"Escalation" or "Retaliation": Israeli Attacks on Palestinians - The Politics of Language By JAMES PETRAS

It is commonplace to read each day in newspapers such as the Financial Times, New York Times, London Times and Washington Post of Israeli "retaliation". The reportage frequently mentions the fetaliation as following a Palestinian attack on an Israeli colonial settlement in the West Bank or urban population center in Israel. The action and reaction always is located in a limited time frame. Palestinian action is always the initial moment and the Israeli military attack is always described as a response or "retaliatory" and therefore, presumably a form of defensive action, "justifiable".

Thus what appears as objective reportage on two sets of military actions, is in fact an arbitrary selection of time frames which lays the basis for a highly biased interpretive framework. The pro-Israeli tilt, evident in the chosen time sequence, and the framework, are derived from the general ideological argument which portrays Israel as a democracy, defending itself from Arab-Muslim terrorists and not an expansionist colonial power engaged in violent ethnic cleansing and large-scale long-term forced population expulsion.

What is absent from the reportage in such "news" accounts is the sequence of events preceding the Palestinian attacks. Here we are likely to find a series of Israeli military incursions, bombings and killing of non-combatants, summary executions of political prisoners, as well as arbitrary arrests, home demolitions and illegal (even by colonial standards) land seizures.

An examination of readily available, well-documented weekly reports by Palestinian Center for Human Rights, throws a wholly different light on the context and framework for understanding the sequence of events and, equally important, the nature and goals of the Israeli state.

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