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The truth is out there, somewhere<br><br>
ANTONIA ZERBISIAS - Toronto Star Dec 8, 2004<br><br>
<a href="http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1073517011288&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795" eudora="autourl">http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1073517011288&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795</a><br><br>
It is disturbingly easy to lose track of those who have fallen over
the<br>
past few weeks in Nablus, the largest city in the West Bank and,<br>
reportedly, the breeding ground for most of the suicide bombers who
have<br>
terrorized Israelis.<br><br>
A search of various databases turns up mind-boggling headlines that
change<br>
every day, and sometimes every hour. "Three Palestinian militants
killed<br>
by Israeli patrols during West Bank sweep'' read one yesterday,
which<br>
followed another "Israeli troops kill Palestinian teenager in West
Bank''<br>
the day before and another "Five Palestinians killed in
clashes" on<br>
Monday.<br><br>
We're looking at perhaps two dozen Palestinians dead and maybe 250
more<br>
injured since mid-December when the town came under a virtually<br>
uninterrupted Israeli military blockade. A 5-year-old was gunned down
just<br>
before Christmas. This week, a 15-year-old was shot dead because, as
IDF<br>
troops said, he was hurling concrete blocks at them from a rooftop.
His<br>
17-year-old cousin was killed during the burial because, as the
Jerusalem<br>
Post reported, "soldiers spotted an armed Palestinian participating
in the<br>
funeral."<br><br>
Don't be confused by the coverage cited here because chances are you
have<br>
seen none of it, no matter how much of a media junkie you may
be.<br><br>
Mostly, the "operation" on the town, where homes have been
dynamited and<br>
civilians confined to quarters, has merited a few sentences in the
back<br>
pages of North America's newspapers, including this one. Not even CBC,
the<br>
network that stands accused by the National Post and myriad Jewish
groups<br>
of a systemic anti-Israel bias, has given the siege more than a few<br>
seconds of airtime.<br><br>
Instead, the news focus just about everywhere has been on
baby-dangling<br>
crocodile hunters and 55-hour marriage of a your-15-minutes-are-up
pop<br>
tart, Princess Anne's killer terrier and Lady Diana's terror of
being<br>
killed, heightened travel alerts and holiday cheer, Saddam's
capture,<br>
crazy chicks (Paris Hilton) and mad cows, and SARS and Mars (the
last<br>
three of which, admittedly, are important).<br><br>
Coverage of issues in Israel has largely been relegated to how a
few<br>
illegal settlements, many of them consisting of nothing more than a<br>
hilltop trailer and a flag, will be dismantled, to how Prime
Minister<br>
Ariel Sharon was jeered by his hardest line party members and to
some<br>
overtures of peace being made by Egypt.<br><br>
No wonder that, in referring to the situation in Nablus, Palestinian
Prime<br>
Minister Ahmed Qorei told Voice of Palestine Radio, "Whenever
the<br>
Palestinians carry out any attacks or operations against Israel they
are<br>
condemned by the whole world but when Israel carries out attacks
against<br>
our people, the international community stays silent."<br><br>
Is it true the world no longer gives a damn about the escalated
violence<br>
in the Holy Land, now in its 40th horrific month? Is the
Palestinian<br>
uprising no longer good for TV ratings? Or was Nablus downplayed
because<br>
the blockade was staged over the holidays when many journalists are
off?<br>
Or have the media been cowed into silence by increasingly vociferous
and<br>
voluminous e-attacks on their mailboxes, manners and moral
fibre?<br><br>
Every day when I log on to my e-mail, I find at least 50 missives,
mostly<br>
pro-Israel but increasingly pro-Palestinian as well, presenting
their<br>
version of reality. Ugly debates rage over whether the
Arabic-language<br>
news network Al Jazeera should be allowed into Canada because,
quite<br>
frankly, some people don't want its version of reality to be seen
here.<br>
Entire Web sites spring up to monitor what journalists do, to call
us<br>
"Idiotarians," to condemn us as anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim, or
to alert<br>
readers to bombard us with more e-mail. Other sites (memri.org)
translate<br>
from Arabic what is claimed to be hateful daily news stories about
Jews<br>
and Israel while other sites still (the newly launched
aad-online.org)<br>
claim to do the same from Hebrew about Muslims and Arabs.<br><br>
I know about Nablus thanks to sites such as palestinemonitor.org,<br>
palsolidarity.org and fromoccupiedpalestine.org. But I don't trust
these<br>
alone, and don't have to because I have the time and resources to
check<br>
and double-check elsewhere. Most others don't.<br><br>
And so concurrent with the spread of the Internet, coincidentally or
not,<br>
the poles grow further apart, the fear mounts, the hate entrenches and
the<br>
violence escalates.<br><br>
Or so it seems thanks to the Internet that perpetuates the
paranoia<br>
while, ironically, providing the reportage the mainstream media appear
to<br>
have abandoned.<br><br>
What the Web giveth, it also taketh away.<br><br>
The truth is out there, all right.<br><br>
Trouble is, it's way out there, for better or worse, in
cyberspace.<br><br>
<br>
-----------<br>
Antonia Zerbisias appears every Thursday. azerbis@thestar.ca<br><br>
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