How Much Can I Write About Gaza Misery Without Mentioning Rockets?

By Jodi Rudoren, NY Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief

Journalism is both a challenging and rewarding profession. While my responsibilities as bureau chief require me to engage in almost as much management of people as of stories, I still get to write. Writing presents challenges of its own, and I relish those challenges, but foremost among them would have to be seeing how much I can write about the misery of the people in Gaza without so much as a whisper of the rockets at the root of Israel’s Gaza blockade.

I did not invent the game myself; my colleagues in other media organizations were playing it long before I assumed this post a few years ago. And the current version is merely the most current of a more venerable media contest: telling the world about the horrible lives Palestinians everywhere are forced to lead as a result of Israel’s policies, but going to new lengths in each story to avoid explaining that those policies are a direct result of Palestinian violence and threats. The BBC in particular excels at this game, but they’ve been at this longer than most other organizations.

Take my most recent article, which discusses the rampant fraud in the system for gaining passage out of the Gaza Strip for medical treatment. I challenge you to find the words “Hamas,” “rocket,” “tunnels,” or “terrorism” in there. With those factors going completely unmentioned, I don’t need to hit the reader over the head with the hammer of the “Occupation” – I only need to mention it a couple of times, quote somebody who calls the fraud a “crime of the Occupation,” and done. To tell the truth (which I take pride in doing only partially), that was an easy one.

Sometimes, though, it is simply an impossible task. Perhaps Arab media outlets can get away with ignoring Palestinian violence and only reporting Israel’s response, but we at the Newspaper of Record don’t always have that luxury. Under those circumstances, the best we can manage is to load the report with qualifiers that call into question Israeli objectivity or reliability: “Israel says,” or “the Israeli military claimed”  – while appending no such phrases to Palestinian claims. You have to take the symbolic victories when they come your way, or you may end up with nothing. I learned that from the people I refuse to mention.

The challenge is so compelling that I’ve actually made it editorial policy at the bureau, and the correspondents have responded well. Diaa Hadid, especially, excels at amplifying the anti-Israel angle in subtle ways, and I’ve asked her to hold workshops with the other writers to help them improve their skills in this regard. One day we might compete with Al Jazeera, but that quality of journalism also seems to go along with serious misogyny.

Of course we could just blame that on the Occupation.

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