By Gabi Dakteris on Mar 5, 2008

If you bothered to actually read what the Daily Cal printed about your event on Monday without jumping to conclusions, you would realize that they did their job, and they did it well, by presenting strictly the facts and by using a powerful and creative photograph. A writer at the Daily Cal, when writing an article or a one-sentence caption about, for example, your event on Monday, is not taking sides with your group; they are just reporting that it happened. They say that your event symbolized the “casualties of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” That is a 100% true statement – it cannot be disputed. Journalism’s main object is to present the facts – not make personal judgements. That is what an editorial is for, which this photograph depiction clearly is not. Coverage of the event on Monday in Tuesday’s paper consisted of this photograph and this photograph alone, which is legitimately the most powerful picture I have seen taken of the event; when students on campus picked up that paper today, the first thing they looked at was that picture. The caption is neutral – the phrase “standing against Israel occupation” that you are suggesting the Daily Cal should have used is just absolutely ludicrous. That phrase would never be printed because it takes sides – it clearly favors the pro-Palestinian point of view. Know something about journalism before you make a broad sweeping criticism of the Daily Cal as a whole, whose staff memebers work hard day in and day out to bring Cal students the news.

By Tom Pessah on Mar 5, 2008

ahhh!!! I saw that too. ew.

And last time, Allie’s op-ed, whose first line is “I am a Jew”, received the header “For Palestinians, There Can Be No Peace Without Equality Under Israeli Law”. It almost seemed like the editor hadn’t read the article and never noticed it wasn’t written by a Palestinian, certainly not one claiming to represent all Palestinians.

But yeah, it’s good to protest “the conflict”: there are so many people who think “the conflict” is a good thing that we must need to protest against them. And not a single word about the one hundred people killed in the last few days.

By Tom Pessah on Mar 5, 2008

Gabi, I don’t understand your logic. You write that ” The caption is neutral – the phrase “standing against Israel occupation” that you are suggesting the Daily Cal should have used is just absolutely ludicrous. That phrase would never be printed because it takes sides – it clearly favors the pro-Palestinian point of view”.

So, if I participate in a protest against the war in Iraq, reporting that the protest was *against the war* is also taking sides. How exactly would you report that?

By tom's cool on Mar 5, 2008

Tom,

Wow, you must be blinded by lies.

According to international law there is no “occupation.” There are disputed territories, not occupied territories.

So when a paper says “Israel occupation,” it is taking a side, or at the very least it is adopting lies spread by anti-Israel propaganda.

By Husam on Mar 5, 2008

they might as well have written:

“Something about the Middle East happened on Sproul today. Concerned students did some demonstrative things. It was hot outside. ”

100% indisputable. Good reporting?

Daily Cal thinks that neutrality and ambiguity is the same thing,but they should be able to provide just A LITTLE bit more information than an unobservant passer-by, don’t you think?

By tom's cool on Mar 5, 2008

Yaman,

You do a good job of completely terrible analogies.

“War” is not a propaganda word when it comes to, for instance, the Iraq war. In fact, both the strongest proponents and strongest opponents of the war refer to it as a war. No one would object to its usage in a newspaper, except for propagandists who would rather call it a genocide or some other outrageous term (as anti-Israel propagandists constantly use).

“Occupation” has been used so much by propagandists that some newspapers actually have adopted it as a fact. However, many, many people completely object to the term given that it has no basis in law, the facts on the ground, or history.

This is especially the case post-Oslo. Many Americans are surprised to visit the “occupied West Bank” and see Palestinians in complete control of many areas and barely any Israeli military presence. That’s not an “occupation.”

Of course, many anti-Semites, yourself probably included, refer to Israel’s very existence as an “occupation.” They call Tel Aviv and Haifa occupation.

Of course the Daily Cal or other newspapers shouldn’t adopt a position in line with such nuts.

By seth on Mar 5, 2008

Wow, tom’s cool, your flexibility is really amazing. How long and how hard did you have to practice to get your head stuck that far up your ass?

Just because Bill Clinton referred to certain Palestinian territories occupied by Israel as “disputed” doesn’t make that a point of fact in international law. He was only president of Gringolandia, and even there he didn’t rule by decree. Hearing you and the rest of the pseudo intellectual zionist community parrot this Clinton line ad nauseum reminds me of a wind up toy: you latch on to a phrase that suits your invasive agenda and say it over and over and over and over. If you have any desire to get your head screwed on right, I’d recommend Avi Shlaim’s **War and Peace in the Middle East.** It’s a quick read, and the language is fairly simple, so you might just be able to digest it with a little effort.

The more you write, the more you demonstrate your inability to so much as observe yourself in action. In practically the same breath you admit that Palestinians do not control all of their West Bank (”…Palestinians in complete control of many areas…”), you admit that there is an Israeli military presence (”barely” according to you, but certainly not zero), and then you assert that “That’s not an ‘occupation.’” Well if it’s not an occupation, what the hell are they doing there at all? If Palestine isn’t occupied, why doesn’t it control all of its territory?

I would say your sheer duplicity is astounding, but I’m not sure that someone incapable of self-observation has the capacity for duplicity.

By ariel on Mar 5, 2008

Anyone who fails to acknowledge that there is an occupation is either daft or engaging in political obfuscation. For chrissakes, even Likud MPs can be heard from time to time referring to it as an occupation.

By tom's cool on Mar 5, 2008

It has nothing to do with Bill Clinton.

LEGALLY it can’t be an occupation no matter what Israel does because there is nothing to occupy.

For instance, regarding the West Bank: Jordan occupied that area illegally from 1948-1967. Before that it was part of the British Mandate. The British relinquished their claim to it, and so has Jordan.

Now, a case can be made that Israel could annex that territory based on the fact it was won in a defensive war; but there is UN resolution 242 that calls on Israel to withdraw from some territories. Essentially today we have Jews and Arabs in the West Bank who have competing claims.

Therefore it is disputed territory.

We should keep in mind that the very notion of the West Bank as somehow a Palestinian area arose AFTER 1967 as a form of attack on Israel. The fantastical notion of a an “occupation” in the West Bank is built on trying to create the false image that it is somehow intrinsically a Palestinian area even though the Palestinians as a people didn’t exist until the 20th century and never had a legal claim to the land.

By allison on Mar 6, 2008

Tom’s cool:

Wow, you are really pushing the limits on your justification for an Israeli military presence in the West Bank. Please address, because you view these territories as part of Israel, won defensively in 67′, does that mean that Israel has a blank check to use any form and degree of force it chooses?

And, when does Israel cross the line from being sovereign over a piece of land to occupation? In your opinion, what nefarious act would the Israeli government have to engage in before it looses it sovereignity?
House demolitions, air strikes, controlling boarders, limiting freedom of movement, denying citizenship, cutting electricity, building a wall that splits villages in half, mass arrest, and excessive civilian death?
Does any of this limit Israel’s soverignity?

Last comment:

They way you jump to conclusions, calling Yaman an anti-Semite and assuming he finds Haifa and Tel Aviv to be occupied is really low. There is nothing in what he has written that would suggest those were the things he was thinking or intending. If so he would have been involved in a great big “free occupied haifa and tel aviv” demonstration where he would announce himself as a Jew-hater. The reality is that the demonstration was to recognize the loss of life that has occurred due to the excessive, unequal use of force by Israel, on Palestinians. You only jump to those conclusions as an attempt to discredit him and show him to have violent intentions. Those are your words, not his, he is talking about a government sanctioned military occupation over a civilian population, not irrationally hating or wishing harm to Jews.

116 people died in the past few days and that pains us; we lay on the ground to grieve, we lay on the ground out of compassion for human life. None of which is anti-semetic.

By Isabel on Mar 6, 2008

Leaving aside the (very interesting) debate about whether true objectivity can even exist, nothing in journalistic ethics suggests that reporters should imbue contentious events with a false veneer of neutrality by using language so vague as to be meaningless.

Objectivity requires that writers silence their own opinions — not only to transmit facts in an unbiased way, but also to cover the opinions and biases of the people they are reporting about, thereby giving readers the information they need to think critically about the world around them.

Journalists are responsible for covering news in a way that is both accurate and informative, and this caption falls short. Sure, it’s vague enough that it’s difficult to contest on factual grounds, but it provides the reader with almost no useful information. Something along the lines of Yaman’s suggestion does this much more effectively. (Maybe: Students stage a die-in in solidarity with the 116 Palestinians killed last week by the Israeli Army)

This actually conveys the substance of the protest, yet the language is still indisputably neutral and factual. You could just as easily write, “Student stages a die-in in solidarity with the one Israeli killed last week by Hamas.”

My verdict? Great picture, lousy cutline.

By Jerry on Mar 6, 2008

These people are not “against conflict”. They are the reason there is a conflict.

This is a blatantly nationalistic, chauvinistic propaganda photo. This is the source of the conflict.

By Jerry on Mar 6, 2008

I didn’t see these people protesting when Israeli’s were killed in Sderot.

And if they are truly representative of the flag they carry, they would be handing out candy and dancing in the streets right about now.

By allison on Mar 7, 2008

jerry:

we usually do not stage a die-in when one palestinian, or two are killed. The die-in was held due to the excessive loss of life. If over a hundred israelis were killed, do not assume that we would not stage a die-in.

Also, do NOT ASSUME that we support ANY LOSS OF LIFE. Regardless of ethnicity, gender, age, sexuality, we do not support the loss of life due to violence. You peg us as being pleased with Israeli deaths, nothing could be further from the truth. We were not out there because we were happy israelis have died, we were out there because we are pained that there is death!

Nothing will ever move forward if you can not expand your mindset to think in the place of the one you oppose. Think, really think, if a palestinian or an israeli die, is it because of some hatred of the other, or is it because they are both living in a situation where they are both oppressed into using violence.

You do not get to decide why were staging a die-in, but if you are angered by it, you have an obligation to find out why were there and should listen to our voices. You may just find we want the same thing as you. We both want an end to violence, yes? Then ask us why we did it. Learn what we mean when I say the Occupation causes all Palestinian and Isreali deaths that are associated with the “conflict.”

And now, I ask you, why does the die-in upset you so? In what way do you understand the photo to be the source of the conflict, because we morn? Explain to me as to where you are coming from.

By Cindy on Mar 8, 2008

Hi Yaman, just wanted to let you know GVO (Global Voices Online) recently published an article on your blogposts and the discussions going on here regarding the die-in, and I just translated that article into Chinese as part of GVO’s Lingua project.

You can see the post here: http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2008/03/07/syria-we-stand-against-occupation/

Your fellow Berkeley student,
Cindy

By Tom Pessah on Apr 14, 2008

here’s another great header: “Viewpoints Differ at Election Debate”.

http://www.dailycal.org/article/101233

By Zevi Wulfi on Apr 23, 2008

There is an occupation. The occupation would turn into an Israeli victory if she were not afraid of international opinon.

Please let us “right wingers” stop fighting against the slanderous terms. We should throw our spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical energy behind an Israeli victory.

The SJP, MSA, and various Pacifica pundits will compare us to wonded souls perpetuating the Nazi occupation on indigenous Arabs that occupied the non-Jordanian side of the British Mandate of Palestine.

In the end the only peace will come after a complete Israeli victory.

I propose a non-novel policy, land for violence. When an act of violence is commited on the Israeli occupiers, they take more land. When an act of peace is sustained towards the Israeli occupiers respond with release a of (non-violent) prisoners and land concessions.