Mort Unplugged: an occasional screed from the real world
(Mort Rosenblum went abroad for The Associated Press in 1967, directing bureaus in Congo, Nigeria, Singapore, Argentina and France. From 1979-1981, he was editor-in-chief of the International Herald Tribune. From 1981 until the end of 2004, he was special correspondent for AP. Now, while writing a new book and teaching, he says what he thinks to whoever gives a damn.) mortunplugged@aol.com
By Mort Rosenblum
PARIS - Hamas is a shock, all right, but if you think about it,
Why? It is not as though we haven't had better than a full generation to see soul-wilting frustration build to a breaking point. (For those of you hair-trigger, Web-habituated readers who think they've spotted my prejudice and are already prepared to argue, stay with me here.)
Back in 1981, a long-viewed employer quite literally handed me the world. The (old) Associated Press gave me editorial freedom, a generous budget, and an airline travel card. Counting all the people AP reached, my potential audience ran to several billion - a substantial amount, even if a few of them had something better to do than read my dispatches.
So, in 1981, I spun my new globe and jabbed a finger at an angry red spot: Gaza. The idea was a series on world refugees. I went to Pakistan where two million half-forgotten Afghanis were learning their ABC's from radicalized mullahs. And I also went to Somalia, where half-forgotten refugees were divided up as political pawns by warlords. But the lead paragraph was about Palestinians.
My notebooks are somewhere under a mound of hundreds of others that have accumulated since. I don't recall many exact quotes. But I remember, fresh as five minutes ago, the look in the eyes of 8-year-olds who had decided they would not live like their fathers did.
In the years since, I watched those eyes grow older and harder, changing from helpless frustration to blind hated, and I saw their reflections across the West Bank. We saw countless peace processes, Camp Davids, Madrids, Road Maps and whatnot. Yet whenever progress seemed possible, someone managed to sabotage it.
For you hair triggers, I am neither "pro-Arab" nor "a self-hating Jew" (doesn't that phrase make you want to throttle someone?"). I'm a reporter who tries to weigh things as they are. I see the need for both an Israeli heartland where Jews ought to be able to hold their heads up and adjacent free Palestinian territory where no one bulldozes olive trees.
I've learned something basic as a life-long correspondent. People don't see their own situations in the abstract. They feel what they feel, and they react to it, in their own cultural context. It doesn't matter what pundits or politicians argue a half a world away. High-exposure media morons who define truth by yelling at those who disagree with them amount to so much silly circus. Any attempt to shape "foreign affairs" that is not rooted in up-close reality will make a bad situation worse.
It was crystal clear in 1981 that someone had to give something while there was still time. True enough, right and wrong are tough to define in conflicts going back generations - and millennia. Entrenched fringes routinely refuse compromise. Yet an attempt at fairness based on facts, rather than politics or ideology, is always possible. That requires sustained attention and coherent diplomacy from outsiders.
American administrations and European governments could have kept a clear line of negotiated process on track. Instead, inattentive and unmotivated publics let them slide. Meantime in the Holy Land, progress was repeatedly thwarted from both sides by lobbyists or terrorists, overzealous demonstrators or over-amped army patrols.
Repeatedly, moderate Palestinian leaders condemned terror, but then hard-liners staged more dramatic attacks. At one point, a brave and wise Israeli premier accepted a workable solution, and a Jewish zealot murdered him. After each flurry of headlines, progress returned to a new starting point. And Gaza and the West Bank festered.
Soon after that 1981 visit, I was back in Israel. Ariel Sharon, then defense minister, lost patience with Palestinian rockets smacking into kibbutzim along the northern border. He invaded Lebanon. Who can say if that was right or wrong? But fallout still poisons the ancient air.
I remember calling my all-suffering mother from Cyprus before catching a ship to East Beirut to work my way into the thick of things. The point - I didn't specify it - was to say goodbye, just in case.
"Be careful of those Palestinians," she told me. "They show you what's on top in the buildings but not what's hidden underneath."
"Mother," I replied, "I know what's under those buildings. That's where I hide from those 500-pound bombs you keep buying the Israelis."
Then I changed the subject, deciding to shut up for a while and be a son rather than a reporter. But I realized that if my mom, a very wise and sentient human being, shaped her reality on Friday night talk at Temple Emanu-El rather than her own kid's firsthand dispatches, the world needed all the foreign correspondents it could get.
So here is my point. The fast-growing trend in America to cut back on reporters who actually go places and see things is going to bring us all - everywhere -- big-time, calamitous, and perhaps insoluble grief. Look at all the shortcuts and layoffs imposed by corporate types who run what we lump under the term "media." There is no great conspiracy, just a simple commonality of interest: to make money rather than to serve any outmoded sense of public responsibility.
It may make interactive audiences feel better to talk back to the news. It may be fascinating to hear what some blogger thinks of distant events as seen from his mother's kitchen table in Des Moines. And it may be yet more interesting still to listen to big-time commentators pontificate with voice-of-God authority on events they don't take the time, the trouble, or the risk to go see up close. But none of it matters.
Analyzing, arguing and guessing are no substitute for reporting.
Google is a fabulous tool for those who use it with thought and care. But I always chuckle at its boastful tagline: 4,500 sources of news. True enough, this wide range allows a good look at different media that used to be flatly inaccessible to the most assiduous news junkie.
But when something big happens, say a calamity in Kashmir that dwarfs the human toll of Katrina, that is likely to mean 4,498 sources all quoting a couple of Indian stringers for news agencies.
None of the big issues should surprise us. Scientists spotted global warming, climate change, and rising seas years ago. Our Monsters of the Moment - now it's Saddam Hussein - usually rack up years as useful friends before their fall.
Many see the Iraq War as monstrous folly by blind ideologues. Others hold out hope that some distant future good might outweigh all the death and pain in an ancient society. Lots of people - me included - were happy to see someone clock Saddam. But no one can reasonably defend going in on spurious charges under the American flag, dragging along a reluctant Britain. We have not begun to pay the price.
And Iraq is only a small part of the new and growing dangers we all face. So, go to your window, stick your head outside and yell: "I'm mad as hell, and I want some more goddamned foreign correspondents!" Let news organizations know that you, in fact, do care about your children's world. Remind them of the public responsibility they're always talking about. And, when you find a truly good newspaper, magazine, or broadcaster, treasure it.
We make a dangerous blunder by confusing accessibility of words with accuracy of information. These days, we may be able to consult Google Earth to locate Shit Creek. Nonetheless, we are still up it.
# # #