When I worked at the Guardian, the foreign editor – now a major columnist – once told me that he did not like his correspondents to spend more than a few years in difficult posts like the Jerusalem bureau because, given time, they were likely to “go native”. At the time I did not understand what he meant. But I learnt soon enough.I moved to cover the Israel-Palestine beat as a freelance journalist in 2001. I had no editors breathing down my neck. I based myself in Nazareth, a Palestinian community inside Israel, thinking that taking a different approach – my colleagues were in Jewish areas of Jerusalem or in Tel Aviv – would make my journalism distinctive and interesting to editors back home.In fact, my different perspective made me far less interesting to them. Indeed, as quickly became clear, it made them extremely nervous of me.But the point is this: despite my unique circumstances, it took me years to fully “deprogramme” and emerge the other side relatively whole.I first had to unravel the conditioning and training – both ideological and professional – that had encouraged me to assume Israelis were the Good Guys and Palestinians … well, they must be something less than the Good Guys.And then I had to rebuild my ideological and professional worldview from scratch – like a child, trying to make sense of all the new information I was absorbing. Although I hid it at the time, the truth is it was a slow, frightening and painful awakening. Everything I believed in and trusted had crumbled to dust.Is it any surprise that the vast majority of journalists never make such a transition.They are highly unlikely to have the opportunity to immerse themselves deeply in the lives of those “natives”.They are rarely allowed the time to step off the journalism treadmill to develop a bigger perspective.They are surrounded by family, friends, colleagues and bosses, who constantly reinforce received wisdom or enforce “professional” standards that shore up the existing consensus.They are disincentivised from straying off the path, when they have a salary to earn, a career to develop, bills to pay, a family to feed.And ultimately, of course, there is the prospect of a terrifying journey ahead, down a dark tunnel to a destination unknown.
Now, let's fact check:
Jonathan Cook never wrote a pro-Israel article before he moved to Nazareth. He mostly wrote about domestic British topics. He went to SOAS and his MA thesis was on Israel allegedly confiscating land from Israeli Arabs in the Galilee. His entire reason for moving to Nazareth was to write a book (finished in 2006) about how Israel mistreats Israeli Arabs, a different angle than the "occupation" narrative that was and is so popular. There was no "deprogramming" in Nazareth - it was all confirmation bias.
He positions his colleagues as being motivated by money while he is pure. But he found plenty of outlets to buy his articles from Nazareth - hundreds of pieces in Al Ahram, Counterpunch, Electronic Intifada and, yes, The Guardian. His supposedly fearless reporting, riddled with errors and bias, gave him prestige and awards.
And where are all of these pro-Israel articles his fellow journalists are writing? The occasional article on Israeli victims of terror hardly counter the tsunami of articles that by default trust terrorist sources and doubt Israeli statements.
Cook talks about his colleagues being infected with pro-Israel bias, "going native" by living in Jewish areas for so long. Yet Cook married an Arab Christian shortly after moving to Nazareth, they have children together and he even received Israeli citizenship because he was married to an Israeli. His colleagues bend over backwards not to appear pro-Israel, but Cook pretends to be immune from any bias while living among Israeli Arabs - most of whom reject the label he gives them of "Palestinians."
Cook's tweet does not hold up to simple facts. He is rewriting history and positioning himself as some kind of fearless, objective hero who managed to learn the truth by his dogged determination. In fact he was biased from the start and he himself has "gone native" far more than any of his journalist colleagues.
(h/t Jill)
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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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