Joel Schalit

Covering the Coverage

His curiosity piqued by a recent article in Haaretz discussing the relative merits of the New York Times‘ coverage of Israel, a colleague asked me if I could point him to what I think are the best studies of Western media reporting on the Arab-Israeli conflict. For those who understand the subtext of such inquiries,  the editor couldn’t have asked a more loaded question. To make such a request in today’s environment means that you first have to ask why the question is important, and second, for whom.

Since September 11th, domestic coverage of the Middle East has obviously become more significant. Not just because the attacks on New York and Washington signaled the beginning of a conflict  between America and West Asian Islamists. But, also because of how it placed far more editorial requirements on a news media already struggling – and, in the US, largely failing – to meet the complex cultural demands already required of Mideast coverage by the country’s Jewish and Muslim Diaspora communities.

US news agencies haven’t done the best job of striking this balance yet either. However, there is more English-language, Mideast-based media to rely on than ever before to make up for it. Take for example, Israeli publications like the English edition of Haaretz on the one hand, and Al Jazeera‘s English broadcasting service on the other, not to mention all of the translated editions of regional sources in between. Americans now have every opportunity to read news that’s potentially more informative.

Though "local" is not always a synonym for "better", irrespective of partisanship and the limitations international media inevitably find themselves subject to, in comparison, few domestic sources, including the ethnic press, deliver the same quality goods.  Does that mean that American periodicals should hang up their hats? No. Because of this country’s obvious ties to the region – economic, cultural, and military, to name a few – US news outlets are morally obligated to continue reporting on the Mideast.

The question is how. Obviously, one answer would be to create content that was complementary with a foreign reporting that is better privileged for information. Another angle would be to concentrate on commissioning work on the numerous ways in which Americans deliberate about their involvement in a particular country’s affairs. Thus, you emphasize domestic political discussions at, say the State Department, or, amongst Americans with cultural ties to said state, instead of the other way around.

As many editors at American news periodicals will tell you, the two biggest complaints about Mideast coverage are always that its either anti-Semitic, or similarly compromised by a desire to satisfy special interest groups. The problem with such criticisms is that they’re not only frequently incorrect. But, most importantly, that they help divert editorial attention away from very real ethical problems, like learning how to properly tailor international news for a cosmopolitan, multicultural readership – during wartime.   

- From my notebook, Nov 1.

Scene From a Mall

A surviving example of early Cana’anite capitalism. Jerusalem, 2007.

Just Say Fez

Oh No‘s new American take on Middle Eastern hip-hop is not without similarly single-minded precedents. In terms of actual full-lengths, Mutamassik‘s 2005 LP, Definitive Works, is of equally subversive significance. For anyone familiar with post-war Egyptian pop, from the sampled string sections to the galloping percussion, the influence of Om Kholtum‘s band looms large on this Brooklyn DJ’s debut album.

Listening to Definitive last weekend, like a lot of records of its kind, I was struck by the ways in which Mutamassik almost plays with Western clichés of oriental music. Particularly the popularity of specific types of orchestral arrangements, and belly dance signifiers popular during the early ’60s, when cities like Los Angeles boasted of a number of Arab-themed club bands.

I don’t mean to suggest that this album intentionally stakes out a critical position in relation to these long forgotten artists. However, if you’re hip to the phenomenon (think guitar-driven mini-orchestras with fez-wearing, Arab-American and Armenian band leaders, not shriners), its hard not to place the new engagement with Mideast music in American hip-hop in relationship to them.

I own a number of out-of-print recordings by several of these groups, but they’re hidden somewhere deep inside my office closet. This weekend, I’m going to do some serious excavation work, and slap them straight back onto my turntable. I imagine that I’ll find them a bit more ideologically complex than I did before.

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

One of the most pronounced themes in my book is an expressed concern with the way Israel gets ‘constructed’ by its proponents in America. Without explicitly specifying it as such, I continually press against the versions of Israel I encounter here, as though there is something alien about them,  continuously wondering whether they have anything to do with me, or are merely the stuff of fantasy. I feel oppressed by this experience, oftentimes suffocated, to the point of wondering whether this was the country my family failed to create. As though they were admonishing us, new pioneers have come to conjure something different, something that ignores ‘the natives’, in much the same way that the original settlers saw Ottoman Palestine as a wild and empty place.

Thus, I was reminded, as I listened to a sixty something New Yorker explain the good he thought Israel had achieved through its seizure of Arab lands in June 1967. The Six Day War improved the lot of American Jewry, he argued, because it completed the process of Jewish integration, helping us secure the truly remarkable level of equality we live with in this country today. Suggesting that the war’s fruits outweighed its failings, this gentleman’s argument was truly curious, as though he were inferring that it’s social achievements in the US were sincerely worth the last four decades worth of displacement and terrorism the occupation has gifted both Israelis and Palestinians. Though I did not ask the guy whether he believed that the occupation ought to continue for said purpose, I still ask myself whether he might believe such.

It is for reasons like these that I am increasingly uneasy about the ways in which fellow progressives tend to rationalize ongoing Diaspora support for the occupation. Traditionally inclined to see such dispositions as being products of a fundamentalist or reactionary approach to Judaism, I am concerned that such arguments have obscured the prevalence of equally common secular positions like these. Specifically, in terms of whether one can ascribe right-wing Diaspora support to the present Israeli status quo on the grounds that it’s never-ending violence is the only guarantee of Jewish equality in multiethnic societies. If that is truly the case, no wonder it feels as though Israel is continuously ignored. Because it’s not Israel that matters in the end, but the Diaspora.

Download Me

Between the fall of 1999 and the summer of 2001, I spent an untold number of hours capturing field recordings of anti-capitalist demonstrators from around the world. Posted to an assortment of websites ranging from Indymedia to the BBC, once I’d start playing a file, I’d record it in real time to a Phillips 765 CD-R dubbing deck.

The best example of these recordings is a montage I pieced together of a demonstration in front of the IMF HQ in Washington DC, in April 2000. Cut and sequenced manually, and then placed over a heavily edited hip-hop percussion track, the song, What’s Your Badge Number?, ended up on the first Elders of Zion record, Dawn Refuses to Rise.

Today, at the request of a listener, a community radio DJ posted the piece to her blog. Click here to read the entry and download the track.

Rome to Tel Aviv Transfer, 1976

Placing our carry-on baggage on a conveyer belt in order to be scanned, we could see the contents of other peoples’ bags on a black and white video monitor. As a Middle Eastern-looking gentleman in front of us watched his bag go through the x-ray machine, a pistol and several grenade-like objects appeared on the television’s screen.

Two Carabinieri carrying submachine guns immediately appeared. Without a word, they took the owner of the bag by the arm and escorted him out of line, while the rest of the flight’s passengers continued through to the gate. Looking up at my father, as though to signal my recognition of what had just transpired, he returned my stare, and silently nodded in reply.

-from a manuscript in progress

Recommended Reading

The timing of this book’s publication couldn’t be better. As Israelis and Palestinians resume peace negotiations, its also an opportunity to consider what separation really means, and why there can be no such thing as a total break.

Using Jewish and Arab literature to demonstrate how their respective identities both overlap and inhere in one another, In Spite of Partition makes a compelling case against simple-minded and destructive notions of cultural difference.

If you live in Los Angeles, on October 14th, Gil Hochberg will be speaking about her new book with fellow UCLA professor Saree Makdisi. Click here for more information about the event.

America or Europe? (Redux)

Israeli progressives look to Europe for the ideological and financial support they do not get from the United States. Though liberal American Jewish organizations such as the New Israel Fund are making enormous efforts to redress such deficits, despite their numerous philanthropically funded social assistance, worker training and educational programs, the perception is that when it comes to Israel, Europeans have a monopoly on liberalism.

Just look at the coverage accorded to Israel boycott initiatives by British university instructors to understand why. Whereas the United States is identified by the UK press with Christian Zionists who love Israel to theological death, the United Kingdom is conversely identified by many American and Israeli periodicals as the home of a growing anti-Semitic left, eager to punish Israeli educators in order to protest Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

This is why the increasing intimacy between Israel and the EU over the course of the past several years has been fascinating. Coming to a head with the large-scale deployment of European peacekeeping forces in Lebanon after 2006’s conflict with Hezbollah, the European commitment of troops came at a time that two of the same countries providing forces were withdrawing from Iraq out of disagreement with US policy.

Excerpted from Israel vs Utopia

Anarcho-Kibbutzniks

Believe it or not, the kibbutz movement is not dead. So argues James Horrox in the October issue of Zeek. Excerpted from a book I am currently editing for AK Press, this young British political analyst shines a new light on Israel’s troubled left.

A Faustian Bargain?

When Benjamin Netanyahu served as Israel’s Prime Minister during the late 1990s, I can distinctly recall the physical revulsion I would read into Israeli faces when they would hear of the ties that Bibi had been cultivating with Evangelist Pat Robertson. Told that American Christians were quickly becoming Israel’s most devoted Diaspora supporters, I still remember how disappointed even my most politically conservative, Likud-voting friends were to hear about this. Of all people, why them?, everyone seemed to respond. It was as though, in our struggle for recognition and support, even conservatives bemoaned the fact that the only foreigners we could reach out to were people who sincerely hated us.

Granted, there are Israelis who value this ‘affection’, and see it as a sign of character. But, more often than not, one will find that Israelis of nearly every conceivable conviction, on one level or another, take issue with Americans. Some, for what is perceived to be a provincial approach to Middle Eastern politics, others because they suspect that Israel is a tool for American interests in the region. Though it’s hard to imagine Israel’s existence without the support of the US, it is equally difficult to stomach the idea that Israelis will learn to indefinitely live with this situation. If we have such ambivalent feelings about our closest ally, what will we think of ourselves if we continue to rely so heavily upon them?