vast American aid was news, yet it never made the news, although no one at
ABC News at the time criticised the piece or questioned its accuracy.
At
the time, however, I was able to write about it – in the Spectator . When
I moved to Lebanon in 1983, the Spectator ‘s editor, Alexander Chancellor,
asked me to write occasional pieces for the magazine. It was the best
thing that could have happened to me. Without the Spectator as an outlet
for stories that were either too complex to be compressed into a
two-minute television spot or too sensitive for broadcast in America, my
time in Lebanon would have been much more frustrating. For that alone, I
am indebted to the Spectator ‘s three great editors during that period,
Chancellor, Charles Moore and Dominic Lawson.
In
1986, Hizbollah guerrillas captured some Israeli soldiers. The Israelis
cordoned off whole areas of south Lebanon and threatened to shoot Juan
Carlos Gumucio of the Associated Press and me as we entered the village of
Tibnin. At a local hospital nearby, young men told us how the Israelis had
taken them into Tibnin’s school and tortured them. They described in
detail, on camera, how IDF soldiers had beaten them with legs broken off
chairs and tables. The marks from the jagged edges of the legs were
visible on their heads and abdomens. They alleged that the Israelis had
used electricity as well, placing wires on their bodies, including their
genitals, from the overhead electric lights in the classroom. A few hours
later, the Israelis left Tibnin and we found the classroom. It was exactly
as the young men had described it – broken table legs drenched in blood,
wires attached to the overhead light dangling down to the floor, blood
everywhere. We filmed the scene.
ABC
News did not broadcast that story either, but the Spectator published it.
(Most of these stories are republished in my collected essays, Money for
Old Rope, Picador.) As recently as 3 March this year, the Spectator
published what I have written about Israel. (In the diary, I quoted an
Israeli professor who had misunderstood a question about executions in the
occupied territories, showing that he approved killing by Israelis but not
by the Palestinian Authority. I also wrote that Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon, who meets President George Bush on Tuesday, should be aware that,
if there are any survivors of the massacres at Qibya in 1953 or Sabra and
Shatila in 1982 in the US, he could be prosecuted under the Alien Torts
Act.)
No
one edited out my words, and, so far as I know, no readers complained. Yet
that was the issue on which the Spectator ‘s proprietor, Conrad Black,
vented his spleen against his ‘High Life’ columnist, Taki Theodoracopulos,
for criticising the recently pardoned American fugitive Marc Rich, Bill
Clinton and Israel’s role in Rich’s pardon. Black’s contention that Taki’s
reflections were ‘almost worthy of Goebbels or the authors of the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ would lead one to suspect he has read
neither. (On Friday, Black’s Israeli paper, the English language Jerusalem
Post, disclosed that Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s records showed he had
telephoned President Clinton three times on Rich’s behalf, not once, as he
had claimed.)
A
former Spectator proprietor and editor, Ian Gilmour, wrote to the
Spectator (10 March) to defend the BBC, Independent, Guardian and Evening
Standard against Conrad Black’s accusation that they were ‘rabidly
anti-Israel’. Black responded in the subsequent issue by calling him
‘little better than a common-or-garden Jew-baiter masquerading as a
champion of the Palestinian "underdog"’. ‘Almost worthy’ and
‘little better’ are cop-outs: is Black calling Taki another Goebbels and
Lord Gilmour a ‘Jew-baiter’? If so, it is contemptible and sends a message
to his writers that they should pull their punches when they describe
Israeli armed action against Palestinians or, even, coverage of the latest
US State Department report on human rights’ allegations about Israeli
torture, land seizure, collective punishment and economic strangulation.
William Dalrymple wrote to the Spectator last week complaining that
Black’s self-exposure as one intolerant of critical reporting of Israeli
behaviour and policy meant that Telegraph and Spectator readers who want
‘balanced reporting from the Middle East must now, sadly, turn elsewhere’.
Piers Paul Read and A.N. Wilson signed the letter, as I did in an early
draft. (I’ve been travelling in France and Switzerland, much of the time
out of communication. The letter had to be submitted early, because Conrad
Black wanted to read it and respond.)
I
told the editor, Boris Johnson, that I did not approve a few minor points
in the letter. He said he would either take them out ‘if he could’ or take
my name off. In the event, Black insisted a mistake be left in, so Johnson
removed my name. However, while disagreeing that the Black-owned Middle
East Report is anywhere near as good as the Hebrew daily Ha’aretz , I
support the letter’s contention that a newspaper proprietor has to make
his editors and correspondents understand they will enjoy his support when
they write the truth about any event. I, for one, would miss having
the Spectator as my publication of last resort.
Also
appeared: The Observer (U.K.) March 18, 2001