WikiLeaks Arabia: An idea whose time has come

The meeting of the Fifth Fatah Revolutionary Council - began with participants giving special honour to Amin al-Hindi. He was one of the masterminds of the slaughter of 11 Israeli athletes at 1972 Munich Olympics. Al-Hindi died in August this year. What followed at the 120 member Council meeting was an honest and robust discussion which unmasked the true feelings of the so-called “pro Western moderate wing” of Palestinian society.

After two days of meetings, Fatah, which makes up the key plank in the West Bank’s Palestinian “government” - as opposed to the rival Hamas “government” in Gaza, - issued a ear screeching “no” to compromise (with Israel presumably, as it couldn’t bring itself to utter the name), diluting what little hope there was for negotiating with the Middle East’s singular democracy .

The Council:

1. rejected recognition of “the so-called Jewish state” ;

2. reaffirmed the “right of return” of Arabs to pre 1967 borders, which if implemented would facilitate the demographic if not the physical liquidation of a Jewish majority in the Jewish homeland;

3. vetoed any land swap whatsoever with Israel as part of a peace agreement. Even large communities holding 80% of the Jewish population in Judea and Samaria (areas known more commonly as the “West Bank’) on no more than 5% of the area must removed root and branch;

This is not exactly the picture of Palestinian “peace seekers” we receive daily from the mainstream media now is it?

Oh, and US understandings, starting in the December 2000 with the so called “Clinton parameters” and continuing with former US President George W. Bush’s declaration that any permanent peace deal would have to reflect the West Bank’s demographic realities, were jettisoned. Less like throwing out the baby with the bathwater and more like killing the baby and then pretending it drowned.

When it comes to the Middle East, where news reporters and editors fail to give the proper space to revelations of Arab extremism and intransigence, they help perpetuate prejudices against Israel. For instance, it’s fair to say that while anti Semitic attacks say in the United Kingdom would exist in the absence of any media, a media that distorts the truth and saddles blame on one party alone for any breakdown in the “peace process” has a great deal to answer for.

Not only is skewed journalism deceitful of a profession and misleads those who rely on it, such misreporting only advances the cause for war as it misapplies blame by ignoring the facts. Facts imperative to grasp if both parties to the conflict are to sense the international community will not settle for double speak and ethnocentric paranoia. The fact that the Palestinian “politicians” rarely take even their own citizens into their confidence is also deplorable. WikiLeaks for instance revealed that Israel tried to coordinate its anti-terror offensive in Gaza (Operation Cast Lead) with Egypt and the Palestinian Authority.

Naturally, as the PA kept this fact concealed from their “electorate”, the PA can do little else but deny WikiLeaks’ claims. So long as Palestinians from President Abbas down to the proverbial olive grower refuse to accept a legitimate Jewish state in the Middle East where Judaism is the prevailing religion, not unlike the position of the Greek Orthodox Church in Greece - the Palestinians will not put away their suicide belts in favour of walking on the path to peace.

The Middle East is a region littered with corrupt autocracies, human rights abusers and pockmarked with states that support terrorism (such as Syria) and pseudo states (e.g. Gaza) that practice rocket launching on Israeli civilians.

Reporting by most media outlets generally of the news but in particular news from the Middle East is blurred too often by editorial or managerial biases and self-serving agendas. Or worse still, publications that rely on the likes of Agence France Presse to spoon feed them, often don’t run key matters because they are simply not alerted to them.

Take WikiLeaks’ revelation that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s most favoured plan for the West Bank is an Israeli exit. Given the relentless demonisation and delegitimisation of the Jewish state by many media outlets, who would have thought that was “hardline” Netanyahu’s view?

Given the state of the mainstream media’s inability or unwillingness to distinguish between news and views, and between what transpired and what they wish would transpire, the public will remain poorly served. Until the day comes, when the mainstream media will report about the Middle East without fear and opine without favour, there will most certainly be a place on many iPads for an organisation solely devoted to dumping all the facts online, howsoever gathered and allowing the felafels to fall where they may.

Julian Assange can inject transparency into Middle East politics by doing the job expected of big media players like CNN, Al-Jazeera, ABC, Fairfax and the Guardian by dedicating a site solely to telling the citizens of the Middle East just what their leaders are really saying when CNN’s and Al-Jazeera’s microphones aren’t rammed down their throats. And telling us in the West, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

WikiLeaks Arabia your time has come.