LETTER FROM JERUSALEM: HAS THE VOICE OF AMERICA BECOME THE VOICE OF ARAFAT?
By Arlynn Nellhaus

The call came from the United States. "I just heard about the cease-fire on CNN. Peace has broken out in Israel. Aren't you thrilled?"

Sure. Seven Israelis have been murdered just since Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon agreed the American-brokered cease-fire to a couple of weeks ago.

But as Israelis say, "We cease, they fire."

The latest murder was that of a 28-year-old woman in front of her 4-year-old son.

That caller didn't recognize that what she hears and sees on the international media and what's really going on here are two different things.

Neither BBC Radio nor the Voice of America even mentioned the murder when it happened on Thursday. But if a Palestinian is killed, they report on it, usually beginning with, "A Palestinian was killed by Israeli soldiers today."

The Palestinians killed were engaged in violence. The woman killed was driving her son home from the doctor's office.

On Friday, again the BBC Radio said nothing, while the VOA finally said that "a settler" was killed. That "settler" was an Israeli. She wasn't this vague entity known as, "a settler," with no nationality, no designation.

The only reason VOA finally mentioned the murdered woman was because Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke of her in his Jerusalem press conference.

Otherwise, she wouldn't have been murdered as far as the VOA is concerned. And she certainly wouldn't have been murdered by Palestinians. I suppose VOA thought she simply evaporated.

Indeed, these overseas radio broadcasts not infrequently say, "A settler died today" or "A settler was killed today," as if he or she had a heart attack or was hit by a car -- not that that person was cold-bloodedly murdered by Palestinians.

The young woman was killed near a junction at which there had been an Israeli Defense Force outpost. It was removed two weeks ago under terms of the Tenet cease-fire.

Yes, "We cease, they fire."

This case isn't the first time the VOA has slighted Israeli casualties. Earlier, when there were two or three Palestinians funerals, the VOA headlined an article on its website, "Palestinians mourn."

Several Israeli casualties had occurred at about the same time. VOA barely mentioned them and usually at the bottom of the article. I wondered what VOA thought – that Israelis don't mourn their casualties, people who didn't choose to get involved with violence?

Maybe VOA thinks Israelis just dump their dead into the ground and then go to a party. That Israelis suffer isn't recognized by VOA.

At the end of Powell's visit, VOA broadcast that a seven-day cooling-off period was a done deal, that both Arafat and Sharon agreed. That isn't what the Israeli news said. And that isn't the reality of what happened.

Yes, Arafat agreed. But can VOA cite any agreement he has kept? He says what he knows his listeners want to hear.

He learned that in 1988, when his American supporters kept returning him to a back room, until he could come out with the words that would make the United States open its door to him. He learned the lesson.

He said he was abandoning violence and recognizing Israel's right to exist. Hundreds of Israelis have been killed since then.

And now he holds out for Palestinians held in refugee status by their Arab brothers for 53 years to be allowed to return to their homes in Israel. That is a way of saying he is pushing for Israel's demise.

What he says in English are pure tactics to get the pressure off his back. Palestinian mortar firing, hand grenade lobbing and bomb planting continue a pace.

The Israeli Army Chief-of-Staff Shaul Mofaz, in a speech in the United States over the weekend, made it clear that all this violence is under Arafat's direction.

But like the expert con man that he is, he knows how to give direction so that there's no concrete evidence that it came from him. You won't find his signature on a directive.

And while he was in the area, Secretary Powell floated his trial balloon of having observers in the area, and then quickly pulled it down the next day.

Would they be present when a Hamas cell plots its deed? Would they be in the Gaza Strip while arms are being smuggled in by tunnel from Egypt? Would they be on the roads when innocent drivers and passengers are ambushed and shot?

After a violent event, the best they could do is go to the Palestinians who will say, "Who? Not us."

And to the Israelis, who will say, "They attacked first."

And the observers will write a report quoting both sides. What has been gained? They and their reports will be as useless as the United Nations International Forces in Lebanon.

What the BBC and VOA's skewed news reports do is to help contribute to Europe's pandering to Arafat -- and failure to hold Yasser Arafat accountable for the violence he has unleashed.

Perhaps that's their goal.

The European Union, it now comes out, has been providing hundreds of thousands of euros a year to Israeli organizations like Peace Now and the Four Mothers, which wrung Israeli hearts to precipitate Israel's speedy and haphazard Lebanon withdrawal.

With some of its EU gifts, Peace Now distributed 12,000 posters during the Benjamin Netanyahu vs. Ehud Barak 1999 campaign for prime minister reading, "Bring Back Peace," "Netanyahu is killing Peace" and "Netanyahu must go."

Knesset Member Mossy Raz of the Meretz Party, who headed Peace Now for six years, said he couldn't see anything objectionable to Peace Now receiving funds from a foreign governmental organization.

Others call EU gifts to another country's political organizations (they facetiously insist they aren't political), "meddling."

The international media, the Voice of America, the EU, and organizations like Peace Now –- are they all in this together?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Arlynn Nellhaus is a former Denver Post reporter now based in Jerusalem, and the author of Into the Heart of Jerusalem, and a freqent contributor to The Idler.