January 8, 2002
Kamloops Daily News



"The best newspapers are founded on good editorial pages
where citizens engage in a lively give and take of ideas
relevant to their lives and communities. That process can
not, indeed must not, be centralized and corporatized," says
Paul Schliesmann, editorial writer for the Kingston
Whig-Standard.

The focus of Schliesmann's worry is the new owner of
Canada's largest newspaper chain, Izzy Asper of  CanWest
Global.  Asper seems to think that the purpose of his
newspapers is to serve as his mouthpiece.

Asper has decreed that his papers must carry editorials
generated by his editorial staff from the centre of Canada,
Winnipeg.   The pressure goes beyond carrying the gospel of
Asper.  

Editors and reporters feel that they have to carry the
corporate line.  They censor themselves by not expressing
contradictory views, says NewsWatch Canada.

An example of this kind of editorial pressure occurred when
a TV columnist for one of Asper's papers, the Montreal Gazette,
decided to review a video documentary about Palestinian
journalists in Israel.  Israel was painted as the aggressor.
The Gazette refused to run the article.  Under pressure, the
review was finally written.

Murdoch Davis, spokesman for CanWest Global admits that his
papers are unapologetically pro-Israel.  Don't get me wrong,
the story of the Jews must be told. 

It's a story of the underdog who succeeds against incredible
odds.  I still remember watching the movie Exodus in 1960. 
Paul Newman plays a  Israeli resistance fighter who helps
bring 600 Jews from Cyprus to the  newly-partitioned
Palestine.  The movie is set in the year 1948,  right before
the United Nations voted to make Palestine a Jewish
homeland.

But we haven't heard much about the heroic struggle of arab
Palestinians for a homeland.  We haven't seen movies about
the failure of the world to recognize UN resolutions for a
Palestine. We need to hear more voices like Lebanese
journalist Reem Haddad who writes:

 "Ali Helou, 25, looked over his shoulder as he led his
nine-month pregnant young wife, Amineh, over the hills of
Lebanon.  Unbeknown to him, it was the last time that he
would see his home."

The year was 1948 and Jews were shelling Arab villages in
preparation of the state of Israel.  Arabs were running for
their lives.  On May 14, 1948, the state of Israel was
declared.  Immediately, the U.S. recognized the newly
created country, but the world ignored the fact that land
and homes had been taken from the Palestinians.

"Ali's wife gave birth under an olive tree, only kilometres
from the Lebanese border.  They were part of 800,000
Palestinians who packed into refugee camps.  Eight months
later, Ali's baby contracted typhoid and died," Haddad
writes.

The proposed Palestinian homeland is shrinking.  In 1947,
the United Nations proposed that Palestine be divided up
with 53 per cent for the Jews and 47 per cent for the Arab
state.  By 1949, Israel controlled 78 per cent and
Palestinians who were driven from their homes and land would
never get it back.

In the year 2000, Israel's solution for a Palestinian home
land reduced the Arab state further by breaking the West
Bank into 29 pieces.  The Palestinians would have face the
humiliation of passing through armed Jewish checkpoints to
visit friends and family in other parts of their country.

Thousands of Palestinians now languish in refugee camps
without clean drinking water.  They peer out of their tin
huts at the luxurious Jewish homes in the Gaza Strip - - in
territory taken by the Jews in the 1967 invasion.  If they
are lucky, they will be able to work for those Jews as
servants or grounds keepers.  Most won't be so lucky.

But I won't hold my breath waiting for the movie in which
Brad Pit plays the freedom fighting engineer, Yasir Arafat.  
The image of the Nobel Peace prizewinner Arafat doesn't fit
nicely into the world view of an arab terrorist.

Only by hearing both sides of middle east conflict can we
understand earth shaking events like those of September 11.  
Without that understanding, we can only clutch our heads in
horror and shout to the skys "why do they hate us so much?"

Maybe Hollywood won't, but Canada's newspapers can and must
tell the stories of the arab Palestinians.  

go back to my Columns in the