Oppose and Condemn US War Crimes in Iraq!
End British Complicity in these Crimes!

Workers' Daily Internet Evening Edition: Article Index :

Oppose and Condemn US War Crimes in Iraq! End British Complicity in these Crimes!

Bearing Witness: Defiance Amid the Carnage
Fallujah, the Martyr City
UN Refugee Agency Voices Extreme Concern for Iraqis Fleeing Fallujah Assault
Stephen Wall: The US can only be constrained by international law

An Exposé of Dishonest Media Coverage of the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Already thousands of Iraqi people in Fallujah have died at the hands of the US occupiers since the start of the occupation. WDIE vehemently condemns the cowardly murderous assault the US has now launched against the citizens of Fallujah. The city is being singled out as a warning to the Iraqi people that they must submit to occupation by US and British forces or face the consequences. Heroic Fallujah, a city that defeated the colonial occupation of the British in 1920, is to be reduced to rubble, block by block, street by street.

This attack is a calculated war crime as civilians are targeted in the name of "creating stability" for elections in January and capturing "foreign fighters" and "terrorists". It is an attempt to psychologically terrorise the population into giving up its resistance to the occupation. Fallujah has already been facing heavy bombardment by the US, including the dropping of 500-pound bombs. Tens of thousands of civilians are still in the city as the US military continues to bombard it with air strikes. All men are being blocked from leaving and ambulances are being stopped from entering the main part of the city to attend the wounded. As US troops are given orders to kill anything that moves, they are being pumped up by commanders to commit atrocities against the Iraqi people. This onslaught on the same scale of atrocities as those committed by the Nazis against the Warsaw Ghetto and other genocidal brutalities carried out by the Third Reich.

According to media reports, US forces are planning to take Fallujah section by section starting with the northwestern Jolan neighbourhood and the northeastern Askari district. In preparation for the attack, the Iraqi government declared martial law on November 7 for 60 days. It affects the whole country except for Kurdish-run areas of the north. "We are going to implement it whenever and wherever is necessary. This will send a very powerful message that we are serious," interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said. "We want to secure the country so elections can be done in a peaceful way and the Iraqi people can participate in the elections freely, without the intimidation by terrorists and by forces who are trying to wreck the political process in Iraq," he told reporters.

The declaration of martial law indicates plans to act with impunity in areas where resistance fighters are targeting the occupation. Under martial law, Iraqi authorities have broad powers, including shoot to kill, the imposition of curfews, banning of meetings and bugging of communications. Specific measures include banning men between the ages of 15 and 55 from the streets of Fallujah and in surrounding areas 24 hours a day; the indefinite suspension of all members of the Fallujah police and security services; and the indefinite closure of all roads to Fallujah and neighbouring Ramadi. The US military said in a statement that "in accordance" with the "emergency decree", the Army's 1st Cavalry Division 2nd Brigade Combat Team "isolated Fallujah and all traffic is being halted". US troops have occupied Fallujah's main hospital, located on the western side of the Euphrates, and are blocking medical personnel from entering the city to attend medical emergencies. Several hundred Iraqi troops were sent into the hospital after US forces sealed off the area.

Media accounts are filled with reports by embedded reporters which seek to instil scenes of alleged US battle victories ranging from Iwo Jima during World War II to Korea and Vietnam. Addressing 2,500 Marines on November 7, Lt-Gen John F Sattler, the commanding general of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, told them: "This is America's fight. What we've added to it is our Iraqi partners. They want to go in and liberate Fallujah. They feel this town's being held hostage by mugs, thugs, murderers and terrorists." Sgt Maj Carlton W Kent, the senior enlisted Marine in Iraq, told troops the battle of Fallujah would be "no different" to the fights at Inchon in Korea, in Iwo Jima or the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. "You're all in the process of making history," he said. "This is another Hue city in the making."

As the US launched the assault, the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) issued a statement calling on "Iraqi forces, the National Guard and others who are mostly Muslims ... to beware of making the grave mistake of invading Iraqi cities under the banner of forces who respect no religion or human rights."

Within this scenario, the British troops of the Black Watch criminally sent to the combat zone by the British government are totally subordinate to the US war plans. No matter how many crocodile tears are shed by the government, the troops’ demand is that they should be withdrawn. Instead the British government is set to send more British troops towards the occupation of Iraq and the subjugation of its people.

WDIE calls on the working class and people to make their voices heard against these latest crimes in the barbaric occupation of Iraq by the Anglo-US forces, and to intensify the struggle to establish an anti-war government that will withdraw all troops from abroad and put an end to aggression and war. No reparations can be too great for the war crimes now being committed in the name of the global war against terror, which itself is unleashing the greatest terror on the people. There can be no conciliation with such crimes under any pretext whatsoever.

Up to nineteen US soldiers have been killed and many more wounded so far in the struggle for Fallujah.

But independent reporters are questioning US claims to have taken 70 per cent possession of Fallujah. The BBC News website spoke by phone on Thursday to Fadhil Badrani, a journalist in the city who reports for the BBC World Service in Arabic.

"I went for a walk around the city last night after the Americans pulled back. It was very quiet – often the only sounds coming from the movement of fighters along streets and rooftops. In places, it was also very dark, with only the occasional rocket or flare lighting the way. Wherever I went, I found broken buildings and bodies – local people and fighters killed on the streets.

"I also saw four crippled US tanks and three abandoned Humvees. In the Hasbiyyah area, I counted the bodies of at least six US soldiers lying on the ground. Some of them were badly mangled with various bits blown off. Others were in better condition, as if they had taken small-arms fire. I noticed two of the US soldiers were still clutching their guns tightly across their chests. But most of their weapons were missing. Some of the dead are beginning to rot in the streets. But the living do not exactly smell great either – I have not had a bath for a week. Nor have I shaved. There is no real rest here, day or night.

"The US brought in a very big force on Wednesday morning. The mosques no longer broadcast the daily call to prayer but nor are they silent. Every time a big bomb lands nearby, the cry rises from the minarets: ‘Allahu Akbar’ [God is great]. The worst fighting is to the north of the city, in the Jolan district. This is where a lot of the fighters have been based. Incidentally, it is also where US security guards were ambushed in April, leading to the first siege of Fallujah.

I think it is misleading to say the US controls 70% of the city because the fighters are constantly on the move. They go from street to street, attacking the army in some places, letting them through elsewhere so that they can attack them later. The fighters have told me they are prepared to resist the Americans until the death. They say they are fighting not just for Fallujah, but for all Iraq. They express confidence that they will win in the end. They say the idea is to inflict enough casualties on the American troops to force them to reconsider their mission."

Reg Keys, whose son Tom was killed in Iraq, called on the government to pull out the troops at the launch of Military Families Against The War on Wednesday.

He was joined by Rose Gentle, whose 19-year-old son Gordon was killed in Basra, Theresa Evans, who lost her son Llewellyn, James Buchanan, who has two sons serving with the Black Watch, and Christine and Leslie Robinson, who have sons with that regiment.

Eight families have launched the campaign and many others have expressed support for the move. Dante Zapata, from the American Military Families Speak Out, joined them.

After speaking at the press conference, the families handed in a letter to 10 Downing Street. The letter said: "Stop the war, bring the troops home and hand responsibility over to the United Nations, at least Kofi Annan still retains some integrity and has a proven, unbiased diplomatic record."

The letter signed by the families concluded: "Morally unacceptable conduct of a British prime minister in the 21st century!"

Radio Havana Cuba Editorial November 8, 2004

With its arsenal of war resources, the United States has a terrifying history of unnecessary and destructive attacks aimed at simply teaching the enemy of the moment a lesson and terrifying the forces it opposes.

Among many examples is the fire-bombing of the beautiful German city of Dresden at the end of World War II. There was no military objective; the massacre was simply an exhibition of the superiority of the Allied air forces. What can one say of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki where tens of thousands of civilians were reduced to ashes in seconds and fifty years later those atomic weapons are still claiming victims?

Now, the Iraqi city of Fallujah has joined the list of atrocities. The brutal bombings that began last April have reduced much of the city to rubble and killed tens of thousands civilians under the pretext of neutralising the resistance. Just yesterday waves of attacks came in the form of C-130 transport planes and heavy artillery continuing the destruction of the historic city; a prelude to the entry of more than ten thousand soldiers who have permission to shoot and kill anyone who "appears" to be carrying weapons or explosives.

Already in the early hours of Monday, key places inside the city had been taken by US troops whose commanders on Sunday compared them to the fighters of the famous Iwo Jima battle. All traffic has been halted inside Fallujah, according to US commanders, to avoid suicide attacks. Meanwhile, the United States tries to make the world believe that it is a campaign against a supposed terrorist of Jordanian origin, who no one has seen in person, and who is presumably, supported by Al Qaida.

On that flimsy pretext, they are destroying a city of untold historic treasures of human patrimony and every day they kill women, children and the elderly.

Soon there will not be a stone left in this city that was born thousands of years ago on the banks of the Euphrates River. It is a city that will be declared scorched earth as punishment for opposing foreign occupation, its people eliminated. But the symbol of Fallujah as a rebel city will always stand as an example for those who prefer death to oppression. Rather than bringing glory to the invaders, this cruel and unnecessary operation will reap a bitter harvest of ever more resistance.

The United Nations refugee agency on November 9 voiced extreme concern over the fate of tens of thousands of Iraqis who have fled the city of Fallujah to escape the fierce fighting in an assault launched on rebels there by United States and Government forces.

"The most immediate needs of the displaced are food, shelter, water and sanitation and health care," UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesperson Jennifer Clark told a news briefing in Geneva.

UNHCR, which has no international presence on the ground in Iraq, is part of a joint emergency group with the International Committee for the Red Cross and non-government organizations (NGOs) based in Amman, Jordan. The group is in close contact with colleagues inside Iraq and with partner organisations monitoring the situation.

The displaced people are staying with relatives, friends or other Iraqis around Fallujah. Some have been provided with tents. The majority of civilians appear to have left the city, although it is difficult to establish numbers with any certainty, Ms Clark said.

Despite the extremely volatile security situation in the country, UNHCR has continued to facilitate voluntary repatriation of Iraqis insisting on going home from camps in neighbouring Iran. Over the past two weeks, 64 people returned to southern Iraq, while more than 700 people returned to northern areas, bringing the total of facilitated returns to 18,115 people since August 2003. UNHCR also facilitated returns from Jordan.

Repatriations are becoming increasingly difficult with deteriorating weather conditions. Near the northern Iraqi border it has been raining steadily for the last three days and the convoys can take a long time getting to their destination. It is not clear how long the repatriation movements from the north of Iran can continue with the weather getting worse and snow expected to fall soon.

From a speech at Chatham House (formerly known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs), by the former Head of European Secretariat, Cabinet Office, 2000-2004

09 November 2004

I believe the central divergence between the United States and Europe is not about power versus paradise, about America as Mars versus Europe as Venus. The central argument is about the rule of law. About whether might is right and about the use, and abuse, of absolute power.

There may be a better way of administering and implementing international law than the existing post-war arrangements. I certainly hope our own country's attitude to Security Council reform will be based on what is likely to be most effective for the international rule of law, not on what massages our ego as a one-time world power. But the UN is the best we have. The fact that the United States is a great democracy to whom we owe our continued survival as free nations is not sufficient reason to give them the benefit of the doubt when they unilaterally withdraw from the Test Ban Treaty, or deny the jurisdiction of the international terrorism court, or want nothing to do with the Kyoto treaty, a tentative step towards tackling a threat to life on our planet much greater than that posed by terrorism.

We have to be firm in our adherence to that rule of law, even if it sometimes means parting company with the United States and adhering to the UN as the only defence against the rule of might that we have. To portray that choice, as is sometimes done, as a choice between effective action, American style; and inaction European or UN style is a caricature.

A European Union which eschewed all use of force would not be a fitting partner of the US. But that is not what is on offer. Tentatively, we are reaching our own defence identity which need not conflict with NATO, though it may sometimes conflict with the United States' view of what NATO’s, or at least America's, position of pre-eminence should be.

- Jean Shaoul, World Socialist Web Site, August 21, 2004 -

The Glasgow University Media Group's new book, Bad News from Israel, exposes the dishonest role the main TV news coverage in Britain plays in distorting the Israel-Palestine conflict and misinforming the public.

Far from explaining the origins of the conflict, most news bulletins function as little more than the overseas arm of the Israeli government's propaganda. Israel is able to mobilise the support of billionaire media owners, Zionist pressure groups and write-in campaigns to intimidate journalists who try to take a more objective stance.

The result is an alarming level of ignorance and confusion among viewers, a lack of interest in the conflict, and feelings of helplessness and the impossibility of change. Above all, poor and biased coverage plays a crucial role in preventing an informed public debate about how the conflict might be resolved.

These criticisms are far from new. But Bad News from Israel provides reams of evidence to back up such views. The book's authors, sociologists Greg Philo and Mike Berry, monitored and analysed four separate periods of news coverage by the BBC and ITN, Britain's two main TV news channels, between the start of the Palestinian intifada in September 2000 and the spring of 2002. They examined around 200 news programmes and compared them against the national press and other programmes such as Channel 4 (C4) News and BBC2's current affairs programme, Newsnight. They interviewed over 800 people and brought well known broadcasters and programme makers to take part in discussion groups with ordinary viewers and find out what they thought about the conflict and its coverage.

Philo and Berry found that news items were reported with little explanation about the origins of the conflict, the United Nations resolution establishing the state of Israel on part of Palestine, and the subsequent war between Israel and her Arab neighbours. Neither did the news spell out how the establishment of the state of Israel and the subsequent war had led to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing their homes, both because of the horrors of war and the forced expulsions organised by the official Israeli military forces and Zionist terrorist groups sanctioned by the then Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion. There was little or no explanation of how many had become refugees again after the 1967 war and had lived in squalid refugee camps ever since.

While news coverage focused on the day to day details of the Palestinian armed uprising, few reporters described how Israel had seized the West Bank and Gaza 37 years ago and illegally occupied it ever since in defiance of numerous UN Security Council resolutions. There was next to no explanation of the meaning of that occupation: that the Palestinians lived under military rule in all but name, had no civil rights and suffered enormous economic and social deprivation.

The figures are quite stark. In the period between September 28 to October 15, 2000, BBC1 and ITN devoted 3,500 lines of text to the uprising, but only 17 to the history of the conflict.

The lack of public knowledge closely mirrored the absence of such information on the TV news.

Without any contextual information, most viewers did not appreciate that the Israelis had seized the Palestinians' land to build the Zionist settlements, closed hundreds of roads, diverted their water supplies, uprooted their olive groves, assassinated their political leaders, detained people for years without trial, routinely used torture, and imposed collective punishment in the form of house demolitions and curfews.

If the journalists did make passing reference to such abuses, they failed to point out that all of this was illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Not surprisingly, therefore, viewers had little understanding of what had given rise to the uprising. Only 10 percent of the groups of British students interviewed in 2001 and 2002 knew that it was Israel that had occupied Palestine. Some even thought that the Palestinians were the occupiers. Many saw the conflict as some sort of border dispute between two countries fighting over land. A massive 80 percent did not know where the Palestinian refugees had come from or how they had come to be dispossessed.

The study found that the language used by reporters routinely favoured the occupying Israeli military forces over the occupied Palestinians. Words such as "atrocity," "mass murder," "lynching" and "slaughter" were used to describe Israeli deaths, but not Palestinian. Journalists used the word "terrorist" to describe Palestinians, but "extremists" or "vigilantes" to describe an Israeli group trying to bomb a Palestinian school.

There were constant references to Israel's security and Israel's right to exist, but little mention of Palestinians' security or their right to exist.

The study found that the impoverished and humiliating conditions faced by Palestinians for decades under the military occupation were virtually ignored. There were no visual pictures of the economic and social consequences of the military occupation, the brutal treatment at the hands of the military, the squalid housing, the shortage of water, or the contrast with the settlers' homes that had swimming pools and lawns.

The bias was quite blatant. In the sample of news items in 2001, the news coverage was six times more likely to show the Israelis as "retaliating" to Palestinian "terrorism," which led viewers to blame the Palestinians. There was no indication that the military occupation had spawned the resistance to Israel, or that the Israeli armed forces had provoked Palestinian violence.

There was more coverage of Israeli deaths than Palestinian, even though three times the number of Palestinians had lost their lives, and the journalists have the evidence that proves it.

That is not to say that the journalists were uniformly pro-Israel and unsympathetic towards the Palestinians. They do show the consequences of Israeli military actions, but it is the Israeli explanation that is most frequently cited.

Again, the gaps in knowledge closely followed the reporting. In 2002, only 35 percent of students questioned knew that the Palestinians had suffered more casualties than the Israelis. In so far as some of the focus groups were better informed, it was because they had access to other sources of information: the press, books or further study in higher education. In other words, despite its potential TV was not the most useful source of information.

The Israeli settlements in the occupied territories were presented as vulnerable communities, rather than as having a key strategic role in expanding Israel's borders and imposing the occupation. Built as fortresses on hilltops to give a commanding position, their occupants are often heavily armed.

Focus groups told Lindsey Hilsum, a Channel 4 News presenter, that they would welcome a "quick potted history," with somebody saying "This is all because in 1948, this happened and that happened," or, as Hilsum put it, "A sort of new readers start here."

The journalists report the tactics and responses of the various parties involved in the conflict. On one occasion they cited the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak as saying that he would use all means to restore order and concluded that the Palestinians were likely to react violently to such a move. There was no critical consideration of the nature of the "order" that the Israelis would restore and that it would mean military control, large scale arrests, imprisonment without trial, torture and extra-judicial killings. Neither did the journalists discuss what the Palestinians could or should do to end this.

Similarly, while the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, was routinely blamed by the Israelis for breaking off the peace talks at Camp David in July 2000, the journalists made little attempt to investigate what the terms "peace" or "normalcy" meant to the Palestinians.

Producing the News

The book's authors provide some interesting insights into the operational reasons why the news is presented in this way.

The demand by the commercial news channels for 24 hour news "as it breaks" means that journalists spend more time in front of the camera than collecting and analysing the news. It makes them more reliant on easy-to-source and cheap information, meaning official sources of information. While the BBC, which has the largest international news teams in the world, remains publicly funded, 25 percent of its income comes from commercial sources, including the syndicating of its news coverage.

Veteran Middle East journalist Robert Fisk explained that the journalists' narrative of events was built around the last thing some official has said. "There seemed to be no real understanding that the job of the reporter is to analyse what is really happening, not simply to pick up on the rolling news machine," he said.

Senior journalists told the research team that they were instructed not to give explanations. Paul Adams, the BBC's defence correspondent, said, "It's covered as if it's a very large blood feud and, unless there is a large amount of blood, it's not covered."

George Alagiah, presenter of the BBC's six o'clock news, pointed out that the BBC constantly stressed that the viewers' attention span was just 20 seconds and that if the news didn't grab people, then people may switch over in that first minute.

Another BBC journalist told the research team that he had been instructed not to do "explainers" by his own editor. As he put it: "It's all bang bang stuff."

Israel's Control of the News Content

The study shows that the Israeli perspective predominated in TV news because of Israel's well-developed system of lobbying and public relations.

One very experienced Middle East correspondent for the BBC gave several practical – but essentially political – reasons for the biased news reporting.

Israeli authorities can provide documents in the appropriate language and put forward a fluent English speaker, well versed in addressing the western media, to put the Israeli perspective on the latest events in a studio in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv or anywhere else in the world. Its media organisation sends out 75-100 emails to reporters every single day.

The Palestinians, by contrast, were described as their own worst enemy. They spoke poor English, were perceived as boorish, were typically incoherent, and were deemed to have "missed the point."

Secondly, the Palestinians find it impossible to surmount the hurdle of dozens of road blocks to get to the studios in Jerusalem, leaving them to give a brief response down the, at best, crackling telephone line. Essentially reactive, they sent out just five emails a week.

Thirdly, the same system of restrictions meant that it was nearly as difficult for the journalists to reach the Palestinian areas to report on what was going on there and obtain a Palestinian viewpoint. None of the Western news channels put any resources into maintaining a news team in the occupied territories.

While all of these factors clearly affect how the Israeli and Palestinian perspectives are presented and perceived by viewers, the journalists made little attempt to compensate for the disadvantages that the Palestinians are working under. At the very least, they need to explain to viewers why they were unable to get to Ramallah to interview the Palestinian Authority leaders or were using a poor telephone line because of the restrictions imposed by the Israeli military authorities. As Philo and Berry put it, "To avoid doing this is to legitimise a structural imbalance."

The book cites Keith Graves, who spent many years reporting for the BBC in the Middle East, as one of a number of journalists working in the occupied territories who complained of extensive intimidation by the Israeli authorities. He suggested that this had worsened as the uprising had continued.

"When I was first based in the Middle East as the BBC correspondent 30 years ago, Israel was rightly proud of its position as the only country in the region where journalists could report freely. Not anymore. Under the Sharon government intimidation of reporters deemed 'unfriendly' to Israel is routine and sanctioned by the government," he wrote in the Guardian.

This is something of an understatement. The Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem and Reporteurs San Frontiers accused the Israelis of deliberately targeting gunfire at journalists, noting that eight had been wounded as of June 2001. The Killing Zone, a Channel 4 programme, gave details of what they regarded as the deliberate killing of a colleague by Israeli security forces, when he had been filming the bulldozing of Palestinian homes.

Israel organises powerful lobby groups to represent it in the United States and in Britain and make sure that the media run with their line. The Independent quoted the Israeli embassy in London as saying, "London is a centre of media and the embassy here works night and day to influence that media. And in many ways I think we don't do a half bad job, if I may say so... We have newspapers that write consistently in a manner that supports and understands Israel's position and its challenges. And we have had an influence on the BBC as well."

If the media do not "support and understand Israel's position," then their reporters face a barrage of critical emails. The Observer has written, "News organisations that fall foul of Israel are accused of being pro-Palestinian at best, and worst anti-Semitic."

Lindsey Hilsum commented on "the number of emails that I receive saying that I'm anti-Semitic because I have written something they don't like about Israel." The Observer also noted the organised letter writing campaigns and the growth of websites that target individual journalists and provide ready-written letters of complaints for subscribers to send out.

The Israelis have also utilised rhetoric about the "war against terror" in their public relations armoury, and successfully exploited revulsion produced by suicide bomb attacks by Palestinian militants.

Nachman Shai, a key Israeli spokesman in the early years of the intifada, told the research team, "We selected the first [war on terror] instead of the second [anti-Semitism] because we are part of the Western world. We very much played the first argument. It worked better with governments, they gave us more support. It's like if you run out of arguments, you are stuck with anti-Semitism. The first one is based on common interests."

The strategy had worked. He regarded the quality of the international media coverage, including Britain's, on the conflict as having improved, and cited the effect of suicide bombings on how the conflict was seen:

"It has gradually become more balanced than in the beginning – the media are now seeing more of the complicated issues than at the beginning, because of the indiscriminate violence of the suicide bombers against the Israeli population," he said.

Political Pressure on the Media 

The research also showed the political and corporate links that are important in ensuring that Israel's perspective predominated.

Speakers from the U.S., who usually endorsed or supported Israeli positions, were regularly featured on TV news. No other countries or governments who were critical of Israel were given as much air time, if any at all, as the U.S.

Some of the U.S. politicians were strongly influenced by the Christian Right, which had joined forces with the powerful Zionist lobby, particularly AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), which Fortune magazine consistently places in the top five special interest groups. No other foreign policy-based lobby group makes it into the top 25. AIPAC's annual conferences regularly feature the attendance of half the U.S. Senate and half the members of the House of Representatives.

Although AIPAC plays a hugely influential role in the media coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict in the U.S., its activities are rarely analysed. In part, this is because it is believed to have organised mass write-in campaigns or suspension of home deliveries of newspapers protesting at alleged pro-Palestinian bias.

In Britain, Sam Kiley, a correspondent of the Times newspaper, part of Rupert Murdoch's communications group, which also owns Fox News in the U.S., resigned in September 2001, blaming its pro-Israeli censorship of his reporting. He spoke of Murdoch's close friendship with Ariel Sharon and heavy investment in Israel.

Writing in the London Evening Standard, Kiley pointed out, "The Times foreign editor and other middle managers flew into hysterical terror every time a pro-Israel lobbying group wrote in with a quibble or complaint and then usually took their side against their own correspondent... I was told I should not refer to 'assassinations' of Israel's opponents, nor to 'extra-judicial' killings or executions."

Kiley was also cited as saying the paper's executives were so frightened of crossing Murdoch that when he interviewed the Israeli army unit responsible for killing a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, he was asked to file the piece without mentioning the dead child.

The Daily Telegraph, part of the U.S. Hollinger group that also owns the Jerusalem Post, previously owned by the disgraced Conrad Black, has also been subject to complaints by its journalists that Black's strong support for Israel has affected its editorial policy.

The Guardian newspaper wrote, "Three prominent writers – all of them past contributors to Mr Black's Telegraph group – have signed a letter to the Spectator [magazine] accusing him of abusing his responsibilities as a proprietor. Such is the vehemence with which Mr Black has expounded his pro-Israeli held view, they say, no editor or correspondent would dare write frankly about the Palestinian perspective."

The travel writer William Dalrymple, one of the three authors of the letter, wrote in the Guardian, "A press baron is an immensely important figure. With that power, comes responsibilities, and those responsibilities are abused when he makes it clear that certain areas are off-limits to legitimate enquiry, and that careers will suffer if those limits are crossed."

The general response of the BBC and ITN is to bow to the pressure. As Professor Philo explained to the World Socialist Web Site, the conflict is so controversial that it is easier not to go over the history. This serves to remove the rationale for the Palestinian uprising and conflict with Israel, leaving journalists reliant on Israel's public relations material rather than the Palestinians' story of their lost homes or struggle for national liberation.

He cited the case of John Pilger, whose programme Palestine for ITV resulted in more than 4,000 emails, largely pro-Zionist and critical, being sent to the TV regulator. It took six weeks to write a 20,000-word response justifying his film. Rodrigo Vasquez, the producer of The Killing Zone for Channel 4, had a similar experience. While the regulator eventually cleared Pilger, it is not something that other journalists want to go through.

In other areas, he said, reporters can be more critical of the official line. For example, reporters can castigate African governments for their corruption. But if the subject was oil, then it became more difficult. The oil companies have lawyers. Journalists know what they can say and adjust their scripts accordingly. Everyone gets to know the parameters of their own organisation.

The book provides a devastating picture of the extent to which the truth is the victim of a pliant media that is, notwithstanding the honesty of a few journalists, only too ready to sacrifice its professional standing in the interests of powerful pressure groups and their corporate backers. But it fails to draw out the wider political, economic and strategic interests that lie behind the TV companies' reluctance to report the Israel-Palestine conflict from within and across the Arab world and the occupied territories, as they once did, as well as from Israel.

The media has no interest in presenting a historical explanation of the tragedy that has befallen the Palestinians, created the monstrous garrison state that is Israel today and threatens to embroil the two peoples in barbarism. Such an analysis would cut across the British government's support for the U.S. and Israel as the custodian of its interests in the region.