a party of their own. It was established in 1959 as a pan-Arab nationalist movement. The party challenged the legitimacy of the State of Israel and demanded sweeping changes in the leadership of the Palestinian community. Al-Ard emerged as an alternative to the communists, who have promised to deliver on a number issues including the refugee return and abolishing absentees land law had dominated and attracted a large number of Arab politicians and the mass in Israel. The party was banned in 1964 citing its anti national character and its pan Arabism. It tried to come in another name “the Arab Socialist Party but it was also banned from contesting to the Knesset. Leading members of the party are Sabri Jiryis, Habib Qahwaji, Salih Baransi, Mansur Qardawsh and Muhammad MiÊ¿ar.
Hadash
It is an acronym for the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality in Hebrew 'Hazit Democratit Leshalom ul'Shivyon. It was an alliance of the Israel Communist Party and some other factions sympathetic to the Arab cause. Hadash was formed in 1977 by Meir Vilner of Rakach among others. The anti-Zionist party has a number of progressive demands including, the return of Israel to June 1967 borders, and establishing an Arab state alongside Israel and the Palestinians should be given the right to return to Israel or should be given compensation. The party also demands for granting equal citizenship to the Israeli Arabs. It also stands for ensuring the rights of individuals and separation of religion from state.
Balad Party
It is an acronym for Brit Le'umit Demokratit meaning National Democratic Assembly it also means homeland in Arabic. This party was found by Azmi Bishara one of the vocal representatives of the Arab aspirations in 1995. The Arab nationalist political party Balad has the objective of turning the state of Israel into a democracy for all its citizens, irrespective of national or ethnic identity.' it has other major stated aims including the recognition of Palestinian Arabs in Israel as a national minority and to grant autonomy in education, culture and press. It also demand the implementation of the UN Resolution 194 that entitles the right of return to the Palestinian in addition to demanding the withdrawal of Israel to its 1967 border and form an Arab state comprising West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.
Major impediments for the Arab participation in Politics
Arab citizens of Israel enjoy the right to vote and the right to get elected to the Knesset. But they have a very limited role in determining the policy of the nation especially those critical of the government and the State policy.17 The contradiction in the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic was a puzzle and one of the major predicaments for the Arabs in Israel. This was in addition to the fact that the Arabs were always seen as a security threat to the nation. The identity crisis of the Israeli Palestinian was compounded with another factor too. The Israeliness of these Arabs was looked down suspiciously and smelled betrayal by the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. It was only after the six day war in 1967 that these Palestinian were also accepted in the larger Palestinian universe.18 The major problem was that it is not citizenship or membership in the state system that determines the extent of services and privileges that the state bestows on the individual and the group; the determining factor is membership in the dominant ethnic group. Citizenship, therefore, is relegated to a less important status than belonging to the national groups that compose the state.19 The very nature of the state as a Jewish one has made the Israeli Arabs indifferent to the State but in order to reclaim their right as a national minority and raise their voice against the injustice meted out against them it was inevitable to take into politics. “Because Israel officially defines Jewishness and not Israeli citizenship as the criterion for inclusion in the state definition, it constitutionally (not only by policy and practice) excludes from its identity all citizens who are non-Jews. At the same time, it includes all non- citizens who are Jewish, regardless of any ideological commitment, sentimental attachment, national consciousness, or indeed desire on their part to be part of the state, but just on the basis of the single criterion of fitting the state's definition of who is a Jew-a definition drawn from traditional Halachic principles.”20 The meaning of Jewish state is expressed not only in national, cultural, religious and social symbols alone but in the very perception of the mainstream Jews.21 The very participation in the political activities seemed to be meaningless. When they did attend Knesset sessions the Arab members limited their activity to making generalized speeches about problems experienced by the Arabs and humbly asking the authorities to find some solutions.22 But their role was restricted to the issues that never raised the major issues related to the Arabs like the repatriation of Palestinian refugees and those which questioned the injustice meted out to the Arabs by the state apparatus including the confiscation of the land or the inferior status of the Arabs in the country. But all the while the Arabs were not given any say in the executive branch of the government whose functionaries are committed to Zionism. The contradiction lies in the fact that the Israeli government also supports the Zionism that is based upon the assumption of expelling all the Arabs from the Promised Land and airlift the Jews from all over the world in their stead.23 This basic contradictory factor is never taken into account, let alone solving it. It is a fact that since the creation of the state of the Israel few Arabs have occupied any influential posts in the government and not a single Arab has ever served in the cabinet despite the fact that they constitute roughly 20% of the total population. Arabs have faced military rule and the hardships under this rule. One governor has summed it up; the military government interferes in the life of the Arab citizens from the day of his birth to the day of his death. It has the final say in all the matters concerning workers, peasants, professional men, merchants and educated men, with schooling and social services….. Often too it arbitrarily interferes in the affairs of political parties, in political and social activities and in local and municipal councils.24
Another important point is that the demographic advantage of the Arabs in Israel was turned in favor of the Zionist ideology through a number of measures including the massive expulsion in 1948 followed by a number of other measures to keep the number on check. The authorities were systematically carrying out their plan in lieu with the Zionism that include the gathering of the Jews in the Promised Land that was captured after ousting its legitimate residents and owners.
These facts should be viewed against a number of attempts by the alternative governments to tackle the question of Arabs and their direct attempt to erode any Arab attempt to form a political platform worth its name. The Koing report of 1976 is an eye opener as it documents the recommended containment and discrimination policies of the then government of Prime Minister Yithzak Rabin. The report sheds light on the systematic planning and deliberation in the decision making circle to tackle the Arab question inside Israel including demographic challenge that the Arab poses in addition to the containment of the increasing political leverage and other economic and educational issues.25 The report recommended to “prevent the establishment of independent Arab political parties or nationwide organization. In this respect the state was successful in preventing the establishment of political parties, like the attempts which were made by Elias Kussa, the Popular Front, Al Ard Movement. We have succeeded in the prevention of such endeavors during 20 years.”
In the political field the Arabs were compelled to vote for the ruling Mapai during the military rule in the first one decade and the dependence of the Arabs in economic matters on Arabs made their case all the more volatile. The Mapai, in its turn accepted the Arabs in its fold to prevent any political power concentration in an exclusively Arab centre. The authorities imposed strict control of the elections in the local Arab areas in order to prevent the election of any Arab leader who maintains a hostile view towards the Jews. IN some cases the municipal councils were dissolved just because the Arabs who were deemed to be hostile were elected.
Conclusion
From what we have discussed it is clear that the Palestinian Arabs living in Israel have emerged as a formidable political power over a period of time which challenge and wield pressure on subsequent Israeli governments to make amendments and build a true democracy. It would be correct to assume that the political mobilization and empowerment of the Arabs have grown enough to compel one of the powerful military regimes in the world to turn into itself and resolve its contradiction. The very concept of democracy could not go hand in hand with the Jewishness of Israel. Unequal and unjust treatment of a people who are the original inheritors of the land and expropriating their land to accommodate anyone living in any part of the world just because of his ethnic similarity is nothing more than a racist one. The very function the Israeli Arabs are doing is that of questioning this ideology and working hard to build a true democratic nation based on justice equality and liberty. The study has also shown that the Arabs have over a period of time developed a political consensus, organization and leadership with substantial legitimacy and popular support. These institutions and consensus are not aimed at achieving the rights of Arabs in Israel alone but to solve the whole Palestinian question while it stood first and foremost for achieving their rights using proper political tools.
Bibliography
*Kimmerling, Baruch& S Migdal, Joel (2003) The Palestine People A History, Harvard University Press, London.
*Burzl, John Islam, (2004) Judaism and the Political Role of Religion in the Middle East, University Press of Florida, Gainessville.
*Edwards, Beverley Milton (1996) Islamic Politics In Palestine, Tauris Academic Studies London
*Rubin, Barry (2007) Political Islam Routledge, London
*Ahmad H Sa’di, ‘The Keonig Report and Israeli Policy Towards the Palestinian Minority, 1965-1976: Old Wine In New Bottles, Arab Studies Quarterly Volume 25, Number 3, Summer 2003.
*Jiryis, Sabri (1976), The Arabs in Israel, Monthly Review Press, New York.
*Nadim Rouhana and Ascad Ghanem The Crisis Of Minorities In Ethnic States: The Case Of Palestinian Citizens In Israel, Source: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Aug., 1998)
*Rouhana, Nadim, The Political Transformation of the Palestinians in Israel: From Acquiescence to Challenge, Source: Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Spring, 1989)
*Jones, Clive & C Murphy, Emma (2002) Israel Challenges to identity, Democracy and the State Routledge, London
*Jacob M. Landau, (1993) The Arab Minority in Israel, 1967-1991, Clarendon Press Oxford
*Rouhana, Nadim The Political Transformation of the Palestinians in Israel: From Acquiescence to Challenge Source: Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Spring, 1989)
*Mark Tessler and Audra K. Grant ‘Israel's Arab Citizens: The Continuing Struggle Source: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 555, Israel in Transition (Jan., 1998)
*Ahmed Bsoul, Labeed (2006) The Status of Palestinian in Israel: 1948-Oslo, Arab Studies Quarterly, Volume 28, Number 2, Spring 2006.
*Kimmerling, Baruch & S. Midgal, Joel (2003) The Palestinian People-a History
*Nadim Rouhana and Ascad Ghanem The Crisis Of Minorities In Ethnic States: The Case Of Palestinian Citizens In Israel, Source: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Aug., 1998)
*Rouhana, Nadim, The Political Transformation of the Palestinians in Israel: From Acquiescence to Challenge, Source: Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Spring, 1989)
* Karsh, Efraim Israel (2000) Israel: The First Hundred Years, Frank Cass London
ROLE OF MEDIA PROPAGANDA IN IRAQ INVASION
Introduction
In this study I would try to explore to what extend the Bush administration has succeeded in creating misperception regarding the war on Iraq as part of its War propaganda through media. Here my attempt would be to see the entire war propaganda against Iraq in a historic perspective. The study would be based upon the objective evaluation of the major events that has led to the crystallization of the current perspective regarding the invasion of Iraq including the logic which justified it. In the process of this study the question of legitimacy and objectivity of our perception would be analyzed. The focus of the study would be the pro-war propaganda, by the Bush administration and war industrialists and importance of the media manipulation, that includes lies, misdirection, loaded rhetoric, staged events in order to justify a war citing an idealistic or patriotic cause deemed to be acceptable. The whole discussion is expected to give us more insight regarding the formation of the views that the public develops over a period of time and how the influential media could manipulate and maneuver information to suit its vested interests. It is a well known fact that managing the media is one of the major activities to win any war and gather support for it. In this study I would examine how the Bush administration has attempted to form the public perception of the war on Iraq and to what extend it has succeeded in this regard through its crafty handling of media and sources of information.
The whole idea of war propaganda revolves around manipulating people's perception and reaction towards war through media. Here the space for open dialog or engagement with the target audience is shut. Media manipulation and disinformation is not new in general and during the war time especially. It is a well know fact that influential groups and governments could control information, manage news in order to shape public opinion in favor of them in times of war. This is not because of the uncritical mindset of the viewers but the propaganda was so powerful that these misperceptions were formed as logical conclusions to what they learned as they were trapped in the propaganda efforts.
Role of Media In Pre Iraq Wars
The policy makers and politicians were very well aware of the importance of the media in the major military engagement of the past. They are very well aware of the critical role media can play to win or lose a war. Here my attempt would be to shed light on the way the media reacted to the major wars that has importance in the modern history. The case of the two world wars and the Vietnam War would suffice to point out to the weight of the media and its role in deciding the future course of the war. It is generally agreed that the governments and media would have conflicting interests during the time of wars as the media would be eager to bring out the gory picture of the war while the government would be insisting on filtering the news and broadcasting only those aspects that would help it to win the war. During the First World War the British government tried to slap censorship through the Press Bureau, that was introduced to provide information favorable to the winning of the war and the photographers were threatened to keep away themselves from the war zone and said that the defying would be on their own risk of being shot. This has led to the opposition of the journalists and they challenged it by taking pictures from the war front violating the order. These reporters were arrested and put into prison.1 But due to the massive opposition and the counterproductive result of the action the government allowed a few accredited army staff to report from the front. This has resulted in the censored airing of the war news.
During the World War II also both British and the US deployed a number of censoring mechanisms to form the public opinion in favor of them. The Ministry of information in London banned reporting any news items that were deemed as against the war effort, while in the US the office of Censorship asked not to report the subversive images of the bloody death of the soldiers or those happy soldiers who are ready to leave the battlefield. Here the interesting question is that the watchdog was converted to a lapdog who followed the orders of his master and hardly questioned constrains imposed on them by their respective governments.
Another important event in this regard was the reporting of the Vietnam War. Here the media got more access and less censorship was there and as a result the journalists started reporting on a variety of the war related topics and many gruesome pictures were shown. This development is said to have undermined the credibility of the war and the anti war movement in the US got momentum and finally the government was compelled to pull out its army halfway from the war. It is to be kept in mind that the journalists were not given a free go to report whatever they saw and still restrictions were there. But this limited access was again restricted and the whole issue of the media management and censorship has become a part of the long established part of the military conflict. These constrains imposed on media point to the importance the policy makers accord to the role the media could play and the effects the media reporting has made in other events of significance. In this backdrop we have to see the whole spin and distortion game of the Bush administration for the run up to the Iraq war.2
Involvement of the Bush Administration and State Machinery in Propaganda
The Bush administration was engaged in wholesale fabrication of lies and to a great extent it succeeded in passing them to the audience as indelible truths, when it is ushered into the day to day news chain. For this purpose the administration has deployed a number of mechanisms including setting up public relations firms in large numbers to finance and influence the media. The lies, converted into news very easily become part and parcel of the emerging political and media consensus in addition to shaping the public perception.
The important role played by civilian propaganda units set up by the State Department in close ties with CIA and Pentagon is one of the important factors to be mentioned in this regard. Charlotte Beers, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, has played an important role in this regard thanks to her important role in the advertising industry as well. The mission she was assigned to is "to counteract anti-Americanism abroad." the office under her leadership was asked to "ensure that public diplomacy (engaging, informing, and influencing key international audiences) is practiced in harmony with public affairs (outreach to Americans) and traditional diplomacy to advance U.S. interests and security and to provide the moral basis for U.S. leadership in the world."3
This is in addition to the direct involvement of the CIA in the Fear and Disinformation Campaign (FDI) through massive enticement to authors, journalists and media critics, through private owned foundations and organizations. The involvement of the CIA in deciding the scope and direction of many Hollywood productions is also to be brought into discussion as studies show that one third of Hollywood movies were related to war after the September 11 attack.
A number of Public Relations groups including Rendon Group and Lincoln Group were hired by the State Department to make its propaganda possible through disinformation. The fact that huge amount of money was earmarked for this purpose is a known secret. The PRs exerting major influence in directing the news and coining catchy words in order to make the propaganda possible and more effective was also exposed. These efforts were made out of the realization that the media plays a central role in war propaganda and only through blatant distortion and manipulation of all news sources it would be possible to drum up the support for the war.
Disinformation and distortion was part of a state policy as the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) was launched just after the September 11attck by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. This was aimed to “plant stories that were false in foreign countries -- as an effort to influence public opinion across the world.” but the administration was compelled to close it following the massive opposition from the public as it was charged as an office to deliberately lie to promote the US interests, but the OSI was functioning through some proxies for the portrayal of Saddam in a bad shape. The involvement of various branches of the intelligence units in different components of the propaganda campaign is well documented.
Major False Information Disseminated Before the War
The major accusations the Bush administration wanted to fabricate and the media has disseminated uncritically include the claim that Saddam Hussein is developing the Weapons of Mass Destruction. This was proved false when the officials tasked to trace the WMD reported that there is no evidence for any WMD or even a WMD program.
The second claim presented was that Saddam was a brutal dictator. This is true but the brutality when it was in full fledge was supported and financed by this very US that has even disrupted one of the UN resolutions against Saddam for the alleged use of chemical weapons just because he was a staunch ally of the US then. Here also the media was not ready to give critical evaluation of the whole question and was reduced to a machine in the hands of the imperialists to highlight what they wanted and downplay any of the charges that may cast doubts on the US for being guilty of supporting him to carry out such huge human right violations.
The next rationale for invading Iraq was that it could help the democratization process in the West Asian countries through cracking down militant Islam, better America's standing in the Arab world, in addition to safeguarding its closest ally in the region, Israel. All these reasons were proved to be unessential since the very presence of the foreign military is seen as part of a neocolonial design and the region has become more prone to the appeals of terrorists and anti-western movements. The popular resentment against Israel is also increasing as it is seen to have worked from behind the scene in the invasion of Iraq.
Another rationale shown by the Bush administration was that Saddam maintained close ties with Osama and has played a role in the terrorist attack on the twin towers. These were also proved to be unsubstantiated and not able to prove and it is unlikely that Saddam would be able to develop any ties with Osama given the hatred that the latter has towards the infidel regime of Saddam. Osama belongs to the Wahhabi school of thought while Saddam was a staunch exponent of the Ba’ath movement with a secular bend that is a diametrically opposite ideology to that of Wahhabism. The links between Saddam and al Qaida and the alleged role of Saddam came into public domain from Czech officials in 2001. But the claim of the Czech Republic’s interior minister that the main culprit in the twin tower attack Mohammed Atta met the intelligence official of Iraq Ahmed Khalid Ibrahim at Prague was proved to be unfounded since the FBI investigation said there is no proof in this regard. The Czech officials also came open denying any proof in this regard and said it was based on a mistaken notion due to the facial similarity between Atta and the man who really met the Iraqi intelligence official. 4 The double stand that the Bush administration has advanced throughout its treatment of the countries designed as “axis of evil”.
Just as Britain and French circulated fabricated news that German soldiers have bayoneted a two year child and chopped off the arms of a baby that clung to its mothers skirts the US war planners have once again highlighted the baby killer image, but here the label is hung in the neck of Saddam. Saddam was accused to be a brutal dictator who has killed 5000people belonged to Iraqi Kurds during the Iran Iraq war in Halabja in 1988. But this was not mentioned by the administration when the first Gulf war occurred just because then the Iraqi government was receiving military and economic support from the US. As the LexisNexis database shows the incident was rarely mentioned during the Operation Desert Storm in 1991.5 But it was reported again with unprecedented importance in the month of March 2003, when the coalition forces invaded Iraq. The sharp increase in the reporting of the “babies from incubator story” who were killed in large number also resurfaced during the run up to the war despite the fact that it was proved to be fabricated with the help of one of the major public relations firms that has concluded a contract with the senior Bush administration to engage in anti Saddam propaganda. Here also the pattern of its disappearance and resurfacing is reveling. The “babies from incubator story” was mentioned 137 times between the invasion of Kuwait and the Operation Desert Storm. But the story of the killing of more than 200 babies after pulling them from the incubator and exposing them to severe cold was questioned by the journalists just after the war. It was also proved to be a fabricated one. But the same story was told and retold in 2002s.
Impact of the Media on Public Perception
As the decision of the Bush administration to go for war against Iraq was not prompted by any internal threat the unique challenge of convincing the inevitability of the mission was the onus of the Bush administration. The administration was in dare need of the legitimacy to go to war at least from its public as the UN Security Council did not approve the decision to go to war. Here the State Department resorted to using the media as a means to garner the support of the public and started airing a number of fabricated lies in order to make the Americans believe that Saddam regime of Iraq posed an imminent potential threat. A public that was not supporting a unilateral military intervention slowly shifted its stand and later came out in large number supporting the proposed invasion of Iraq. There are a number of misperceptions that the public has taken for granted when the Bush administration launched its propaganda war against Iraq. These include that Iraq posed a real threat to the peace and global security as Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction. The charge that Saddam is developing WMD was leveled in addition to asserting the support he has extended to the al Qaeda terrorist group. Even before the war, majority of the people were of the view that Iraq had a WMD program and was supporting al Qaeda but the support was not overwhelming to the extent that they would justify any unilateral military action. But when Bush decided to attack Iraq finally the public expressed their support and even after the conformation that there is no WMD in Iraq much of the support remained. These facts are grim reminder to the extent the Bush administration was able to create misperception through spin and disinformation. The public developed their views based upon the information disseminated directly or implication by the media. There are a number of lies that were passed to the public as facts and were the bedrock of the support for the US war on Iraq. Experts in the field are of the view that there are at least 27 false claims by the US administration given to the public to justify its decision to go to war. This is in addition to a number of other past events digged out to present Saddam as a savage and brutal dictator. The reemerging of the past events including the Halabja massacre and the incubator episode in Kuwait during the first Gulf war is revealing.
A study conducted by Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland and Knowledge Networks, made it clear that 70 % of the public held one misperception about Iraq, while 20 % held two and 8% held three, while only 30 % percent held none of the misperceptions. (PIPA/Knowledge Networks 2003).
But the interesting thing is that even after the reporting one of the authentic polls conducted by Program on International Policy Attitudes/Knowledge Networks revealed the disturbing fact that many were not informed about it.( see table No 1)
Since the war with Iraq ended, is it your impression that the US has or has not found Iraq weapons of mass destruction?
Table No. 1*
Period
9/03
7/03
6/03
3/03
6/03-9/03
US Has
24
21
23
34
22
US Has not
73
76
73
59
75
No answer
3
3
4
7
3
*Source: Program on International Policy Attitudes/Knowledge Networks 2003
Another cooked intelligence report that was passed over to the people who believed it was that Iraq maintained close links with al Qaeda and the belief sustained even after the invasion and the clear evidence that there was no relation. The table given is revealing:
Is it your impression that the US has or has not found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al Qaeda terrorist organization?
Table No. 2*
Period
8-9/03
7/03
6/03
6/03-9/03
US has
49
45
52
48
US has not
45
49
43
46
No answer
6
6
5
6
*Source: Program on International Policy Attitudes/Knowledge Networks.
This phenomenon indicates to another stark reality that the support from those with no misperceptions for the policies of the Bush in Iraq was 23% while 53 % supported out of those who held one misperception. The massive support for Bush in his policy came from those who held two or three misperceptions (78 % and 86 % respectively). The reason why many of the Americans held misperception largely depends on news source. Here the case of the Fox TV news is revealing as 80% of those who relied upon it held at least one misperception. This is in sharp contrast to 55% of CNN viewers, 47% of those who depended on print media.6
Different rationale was shown for invading Iraq and continuing the military presence there. This shift in the stand itself points to the fact that other unbiased media outlets also tried their best to give a clear picture of the whole event. It is a disturbing fact that a number of polls conducted during the run up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 unveil the connection between propaganda of the Bush administration and public misperception. Here the media has played a crucial role in shaping the public opinion in favor of the war by presenting the information given by the Bush administration without checking its accuracy or observing any kind of critical evaluation of the whole issue. There are a number of studies that reveals how Bush Administration managed to create misperceptions among the public both in America and outside on a range of issues including Iraq, Saddam Hussein and the threats they posed. This in turn helped the Bush administration to garner support for going for war and dethroning Saddam.
Tactics to Maintain Pro War Reporting
One of the major techniques employed by the Bush administration to maintain the pro war reporting in the whole media is repetition. The neoconservatives in order to leave a lasting impact on the public have time and again repeated war with Iraq pretty in advance. The use of multiple sources to reinforce the concept of the war and the referring of the one source to another would have a psychological impact on the target audience to the extent they would accept the war as an inevitable one without giving any chance to scrutiny. Another important tool that was used through the media was polls because they would be accepted as news despite the fact that they are just the views of those people who were polled. We have seen to what extent the opinion of the public would vacillate according to the news they are catered.
There are a number of critics who holds the view that introducing a number of war related words and setting the stage for a US friendly media was one of the major successes achieved by the Bush administration. The entire literature on war on Iraq and the very use of war in Iraq is seen as part of disinformation tactics. It was a unilateral attack by one of the most powerful countries the world has ever seen and the opponent could not be called an adversary. To turn the realities upside down the very act of war that has no legitimacy of the UN, international community or the nation it is invading was christened as "humanitarian interventions" in order to liberate a people through “regime change” and “promoting democracy”. Despite the fact that UN Charters approves any kind of resistance to the illegitimate invasion of any given nation but the terms used to describe the revolting people of Iraq is always in bad shape while that of the military occupation and the brutal targeting of civilians are called "peace-keeping". The entire shift in the whole literature and the mentioning of the September 11 attack as a major global turning point could be seen as part of a bigger game plan. A contrast between the sheer number of the civilian casualties in the Twin tower attack and its retaliation is all the more raveling.
As one of the anti war activists reveals the war propaganda is carried out through issuing statements that in turn would be carried by the major media with the effect that all the local media would follow the suit just because it don't have any alternative. Using some of the real or perceived buzz words the media would sustain and would be helpful in fabricating the news in the official line. Some of the buzzwords widely used are "Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda" who is the de facto perpetrator of all the terrorist attack and hence caters news stories including the "war on terrorism" as part of the containment strategy for any "alleged", "future” actual or presumed terrorist attacks. It goes without saying that most often than not Al Qaeda is a CIA "intelligence asset" that could be used in all the operations that the US wanted to carry out against any of the threats to its interests.
There are a number of other words coined by the propagandists and duly followed by the media. R.N. Sharma and Y.K. Sharma, two Middle East experts from India have enumerated a number of terms coined by the Pentagon and uncritically used by media.
*Air campaign: Bombardment of essentially defenseless cities.
*Allegedly: Prefix used for all reports of civilian death caused by US, UK forces
*Allies: US and UK forces currently invading Iraq.
*Coalition forces: US and UK forces.
*Claimed: Everything the Iraqis say that the shows the US and the UK in bad light.
*Collateral damage: Civilian casualties caused by US-UK forces which cannot be blamed on Iraqis.
*Embed: Journalists who may not get the true picture because they are gusts of the military unit.
*Human shields: civilian casualties caused by US-UK forces but blamed on Iraqis.
*Liberation: Occupation.
*Military experts: Commentators who toe the Pentagon line.
*Regime death squads: Iraqi resistance fighters.
*Soldiers in civilian clothes: Iraqi civilians fighting foreign occupation.
* We are still investigating: We don’t want to admit responsibility right now.
*Target rich environment: Lots of places to bomb.7
The entire machinery built over a period of time to maintain the reporting on official line deserves mention. Since the September 11th attack these machinery grew in importance and huge amount of money was funneled to it. Here David Miller one of the eminent anti war activist-cum-media critic says that the US and the UK have succeeded in keeping one of the most sophisticated media controlling system. The UK foreign office public relations alone have an estimated annual expense of 340 million pounds for its works done in London alone. In the US the Pentagon has its own public relations office in addition to the Office of the Public Diplomacy of the State Department. The estimated amount of the latter to win the hearts and minds in the Arab world alone is calculated to be more than one billion USD. There is a system to coordinate the works of the US and the UK in this regard. The total amount spent on the propaganda to win the support of the global support is a secret. There is an Office of Global Communication (OGC) for the White House that is the top most office to decide in this regard. This OGC has cooked the whole issue of the Iraqi threat in 2001. The comment of the Deputy Assistant to President Bush for communication Suzy Defrancis sheds light to the agenda of the Bush regime, “When Americans wake up in the morning, they will first here from the Persian Gulf region, may be from General Tommy Franks. Then later in the day they will here from the Pentagon then the state department then later on the White House will brief.” The White House would be giving the news to the rest of the propaganda apparatus that has global reach.
Conclusion
From the above facts one can conclude that despite the public opposition to the invasion of Iraq, given the real picture, the Bush Administration managed to get the public support through their propaganda. The above facts also point to the fact that media has huge impact in forming the public perception and hence the support or opposing of a war that have risked hundreds of thousands of lives and added many global turmoil in addition to fueling the economic meltdown that the world is witnessing lately. The study presents the grim reality that if handled in a distorted way media could be a powerful weapon to win the hearts and minds of the people for any uncalled for war.
The fact is that out of those who have a clear picture and those who held misperception hardly supported the unilateral war. This leads us to the fact that if the media was not reduced to a propaganda machine in the hands of the neoconservatives the war could have been averted and it would have been a tough task to Bush to go to war in defiance of the public opinion and opposition from the UN. Here another important point emerges that the media could not be trusted the job of monitoring the whole policies and pronouncements of any government. The substantial increase in the sources of the media and their multinational nature made the task of giving the right and up-to-date version of the story all the more daunting. The fact remains that still a number of misperceptions remains unchallenged and the whole discourse is still in that framework that was developed by the media to facilitate a unilateral invasion of Iraq. The question of dependability and the very function of media as a means to give the popular sentiment is also being questioned when it is controlled and coerced through threat and incentives.
** ** ** ** **
References:
Miller, David (2004) Tell Me Lies Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq, London Pluto Press
Rampton, Shelton & Stauber, John (2003) Weapons Of Mass Deception-the Uses Of Propaganda in Bush’s War On Iraq, New York, Jeremy P. Tarcher
Elizabeth Poole, John E. Richardson (2006), Muslims and News Media, London, I.B. Tauris.
Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War political science quarterly Volume 118 · Number 4 · Winter 2003-2004 Steven Kull, Clay Ramsay and Evan Lewis
Brian A. Patrick and A. Trevor Thrall (2004) Winning the Peace: Paradox and Propaganda after the Invasion of Iraq Down loaded from internet.
David Robie, (2003) The Invasion of Iraq — and how the media war was won and lost half truths and media spin: whom do you believe? Downloaded from internet.
Daniel McCarthy (2002) The Propaganda War Downloaded from internet
R.N. Sharma, Y.K. Sharma (2003), Gulf War-II 2003- Before the Beginning and After the End, Shubi Publications, New Delhi
In this study I would try to explore to what extend the Bush administration has succeeded in creating misperception regarding the war on Iraq as part of its War propaganda through media. Here my attempt would be to see the entire war propaganda against Iraq in a historic perspective. The study would be based upon the objective evaluation of the major events that has led to the crystallization of the current perspective regarding the invasion of Iraq including the logic which justified it. In the process of this study the question of legitimacy and objectivity of our perception would be analyzed. The focus of the study would be the pro-war propaganda, by the Bush administration and war industrialists and importance of the media manipulation, that includes lies, misdirection, loaded rhetoric, staged events in order to justify a war citing an idealistic or patriotic cause deemed to be acceptable. The whole discussion is expected to give us more insight regarding the formation of the views that the public develops over a period of time and how the influential media could manipulate and maneuver information to suit its vested interests. It is a well known fact that managing the media is one of the major activities to win any war and gather support for it. In this study I would examine how the Bush administration has attempted to form the public perception of the war on Iraq and to what extend it has succeeded in this regard through its crafty handling of media and sources of information.
The whole idea of war propaganda revolves around manipulating people's perception and reaction towards war through media. Here the space for open dialog or engagement with the target audience is shut. Media manipulation and disinformation is not new in general and during the war time especially. It is a well know fact that influential groups and governments could control information, manage news in order to shape public opinion in favor of them in times of war. This is not because of the uncritical mindset of the viewers but the propaganda was so powerful that these misperceptions were formed as logical conclusions to what they learned as they were trapped in the propaganda efforts.
Role of Media In Pre Iraq Wars
The policy makers and politicians were very well aware of the importance of the media in the major military engagement of the past. They are very well aware of the critical role media can play to win or lose a war. Here my attempt would be to shed light on the way the media reacted to the major wars that has importance in the modern history. The case of the two world wars and the Vietnam War would suffice to point out to the weight of the media and its role in deciding the future course of the war. It is generally agreed that the governments and media would have conflicting interests during the time of wars as the media would be eager to bring out the gory picture of the war while the government would be insisting on filtering the news and broadcasting only those aspects that would help it to win the war. During the First World War the British government tried to slap censorship through the Press Bureau, that was introduced to provide information favorable to the winning of the war and the photographers were threatened to keep away themselves from the war zone and said that the defying would be on their own risk of being shot. This has led to the opposition of the journalists and they challenged it by taking pictures from the war front violating the order. These reporters were arrested and put into prison.1 But due to the massive opposition and the counterproductive result of the action the government allowed a few accredited army staff to report from the front. This has resulted in the censored airing of the war news.
During the World War II also both British and the US deployed a number of censoring mechanisms to form the public opinion in favor of them. The Ministry of information in London banned reporting any news items that were deemed as against the war effort, while in the US the office of Censorship asked not to report the subversive images of the bloody death of the soldiers or those happy soldiers who are ready to leave the battlefield. Here the interesting question is that the watchdog was converted to a lapdog who followed the orders of his master and hardly questioned constrains imposed on them by their respective governments.
Another important event in this regard was the reporting of the Vietnam War. Here the media got more access and less censorship was there and as a result the journalists started reporting on a variety of the war related topics and many gruesome pictures were shown. This development is said to have undermined the credibility of the war and the anti war movement in the US got momentum and finally the government was compelled to pull out its army halfway from the war. It is to be kept in mind that the journalists were not given a free go to report whatever they saw and still restrictions were there. But this limited access was again restricted and the whole issue of the media management and censorship has become a part of the long established part of the military conflict. These constrains imposed on media point to the importance the policy makers accord to the role the media could play and the effects the media reporting has made in other events of significance. In this backdrop we have to see the whole spin and distortion game of the Bush administration for the run up to the Iraq war.2
Involvement of the Bush Administration and State Machinery in Propaganda
The Bush administration was engaged in wholesale fabrication of lies and to a great extent it succeeded in passing them to the audience as indelible truths, when it is ushered into the day to day news chain. For this purpose the administration has deployed a number of mechanisms including setting up public relations firms in large numbers to finance and influence the media. The lies, converted into news very easily become part and parcel of the emerging political and media consensus in addition to shaping the public perception.
The important role played by civilian propaganda units set up by the State Department in close ties with CIA and Pentagon is one of the important factors to be mentioned in this regard. Charlotte Beers, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, has played an important role in this regard thanks to her important role in the advertising industry as well. The mission she was assigned to is "to counteract anti-Americanism abroad." the office under her leadership was asked to "ensure that public diplomacy (engaging, informing, and influencing key international audiences) is practiced in harmony with public affairs (outreach to Americans) and traditional diplomacy to advance U.S. interests and security and to provide the moral basis for U.S. leadership in the world."3
This is in addition to the direct involvement of the CIA in the Fear and Disinformation Campaign (FDI) through massive enticement to authors, journalists and media critics, through private owned foundations and organizations. The involvement of the CIA in deciding the scope and direction of many Hollywood productions is also to be brought into discussion as studies show that one third of Hollywood movies were related to war after the September 11 attack.
A number of Public Relations groups including Rendon Group and Lincoln Group were hired by the State Department to make its propaganda possible through disinformation. The fact that huge amount of money was earmarked for this purpose is a known secret. The PRs exerting major influence in directing the news and coining catchy words in order to make the propaganda possible and more effective was also exposed. These efforts were made out of the realization that the media plays a central role in war propaganda and only through blatant distortion and manipulation of all news sources it would be possible to drum up the support for the war.
Disinformation and distortion was part of a state policy as the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) was launched just after the September 11attck by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. This was aimed to “plant stories that were false in foreign countries -- as an effort to influence public opinion across the world.” but the administration was compelled to close it following the massive opposition from the public as it was charged as an office to deliberately lie to promote the US interests, but the OSI was functioning through some proxies for the portrayal of Saddam in a bad shape. The involvement of various branches of the intelligence units in different components of the propaganda campaign is well documented.
Major False Information Disseminated Before the War
The major accusations the Bush administration wanted to fabricate and the media has disseminated uncritically include the claim that Saddam Hussein is developing the Weapons of Mass Destruction. This was proved false when the officials tasked to trace the WMD reported that there is no evidence for any WMD or even a WMD program.
The second claim presented was that Saddam was a brutal dictator. This is true but the brutality when it was in full fledge was supported and financed by this very US that has even disrupted one of the UN resolutions against Saddam for the alleged use of chemical weapons just because he was a staunch ally of the US then. Here also the media was not ready to give critical evaluation of the whole question and was reduced to a machine in the hands of the imperialists to highlight what they wanted and downplay any of the charges that may cast doubts on the US for being guilty of supporting him to carry out such huge human right violations.
The next rationale for invading Iraq was that it could help the democratization process in the West Asian countries through cracking down militant Islam, better America's standing in the Arab world, in addition to safeguarding its closest ally in the region, Israel. All these reasons were proved to be unessential since the very presence of the foreign military is seen as part of a neocolonial design and the region has become more prone to the appeals of terrorists and anti-western movements. The popular resentment against Israel is also increasing as it is seen to have worked from behind the scene in the invasion of Iraq.
Another rationale shown by the Bush administration was that Saddam maintained close ties with Osama and has played a role in the terrorist attack on the twin towers. These were also proved to be unsubstantiated and not able to prove and it is unlikely that Saddam would be able to develop any ties with Osama given the hatred that the latter has towards the infidel regime of Saddam. Osama belongs to the Wahhabi school of thought while Saddam was a staunch exponent of the Ba’ath movement with a secular bend that is a diametrically opposite ideology to that of Wahhabism. The links between Saddam and al Qaida and the alleged role of Saddam came into public domain from Czech officials in 2001. But the claim of the Czech Republic’s interior minister that the main culprit in the twin tower attack Mohammed Atta met the intelligence official of Iraq Ahmed Khalid Ibrahim at Prague was proved to be unfounded since the FBI investigation said there is no proof in this regard. The Czech officials also came open denying any proof in this regard and said it was based on a mistaken notion due to the facial similarity between Atta and the man who really met the Iraqi intelligence official. 4 The double stand that the Bush administration has advanced throughout its treatment of the countries designed as “axis of evil”.
Just as Britain and French circulated fabricated news that German soldiers have bayoneted a two year child and chopped off the arms of a baby that clung to its mothers skirts the US war planners have once again highlighted the baby killer image, but here the label is hung in the neck of Saddam. Saddam was accused to be a brutal dictator who has killed 5000people belonged to Iraqi Kurds during the Iran Iraq war in Halabja in 1988. But this was not mentioned by the administration when the first Gulf war occurred just because then the Iraqi government was receiving military and economic support from the US. As the LexisNexis database shows the incident was rarely mentioned during the Operation Desert Storm in 1991.5 But it was reported again with unprecedented importance in the month of March 2003, when the coalition forces invaded Iraq. The sharp increase in the reporting of the “babies from incubator story” who were killed in large number also resurfaced during the run up to the war despite the fact that it was proved to be fabricated with the help of one of the major public relations firms that has concluded a contract with the senior Bush administration to engage in anti Saddam propaganda. Here also the pattern of its disappearance and resurfacing is reveling. The “babies from incubator story” was mentioned 137 times between the invasion of Kuwait and the Operation Desert Storm. But the story of the killing of more than 200 babies after pulling them from the incubator and exposing them to severe cold was questioned by the journalists just after the war. It was also proved to be a fabricated one. But the same story was told and retold in 2002s.
Impact of the Media on Public Perception
As the decision of the Bush administration to go for war against Iraq was not prompted by any internal threat the unique challenge of convincing the inevitability of the mission was the onus of the Bush administration. The administration was in dare need of the legitimacy to go to war at least from its public as the UN Security Council did not approve the decision to go to war. Here the State Department resorted to using the media as a means to garner the support of the public and started airing a number of fabricated lies in order to make the Americans believe that Saddam regime of Iraq posed an imminent potential threat. A public that was not supporting a unilateral military intervention slowly shifted its stand and later came out in large number supporting the proposed invasion of Iraq. There are a number of misperceptions that the public has taken for granted when the Bush administration launched its propaganda war against Iraq. These include that Iraq posed a real threat to the peace and global security as Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction. The charge that Saddam is developing WMD was leveled in addition to asserting the support he has extended to the al Qaeda terrorist group. Even before the war, majority of the people were of the view that Iraq had a WMD program and was supporting al Qaeda but the support was not overwhelming to the extent that they would justify any unilateral military action. But when Bush decided to attack Iraq finally the public expressed their support and even after the conformation that there is no WMD in Iraq much of the support remained. These facts are grim reminder to the extent the Bush administration was able to create misperception through spin and disinformation. The public developed their views based upon the information disseminated directly or implication by the media. There are a number of lies that were passed to the public as facts and were the bedrock of the support for the US war on Iraq. Experts in the field are of the view that there are at least 27 false claims by the US administration given to the public to justify its decision to go to war. This is in addition to a number of other past events digged out to present Saddam as a savage and brutal dictator. The reemerging of the past events including the Halabja massacre and the incubator episode in Kuwait during the first Gulf war is revealing.
A study conducted by Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland and Knowledge Networks, made it clear that 70 % of the public held one misperception about Iraq, while 20 % held two and 8% held three, while only 30 % percent held none of the misperceptions. (PIPA/Knowledge Networks 2003).
But the interesting thing is that even after the reporting one of the authentic polls conducted by Program on International Policy Attitudes/Knowledge Networks revealed the disturbing fact that many were not informed about it.( see table No 1)
Since the war with Iraq ended, is it your impression that the US has or has not found Iraq weapons of mass destruction?
Table No. 1*
Period
9/03
7/03
6/03
3/03
6/03-9/03
US Has
24
21
23
34
22
US Has not
73
76
73
59
75
No answer
3
3
4
7
3
*Source: Program on International Policy Attitudes/Knowledge Networks 2003
Another cooked intelligence report that was passed over to the people who believed it was that Iraq maintained close links with al Qaeda and the belief sustained even after the invasion and the clear evidence that there was no relation. The table given is revealing:
Is it your impression that the US has or has not found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al Qaeda terrorist organization?
Table No. 2*
Period
8-9/03
7/03
6/03
6/03-9/03
US has
49
45
52
48
US has not
45
49
43
46
No answer
6
6
5
6
*Source: Program on International Policy Attitudes/Knowledge Networks.
This phenomenon indicates to another stark reality that the support from those with no misperceptions for the policies of the Bush in Iraq was 23% while 53 % supported out of those who held one misperception. The massive support for Bush in his policy came from those who held two or three misperceptions (78 % and 86 % respectively). The reason why many of the Americans held misperception largely depends on news source. Here the case of the Fox TV news is revealing as 80% of those who relied upon it held at least one misperception. This is in sharp contrast to 55% of CNN viewers, 47% of those who depended on print media.6
Different rationale was shown for invading Iraq and continuing the military presence there. This shift in the stand itself points to the fact that other unbiased media outlets also tried their best to give a clear picture of the whole event. It is a disturbing fact that a number of polls conducted during the run up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 unveil the connection between propaganda of the Bush administration and public misperception. Here the media has played a crucial role in shaping the public opinion in favor of the war by presenting the information given by the Bush administration without checking its accuracy or observing any kind of critical evaluation of the whole issue. There are a number of studies that reveals how Bush Administration managed to create misperceptions among the public both in America and outside on a range of issues including Iraq, Saddam Hussein and the threats they posed. This in turn helped the Bush administration to garner support for going for war and dethroning Saddam.
Tactics to Maintain Pro War Reporting
One of the major techniques employed by the Bush administration to maintain the pro war reporting in the whole media is repetition. The neoconservatives in order to leave a lasting impact on the public have time and again repeated war with Iraq pretty in advance. The use of multiple sources to reinforce the concept of the war and the referring of the one source to another would have a psychological impact on the target audience to the extent they would accept the war as an inevitable one without giving any chance to scrutiny. Another important tool that was used through the media was polls because they would be accepted as news despite the fact that they are just the views of those people who were polled. We have seen to what extent the opinion of the public would vacillate according to the news they are catered.
There are a number of critics who holds the view that introducing a number of war related words and setting the stage for a US friendly media was one of the major successes achieved by the Bush administration. The entire literature on war on Iraq and the very use of war in Iraq is seen as part of disinformation tactics. It was a unilateral attack by one of the most powerful countries the world has ever seen and the opponent could not be called an adversary. To turn the realities upside down the very act of war that has no legitimacy of the UN, international community or the nation it is invading was christened as "humanitarian interventions" in order to liberate a people through “regime change” and “promoting democracy”. Despite the fact that UN Charters approves any kind of resistance to the illegitimate invasion of any given nation but the terms used to describe the revolting people of Iraq is always in bad shape while that of the military occupation and the brutal targeting of civilians are called "peace-keeping". The entire shift in the whole literature and the mentioning of the September 11 attack as a major global turning point could be seen as part of a bigger game plan. A contrast between the sheer number of the civilian casualties in the Twin tower attack and its retaliation is all the more raveling.
As one of the anti war activists reveals the war propaganda is carried out through issuing statements that in turn would be carried by the major media with the effect that all the local media would follow the suit just because it don't have any alternative. Using some of the real or perceived buzz words the media would sustain and would be helpful in fabricating the news in the official line. Some of the buzzwords widely used are "Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda" who is the de facto perpetrator of all the terrorist attack and hence caters news stories including the "war on terrorism" as part of the containment strategy for any "alleged", "future” actual or presumed terrorist attacks. It goes without saying that most often than not Al Qaeda is a CIA "intelligence asset" that could be used in all the operations that the US wanted to carry out against any of the threats to its interests.
There are a number of other words coined by the propagandists and duly followed by the media. R.N. Sharma and Y.K. Sharma, two Middle East experts from India have enumerated a number of terms coined by the Pentagon and uncritically used by media.
*Air campaign: Bombardment of essentially defenseless cities.
*Allegedly: Prefix used for all reports of civilian death caused by US, UK forces
*Allies: US and UK forces currently invading Iraq.
*Coalition forces: US and UK forces.
*Claimed: Everything the Iraqis say that the shows the US and the UK in bad light.
*Collateral damage: Civilian casualties caused by US-UK forces which cannot be blamed on Iraqis.
*Embed: Journalists who may not get the true picture because they are gusts of the military unit.
*Human shields: civilian casualties caused by US-UK forces but blamed on Iraqis.
*Liberation: Occupation.
*Military experts: Commentators who toe the Pentagon line.
*Regime death squads: Iraqi resistance fighters.
*Soldiers in civilian clothes: Iraqi civilians fighting foreign occupation.
* We are still investigating: We don’t want to admit responsibility right now.
*Target rich environment: Lots of places to bomb.7
The entire machinery built over a period of time to maintain the reporting on official line deserves mention. Since the September 11th attack these machinery grew in importance and huge amount of money was funneled to it. Here David Miller one of the eminent anti war activist-cum-media critic says that the US and the UK have succeeded in keeping one of the most sophisticated media controlling system. The UK foreign office public relations alone have an estimated annual expense of 340 million pounds for its works done in London alone. In the US the Pentagon has its own public relations office in addition to the Office of the Public Diplomacy of the State Department. The estimated amount of the latter to win the hearts and minds in the Arab world alone is calculated to be more than one billion USD. There is a system to coordinate the works of the US and the UK in this regard. The total amount spent on the propaganda to win the support of the global support is a secret. There is an Office of Global Communication (OGC) for the White House that is the top most office to decide in this regard. This OGC has cooked the whole issue of the Iraqi threat in 2001. The comment of the Deputy Assistant to President Bush for communication Suzy Defrancis sheds light to the agenda of the Bush regime, “When Americans wake up in the morning, they will first here from the Persian Gulf region, may be from General Tommy Franks. Then later in the day they will here from the Pentagon then the state department then later on the White House will brief.” The White House would be giving the news to the rest of the propaganda apparatus that has global reach.
Conclusion
From the above facts one can conclude that despite the public opposition to the invasion of Iraq, given the real picture, the Bush Administration managed to get the public support through their propaganda. The above facts also point to the fact that media has huge impact in forming the public perception and hence the support or opposing of a war that have risked hundreds of thousands of lives and added many global turmoil in addition to fueling the economic meltdown that the world is witnessing lately. The study presents the grim reality that if handled in a distorted way media could be a powerful weapon to win the hearts and minds of the people for any uncalled for war.
The fact is that out of those who have a clear picture and those who held misperception hardly supported the unilateral war. This leads us to the fact that if the media was not reduced to a propaganda machine in the hands of the neoconservatives the war could have been averted and it would have been a tough task to Bush to go to war in defiance of the public opinion and opposition from the UN. Here another important point emerges that the media could not be trusted the job of monitoring the whole policies and pronouncements of any government. The substantial increase in the sources of the media and their multinational nature made the task of giving the right and up-to-date version of the story all the more daunting. The fact remains that still a number of misperceptions remains unchallenged and the whole discourse is still in that framework that was developed by the media to facilitate a unilateral invasion of Iraq. The question of dependability and the very function of media as a means to give the popular sentiment is also being questioned when it is controlled and coerced through threat and incentives.
** ** ** ** **
References:
Miller, David (2004) Tell Me Lies Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq, London Pluto Press
Rampton, Shelton & Stauber, John (2003) Weapons Of Mass Deception-the Uses Of Propaganda in Bush’s War On Iraq, New York, Jeremy P. Tarcher
Elizabeth Poole, John E. Richardson (2006), Muslims and News Media, London, I.B. Tauris.
Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War political science quarterly Volume 118 · Number 4 · Winter 2003-2004 Steven Kull, Clay Ramsay and Evan Lewis
Brian A. Patrick and A. Trevor Thrall (2004) Winning the Peace: Paradox and Propaganda after the Invasion of Iraq Down loaded from internet.
David Robie, (2003) The Invasion of Iraq — and how the media war was won and lost half truths and media spin: whom do you believe? Downloaded from internet.
Daniel McCarthy (2002) The Propaganda War Downloaded from internet
R.N. Sharma, Y.K. Sharma (2003), Gulf War-II 2003- Before the Beginning and After the End, Shubi Publications, New Delhi
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