Arafat's Secret Weapon:  Media Gullibility
by Emanuel Winston

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman

Yassir Arafat's Palestinian Authority always maintained an exceptionally high level of well organized propaganda. During his 12 years in Lebanon, the media received press hand-outs from Arafat's brother at the Commodore Hotel in Beirut.

Few reporters were brave enough to go against Arafat's street terrorists, so the picture of the war in Lebanon was mostly shaped by Arafat's highly professional propaganda machine.

In the years after the political Left of Israel returned Arafat to power from exile in Tunisia, that propaganda machine grew exponentially. Most of the funds for broadcasting equipment, radio and television studios, print media came from the European donor nations.

The reason I am providing a touch of background is so the reader and the media can understand and anticipate Arafat's next stage of his revolutionary pogrom - what he calls an 'intifada'.

Having launched his terrorist war on September 28, 2000(Rosh Hashanah) with ramped-up suicide bombing, Arafat knew Israel would be likely to respond sooner or later. He knew that even after turning the cities gifted to him into fortresses and using the refugee camps as military training camps, the Palestinian terrorists would lose to Israeli forces.

Therefore, the next phase in his 'intifada' was to draw in Americans and Europeans to act as enforcers of what he wanted.

This is now a work in progress as the Arab nations pressured Bush-Cheney-Powell to demand Israel's withdrawal from the fortress cities where terrorists trained and weapons were stored.

Israel could not and perhaps would not use the doctrine of stand-off bombing to simply level the military camps and cities which are the incubators of the suicide bombers because Arafat always hid behind the "human shield" of 'his' civilians. The basements were booby-trapped bomb factories. The first few floors housed civilian families and the top floors were fortressed shooting perches for Arafat's 80,000-100,000 well-armed terrorist/para-military.

Because Israel fights humanely, her troops went in and fought the unthinkable house-to-house battles in the narrow alleys and streets where the terrorists had the best pre-positioned sniper roosts. This caused many Israeli casualties. By April 10th, 28 Israeli soldiers were killed and 149 wounded, many maimed for life. But, it could not be said later that Israel had indiscriminately targeted Arab civilians. Nevertheless, in all wars, as most recently in Afghanistan, there must be civilians hurt - especially when the Arab terrorists use their own children and women for cover.

America's doctrine of war, shaped by then Gen. Colin Powell as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is to first use stand-off bombing, shelling, missiles and only then move in with overwhelming ground forces. There were always collateral (civilian) casualties in Afghanistan - and before that, in Kosovo. The American political/military seldom offered any real regrets, as Israel does now, having to fight terrorists who use their own general population as a "human shield".

In a week or so, Israel will continue withdrawing from key cities under Arafat's Palestinian Authority control. Due to American pressure from President George W. Bush and the presence of Secretary of State Colin Powell, most of this withdrawal will be too early, leaving sufficient terrorists and weapons in place to resurrect their authority over their own civilians whom they control - also by terror.

Given the Bush ultimatum and the economic boycotts threatened by the Europeans, Israel's premature withdrawal will soon be followed by another surge of suicide bombings, sniper shootings, drive-by shootings and bombings. I feel certain that we will once again hear from Bush, Powell, Kofi Annan and the E.U., offering condolences.

Yassir Arafat is now cultivating a massive propaganda campaign reminiscent of the 12 year Lebanon Civil War where 100,000 Christian and Muslim Arabs were killed or the 8 year Iran/Iraq war. Each side massacred the other and then invited the press in for an interview. The media always went into a shark-like feeding frenzy when blood was flowing like water. The killers always played to a cooperative press. It became a well-established symbiotic relationship - ending their message with something about accommodating Arafat.

In Jenin the stage is being set to not only invite in the media but, advance cooperation is already in motion. When Israeli troops leave Jenin, bodies of the terrorists and civilians killed in the fighting will be left in place for the media and their photo-Ops. The Palestinian terrorists would not allow the Red Crescent nor any other groups to remove the corpses or treat the wounded. Pre-planning for maximum photo benefits, their weapons and explosives are removed from the corpses. They are placed like mannequins for maximum shock value. When the Palestinian terrorists' shooting stops, Israel will withdraw (probably too soon due to force from the U.S. State Department embodied in Colin Powell). The accommodating media will be guided to the most grizzly piles of bodies. It is anticipated that where there are not enough bodies, those already photographed will be loaded on trucks and moved to other spots. Photo journalists and TV camera crews will then be guided to these other locations. Civilians in apartments will be used for special attractions with well-known news anchors speaking about atrocities while TV crews pan over the dead bodies.

Look for various news services to cut deals to get the best and first shots. These are experienced journalists and they will know that much of what they will see and speak about was manipulated. But, being eager to hype their news stories, the fact that the piles of bodies were staged will be no deterrent. This is 'Show Biz, Folks!' and the pay is good. All of this will not occur in a vacuum insofar as some of the lead European nations and Arabists in Washington will use the media hype to further pressure Israel.

Photos of dead Palestinians on the front page of The New York Times will assist the Bush Administration's demands that Israel comply with his ultimatums. CNN, NBC, ABC, BBC, NPR, Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, 'et al' will certainly express shock at Israelis brutality.

All of this is in an advanced stage of planning.

It is expected by Arafat that he can provoke riots in the cities of Europe and the Arab streets. He expects the staged photos in the media (who is willingly manipulated) to drown out any voices of reason. The streets are heating up there as mobs and religious rabble rousers will be out in force accusing the Jews of murdering their "holy warriors". Even now the propaganda is causing a tremendous rise in violent acts of anti-Semitism in Europe and England with muted reactions from their leaders. Synagogues have been torched and burned down; Jewish school buses attacked; Jewish cemeteries vandalized.... Shades of the 30s and 40s as Europe assisted Hitler in his "Final Solution to the Jewish Question".

Palestinian film crews, part of Yassir Arafat's propaganda apparatus (paid for by American and European donor monies) have been filming with assistance of the Palestinian terrorists who assemble the bodies in natural position for maximum drama. This will, no doubt, be sold by the yard to gullible journalists.

Arab news media is being prepared to receive photos and film footage designed to enrage the masses. They wish to add this to what they call their "National Memory" in order to keep the passion for revenge alive.

There are few events that cannot be arranged and manipulated by the State-controlled media in Arab nations. Some things cannot be hidden, such as former President of Syria, Hafez al Assad's destruction of the entire town of Hama where he killed of more than 20,000 of his Syrian people whom he considered his enemy.

That was hard to hide but, neither the American nor the European media gave it much attention.

When Saddam Hussein used Sarin and Mustard Gas on a Kurdish village, killing 5,000 civilians, the only reason the media paid much attention was that the village was re-captured by Iran and the media was brought in to show the savagery of Saddam.

That story lasted about a day and a half in the world media.

When King Hussein of Jordan had to attack and kill off between 10,000 to 20,000 of Arafat's Palestinians because he challenged the King's rule, here again the media gave short shrift to King Hussein's actions.

The media played down the reasons he found it necessary to drive Arafat and his Palestinian gunmen out of Jordan and into Lebanon - setting the stage for Arafat's 12 year Civil War in which more than 100,000 Christians and Muslims massacred each other.

And the media played ignored this.

Yet, if Israel executes one of Arafat's terrorist bombing planner/organizers, the world media goes ballistic against Israel. (Regrettably, I add to that the Leftist media of Israel.) There is something about Jews and the Jewish nation that cause normally objective news-people to froth at the mouth and bias their reportage -- to the point of out-right lying.

The Left-Liberal media, including too many Jewish opinion journalists, knowingly accept Arafat's propaganda despite having the evidence to the contrary in hand. That is a pathological sickness which has yet to be explained.

Watch the aftermath of Israel's withdrawal from Jenin for the next 'greatest show on earth'. Yassir, baby, you could have had the top spot at any New York PR agency in a flash. As for the Israelis, they will, as usual, miss the chance to expose coming events in real time and later they are most likely to have unconvincing, inarticulate spokesmen deny the flood of stories even now being drafted. Israeli spokesmen, except for a very few, always sound guilty as they plead for understanding, even before the evidence is presented. Why is that?

Be assured the World press will not speak or show available photos of Palestinians training 10 year old boys to shoot and kill in each of the enclaves which Israel has now entered. There are photos and TV film footage of the huge stockpile of weapons, missiles and explosives found in Jenin, Nablus (Schehem), Ramallah (right in Arafat's compound) but, don't look for it on CNN or other leading news organizations. Because the IDF wouldn't bomb the 70 meter square booby-trapped fortress of the terrorists in Jenin because it wouldn't look good on TV, 13 young Israeli soldiers were blown up for better publicity.

Don't expect CNN or the BBC to expend any time showing those educational films Arafat used to train children to hate and kill Jews - or the stockpiles of weapons illegal under Oslo. No, the media's propaganda line is that Israel entered "Palestinian cities" like Jenin, for flimsy reasons to simply massacre the good folks who lived there in peace.

Watch for Peter Jennings or Geraldo Rivera to single out an Arab family so they can tell why their terrorist son was wrongly killed by the Israelis.

Willfully blind Arafat apologists like Tom Friedman, Joel Brinkley, James Bennet, Linda Gradstein, Geraldo, Walter Rogers, etc., etc. will all be out hustling, spinning the story. and dancing the liars' shuffle as fast as they can.