In Israel, Wounding the Messenger

By Michael S. Serrill

The state of Israel prides itself on being the only true democracy in the Middle East, enthusiastically relishing the slings and harrows of hard-fought elections, freedom of assembly and an aggressively independent press. In keeping with that spirit, the Israeli government initially raised few obstacles to the surge of foreign reporters that poured into the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip when violent demonstrations broke out there four months ago. The regular contingent of 250 to 300 writers, photographers, television cameramen and technicians swelled to more than 1,200, all of them racing across the dusty hills of the occupied territories to record the next episode of rock throwing and tire burning.

Soon, however, there were other images to record: those of Jewish soldiers shooting and beating demonstrators who were armed only with stones, roughing up Arab women, and even breaking the bones of unarmed captives. As these images flashed around the world, soiling the reputation of the once vaunted Israel Defense Force, Jerusalem quickly saw the dark side of its enlightened media policy. Officials came to an all too familiar conclusion: the press was to blame.

Last week the government took the strongest action yet to hobble the messenger. Determined to deal firmly with the widespread protests called to mark Palestinian Land Day without the usual glare of publicity, the army banned all foreign reporters from the occupied territories for three days, except for a dozen pool reporters accompanied by the military. Said I.D.F. Spokesman Colonel Raanan Gissin: "We know the presence of the press incites and instigates the violence."

The ban was lifted at week's end, but officials made it clear that reporters could be banned again should events warrant it. Intensifying the effects of the blackout, the army closed for six months the Palestine Press Service, a Jerusalem-based network of Arab journalists. Foreign reporters thus lost a dependable supplement from inside the territories to the sparse information in army press releases.

The government's crackdown came as no surprise to most Israel-based journalists. In recent weeks they have been shooed away from refugee camps and villages by soldiers waving pieces of paper that said CLOSED MILITARY ZONE. Photographers and television cameramen especially have been subjected to a campaign of intimidation. On Jan. 27, members of a CBS television crew were attacked by troops in the Gaza Strip after they filmed soldiers beating a Palestinian youth. On Feb. 5, two foreign photographers driving in the West Bank were startled by a senior I.D.F. officer pointing an automatic weapon at them and shouting, "Stop! Stop! I am going to kill you!" Cameras have been smashed and film confiscated. Israel's Foreign Press Association estimates that nearly 100 journalists have been attacked by Israeli soldiers.

Israelis, remembering that the U.S. and Britain limited press coverage of the Grenada and Falkland Island invasions, ask defensively why Israel should hesitate to do the same in the West Bank. The analogy blurs the line between the secrecy needs of combat operations and those of policing civil unrest, but the idea of shutting out the press has got a sympathetic hearing in elite quarters. Last month former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was quoted as telling a group of American Jewish leaders that the "insurrection must be quelled immediately, and the first step is to throw out television, a la South Africa." Kissinger, while not denying that he made the statements, has said that his remarks were distorted.

Nothing so incenses Israeli officials as comparisons with South Africa. There the white minority government has forbidden since last June virtually all press coverage of black unrest. The policy seems to have worked: in the weeks after the ban was imposed, first the disorders disappeared from the world's headlines, then the unrest itself began to subside. Other nations have shielded their conflicts from public scrutiny in a similar fashion. The bloody ground war between Iran and Iraq goes unmentioned in the world's press for months at a time because reporters have no access to the front lines. In the first years after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, almost nothing was known about the course of the conflict, though thousands were dying. When reporters cannot be kept out, governments seem increasingly willing to resort to intimidation and sabotage. In Panama, General Manuel Noriega tried to solve the problem of a bad press last week by having troops harass a group of foreign reporters, breaking cameras and destroying film.

For Israelis, the question seems to turn on whether the uprising is seen as $ a civil rights struggle or a civil rebellion. "I'm not for freedom of the press," right-wing Knesset Member Geula Cohen asserted. "I'm for the freedom of Israel." But few expect the South African solution -- stopping the disorders by starving them of media attention -- to work in Israel. The often contentious Israeli press is unlikely to tolerate continued censorship. Ido Dissentchik, editor of the conservative daily newspaper Ma'ariv, called the shutdown of the territories a "hysterical step" by desperate officials trying to hide their own actions. Whatever the consequences for the Jewish state's fragile image, said Dissentchik, "Israeli authorities must live with this problem called democracy."

With reporting by Robert Slater/Jerusalem