CNN Reports How Americans In Afghanistan Are Using 'Books Not Bombs' To Win The War While Israel Focuses On Destruction of Gaza IsraCast Assessment: Recent In-depth Report 'Generation Islam' by Christiane Amanpour Illustrates How International Media Often Skew Reality Amanpour's Camera Had One Focus For Afghanistan & A Different Focus For Gaza
The latest U.S. bomb strike that
killed an estimated 90 people in Afghanistan on Sept. 4th, many of them
reportedly civilians, has again raised the dilemma of how conventional
forces should fight terrorists that deliberately use civןilians as
shields. This is the case in Gaza no less than Afghanistan. However,
international forוums such as the U.N. and the international media
often skew their reporting when it comes to Israel. The CNN’s recent
report ‘Generation Islam’ is a case in point.
‘In Afghanistan, the U.S. military
tries to win the war with more than bombs’ and ‘fighting with books not
bombs’ – these are captions for the Special Report by CNN’s chief
international correspondent Christiane Amanpour. She poses the
question:’Is it possible to win the hearts and minds of Muslim youth?’
A comparative report then attempts to relate what Americans are doing
in Afghanistan and then, what Israelis have done to Gaza.
After
referring briefly at the outset to the causes of 9/11 and the thousands
of rockets fired into Israel from Gaza, there is little semblance at
being fair and balanced between what the Americans are doing in
Afghanistan and Israelis to Gaza. In Gaza, she hastens to add that
provocations by both Palestinians and Israelis triggered Israel’s
recent ‘Cast Lead Operation’.
Amanpour went to an Afghan
village, recently been demolished by an American air strike that killed
and wounded scores of innocent civilians. Amid the rubble, Amanpour
consoles a weeping relating to the ongoing NATO campaign against the
Taliban and which leads into a sound-bite apology by Admiral Mike
Mullen, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. The American
air-strikes that have inadvertently hit Afghan civilians, have been an
ongoing issue for years and so much so that even Afghan President Hamid
Karzai has publicly complained to both the Bush and Obama
administrations.
If this is not a decisive factor bearing on the hearts
and minds of young Afghans what is? Yet, almost en passant, in a one-on
one interview with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs no less, CNN’s
chief international correspondent deigns not to pose any tough
questions but continues on her mission of showcasing how the
U.S. is ‘not only fighting the war with bombs but with books’. There
are smiling U.S. troops in full combat gear filmed handing out books
and pencils to Afghan children. And a lengthy segment with an admirable
American volunteer who, with the aid of U.S. charitable organization,
has set up an educational network for Afghan children. One of the most
bizarre shots are of a group of Afghans who are grouped together to
answer the reporter’s question about whether they like the lessons to
which they reply in unison: ‘Yeeeees!’
Okay, CNN is an American
owned network and if its Chief International Correspondent decides to
focus on this this particular aspect of the war in Afghanistan that is
up to CNN. However, the report then moves on to the hearts and minds of
young Muslims in Gaza. IDF Chief of Staff Gaby Ashkenazi is not
recorded apologizing for the Palestinian civilian casualties. And would
Amanpour have allowed Ashkenazi or any other IDF officer to get off
with an apology? No way, they would have been grilled in detail. Now
Amanpour did not make clear whether she had requested an Israeli
response been turned down, but even if she had this would not
justify her obvious approach of presenting the ‘beautiful Americans’ in
Afghanistan as compared to the ‘ugly Israelis’ who have devastated Gaza.
Again,
at the start of her Gaza segment Amanpour did make this very balanced
but then slanted introduction… provocations by both sides. In the
Afghan segment focused on the American volunteer whereas in Gaza she
concentrates on the tragedy of the Palestinian doctor whose three
daughters were killed when the IDF attacked a building suspected of
being used as a shooting position by terrorist snipers.
By this time,
buried deep in the Gaza rubble and amid the death and destruction, it
was easy to forget, even if one had been told at the outset that the
Palestinians had launched thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians for
over eight years and had terrorized tens of thousands of Israeli
children, women and men. Moreover, Amanpour interviews Palestinian boys
at a summer camp who were getting pre-military training. And when
Amanpour asks them what they want to be when grow older they all reply:
‘To be guerrillas and martyrs to fight the Israelis’.
In brief, the CNN
report concentrates on how the devastation inflicted by the IDF has
led, and is leading to future terrorism by the young Islamic generation
in Gaza, whereas U.S. troops are also trying to win over young Afghans
by handing out books and pencils. Granted Israeli soldiers cannot hand
out books and pencils in Gaza, but at the very least Amanpour could
have noted, for example, that thousands of Palestinians have received
medical treatment in Israeli hospitals and not for military wounds.
In
a more serious vein, CNN totally ignored, as often is in the case in TV
reporting, the basic cause and effect context of the Gaza situation.
Even though, most people around the world are fully aware of the 9/11
reason for the U.S. being entitled to combat the Taliban in
Afghanistan, Gaza is a different story. If Amanpour focused so
dramatically on the Israeli destruction in Gaza as opposed to what the
U.S. is doing in Afghanistan, should she not at least have had one
Israeli reaction or one reference to the damage and suffering caused on
the Israeli side of the border? Maybe CNN would reply that this was not
part of the story. But was it not Amanpour’s duty, as a
professional journalist to ask even one question of the young
Palestinians, about what they thought about their own elected Hamas
government that has brought such devastation on Gaza by relentlessly rocketing Israeli civilians?
