Representing Palestine: Media and Journalism in Australia Since World War I 9781838609023, 9781838609030

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Peter Manning, PhD, is Visiting Fellow in the School of Communication, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney. Before turning to academia, he was an investigative reporter, producer and then executive producer of Four Corners in the 1980s and head of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s TV News and Current Affairs department in the early 1990s, starting Lateline, Foreign Correspondent and Landline. He later went on to be head of Current Affairs at the Seven Network. He is also the author of Us and Them: A Journalist’s Investigation of Media, Muslims and the Middle East (2006), along with other books, chapters and papers.

‘Israel and Palestine occupy a unique place in Australian media and politics. This meticulous research exposes the origins of this extraordinary engagement. This forensic analysis of the Australian media’s coverage of the Palestine issue exposes clearly the crucial role the international media plays in the fortunes of one of the world’s oldest conflicts. A must-read for anyone caring about Palestine and interested in media’s ethics and contribution to global peace.’ Illan Pappe´, Professor of History, Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies, University of Exeter ‘Through a detailed and solid textual analysis, this book provides a media history that describes an Australian newspaper’s portrayal of the Palestinians during peak periods of news interests over a century. It offers a history of journalistic practices and ethics as well as a critical account of the roots of twenty-first century demonisation of the Palestinians.’ Dina Matar, Senior Lecturer in Arab Media and Political Communication and Head of the Centre for Global Media and Communication, SOAS

SOAS PALESTINE STUDIES

This book series aims at promoting innovative research in the study of Palestine, Palestinians and the Israel –Palestine conflict as a crucial component of Middle Eastern and world politics. The first ever Western academic series entirely dedicated to this topic, SOAS Palestine Studies draws from a variety of disciplinary fields, including history, politics, media, visual arts, social anthropology, and development studies. The series is published under the academic direction of the Centre for Palestine Studies (CPS) at the London Middle East Institute (LMEI) of SOAS, University of London.

Series Editor: Gilbert Achcar, Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at SOAS, Chair of the Centre for Palestine Studies

Board Advisor: Hassan Hakimian, Director of the London Middle East Institute at SOAS

Current Titles: Palestine Ltd.: Neoliberalism and Nationalism in the Occupied Territory, Toufic Haddad Politics and Palestinian Literature in Exile: Gender, Aesthetics and Resistance in the Short Story, Joseph R. Farag Palestinian Citizens of Israel: Power, Resistance and the Struggle for Space, Sharri Plonski

REPRESENTING PALESTINE Media and Journalism in Australia since World War I

PETER MANNING

Centre for Palestine Studies Published in association with the Centre for Palestine Studies, London Middle East Institute

Published in 2018 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd London • New York www.ibtauris.com Copyright q 2018 Peter Manning The right of Peter Manning to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions. References to websites were correct at the time of writing. SOAS Palestine Studies 4 ISBN: 978 1 78831 182 3 eISBN: 978 1 83860 902 3 ePDF: 978 1 83860 903 0 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Typeset in Garamond Three by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India

To my trio of friends and mentors: Professors Heather Goodall, Ahmad Shboul and Liz Jacka

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations Abbreviations Foreword to the SOAS Palestine Studies Book Series Acknowledgements

xi xiii xv xvii

Introduction Methodology Scholarly Implications Roadmap of the Book

1 7 12 13

1.

Reporting Palestine in World War I Historical Context The SMH at War Reporting Palestine The Holy Land Narrative and Jerusalem The Jews and Zionism Stories Untold War Correspondent in Context Conclusion

16 17 19 23 39 42 44 48 54

2.

Palestine’s Competing Narratives after World War II Perceptions of the Jewish Emigration to Palestine 1947 Australia’s External Affairs Minister, Dr H.V. Evatt The Palestinian Catastrophe (The Nakba) of 1947–8

56 61 64 72

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3.

Words for War and Partition Terms of the Chosen Sample The ‘New’ SMH of 1947– 8 Reporting Palestine and Israel, 1947– 8

4.

The ‘Special Correspondent’ in Palestine, 1948 The Journalists’ Union New Code of Ethics ‘Facts’ v. ‘Opinion’, ‘News’ v. ‘Features’ By-Line Policy: Names, ‘Special Correspondent’ and ‘Staff Correspondent’ News Reporting from Palestine The SMH’s ‘Special Correspondent’ in Palestine The Body of Work of the ‘Special Correspondent’

5.

77 79 80 86 103 104 105 107 110 112 128

The ‘Staff Correspondent’ in Palestine, 1948 The SMH’s ‘Staff Correspondent’ in Palestine The Body of Work of the Staff Correspondent One Land, Two Reporters: The Special Correspondent and the Staff Correspondent

132 134 155 159

6.

Opinion on Palestine: Editors and Specialists The Organs of Opinion in the SMH Editorials in the SMH, 1947–8 ‘News Features’ in the SMH, 1947 –8

162 165 166 181

7.

How to Miss the Palestinian Nakba, 1948

192

Conclusion Palestinians: From Low to High Visibility

228

Notes Bibliography Index

241 255 267

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The statistics in the Tables are the author’s. All credits for Figures are outlined in the Acknowledgements and Maps were designed by Dr Ross Burns.

Tables Table 1.1 Distribution of articles in SMH by genre and battle, 1917–18.

27

Table 1.2 Visibility of keywords in SMH by battle, 1917–18.

28

Table 3.1 Number of days on which SMH had a news story on Palestine, 1947– 8.

86

Table 3.2 Number of SMH news articles on Palestine, selected months 1947– 8.

87

Table 3.3 Genres of SMH stories/articles mentioning Palestine, 1947–8.

87

Table 3.4 Page and placement of SMH articles on Palestine, 1947–8.

89

Table 3.5 Breakdown of content keywords used on SMH by monthly periods, 1947–8.

90

Table 6.1 Number of SMH editorials on Palestine, selected months 1947–8.

167

Table 6.2 Support expressed for either side in SMH editorials, selected months, 1947– 8.

180

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Table 6.3 Support expressed for either side in SMH news features, selected months 1947– 8.

187

Table 7.1 Mentions of key ‘nakba events’ in the SMH, 30 November 1937– 15 May 1948.

221

Maps Map 1 Map of Mandate Palestine (including current boundaries of Gaza and the West Bank). Map 2 Map of Jerusalem, 1947.

xix 115

Figures Figure 2.1 The SMH reporters’ room, Fairfax Building, Hunter Street, Sydney, 1930.

59

Figure 2.2 Secret cable from Minister for External Affairs H.V. Evatt to John Burton, 10 August 1947, warning his UNSCOP official.

68

Figure 2.3 H.V. Evatt secret cable to John Burton, 15 November 1947. Evatt warns against a state that ‘puts 60,000 Jews at the mercy of the Arabs’.

70

Figure 2.4 H.V. Evatt secret cable to John Burton, 3 December 1947. Evatt sends his thanks to Abe Landa (MLA for Bondi) and the Jewish community.

71

Figure 2.5 Palestinian refugees walking away from their homes in Tantura, 1948.

75

Figure 5.1 Letter from SMH management requesting travel assistance for J.H. Flower.

133

Figure 7.1 The circle of stones covers a well where bodies were dumped at Deir Yassin, 1948.

224

Figure 7.2 Jewish Agency journalist tries to interview a Palestinian elder, 1948.

225

ABBREVIATIONS

AAP ABC AHC AJA BBC DT EEF IZL JA PRO JNF LHI NAA NSW NYT SAI SMH UNSCOP UNWRA WZO ZFA

Australian Associated Press Australian Broadcasting Corporation Arab Higher Committee Australian Journalists Association British Broadcasting Corporation Daily Telegraph (British) Egyptian Expeditionary Force Irgun Zevai Leumi (national military organisation) Jewish Agency Public Relations Office Jewish National Fund Lohamei Herut Israel (Freedom Fighters for Israel) National Archives of Australia (State of) New South Wales, Australia New York Times State Archives of Israel Sydney Morning Herald United Nations Special Committee on Palestine United Nations Relief and Works Agency World Zionist Organization Zionist Federation of Australia

FOREWORD TO THE SOAS PALESTINE STUDIES BOOK SERIES

The question of Palestine – with its corollaries, the Israel–Palestine and Arab–Israeli conflicts – has been a key issue of world politics and a major source of world tension since the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Few global issues have attracted so much attention over such a long period of time. As a result, despite its small territorial size, Palestine has become a key component of Middle East studies in the academic community as well as a field of study in its own right, in the same way that France or Germany are each the subject of individual study while being part of European Studies. This ‘disproportionate’ status of the Palestine topic is due to several factors. First is the strategic location of Palestine at the Mediterranean door of the Middle East and the ‘East of Suez’ world. This strategic position – the source of British interest in Palestine at the beginning of the twentieth century – has been enhanced by the greater importance of the broader Middle East in global affairs as manifested by the high frequency of wars and conflicts in the region since World War II, and even more since the end of the Cold War. Second is the very particular fact of what has been described as a ‘settler-colonial’ project in Palestine that was boosted by the huge human tragedy of the Nazi genocide of European Jews in 1941– 5. The result has been a complex mingling of the Holocaust, which the Zionist movement claims as legitimising its actions, with what Palestinians call the Nakba, or ‘catastrophe’, which describes the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Arab Palestinians from great swathes of Palestine in 1948 by the Zionist drive towards the creation of Israel.

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Third is the sheer complexity of the Palestine question engendered by the Nakba and the subsequent occupation by the state of Israel of the West Bank and Gaza following the Six-Day War in 1967. As a result of these, the Palestinian people today are living under very different conditions and legal regimes: they encompass those who remained in Israel after the state’s establishment in 1948; those, including refugees, under direct Israeli occupation or indirect Israeli control in the West Bank and Gaza; those displaced by the wars of 1948 and 1967 to the eastern bank of the Jordan River, some of them still living in camps, and most of whom became Jordanian citizens; those living in the refugee camps of Lebanon and Syria; those of the diaspora living in other Arab countries; and those of the global diaspora. Finally, the question of Palestine plays such a major role in Arab politics in general and represents such a major trauma in collective Arab memory that it has been the focus of prolific artistic and literary energy, a drive that goes beyond Palestinians to include creative minds and talents from all Arabic-speaking countries. This complexity and the unparalleled diversity of contemporary Palestinian locations and situations help to explain Palestine’s ‘disproportionate’ status and account for the abundance of publications on Palestine and its people. And yet, surprisingly, there has until now been no university-based English-language book series specifically dedicated to Palestine Studies. The SOAS Palestine Studies series, published by I.B.Tauris in collaboration with the SOAS Centre for Palestine Studies (CPS) at the London Middle East Institute (LMEI), seeks to fill this gap. This series is dedicated to the contemporary history, politics, economy, society and culture of Palestine and the historiographic quarrels associated with its past. The subject of Palestine has aroused intense passions over several decades. On such a topic it is very difficult to exclude passion, and the pretension to be ‘neutral’ is often disqualified by both sides. But we will make sure that none of our books stray beyond the realms of intellectual integrity and scholarly rigour. With the Palestine Studies series we hope to make an important contribution towards a better understanding of this most complex topic. Professor Gilbert Achcar, Editor Chair of the Centre of Palestine Studies, SOAS, University of London

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to acknowledge the source of various items from the ‘Figures’ list. The two maps (Map 1 and Figure 4.1) were composed by Dr Ross Burns. The photo of the journalists at work in the SMH reporters’ room in 1930 (Figure 2.1) is from Gavin Souter’s Company of Heralds published by Melbourne University Press, 1981. The cables of Dr H.V. Evatt (Figures 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4) were accessed by me at the National Archives of Australia. The letter of appointment of J.H. Flower to Palestine in 1948 (Figure 5.1) was accessed by a Fairfax archivist on request in 2012. The three photos that constitute Figures 2.5, 7.1 and 7.2 are from Ariella Azoulay’s From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947– 1950, published by Pluto Press, London, 2011.

LEBANON Acre

SYRIA Khisas

Safad Sea of Galilee

Haifa

Tiberias Nazareth

Athlit al-Tantura

Afiq

Afula Jenin Tulkarm Nablus

TelAviv Jaffa

Ashdod

Salama Ramallah Qastal

Ashkelon Gaza City

JORDAN Jordan River

Jericho Lifta Jerusalem Bethlehem

Amman

Hebron

KhanYunis Beersheba

EGYPT

0

20

40

PALESTINE UNDER THE MANDATE 100 km

Aqaba

Map 1 Map of Mandate Palestine (including current boundaries of Gaza and the West Bank).

INTRODUCTION

When the Sydney Olympics finished on 1 October 2000, the city and the nation breathed a collective sigh of relief. At the closing ceremony the then (retiring) International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch had declared Sydney’s event ‘the best Olympic games ever’. Australia was fourth on the medals ladder – after the big three of the USA, China and Russia – and the tens of thousands of friendly country folk who had come down from bush towns to ‘the big smoke’ to give visitors a taste of true Aussie hospitality and directions guidance were on their way home.1 However, behind the image of harmony – and even successful multiculturalism – lay a fraught tension about Australian identity, a long-running debate about who was welcome and who was not. The White Australia Policy, passed as policy in the first parliament of the new federation of Australian states in 1901, had only been abolished 25 years earlier when Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s government passed the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975. Sydney was not dealing well with migrants from Vietnam who arrived in its far western suburb of Cabramatta thanks to Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser’s compassionate immigration policies in the 1970s and 1980s. By the late 1990s, it was allegedly Sydney’s ‘heroin capital’ run by the Vietnamese ‘5T’ drug gang. When a Detective-Sergeant Tim Priest warned of increasing drug gang activity in Cabramatta in 1999, he was howled down by his New South Wales (NSW) Assistant Commissioner of Police, Clive Small, but supported in a petition signed by 41 other police officers at Cabramatta.2

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However, on a Saturday night on 17 October 1998, the baton of ‘the other’ changed from ‘Asian crime gangs’ to the Lebanese in Sydney. A 14-year-old Korean Australian named Edward Lee arrived at a house in western Sydney expecting to see a birthday party. Instead, he was met by a group of Lebanese teenagers and a fight broke out. One of them, 15-year-old Mustapha Dib, grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed Lee in the chest and back, puncturing his heart and lung. He died that night. The street was Telopea Street, Punchbowl. Some 130 police descended on Telopea Street and surrounding areas the next day, talking to 200 residents. Few would talk.3 The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) headline read ‘Police Hit Gang Wall of Silence’.4 A fortnight later, on a quiet Sunday morning, five police officers took the overnight shift at the nearby Lakemba police station. At 1.15 am, a maroon 1989 Holden Commodore stopped outside and pumped 15 bullets into the station, narrowly missing all police officers. It was immediately assumed as revenge for the earlier raid on Telopea Street. The community was allegedly fighting back. The NSW Police Commissioner, Peter Ryan, said Australia was witnessing a new era of crime. Apart from places like Northern Ireland and other war-torn countries, I’ve never seen anything like this in my career. When you stand behind that counter and look at the bullet holes in the windows and the woodwork, I’m amazed that no-one was killed. The then Premier of NSW, Bob Carr, said: ‘The people trying to destroy the Australian way of life will simply not succeed.’5 Mustapha Dib was sentenced to 30 years in jail and is eligible for release on 8 July 2041. However, the dramatic effect of the killing, the lack of co-operation with police and the drive-by shooting at the police station set the scene for a new target of media and academic study: the Arabic-speaking community of Sydney. Said Scott Poynting, then Senior Lecturer at the University of Western Sydney: There is now an urgent need for such monitoring (of ethnic groups) to be undertaken in respect of the Arabic-speaking

INTRODUCTION

3

communities, most notably the currently critical site of Canterbury-Bankstown.6 Then, two weeks later, an event occurred on Sydney’s wealthy North Shore district, which would occupy media attention for the next two years: the abduction and rape of a young woman from Chatswood by two different gangs from the Canterbury-Bankstown district.7 The headline claimed ‘Woman Raped by Two Gangs in a Day’. In this report, no ethnicity of the attackers was mentioned. However, eight months later, the story was re-discovered and re-badged as ‘70 Women Lured and Pack-raped’ by the same newspaper, this time with more victims involved and the ethnicity of the attackers: Lebanese. The month of August 2001 would become a perfect storm of reporting the alleged vices of Australia’s biggest Arab community – the Lebanese – and the suburban location of the problem: Bankstown. In the weeks following the first report, the number of accused dropped from 70 to less than 20 and, finally, less than 15. Eventually four young men, born in Australia to Lebanese-born parents, were found guilty and sentenced. But the media concentration on this one community continued. On 9 August, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph hit back with their ‘Special Investigation’: Revealed today is the growing influence wielded by ethnic-based gangs in our city [. . .] There are suburbs in which the streets are not safe and young Caucasian women are at risk of rape.8 The next day, the Daily Telegraph declared the whole of Sydney’s southwest (more than 1.5 million people) to be in danger: ‘Police have issued a series of warnings to women as sexual predators turn areas of southwestern Sydney into virtual no-go zones.’9 The paper showed statistics that gang rapes of Caucasian teenagers were on the rise. Finally, this broad-brush reporting became too much for criminal justice lawyers and statisticians. On 22 August, the head of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime and Statistics issued a press release. It stated: The factual evidence on Bankstown provides no support whatsoever either for the claim that sexual violence in that area

4

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is more prevalent than anywhere else in the State or for the claim that the incidence of sexual assault is rising in Bankstown [. . .] The accompanying table also shows [. . .] the recorded rate of sexual assault involving multiple offenders is not as high in Bankstown as it is in several other areas of the State.10 All during the year 2001, another strand of news focusing on people from the Middle East played out. It concerned asylum seekers arriving on boats from Indonesia to Australian shores. The then Immigration Minister, Phillip Ruddock, warned on 4 January, according to a report in the SMH, that ‘Multinational people smugglers are preying on a fresh crop of well-off refugees, including Palestinians, Syrians and Iranians for the refugee trade to Australia.’11 By August, the tabloid Sunday Telegraph had turned Ruddock’s ‘fresh crop’ of refugees into a ‘wave’. Under its page 3 headline, ‘(Christmas) Island Braces for Biggest Refugee Wave’, the first paragraph of the story claimed the wave was ‘the biggest boatload of refugees ever to hit Australian shores’.12 At this point, the happy Sydney of the Sydney Olympics was just 11 months past. The trauma of September 2001 was still to come. Prime Minister John Howard had an election in November and was already using the race and fear card to practical effect. ‘We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come’ he declared, as though Australian sovereignty was under threat.13 The master politician was pushing all the right buttons to get himself re-elected – but at the expense of his Arab and Muslim communities. A year later and the trials of another group of Lebanese men who had raped Caucasian women re-ignited a storm of media panic about Arabs, Muslims and their place in Australian society. Three years later still, a race riot at Cronulla railway station in southern Sydney, where western Sydney Lebanese and their family and friends go to surf, saw white vigilantes bashing men and women of ‘Middle Eastern appearance’ as they got off trains. It was the worst such riot in a century. The riot had been egged on by Sydney’s highest-rating broadcaster, Alan Jones.14 A decade of demonisation in the media had seemingly taken its course. Between the rape trials and the Cronulla riot on 11 December 2005, I conducted a content analysis of both Sydney’s daily newspapers a year before and after 11 September 2001, partly to see whether the shock of

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9/11 had caused a highly negative framing of Arabs and Muslims in Sydney or whether there was a continuing bias that mirrored Edward Said’s ‘orientalist’ thesis alive and well in Sydney. A LexisNexis search revealed 12,000 or more articles mentioning Arabs or Muslims in the more populist tabloid the Daily Telegraph (DT) and the more serious SMH in the two-year period. These were read to extract ‘themes’ such as ‘refugees/asylum seekers’, ‘Lebanese gangs’ and others. An analysis of these key themes and how the two newspapers represented Arabs and Muslims (conscious of the fact that not all Arabs were Muslim and a minority of Muslims were Arab) was published in Media International Australia (MIA).15 The quantitative and qualitative analyses were compared to address the major research question at the heart of that study: how closely did the coverage of news stories in these two Australian newspapers approximate the central propositions of Edward Said’s notion of ‘orientalism’ as expressed in two books, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient16 and Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World?17 The conclusion to the MIA article was: The textual reading, sometimes assisted by the statistical analysis, elicits some clear patterns of portrayal. Arabs and Muslims (and the terms appear coterminous in the articles) are seen as violent to the point of terrorism – especially Palestinians. [. . .] It is a portrait of deep and sustained fear. It is also a portrait of an Australian orientalism that has been successfully transplanted and developed on Antipodean shores.18 However, as mentioned above, one of the most intriguing results of the study was the key role played by Palestinians in forming the concepts of ‘Arab’ and ‘Muslim’. In the random sample part of the study (400 articles), 66 per cent of the total news articles are from international rather than national or local reports. Some 62 per cent of these international reports focus on the Middle East and 51 per cent of those reports focus on Israel/Palestine rather than Iraq, Iran or any other area. A computer study of these articles on Israel/Palestine, using NU’DIST coding software, determined that the keyword ‘Palestin/e/inian’ was associated ‘in close proximity’ with the word ‘violence’ (and its derivatives, such as ‘terror’) on 72 per cent of all mentions.

6

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The DT, part of News Limited, did not have a staff correspondent or bureau in Israel/Palestine at the time and, through its freelancers, seemed to give a more balanced coverage with the least prejudicial terms. The SMH, with its sole staff correspondent, Ross Dunn, seemed more biased, stereotypical and inaccurate. Surprisingly, the study concluded: The Israeli – Palestine conflict forms much of the imagery of what it means to be Arab or Muslim in these two Australian newspapers. A major proportion of that coverage came during this period from the SMH’s Ross Dunn. Dunn’s portrayal of Palestinians is without history or context [. . .] Palestinians have become terrorists, Israelis rightful defenders and injured civilians unfortunates caught in the crossfire.19 Palestinians seemed to be the ultimate enemy to Australians, not Lebanese. Not only were they Arab, not only Muslim, but terrorist as well. Therefore, this current study is an attempt to address the roots of that negative portrayal and to trace the lineage of this Australian media bias against one race (‘Arabs’/’Palestinians’) and one religion (‘Muslims’) for the first time. It is conducted over a near-century period, concentrates on one newspaper and one group (‘Palestinians’). It investigates deep rather than wide. My skill base is originally as a journalist, although I have spent the last 15 years in academic journalism studies and media analysis. In both careers, I have gained great respect for the disciplines. For almost a decade, I worked on ‘Four Corners’, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) 50-year-old investigative journalism programme (modelled on the BBC’s ‘Panorama’). I have an enduring respect for its rigour, dedication, fairness and balance. This book is based on my intimate knowledge of how journalists think and write and, in so doing, impart meanings to their audience. I do not believe that they set out to mislead and demonise (although a few radio ‘shock jocks’ may at times). Therefore, the conundrum is, how do good men and women get it so wrong? How is it that most of our media sing the praises of the invasion of Iraq, get embedded with one side and mythologise the occupation as a necessary evil when, within months, as British journalist Patrick Cockburn of The Independent newspaper was to write, Iraqis quickly

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realised George Bush’s invasion was no liberation, it was just another imperial occupation?20 A historical approach therefore is taken in this study to apply similar keywords used in the 2000–2 study and apply them to two earlier peak periods of newspaper coverage involving Palestine and Palestinians. It seeks to establish the roots of these portrayals of Palestinians. Were they always ‘the Other’? And what role did earlier portrayals play in establishing current-day reporting? The biggest and longest such ‘peaks of coverage’ over the last century were World War I (when Australian troops fought in Palestine, 1917–18), and the partition of Palestine in 1947 and the creation of the state of Israel in mid-1948. The study takes The Sydney Morning Herald and examines in depth the text of the journalism, the surrounding institutional politics and the context of the times in Palestine. In doing so, its methodology mirrors that of the 2000– 2 study: usage of both statistical analysis based on keywords, but also by qualitative literary analysis based on the author’s 30 or more years as a media practitioner in print, radio and television in Australia.

Methodology Some 567 editions of the SMH over the last 100 years were closely examined within the two periods of time chosen. The newspapers were accessed on microfiche rolls at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney. I examined 204 editions relating to Australia’s participation in the war in Palestine in World War I, and some 363 editions relating to the partition of Palestine and the establishment of the state of Israel. In general, these two periods were chosen as being most likely to represent sustained periods of newspaper coverage of Palestine and Palestinians. World War I represented the first time Australians had been at war in such a region and stayed for a lengthy period of time (18 months). The period from February 1947 to the end of 1948 represented another period of ‘peak coverage’, starting with Britain’s announcement that it would relinquish its Mandate over Palestine and ending with Israel’s success over the Arab armies that came to the support of Palestinian irregulars on 15 May 1948. The criteria for determining a database was different for each period.

8

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For World War I, it was the likelihood of coverage of Palestine in the days before and after the major battles fought by the Australian forces in early 1917 through to late 1918 (such as in Gaza, Beersheba, the Jordan River and Northern Palestine). Some 115 articles were found that mentioned the word ‘Palestine’ or ‘Palestinian’, or any other derivative or formulation of the word (for example, ‘Palestinian Arab’). For the 1947– 8 period, three sub-periods within the 23 months between February 1947 and December 1948 were chosen: the month of February 1947 (when Britain announced its withdrawal); the eight months between October 1947 and May 1948 (marking the UN decision to partition Palestine, the civil war between the Palestinians and the Jews in Mandate Palestine and the creation of Israel in May); and the last three months of 1948 (marking the acceptance by all that Israel had beaten the Arab armies that invaded after 15 May 1948).

. .

.

Twelve months’ worth of SMH newspapers were thus searched for the same mention of the words ‘Palestin/e/ian’ and some 409 articles were found. While it is true that the criteria for the construction of the database in each period is different (set-piece battles in the first and political and then largely civil war battles in the second), and that different ideologies were at stake (imperial forces in the first and Zionist in the second), the study explores the same mediated subject through the same keywords: the people of Palestine. A keyword search was conducted on the 115 articles from World War I and the 409 articles from 1947–8. The keywords were designed to measure nomenclature of people, place, religion and attitude within the text of each article. The 14 keywords were: 1. 2. 3. 4.

PEOPLE Palestin/ian/s Arab/s Jew/s Other (e.g., Zionist/s)

INTRODUCTION

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

9

PLACE Palestine Holy Land Judea/Samaria Other (e.g., Middle East) RELIGION Muslim Christian ATTITUDE Violent/ce/terror/ism Refugee/s/immigrant/ion Oil

The articles were also assigned according to some traditional newspaper categories in order to determine the importance and/or prominence given each article by the SMH. These included date of publication, page of publication, position on page (‘lead’ or not), attachment of any graphic (e.g., map, photo or cartoon) and mode of publication. ‘Mode of publication’ was broken down into the following categories of editorial content: P C N F Ed WN L O

Photo Cable news News report (SMH reporter, etc.) Feature article Editorial ‘War Notes’ – a column during World War I Letters to the editor Opinion piece

Finally, if keywords appeared in a headline, they were assigned a ‘H’, if in a sub-headline an ‘sH’, and if in a caption to a photo, map or cartoon a ‘Ca’. The information obtained occupied some 88 pages of graphed data. Its aim is to give a clear idea of how the people and the place of Palestine are referred to in the text (including religion, references to violence and ‘terrorism’, the question of refugees both for Jews and Palestinians, and the role of oil). It is also designed to portray a sense of the editorial priorities of the SMH in these two periods with

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REPRESENTING PALESTINE

regard to Palestine and Palestinians and, thereby, how Australian readers might form attitudes to Palestine, Palestinians, Israel and the Middle East. Beyond these two exercises in content analyses, there is a textual analysis of the ways in which keywords are used. In World War I, this is undertaken by examining the role and texts of H.B. Gullett, who arrived late in the war as the SMH’s own man on the ground in Palestine. In 1947 – 8, it is done by looking at the work of the two reporters on whom the SMH chose to rely for its own exclusive coverage from Palestine. The two are the (unnamed) journalist called ‘Our Special Correspondent’ from 30 March 1948 to the end of May 1948 (in our sample) and Mr Jack Flower, called ‘Our Staff Correspondent’ from 13 May 1948 onwards. Some 11 stories from the ‘Special Correspondent’ are analysed in detail, and 13 from the ‘Staff Correspondent’. For a further indication of the SMH’s portrayal of the 1947– 8 period, its own explicit position on Palestine and the conflagration that dominates its headlines for almost two years (but especially early 1948) is examined by looking at its 30 editorials and 13 news features. In these categories, ‘opinion’ was allowed and encouraged. The structural elements of the methodology involved several choices. The first was the decision to examine the SMH and, unlike the 2000–2 study, without its more populist competitor, the Sydney DT. The most important reason was that the SMH saw itself as Australia’s oldest ‘paper of record’, dating from 1841. By World War I, it was already more than 70 years old and its staff saw it as the home of quality journalism, although a bit too low on pay and conditions.20 By the late 1940s, it held the same reputation, but was in a battle to remain the highestcirculation paper in Australia’s first and biggest city. Throughout, it was Australia’s equivalent of the London Times or the USA’s New York Times (NYT). It was also a world newspaper, giving ‘world affairs’ prominent coverage in its news, features and opinion pages. As the newspaper of the nation’s establishment, it also wielded influence and power. For all these reasons, the SMH was regarded as the appropriate choice for this study. If the 2000– 2 study is taken as a ‘bookend’ research base, it would have been possible to add several other databases apart from the current two. In 1967, the Arab–Israeli Six Day War occurred, which ended with

INTRODUCTION

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Israel invading the rest of Palestine that had been left unoccupied in 1948. However, the war was over in such a short period of time, it hardly counted as a ‘peak period of coverage’ and, in any case, it was more about Israel and neighbouring countries than the Palestinians. The same objections apply to the following 1973 war between Israel and its Arab neighbours. The other possible inclusion might have been a series of terrorist incidents involving Palestinians – plane hijackings, the Munich Olympics in 1972 and suicide bomb attacks – but these were so disparate as to hardly fit the criteria of extended ‘peak of coverage’ exhibited by the three other research markers. Finally, a choice was made in the use of textual analysis. The broad content analysis referred to earlier has been overlaid in this study with my own dissection using my long experience as a journalist over 30 years in print, radio and television at all levels, from on-the-road reporter and producer to Controller of Television News and Current Affairs at both Australia’s major public broadcaster (the ABC) and at the commercial Network Seven. My journalism cadetship and my first graded job was at John Fairfax and Sons Limited, publishers of the SMH. When I joined the SMH in 1968, many of the people from the SMH of 1948 were members of the senior staff and became friends and acquaintances of mine (Guy Harriott, Jack Percival and Gavin Souter). Certainly, the culture, ambience and ethics of the SMH are well known to me from that time and from all the years since. This knowledge base is used in this book. As a result, having not specialised in linguistics but in journalism practice and theory since the year 2000 when I entered academic life, this study borrows some concepts from several disciplines to investigate my colleagues’ output. From M.A.K. Halliday, the notion of ‘voice’ and, in particular, ‘middle voice’;22 from Nick Couldry, the concept of ‘agency’ in media studies;23 from Teun van Dijk, the concept of ‘ideology’;24 from Pierre Bourdieu, the concept of ‘field’ and ‘habitus’ that applies neatly to news organisations;25 from Stuart Hall and Raymond Williams, the concepts of coding, representations and, especially, the use of keywords;26 from Robert Entman and many others, the definition of ‘framing’;27 and from Edward Said, the role of imperialism in cultural formation.28 I admit to the borrowing, but the resulting intellectual stir-fry is my own. It is used partly in Chapters 1 and 8, but more thoroughly in Chapters 5, 6 and 7.

12

REPRESENTING PALESTINE

Specifically, in making judgements about particular articles, I have used a mix of journalistic standards that might reasonably have been expected to be known and used at the time, along with a list of linguistic, sociological and cultural studies techniques that focus on the representation of emotion, agency, positioning and individualisation. In addition, there is an attempt to discern in each article whether an ‘interview’ has been conducted, even though, in both periods, the use of the quoted interview, especially with ordinary people not occupying positions of power and authority, was very rare. As in historical studies, the voice of ‘the people’ does not come to be heard until the 1960s, when ‘social history’ broke the mould. Effectively, the analysis therefore depends partly on my 30-year experience in journalism and partly on my 15-year experience in the academy.

Scholarly Implications The primary interest of this book is how one newspaper portrayed one group of people during peak periods of news interest over nearly a century. Given the findings of an earlier study, questions of racism and religious discrimination are foregrounded. It is an attempt to see the roots of twenty-first-century demonisations. Media historians might also see in this study the attempt of an Anglophile newspaper to take in the different culture and context of an area far from home and to balance its acknowledged politics (in editorials, for instance) with the values of journalism within its management and its staff. The study also has clear relevance to war reporting and the duties and culture of foreign correspondents. This is especially so with regard to the current vexed professional question of ‘embedding’ journalists with one side of armed conflicts. Since Vietnam, militaries around the world have tried to limit the rights of journalists to go it alone. The result is, inevitably, a one-sided view of conflicts with journalists suffering a clear conflict of interest. Journalists like Britain’s Patrick Cockburn and Robert Fisk, Australia’s Paul McGeogh and Israel’s Amira Haas have chosen to forgo the invitations to join one side’s military. In the first issue of a new journal from Sage Publications in 2008 called ‘Media, War and Conflict’, veteran BBC war correspondent

INTRODUCTION

13

Martin Bell warned of the consequences for journalism and, in turn, public policy: Twenty-first century warfare as conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan offers no foothold for independent and free-ranging journalism. Reporters are driven back into green zones and fortified compounds where they no longer have a function as eyewitnesses. Embedded reporting is so limited in scope that it serves as little more than a recruiting movie. Wars which are fought among the people are no longer reported from among the people. The news agenda has also retreated from the real world into a comfort zone of its own.29 In observing reporting in Palestine, this study throws new light on Australian war correspondents from earlier eras and throws up new questions for today. Finally, the book suggests further studies of how national newspapers with similar standards and codes of ethics – the London Times, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Scotsman and many others – confronted and handled the challenges of reporting Palestine over the last century. All had correspondents on the ground during the same peaks of coverage used in this book. All used the same news agencies – Reuters and Associated Press – and often rubbed shoulders together in the field. Did the same tropes and perceptions apply and is there, as a result, the same resonance today?

Roadmap of the Book The chapters of the book operate on three levels: a microscopic analysis of articles conducted within a broad overview of the content; the changing fortunes of the Fairfax company and an analysis of how this would have affected the editorial floor of the SMH and, in turn, the expectations of and demands on correspondents; and a historical analysis of the changing field of conflict within Palestine and how this might have affected the task of reporting Palestinians dealing with Turkish, then British and, finally, Israeli occupation of their lands. Chapter 1 begins with a study of how the Palestinians were portrayed while Australian troops under British command fought to clear

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REPRESENTING PALESTINE

Palestine of hundreds of years of Ottoman rule. Chapter 2 looks at how the influx of Jewish immigration after World War II and how the notion of ‘transfer’ came to dominate the thinking of the Jewish leaders, radical changes in the SMH, the role of Australian External Affairs Minister Herbert Vere Evatt in supporting the Jewish case during 1947 and 1948 and the onset of what the Palestinians would later call their nakba (catastrophe). The remaining chapters all analyse the textual content of the SMH over the 12 months sampled from February 1947 to December 1948. Chapter 3 contains a content analysis overview in which all the keywords are laid out in several tables to determine the broad outlines of the word usage and the crucial peaks of coverage within the 1947–8 period. In Chapter 4, the work of the SMH’s ‘Special Correspondent’ in Palestine is closely analysed according to criteria set out earlier. In Chapter 5, the same occurs for the ‘Staff Correspondent’ sent from Sydney. In contrast to the two correspondents, whose work would have been expected to exemplify ‘objectivity’ in news reporting, Chapter 6 examines the ways in which the SMH expressed its editorial opinions of the Palestine/Israel dispute, of its effect on Britain and Australia, and of how Australian foreign policy should respond. Chapter 7 takes a different path. It examines not so much the text of the articles, but how the articles did or did not report a series of events, people and institutions of 1947– 8, which have since been revealed in the documents of the Israeli Archives in the last 25 years. The documents formed the basis for a collection of books from the late 1980s onwards, written by a new wave of Israeli historians, since collectively called ‘the new historians’ (Morris, Shlaim, Pappe, Segev et al.). While there have been disagreements within this group (especially between pro-Zionist Morris and anti-Zionist Pappe), sparking further debate about Israeli perceptions of 1948, this book is concerned only with the revelations in the documents: the reports of the Jewish Agency’s Haganah military commanders, the written thoughts and diaries of Agency leaders, the ‘secret’ discussions about ‘transfer’ at Zionist conferences, and so on. Therefore, Chapter 7 simply compares what the documents show happened in a variety of places in Palestine and whether or not the SMH reported them. This is no small matter. Together, these events make up what the Palestinians call their nakba (catastrophe). It was the clearing out of half the people of Palestine from their land.

INTRODUCTION

15

In all of these chapters, the primary focus is on the Palestinians. The central question is how they were represented throughout the two biggest sustained peaks of coverage in a Sydney newspaper over nearly a century and the extent to which these representations contributed to the stereotypes of Palestinians in the twenty-first century.

CHAPTER 1 REPORTING PALESTINE IN WORLD WAR I

When Australian troops left their home shores on 21 October 1914, the largely enthusiastic recruits expected to end up in England. Nearly one in five had been born in Britain.1 Most press attention had concentrated on the German threat; however, the Australians disembarked in Egypt. Turkey had joined the war while they were at sea and were threatening an Australian lifeline to Britain, the Suez Canal. As a result, the Australians’ first battles were at Gallipoli in Turkey, not Europe. The now-famous war correspondent Charles Bean was aboard that first fleet in 1914. It was known to the officers that he was not only a correspondent and journalist, but would also maintain diaries to form the official history of the war.2 Like the troops he was reporting on, he ‘cooled his heels’ in Cairo before heading off to Gallipoli. Only after the withdrawal from Gallipoli on 19 December 1915 did he begin his stint on the Western Front in France. Bean was nothing if not prolific and dedicated to his task as historian. His 283 books of diary notes formed the basis for much of the myth about being an ‘Anzac’ and ‘an Australian’, and the diaries have themselves become the subjects of historical analysis.3 The Gallipoli (or Gelibolu, in Turkish) campaign is viewed today as an iconic event in Australian history and Anzac Cove is the subject of annual pilgrimage by young people, tourists, ex-soldiers and politicians. Equally, the battles of the Somme River on the Western Front in France occupy almost religious status.

REPORTING PALESTINE IN WORLD WAR I

17

A different group of Australian troops – the Light Horse – headed eastwards from Egypt after the withdrawal from Gallipoli and confronted the Turks again in late 1916 and early 1917 among the largely Arab and Muslim population of Palestine and Syria. They had no Australian correspondent with them, and their activities were to be reported by a British correspondent until August 1918 when an Australian, Henry Gullett, arrived.4 For troops and correspondents, this was unusual in several respects. They had expected to be fighting fellow Europeans on behalf of the British. In Gallipoli, they had been fighting a tough foe, but the foe was defending his own land. In Palestine and Syria, they were fighting, once again, the Turkish troops, but this time on land occupied by Arabicspeaking people of largely Muslim background. They were effectively destroying the Ottoman Empire, not just fighting Germans. This was a challenge of understanding not only for the generals and officers, who had to handle the logistics of fighting a foreign war on occupied territory, but for the ordinary soldiers and correspondents in day-to-day life.

Historical Context Rising Arab nationalism, pre-World War I For 30 years prior to World War I, Syrian intellectuals had been discussing the notion of an ‘Arab nation’. Butrus al-Bustani, a Christian from Beirut, promoted the idea of resistance to foreign intervention in Syria in the 1870s and 1880s, and spread the word through newspapers, schools, universities, libraries and public lectures.5 Later, nationalists such as Rashid Rida were not only talking about a nation state, but also about how to integrate Western notions of progress (democracy, equality and science) with Islam.6 British historian Albert Hourani has described the rich debates of Arab, Christian and Muslim thinkers during the late Ottoman period.7 The notion of a greater Arab state, forming the boundaries of what are today Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine, was also alive and well in a period of intense thought about nationalism worldwide. Palestine ‘notables’ and peasants Various scholars have written of the long-held notion of ‘Palestine’ as a Benedict Anderson ‘imagined community’.8 One such is a study of the

18

REPRESENTING PALESTINE

fatwas (meaning ‘legal opinions’) of a seventeenth-century al-Ramla mufti, Khayr al-din al-Ramli, which shows clear references among the people of Filastin (Palestine) to the notion of the geographical area of their country and of Palestine being ‘a (Muslim) holy land’.9 Hourani also describes the role of Palestinian urban intellectuals, merchants, politicians and Muslim leaders in nation formation in the late Ottoman Tanzimat period. Borrowing from Max Weber’s term ‘patriciate’, Hourani renames this elite Palestine’s ‘notables’.10 It was these ‘notables’ who formed the moderate base of Arab and Palestinian representatives in the parliament of the Ottoman Empire prior to the war. It was also they, the Abdul-Nabis, the Nashashibis and the Khalidis, who led the revolt against the Ottoman Young Turks when they tried to crush aspirations of Syrian and Palestinian nationalism in favour of Turkish nationalism immediately prior to the war. These Palestinian nationalists also had their own secret clubs and newspapers.

Zionist immigration to Palestine, 1880s–1914 Jews of the Mizrahihad had always been a part of the various Muslim empires of the Arab world;11 however, rising Jewish immigration to Palestine ran alongside a growing interest in Palestine as ‘the Holy Land’ in nineteenth-century Europe. Jewish immigration also rose sharply after publication of Theodor Herzl’s famous book of 1896, The Jewish State, which called for a nation state for the Jews in the ancient land of Zion (northern Palestine).12 Immediately prior to World War I, however, immigration was running at extremely high levels and has been referred to in Hebrew as ‘the second aliya’.13 The feature of this period was the way in which Jewish settlements no longer employed Palestinian labour, using instead exclusively Jewish workers, and took on the status of a ‘state within a state’. Shafir sees this as the prelude to a new nation within Palestine prior to 1914, effectively competing with the Palestinians. Studies of Palestinian newspapers at the time show the Palestinians to be well aware of this clash of nationalisms prior to the onset of the War.14 The settlement of Richon near al-Ramla in central Palestine was one such ‘nation state’ project, specialising in a new type of ‘plantation’ agriculture, expressing ‘contempt’ towards local Palestinians’ rural methods and backed financially by Lord Rothschild of Britain since 1882.15

REPORTING PALESTINE IN WORLD WAR I

19

The secret Sykes– Picot Agreement of May 1916 At the beginning of the war, Britain had promised Sharif Hussein bin Ali of Mecca that if his Arab Bedouin troops discarded their religious affinities to the Ottoman Empire and rose in revolt against the Turks, Britain would support his demand for an Arab nation state upon which his four sons would rule in Iraq, Syria, Amman and Jerusalem.16 However, in 1916, having secured Hussein’s agreement, the British and the French met secretly and agreed to carve up the Middle East according to their own interests.17 France would get Syria and form a new, more Christian, state of Lebanon out of it. Britain would get Iraq and Palestine and carve a new state out of southern Syria (later called Jordan). A year later, Britain would also give Palestine to the Jews to be shared as their national home. It took until late November 1917 before this making and unmaking of promises became public, when the Bolshevik rulers in Russia released all the secret correspondence with the previous government. It contained copies of the Sykes –Picot Agreement.18 By the end of the war, the grab for territory by Britain and France had become clear: French troops invaded Damascus and British troops had already taken Baghdad, Jerusalem and Cairo. A nationalist revolt in Cairo was suppressed in 1919, with the assistance of Australian troops.19 In all, these four factors illustrate the complexity of the region in 1916 when Australian troops returned from Gallipoli on the eve of a campaign through Palestine in 1917. British, Arab, Palestinian and Jewish interests were all intersecting in a variety of political, economic, religious and social ways. Unlike in Europe, where press coverage of German atrocities had begun to reach new heights and demonisation of ‘the Hun’ had become commonplace,20 Palestine was alive with ambiguities. The SMH had to cope with a new and more complex scene in Palestine.

The SMH at War Charles Bean’s terms of reference Charles Bean was chosen to be Official War Correspondent by a ballot of journalists on request from the new Labor government of Prime Minister Andrew Fisher.21 In doing so, he beat the Melbourne Herald’s Keith

20

REPRESENTING PALESTINE

Murdoch to the position to be used on behalf of all Australian newspapers. It was a prestigious achievement and Bean remains a favourite of the journalist community today,22 for staying close to the men at the front and reporting on their lives, history and experiences. Several books and papers on Bean laud this quality.23 He has gone into the history books along with Gallipoli. As Inglis says: ‘The place occupied by the word “Anzac” in the Australian language owes as much to him (Bean) as to any other man.’24 However, it is also true that Bean was under an institutionally restrictive arrangement in several senses. These include the following: the formal censorship rules imposed by the British War Office; the Australian government and the military censors on the ground; the conflict of interest involved in being asked to be both a daily correspondent and an end-of-war historian; the need to address the various needs of different newspapers with different audiences; and the demands of his immediate superiors with strong imperial sympathies at the SMH to report on the war. Having read Bean’s diaries, Fewster concluded: A more significant criticism is that he was often selective in what he presented as truth [. . .] At several later points in his diary we can sense the moral dilemma he experienced when forced to choose between truth, devotion to the Empire, and loyalty to its often incompetent military leaders. He invariably chose to keep his criticisms to himself.25 As Bean himself said to his assistant in December 1917: ‘The rule of the censorship also forbids criticism.’26 This is not the way other correspondents saw their role, in particular journalist Philip Gibbs of the London Daily Chronicle.27 It was convenient for Bean, maybe with an eye to his preferred role as a later historian, that he remain ‘onside’ with his superiors. In fact, as soon as the war ended, many newspapers in Britain launched into a series of mea culpas regretting not being critical enough about the massive death toll of the war. A whole decade of war fiction ensued. Bean’s interpretation of ‘criticism’ meant he never had to address arguments that challenged tactical and strategic mistakes at the Front – or the shocking loss of life. This was especially relevant to Australia, which, proportionally, lost a

REPORTING PALESTINE IN WORLD WAR I

21

higher percentage of men than any other nation.28 Bound by his own ethic of non-criticism, Bean remained silent. In any case, Bean was never to report on Palestine; but he was always the senior correspondent, both for the SMH and as Australian Official Correspondent appointed by the journalists themselves. He was a friend of Henry Gullett; they had worked together in London and both came from conservative backgrounds. Bean came from what historian Ken Inglis called ‘an imperial family’, had an Oxford education, wrote defending the White Australia Policy in the London Spectator, and thought white racial purity was essential to Australia’s future. He had a love of warships and cricket.29 Gullett’s appointment to Palestine was recommended by Bean after the two had spent considerable time together in England and on the Western Front. Bean said: ‘[Gullett was] a very brilliant, transparently clean Australian, with a wholesomeness that wins your admiration and respect.’30 Gullett, therefore, as reporter for the SMH in Palestine, was very much Bean’s man and the two shared many opinions. Gullett would also go on to be the writer of the Palestine campaign within the volumes of Bean’s Official History, 1914–1918 War.

Censorship restrictions On 6 August 1914, in the context of telling its readers to get used to censorship, the SMH’s editorial made clear its dissatisfaction with the strictness of the regime: ‘For some days past the cables have been allowed to transmit only those messages of which a very strict censorship approved.’31 Therefore, as far as Palestine was concerned, until 1918 when Gullett arrived, the SMH would be reliant on London cables and the work of W.T. Massey, the London Daily Telegraph (DT) war correspondent. Tania Rose has made a study of the censorship rules and restrictions from the Press Bureau of the British War Office during World War I. She lists the principles upon which censorship was made as: (1) to prevent the publication of news injurious to the naval and military operations of the British Empire; (2) to prevent the publication of news likely to cause needless alarm and distress among the civilian population; and

22

REPRESENTING PALESTINE

(3) to prevent the publication of news objectionable on political grounds: news, for example, calculated to injure the susceptibilities of other Allies.32 Rose states that the Official Press Bureau had four censors, 21 assistant censors and a further six assistants who worked day and night in three shifts. In 1916, some 343,668 cables were censored at a daily average of 945 per day.33 This was the system operated from London and affecting the SMH. However, reports from Britain also had to undergo censorship at the Australian end. Gavin Souter’s history of the SMH, Company of Heralds, gives an idea of this double handling: The censorship imposed upon war news was a burden under which the Herald and other papers laboured willingly at first, but with increasing resentment as the war ground on [. . .] By January, 1915, however, it was complaining about the censoring in Australia of cablegrams already censored in London [. . .] Whereas Britain’s chief censor was a widely respected journalist, newspaper censorship in Australia was controlled by a variety of military men with no experience of journalism.34 Double application of the principles above could only lead to excessive caution in reporting. The SMH editor during the war, Thomas Heney, revealed the paper’s frustrations after the war. The censorship took itself with the most deadly seriousness; it treated the leading and the most devoted organs of public opinion as if they were all vehemently suspect, and as if they necessarily desired to publish dangerous matter.35

Gullett as choice of correspondent Henry Gullett is remembered mainly as the long-time Nationalist Party member for the Victorian seat of Henty from 1925 until his death in 1940. On return from World War I, he was temporarily the first Director of the Australian War Museum (now Memorial). He later became a deputy leader of the

REPORTING PALESTINE IN WORLD WAR I

23

Nationalist–Country Party and, in 1939, under Menzies, Minister for External Affairs.36 His great passion was immigration. He believed Australia needed a strong immigration policy, and wrote a book along these lines in London in 1914 (The Opportunity in Australia). He also firmly believed in the White Australia Policy. His English father died early in his life (when Henry was 12), and he and his mother lived on the farm until he took a job on the Geelong Advertiser.37 In 1900, he joined the staff of the SMH after encouragement from his uncle, who had been an editor of the paper. In 1908, he went to London and freelanced, becoming the Sydney DT’s London correspondent. It was there that he met a fellow Anglophile, Charles Bean. As part of the SMH ‘family’, both literally and metaphorically, Gullett knew the traditions and ethos of the paper. He was a natural selection for the job in Palestine, seen as a minor theatre of war compared to the Western Front, when the opportunity arose in 1918.

Reporting Palestine Visibility of terms The first report of the arrival of Australian troops in Palestine in the SMH occurred on Saturday, 31 March 1917. The main headline stated: ‘British invade Palestine’ in capitals. A sub-headline stated ‘20,000 Turks engaged’ and another sub-headline below stated ‘Anzac mounteds praised’. The report came by undersea cable from London, received in Egypt. Its source was described as ‘an official message’ and its first sentence stated: ‘Twenty-thousand Turks have been defeated south of Gaza, in Palestine.’ No correspondent was listed and, like all cables, it would have undoubtedly undergone censorship both in London and in Egypt prior to publication.38 A third sub-headline, in the middle of the 204-word report, stated in capital letters: ‘The new Crusade’. It began: The (London) newspapers, giving prominence to the rout of 20,000 Turks in Palestine, describe it as ‘The New Crusade,’ and likely to result in driving the Turks out of Palestine during the summer.39

24

REPRESENTING PALESTINE

Referring to the British and Anzac forces campaign across the Sinai desert to the south in previous months, the final paragraph of the report ended: General Murray has been building a railway as he advances, along the sea coast [. . .] The newspapers suggest that Britain is likely to hold this 50 miles wide highway into Egypt after the war so as to allow the Jews to return to Palestine.40 The SMH thought the arrival of Australian troops in Palestine on that day to be significant enough to mention it in the latter half of its editorial. In a long piece largely devoted to strategic military analysis, it nevertheless framed its Palestine reference in terms of historic and religious symbols. It concluded: The Turks must now see how impotent their German allies are to help them, and must think sorrowfully of the hold once exercised over this coast line by the French, who fought in the Crimea for their right to protect the Holy Places.41 One day before this report and its accompanying editorial, David Jones, Sydney’s leading retail store, took out a large advertisement on page 4 of the SMH’s 30 March edition advertising ‘Orient Suit cases’, ‘Orient Cabin trunks’ and ‘Orient Woollen Rugs’. ‘All you need for the Holidays [. . .] Reliable, moderately priced and equal in every way to English or American goods.’ One week earlier, the SMH had similarly run a news item and editorialised on it. It framed the war in the Middle East in religious terms. On Thursday 22 March, on page 7, it ran a small news item headed ‘Holy War Proclaimed’, which stated: ‘Athens advices from Turkey state that the Sheik-ul-Islam, Mussa Kaizir Effendi, has proclaimed a holy war following the fall of Bagdad.’ In its editorial, headed ‘FAILURE OF HOLY WAR’, the newspaper made light of the Caliph of Islam: According to the Constantinople newspapers, it then became a duty for the 300,000,000 Muslims of the earth to participate in the holy war immediately after the issue of the fatwa. The Jihad,

REPORTING PALESTINE IN WORLD WAR I

25

however, proved a dismal failure [. . .] The slight effect which the Sultan’s proclamation had upon the Islamic world is proved by the fact that the Sherif of Mecca, a descendent of the Prophet himself, is now leading a rebellion against the Sultan.42 In this one week of reporting in 1917, several narratives – of Orient, Empire, Crusades, Holy Lands, Christians, Jews and Muslims, not to mention Australian identity – were intermingling. All were in the context of a war in the land of Palestine. The 14 keywords in this book to do with people, place, religion and attitude were applied to the 18 months in which Australian troops fought their way through Palestine: from late March 1917, when they entered from the Sinai desert of Egypt, to late September 1918, when large, northern Palestinian towns such as Nablus and Samakh, south of Lake Tiberias, were taken from Turkish and German troops. The SMH saw all of the Australian campaign in Palestine as worthy of coverage, although in small proportion to the wider and more intense fighting on the Western Front. As mentioned, for much of the 18 months the SMH got its picture of Palestine from a variety of sources until, in November 1917, it formed a working alliance with the British Official War Correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph, W.T. Massey. From then until Gullett arrived in August 1918, just near the end of the war, it relied on a combination of Massey, cables, (British) War Office releases and occasional other sources. Every battle involving Australian forces was covered by the SMH. They were: . . . . . . . . . .

First Gaza, 26– 27 March 1917; Second Gaza, 19 April 1917; Beersheba, 31 October 1917; Khuweilfe, 1 –8 November 1917; First Amman, 27– 30 March 1918;43 Es Salt, 30 April –3 May 1918; Megiddo, 19– 21 September 1918; Nablus, 20 September 1918; Wady Fara, 21 September 1918; Second Amman, 25 September 1918;

26 . .

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Samakh, 25 September 1918; and Kaukab, 30 September 1918.44

Because it took between seven and 17 days for news of battles to be published – taking into account the harsh conditions for writing, the availability of wireless telegraphy, the censorship administration and competition for space against news from the Western Front – it sometimes took a fortnight or more before the item on a particular battle would occur. The end result was that this study of the SMH’s reporting of the war in Palestine involved a total of 115 articles over 62 newspaper days. They are also naturally distributed across the four sub-campaigns in Palestine distinguished by geography (area of campaign) and time period: (1) (2) (3) (4)

20 26 26 43

(First and Second Gaza, early 1917); (Beersheba and Khuweilfe, late 1917); (east and west of the Jordan River, March– July 1918); and (northern Palestine).

The 14 keywords were noted, but articles were also classified according to date and page. More importantly, they were noted according to the traditional categories used in the newspaper industry, both then and now, as follows: . . . . . . . .

C: cable (usually from outside the local area, e.g., London); N: news report (usually local, often using reporter’s name); F: feature article (profile of person, geography, book, using opinion); WN: war notes (a column of the SMH incorporating news and opinion); Ed: editorial (opinion of the SMH, a ‘leader’, written by senior staff); P: photo (sometimes attached to an article); L: letters (either from soldiers or relatives and so on); and O: opinion piece (clear statement of opinion on one issue of the day).

Of the 115 articles in this sample, they were distributed as shown in Table 1.1. Table 1.1 shows that the major proportion (53 per cent) of articles were news reports. The next most numerous categories are also

REPORTING PALESTINE IN WORLD WAR I Table 1.1 no.

Distribution of articles in SMH by genre and battle, 1917– 18.

newspaper genre 1 and 2 Gaza B’sheba Jordan R. Nthn Pal. 21 cable news 61 news reports 3 feature report 10 editorial 15 war notes 2 letters 0 photo/map 0 opinion piece

Totals

27

7 6 1 1 2 2 1 (map) 0

5 14 0 2 4 0 1 (map) 0

1 18 0 1 6 0 0 0

8 23 2 6 3 0 1 (map) 0

20

26

26

43

‘news’-related (rather than ‘opinion’): cable news (18.3 per cent) and war notes (13 per cent). Table 1.1 also draws attention to the editorial importance given to the final surge of interest in the days before the Allied victory: 19–30 September 1918. Many more news articles were run by the SMH and many more editorials covered the end of the Palestine campaign. This could simply be a reflection of the celebration of victory, but it could also reflect the impact of Henry Gullett’s arrival as SMH’s Official Correspondent. Within this context of newspaper genres, the ‘visibility’ of the keywords is apparent in Table 1.2. They appeared in the following distribution (H represents ‘in Headline’). A further breakdown of the ‘Arab’ category in Table 1.2 reveals that eight out of the 21 times when the word ‘Arab’ was used it was in relation to the phrase ‘Hejaz Arab’. This refers to the Arabs of the Arabian Gulf and of Sheikh Hussein who joined the British forces to disrupt rail lines used by the Turks. Examination of the ‘Other’ category in the table reveals that of the seven mentions during the Gaza campaign, four were references to ‘Bedouins’, two were to ‘tribes’ and one (in a headline) was to ‘natives’. The one mention during the Jordan River campaign was in reference to ‘native’. The five references in the Northern Palestine campaign referred to one ‘Nazarene’, two ‘natives’ and two ‘tribes’.

Table 1.2

Visibility of keywords in SMH by genre and battle, 1917– 18.

keywords 1. Palestinian/s 2. Arab/s 3. other (’natives’ etc) 4. Jews 5. Israelis 6. Palestine (inc. Gaza/West 7. Holy Land (inc.Jerusalem) 8. Judea/Samaria/Israel 9. Middle East 10. Muslim/s 11. Christian/s 12. Jew/s/ish (religion) 13. violent/terror/war 14. other adjective (eg ’occupied’)

1 and 2 Gaza

B’sheba

Jordan R.

Nthn Pal.

total

0 10 7 1 0 21 (þ9H) 9 0 1 3 (þ1H) 1 0 6 (þ2H) 2

0 0 0 1 0 26 (þ12H) 10 1 0 0 0 0 0 3

0 8 1 11 0 25 (þ12H) 5 0 0 1 1 0 0 1

0 21 5 2 0 53 (þ15H) 16 8 0 1 1 0 0 1

0 39 13 15 0 125 (þ48H) 40 9 1 5 (þ1H) 3 0 6 (þ2H) 7

REPORTING PALESTINE IN WORLD WAR I

29

In all, these 13 ‘Other’ references break down as follows: – – – –

4: 3: 4: 1:

Bedouin ‘natives’ ‘tribes’ ‘Nazarene’

This analysis is not concerned with military history or campaigns. They are incidental to the reporting of the people and the area of Palestine in which the war was fought. The major combatants and their names – Turks, Germans, Britons and Australians, Anzacs and so on – are therefore not analysed. However, it is striking to note that not once are the local people in Palestine referred to by the name they give themselves: Palestinian (in Arabic, filastini). The word ‘Palestinian’ is never used. Given that ‘Hejaz Arabs’ refers to Arabs living at a distance from Palestine, it means that of the 44 times that local residents are described, the Palestinians were depicted in the following ways: . . . . . .

0 times as Palestinians; 31 times as Arabs; 4 times as Bedouins; 4 times as ‘tribes’; 4 times as ‘natives’; and once as ‘Nazarene’.

The problematic way in which the SMH describes the local people will be discussed later. Nevertheless, from Table 1.2 it is clear that ‘Palestine’ is overwhelmingly the way in which the area of Palestine is referred to in the SMH and there is a sub-narrative that is also apparent from Table 1.2: almost 20 per cent of the time the area is referred to as the Holy Land or by biblical geographical references to it. This, too, will be demonstrated and discussed further.

Empire and the British race Much has been made of the explicit nature of spoken and written references to empire, the British ‘race’ and the Orient at the turn of the century in Australia.45 Such terms were the lingua franca of the time,

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particularly in the context of the open debate around the White Australia Policy. In particular, the Australian Labor Party was a leading proponent of racial purity.46 Therefore, it is not surprising that the 62 editions of the SMH that form the basis of this study during World War I were replete with the same terms. They are not keywords listed since they are not focused on Palestine or the Palestinians. However, it would be remiss not to mention that the reporting of this campaign was wrapped in an imperialist and, to a modern reader, perhaps even a racist frame throughout the coverage. The factual and proximate basis for the connection to Britain was that, of course, Australian troops were under the command of British generals on the Western Front and operated within the (British) Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF). While there was much discussion among Canadians, New Zealanders and Australians about how to have their troops commanded by national military leaders, as Australian military historian Jeffrey Grey acknowledges: ‘For most of the war the Australian government had absolutely no say in its conduct.’47 Having said that, in Palestine, the appointment by General Sir Edmund Allenby of Sir Harry Chauvel to the level of Lieutenant-General in August 1917 made him the first Australian to attain this rank and the first to lead a corps of the Desert Column of mounted troops.48 The SMH was explicit in its support for the British Empire, not just the role played by Australian divisions within its forces. The Fairfax company official history of the SMH, Company of Heralds, states: ‘During the days of crisis before the declaration of war, the SMH rightly assumed that Australia would automatically follow whichever course Britain took.’49 It quoted the editorial written on 6 August 1914: ‘For good or ill, we are engaged with the mother country in fighting for liberty and peace [. . .] and above and beyond everything our armies will be fighting for British honour.’50 Given the important role of mounted troops in this campaign, the role of the Australian Light Horse Brigade received a surprisingly cursory mention. As Grey states: Alone of the British theatres of war, the fighting in Sinai and Palestine allowed a large role for mounted troops, and the Australians and the New Zealanders in the Australian Mounted

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and Anzac Mounted Divisions provided the bulk of the mounted troops in the EEF.51 Chauvel and his mounted brigades played a major role in the capture of Gaza,52 but the following was how the SMH’s only editorial on an Australian battle (entitled ‘Gaza’) in Palestine referred to it: The capture of Gaza will take its place beside the recapture of Kut as an instance of the unbreakable determination of the British people [. . .] Its capture was regarded by Napoleon as essential to his plan of an eastern empire [. . .] General Allenby has thereby strengthened Sir Stanley Maude in Mesopotamia [. . .] The Suez Canal and Egypt may now be defended like the northwestern provinces of India.53 There was no mention of Australian forces, including the crucial battle for Beersheba in which the Australian Light Horse had figured so highly ten days earlier (and reported in the news columns of the paper just three days prior). Again, six months later, at a time of dramatically falling voluntary enlistments54 following the news of the horror of the Western Front in 1916 and 1917 and the failure of the two conscription referenda of Prime Minister William ‘Billy’ Hughes during that time, the SMH appealed to its readers under the banner headline ‘An appeal to the Empire’: It is impossible to feel any doubt of the answer which Mr Lloyd George’s (British Prime Minister) appeal will meet with in this country and in the other dominions [. . .] the continuity of the Empire, the security of the land of their fathers, and the safety of their own homes have been and still are most seriously threatened [. . .] Their (German) acceptance would involve the triumph of that creed which includes in its articles the violation of treaties, the enslavement of girls and young women, the murder and terrorising of civilians, and in which there is no trace of either of a love of beauty or a sense of pity, the two instincts which divide men from animals.55

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The next day, the paper ran an appeal in a box on the top right-hand corner: THE CALL TO THE BRITISH RACE The text, not attributed to any organisation or person and so presumably a statement of the SMH, stated: For the first time in history the Imperial Government is appealing directly to the Dominions to aid in the defence of the Empire. Britons in the mother country are calling to Britons overseas for additional help [. . .] If she fails the British Empire will be shattered, and Australia, with her heritage of freedom, will be lost. The call is to the British race. ENLIST.56 This empire bias was also reflected in the news pages of the paper. Throughout the Gaza, Beersheba and Jordan River campaigns – more than two-thirds of the SMH’s coverage of Palestine – the newspaper had its ‘copy’ or articles coming from British sources, either as cables from London or the London DT’s correspondent in Palestine, Massey. It is probably no surprise, then, that the news reports were biased towards British victories, even when Australian troops were heavily involved (‘A Great Day, How Beersheba was taken’, SMH, 6 November 1917, p. 7; ‘British success near Gaza’, SMH, 31 March 1917, p. 13; ‘Great British attack, defences carried, cavalry sweep on’, SMH, 21 September 1918, p. 13; ‘Victory in Palestine, Turks surprised and routed, Great captures reported’, SMH, 23 September 1918, p. 7). While Massey undoubtedly acknowledged the role played by Australian mounted cavalry, it was almost always in terms of the tactical and strategic qualities of the British General Edmund Allenby and his leadership qualities. Finally, the dominance of the British Empire and the British race as key concepts emerged during the Palestine coverage through side-byside coverage of the two conscription referenda. While the SMH published as if ‘the British race’ was synonymous with its readership, the referenda showed that a significant proportion of the Australian population – especially Catholics and those of Irish heritage – did not see themselves as of ‘the British race’. This, presumably, was also true of

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the Aboriginal population and minority groups such as German migrants. Nevertheless, the SMH ran copious appeals by the prime minister, Billy Hughes, in its news pages. A long report of a speech by Hughes to a journalists’ luncheon on 15 November 1917 (a month before the second referendum) was headed ‘Australia and the Empire, Patriotic Appeal by the Prime Minister’. Elements of the speech included: We have arrived at a time when the characteristic virtues of the race must display themselves, or else the race and all that it stands for must make way for men of sterner mettle (Applause) [. . .] Upon this conflict, upon the issue of it, depends our destiny (Applause). Now it is that this fact has to be hammered into the hearts and the minds of the people of this country. A little while ago an alien, a foreigner, a stranger to this country, said we should ‘put Australia first and the Empire second’. He does not know there is no hope for Australia except by the British Empire (Applause). That means imperilling the Empire, because without her we would fail.57 Two days later, the SMH ran an ‘Appeal by Mr Hughes’ to ‘New South Wales’ about ‘The Spirit of the British Race’: Now is the hour when we of the British race should show to those of our friends who falter, and to our enemies who exult, what manner of men we are. The deciding factor in this war will be the spirit of our people.58 In its editorials, its news coverage and its extensive coverage and support for the conscription campaigns of the prime minister of the day, readers of the SMH could not fail to see the newspaper’s framing of the war in imperial terms during this period of Australia’s involvement in Palestine.

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Palestinian/s v. Arabs v. natives and Bedouins ‘Palestinians’ The word ‘Palestine’ is used routinely as a place name in this sample to describe where the EEF was fighting. If anything, it was overzealous to locate Palestine. On two occasions, the SMH wrongly locates two large cities, Beirut (then Syria, now Lebanon) and Damascus (Syria then and now), under the ‘Palestine’ headline.59 But there was no interest in describing the people of the area as ‘Palestinians’. There was not a single reference to a person called a ‘Palestinian’ in ‘Palestine’. When Henry Gullett arrived near the end of the war and travelled with the troops in the Galilee area in northern Palestine, he came close to describing the residents of Nazareth by their national name, but ended by calling them ‘Nazarines’: ‘The Nazarines, like the inhabitants of all other villages entered during the operations, greeted the invaders very cordially.’60 One remarkable conclusion from Table 1.2 is not the distribution within the references to non-combatant inhabitants – the residents of the area of Palestine – but the paucity of references overall. On only 67 occasions do those living on the land get a mention in 62 editions of the SMH. Some 1,374 Australian men of the EEF died in the war.61 By comparison, 51,000 Palestinians were killed.62 The overwhelming preference for nomenclature for the local people the SMH correspondents ‘saw’ before them was undistinguished ‘Arabs’. In fact, the word ‘Palestinian’ – filastini – was well in use in Palestine. It was in use in the speech of Palestinians.63 It was in the title of one of the three flourishing national newspapers, produced out of Jaffa, called Filastin. And it was on billboards in the big cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Jaffa, Nablus and Jenin where trade and commerce took place. Much of this may have been in Arabic speech and script; but it is difficult to believe that, in all the ‘cordiality’ of being greeted as liberators attested by Gullett, and with the presence of translators, multilingual Palestinian professionals (such as journalists and clergy), diplomats and others, that no conversation ever occurred mentioning the word ‘filastini’ rather than ‘arabi’ (Arabs). The non-existence of the Palestinian presence, of course, has considerable symbolic importance. On all sides – the Turkish, British and Zionist – there were movements at the time to deny Palestinian identity. The 1908 Young Turk revolution ended with a rampant

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Turkish nationalism that demanded a denial of its Arab provinces the same right to separate nationhood – whether Arab, Syrian or Palestinian.64 On the British side, many in the British cabinet – but particularly Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour – believed that the Jews should be given a home in Palestine.65 ‘A land without a people for a people without a land’, originally an idea of the Christian Zionist Lord Ashley, the Tory Earl of Shaftesbury, became a catch-phrase at the end of the nineteenth century that was taken up by Zionist Jews looking for their place in Palestine.66 Within seven months of the SMH beginning its Palestinian-free coverage of the war in Palestine, Balfour would make his formal declaration on behalf of Britain in a letter to the leader of the Zionist cause in Britain, Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild: His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by the Jews in any other country.67 At that moment, the Jews constituted 10 per cent of the 656,000 people of Palestine. Interestingly, when referring to the 90 per cent of Palestine, Balfour referred to them as ‘non-Jewish communities’, neither Palestinian nor Arab.

‘Arabs’ If the SMH’s primary title for the local residents was ‘Arabs’, how were they represented? The first answer is that the descriptions of the Arabs were divided by an adjective added to the noun to distinguish one kind of Arab from another. Eight of the 21 times the word Arab was referred to, the adjective ‘Hejaz’ was attached to it. In the context of the war, this indicated the decision of the Hashemite Bedouin leadership in Mecca and Amman to side with the British on a promise that such a decision would result in an independent national state of the Arabs after the war. The ‘Hejaz Arabs’ were not from Palestine, as

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the SMH explained early in the campaign. These Arabs, the SMH said, were: organised by the British as their allies [. . .] various Bedouin tribes have put aside their old enmities [. . .] They were supplied with drill masters, presumably British, who effected the organisation of an Arab fighting unit [. . .] The importance of the union of the two powerful Anseh and Shamr tribes is that they number not fewer than 4,000,000 souls.68 The SMH claimed this information came from ‘private mail advices received from Asiatic Turkey’ early in March.69 The item ran under the headline ‘Germans fear natives’ and included descriptions of how the Turks were ‘carrying out a deliberate policy of destructing of Arabs’ by hanging Arab leaders. These claims referred to the people of Lebanon and Palestine, but all were under the banner of ‘natives’, including in the first paragraph of the item. Throughout the 62 SMH editions covered in this survey, the ‘Hejaz Arabs’ were given more sympathetic coverage than other ‘Arabs’. This was especially so when ‘Arab allies’ referred to actions of ‘Hejaz Arabs’ as reported by Massey, not Gullett. ‘Hejaz Arab’ exploits in blowing up the railway line to Mecca – the actions associated with the famous T.E. Lawrence (‘of Arabia’) – distinguished them from the near-at-hand residents of Palestine. The attitude of the SMH towards (Palestinian) Arabs – not of the ‘Hejaz’ – ranged from condescension to disgust. ‘An Officer in Palestine’ was the heading given to a letter received at the SMH from a Mr Claude Fleming of the Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club in Sydney. The officer stated that he was writing from ‘a nice spot in Palestine’ and visited a village: The inhabitants are all Bedouin Arabs and number about 2,000. They are, for the most part a villainous looking crew and we are pretty sure they are hostile, being Turkish subjects. It was impossible, owing to their faces being covered, to tell what the women were like, but I don’t think there is much danger of any of our chaps falling in love with them as they seldom, if ever, indulge in a wash, partly because the Turks blew up a fine well from which every one drew their supplies.

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One turnout which took my fancy consisted of a boy who had a calf and a diminutive donkey hooked up in pre-historic manner with bits of old rag, string and pieces of hide. [. . .] all the family sort of herd together in a low tent, together with all the family pets, including the donkey [. . .] An old woman offered me a drink of what an interpreter said was sheep’s milk, and appeared to feel rather hurt when I declined. They are an awful race and, after seeing them, no-one is carried away by the romance of the ‘Arab and his Steed’ or the ‘Bedouin Love Song’.70 From the date and the description, the officer could well have been on the outskirts of a village of mud-built houses with semi-nomadic Bedouin Arabs in tents. His description of the ‘villainous’, dirty, ‘prehistoric’ Arab served to confirm (or construct?) the Western orientalist myth possibly common back home. It set up a powerful image for coverage of the war. This contrasts with two reports of the British correspondent, W.T. Massey, and another in May 1918 (an anonymous ‘War Notes’ column item) that may well have been his. The May 1918 item is neutral in tone, if not positive and supportive of the Hejaz Arab forces: Arabs attacked Turkish working parties northward of Maan, southward of the Dead Sea [. . .] This suggests co-operation on the part of the Hedjaz Arabs and British [. . .] General Allenby is anxious to establish closer contact with those Arabs of the Hedjaz.71 On 23 September of the same year, Massey, with a by-line, reports: a strong detachment of Hedjaz Arabs severed railway communication [. . .] Moreover, the King of the Hedjaz reports that his troops severely defeated the Turks in south-east of the Dead Sea.72 Two days later, Massey reports: ‘Our Arab allies have captured Maan.’73 Two years after the war, Massey would publish his account of the Allenby final push through Palestine to take Damascus and break Turkish resistance. In it, he says:

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Like most Dominion troops, the New Zealanders did not estimate the fighting powers of coloured troops very highly but after they saw the dash of the West Indians [. . .] they regarded them as sterling brothers in arms.74 It may well be that the Dominion of Australian troops and their attitude had more of an effect on Australian journalist Henry Gullett than it did on Massey. Gullett reports how the air wing of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) ‘lived with the Arabs’ east of the Jordan River: ‘One day they crashed two Hun planes among the Arabs, who were frantic with delight and excitement.’75 He reports the arrival of Australian forces in Damascus on 5 October 1918: The appearance of the swarthy-looking Arabs, beautifully mounted on black and white horses and camels, aroused the wildest enthusiasm [. . .] The Arabs galloped in circles, firing their rifles in the air, in marked contrast to the stolid bearing of the tired Australian and British cavalrymen.76 In all, there seems to be a clear division in the SMH’s coverage between the Arabs who were fighting east of the Jordan River, having done a deal with Britain, and those with whom the troops and correspondents lived on a day-to-day basis in Palestine.

‘Natives’ and Bedouins The distinctive dress of the Bedouin male – the keffiyeh (black-and-white or red-and-white checked head-dress) and the thobe (long white neck-totoe dress) – could hardly have passed the notice of either the Australian troops or the correspondents for the SMH. Photos from the day show other Arabs or Palestinians as dressing in more formal Ottoman fashion and, in some cases, more prominent or professional-class Palestinians in cities such as Hebron, Jerusalem, Gaza or Nablus wearing very formal clothes as doctors, lawyers, politicians and suchlike. However, the SMH coverage seems to conflate all of these layers of Palestinian society into one. When they were not ‘Arabs’ (in a tent), they were ‘natives’. ‘Tribes’ is often used in connection with ‘native’, or

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having the same ‘primitive’ meaning. So the seven occasions on which either ‘native’ or ‘tribes/al’ were used seems to be a belittling of the complexity of the society in front of the correspondents. It is as though they do not recognise what they see. Thus, when Gullett spoke of the ‘native town of Safed’, he spoke of a district capital city with a range of more than 70 surrounding villages containing around 500 people in each, all typically involved in intensive farming (grain, citrus, fruits, olives and vegetables) with their own school and mosque. In most cases, these major towns and villages had histories and records going back hundreds of years.77 Raymond Williams’ Keywords describes ‘native’ in these terms: Native is one of those interesting words which, while retaining a substantial usage of meaning, are applied in particular contexts in ways which produce radically different and even opposite senses and tones [. . .] A positive social and political sense, as in native land, native country, was strong from C16 onwards [. . .] Though the particular social usage became obsolete, the negative usage of native to describe the inferior inhabitants of a place visited and observed from some supposedly superior standpoint, became general. It was particularly common as a term for ‘non-Europeans’ in the period of colonialism and imperialism [. . .] Yet, all the time, alongside this use, native remained a very positive word when applied to one’s own place or person.78 This is exactly the negative sense in which the SMH’s sub-editors used the word ‘native’ in a headline such as ‘Germans Fear Natives’,79 Massey saw the ‘native population’ near Es Salt80 and Gullett in the field also referred to the ‘native population’81 and the ‘native town of Safed’.82 There is a further symbolism, too. Such ‘natives’ occupy land that could be better used. This notion – not seeing the ‘natives’ before you as deserving of cultural respect – prompts a replacement narrative.

The Holy Land Narrative and Jerusalem The clear alternative narrative in the SMH was of ‘the Holy Land’. Some 40 references – nearly one per newspaper, often one per article – positions the war coverage as a kind of travelogue through a

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religious landscape, one taken from the familiar Christian and Jewish religious foundation texts. Of those 40 references, 29 were to the phrase ‘the Holy Land’ and 11 to the use of ‘Jerusalem’, not just as a place name, but as ‘the Holy City’. Palestine, of course, was not just a ‘Holy Land’ to the Christian Australians, either soldiers or troops, but also to the majority-Muslim Palestinians. Jerusalem was the third-holiest city in Islam and Hebron a sacred place to Islam, too, as an Abrahamic religion. In addition, the memory of the Crusaders taking Jerusalem and areas of Palestine from the Muslims in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, only to be retaken by the Kurdish Muslim leader Salah ad-Din in 1187, was at the forefront of Palestinian Muslim leaders’ thinking in the nineteenth century.83 This sensitivity was heightened among Palestinians by the rush of interest in Palestine as an archaeological, geographical and religious tourism site throughout the final decades of the nineteenth century. Following the Crimean War (1853– 6), which imposed a joint European protectorate over Ottoman Christians in places like Palestine, ‘the Holy Land’ quickly became the subject of Christian, especially Protestant, missionary interest.84 By the end of the century, more than 3,000 books and travelogues had been written on Palestine by European authors. All painted ‘a picture of a primitive Palestine waiting to be redeemed by Europeans’.85 The SMH’s coverage arguably coalesces with this wave of interest. Prior to the taking of Jerusalem by General Allenby on 9 December 1917, the SMH’s coverage was high in expectation. ‘At present they [Australian troops] appear to be pushing on towards Gaza’, says the SMH in an anonymous War Notes column on 13 March 1917. ‘At present they are not more than 50 miles from the Holy City itself.’86 Later in the year, on 9 November, Massey, the SMH correspondent from Britain, under a sub-heading ‘Australians at work’, reported that following the bombing of Gaza many landmarks were destroyed, ‘especially Alimuntar Hill, up which Sampson carried the gates of Gaza’. The Australian troops seemed to be a bit untouched about the religious significance of the area – whether biblical (Christian) or current (Muslim). Said Massey: ‘General Allenby, visiting the front line, saw Australian engineers preparing the water supply for a large force of men

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and horses. Some were stripped to the waist. Others were naked. They had worked 24 hours to get a good flow of water.’87 A week later, on 13 November, the SMH reported: ‘A point has been reached almost due west of Jerusalem [. . .] Although the driving of the Turk from Jerusalem would be an event of world-wide interest, the capture of Jaffa would probably be of greater military importance.’88 Three days later ‘a high military source’ was the basis for a report that said: ‘General Allenby, on November 13, attacked and drove back the Turks northward to Wadi Surar. Biblically known as the Brook Kedron, covering the Jaffa and Jerusalem railway junction.’89 On the same page, in a separate report under the heading ‘British advance, Towards Jaffa’, the SMH correspondent stated ‘The troops are in wonderful condition, despite their 50 miles march. The cavalry is now before Wadi Surar, Samson’s birthplace.’90 Just less than a year later, and nine months after the taking of Jerusalem by Allenby, Henry Gullett’s first by-lined report was infused with even more biblical references than Massey’s. He reported he was in the area of the ‘Esdraelon Plain’ (an Old Testament reference) in Samaria (same) and continued: All railways are cut behind his (the Turk’s) army in Samaria. Yeomanry and Indians galloped across the Esdraelon Plain, raced up the slopes of lower Galilee at noon today, and occupied Nazareth, which offered but slight resistance.91 The Esdraelon Plain received two more mentions before the report concluded. Gullett was maybe the most prolific on the biblical narrative, but Massey was not immune either. Five days later, Massey also referred several times to the battles on the ‘Plain of Sharon’, the ‘Judean Plateau’ and the ‘Plain of Armageddon’. There were well-known Palestinian place names available. He later referred to the major city called Nablus and added ‘the Schechem of the Bible’, and referred to Leijan as ‘the ancient Megiddo’.92 When King George V congratulated General Allenby on his swift victory in Palestine, the SMH editor also felt ready to give the Crusades another mention:

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French troops, both in the entrance into Jerusalem and in this battle, have given the occupation an international character. Though France has claimed an interest in Palestine since the foundation of a Latin kingdom by the Crusaders, her recognized place in Asia Minor is in Syria.93 The SMH’s editorial presaged the shock that would soon descend on the Arab world: the exchange of support against the Turk for the promised Arab independence would be broken within months. French troops would enter Damascus to prevent an Arab take over and British troops would do the same in Egypt (with Australian help), Jordan and Palestine.

The Jews and Zionism With 15 references to Jews in this sample, this constitutes about a third of those made to local Arabs or ‘natives’. Since they occupied about ten per cent of the population, this was a disproportionate focus. But unlike the references to Arabs and ‘natives’, these were not strewn throughout the coverage. They occurred on a few days and they related to one matter: the ‘arrival’ of the Jews ‘back’ to Palestine. In a sense, this was a continuation of the biblical theme of ‘the Return’. But in a more practical sense, it was a recognition of the struggle of the Zionist movement of Theodor Herzl, backed by wealthy figures in Britain like Lord Rothschild, to settle Jews in Palestine who had suffered anti-Semitism in eastern Europe. There had always been Jewish communities throughout the Muslim world. The renowned historian Albert Hourani makes the point that Jews were probably spread more widely than Christians throughout the world of Arabic Islam,94 were found in most cities and ‘played an important part in trade, manufacture, finance and medicine’. However, the various waves of immigrants from Europe were a different matter.95 This immigration had been occurring in Palestine, to the great fear of Palestinians, since the 1880s.96 It had been opposed by the Ottoman Sultans in law, public policy and negotiations,97 but occurred under the protection of the European powers. Jewish settlements were of a new kind, excluding non-Jews and, later, industrial workers covered by the Jewish trade union organisation Histradut to put Zionism before class

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struggle with Palestinian workers.98 By 1918, there were 60,000 Jews in Palestine.99 The new Zionist settlements were a hot topic in Palestinian nationalist newspapers such as Filastin, al-Karmil, al-Mufid and Al-Muktabas in the years just prior to the war.100 The SMH made itself clear in its various interventions: it agreed with the British foreign secretary’s inclination to give the Zionist Jews a separate home in Palestine. As quoted earlier, one of its first reports in March 1917 concluded that the British were building a highway in southern Palestine ‘so as to allow the Jews to return to Palestine’.101 At that moment, there were many Jews who had been in Palestine for hundreds of years, in cities and villages; however, there were also now many new Jewish settlers already in Zionist villages. The SMH’s wording suggests a return in the biblical sense. The Balfour Declaration, as stated, occurred on 2 November 1917. At that time, Australian light horsemen were attacking a prominent hill 18 kilometres north of Beersheba under Lt-Gen. Harry Chauvel. The SMH was reliant on W.T. Massey, cables from General Allenby’s office in Cairo and cables from London. The only mention of Balfour’s momentous announcement was in the SMH of 17 November, more than two weeks after the announcement became public in London, on page 13. Under the headline ‘Zionist hopes’, it stated in one single paragraph: A message from Montreal says: Mr Desola, head of the Canadian Zionists, announces that Mr A.J. Balfour, when in Ottawa, agreed on behalf of Britain to create Palestine an autonomous Jewish State, under the protection of the Allies. The next mention was five months later in the edition of 4 May 1918, which both had a news report and an editorial. The news report, headed ‘Jerusalem – Zionist Commission’ stated: The Zionist Commission, under Dr Weizmann, arrived at Jerusalem on April 18. Immense crowds attended at the reception on the Mount of Olives. Dr Weizmann, addressing the assemblage in Hebrew and English, expressed to Mr Balfour, Mr Lloyd George, and the whole British nation, the gratitude of the Jewish nation.102

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There were no reports of the reactions of the 90 per cent of the people who inhabited Palestine – the Palestinians. For Australian readers, the importance of the decision of the British cabinet, with all its implications, went barely reported. However, the SMH editorial warmly adopts the Zionist theme: Jewish effort in the next generation, with its intensive methods of agriculture, its application of science to industry, and its Western ideas of hygiene and business methods, has already reclaimed parts of Palestine, which had been swamp or desert for centuries, and under the fixed and settled government of the future, the development of the colonization scheme should make rapid headway.103 Later the same year, as the Allenby campaign neared its conclusion, an SMH book review of Boundaries in Europe and the Near East by a ‘distinguished British geographer’, Sir Thomas Holdich, made clear that the ‘fatal defect’ of the Turk is his ‘faith’ (Islam) which, according to Holdich ‘never has produced and never can produce a successful ruler of subject races’. For the last 400 years, these subject races had been ‘seething with disaffection’: His Asiatic Empire has been the scene of ruthless oppression and economic stagnation. The Turk must leave Europe; his three great provinces of Syria, Mesopotamia and Arabia must be freed from his yoke.104 In lauding the victory of British forces over the Turk in its editorial of 25 September 1918, the paper again added an element of the ‘make the desert bloom’ theme seen earlier in the year: ‘The liberation of Palestine, as of Mesopotamia, means the substitution for the Turk of a settled government under which the soil will be cultivated and industries developed.’105

Stories Untold The burning of Surafend There was another serious absence of reporting beyond the omission of the word ‘Palestinian’ to describe the local people. It was the burning down of

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the village of Surafend in south-west Palestine by Anzac troops, killing more than 100 male residents, in retaliation for the theft of items from a New Zealand soldier’s tent and the soldier’s death in an ensuing scuffle. The events of the night of 9 December 1918 have recently been the subject of an investigation by Australian journalist Paul Daley in his book Beersheba106 and military historian Peter Stanley in his book Bad Characters: Sex, Crime, Mutiny, Murder and the Australian Imperial Force.107 Both refer to the event as a ‘massacre’. Daley writes: Beersheba was the scene of great heroism and daring. Conversely, Surafend was the setting for an act of extreme cowardice and premeditated violence so shameful that it sits starkly – almost irreconcilably – at odds with the incredible achievements and, just as importantly, the myth and the legend, of the Australian light horse.108 The first mention of the incident was not at the time in the SMH, but after the war. Henry Gullett referred to it in his official record of the Palestine campaign, published in 1923, The Australian Imperial Force in Sinai and Palestine, 1914– 1918. However, Surafend is not mentioned in most subsequent military histories until recently. There are no mentions, for instance, in Chris Coulthard-Clark’s The Encyclopedia of Australia’s Battles (1998) or Jeffrey Grey’s Military History of Australia (1999), both standard texts sold at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Here is Gullett’s description five years after the war: But an unfortunate incident was destined to throw a shadow over the last days in Palestine of the Australian Mounted Division. Close to the camps of the three brigades in December was the native village of Surafend. All the Arabs of western Palestine were thieves by instinct [. . .] Throughout the campaign the British policy, as already noticed, was to treat these debased people west of the Jordan as devout Moslems, kin not only to the Arabs of the Hejaz but to the Mohammedans of India. And the Arabs, a crafty race, quick to discern British unwillingness to punish their misdeeds, exploited their licence to extreme limits [. . .] The natives of Surafend were notorious for their thieving.109

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Gullett then described an ‘Arab’ pulling at the bag of a New Zealand trooper sleeping in his tent. The trooper gave chase and caught the intruder and, in a scuffle, the ‘Arab’ pulled out a revolver and shot the soldier. The soldier soon died of his wounds. Gullett says the angry New Zealand soldiers threw a ring of troops around the nearby village, supported by a group of Australians. The war task was now completed and they, a band of sworn brothers tested in a hundred fights, were going home. To them the loss of a veteran comrade by foul murder, at the hands of a race they despised, was a crime that called for instant justice [. . .] They were angry and bitter beyond all reasoning. Entering the village, the New Zealanders grimly passed out all the women and children, and then, armed chiefly with heavy sticks, fell upon the men, and at the same time fired the houses. Many Arabs were killed, few escaped without injury; the village was demolished. The flames from the houses lit up the countryside, and Allenby and his staff could not fail to see the conflagration and hear the shouts of the troops and the cries of their victims.110 Gullett records all the Anzac troops being lined up the next day and asked to explain their actions against civilians under the care of the British forces. ‘General Headquarters demanded the men who had led the attack and had been guilty of the killing. The Anzacs stood firm; not a single individual could definitely be charged.’ Gullet records a visit from an angry General Allenby, where he used ‘strong, and some might say, ill-considered language.’111 In fact, Allenby told the Anzac troops: ‘I was proud of you once. I’m proud of you no longer’ and, wheeling his horse, galloped away.112 The colonel in charge of medical services for the troops, Rupert Downes, described the event at the time as ‘really a massacre’ and subsequent investigations found the attack had been planned rather than spontaneous.113 The Australian and New Zealand governments, on British demand, later paid for restoration and rebuilding of the village, thereby acknowledging fault.114 In a history of Tasmania’s light horsemen, published in 2006, an ex-soldier and military historian Doug Wyatt wrote:

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Brigadier General (George) Cox is reported to have addressed the members of the Third Light Horse Regiment in 1919 and said: ‘We will speak of this incident no more’.115 An alternative view of the village is represented in Walid Khalidi’s comprehensive history of the villages in Palestine ‘occupied and depopulated by Israel in 1948’, called All That Remains. It lists a major and a minor Surafend on the western side of the road from Jerusalem and Al-Ramle to Jaffa on the coast: The village existed in Roman and Byzantine periods. It was mentioned by the eighteenth century Sufi traveller Mustafa al-Dumyati al-Luqaymi when he came to visit the shrine of Luqman al-Hakim in the village. British travellers during the nineteenth century – in 1838 and the 1870s – recorded one village being occupied and the other abandoned and the area growing olives and citrus trees. The village had mainly Muslims but also some Christians in it. It would have had about 1,000 people in it – so 100 or more of the men being murdered would have been a high proportion and therefore a major, tragic event.116 More importantly for this book, there is no reporting of this ‘unfortunate incident’, as Gullett refers to it, in the SMH. Was he censored or did he self-censor? During this period, at the end of the war, cables were arriving at the SMH within four days or less of the event. The ‘massacre’ occurred on the night of Monday, 9 December 1918. There is no mention of it in the SMHs of 10, 11, 12, 13 December or Saturday, 14 December. There is also no mention of it the following week, Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday (16 – 18 December inclusive). Stanley states that Provost records (effectively military police records) from the Light Horse detail other assaults: The cases documented are not trivial – such as the case of a ‘particularly violent and brutal assault’ on ‘a native widow’ and her son, also near Bethlehem, the perpetrators of which – identified as Australians – were never traced [. . .] As ever, ‘very regrettable

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incidents’ such as these were attributed to ‘a very small number of men of bad character’.117 Gullett appears to have missed this one, too. No such case is mentioned in the sample of 62 newspapers. With Surafend, it is clear he knew intimately of what had occurred.

War Correspondent in Context News sources: Gullett, Massey and cables As mentioned earlier, Henry Gullett went to Palestine on the recommendation of Charles Bean, his friend and colleague. Bean had been the SMH’s London correspondent and Gullett had similarly been in London, although as a freelancer. In fact, journalism was in his blood: his cousin, Lucy Gullett, was married to the SMH’s editor, Thomas Heney, and his uncle had also been a previous editor of the SMH.118 Gullett had joined Bean on the Western Front, but as Bean became increasingly concerned with his duties as a historian of the War, Gullett asked if he could travel to Egypt to administer the Australian War Records Section of the AIF. Military historian Hill says: ‘The AIF saw in him what they had so long been denied – their own Australian war correspondent’.119 There is a difference between Gullett’s own account of when he began reporting with the Light Horse and that of the Australian Dictionary of Biography’s Tony Hill. Gullett states in his official account (1923): ‘From the beginning of December 1917 he (the author) accompanied the Light Horse in nearly all their operations.’120 Hill states: ‘He took up this appointment (as Australian War Correspondent) in August 1918, just in time for the final offensive.’121 The latter account seems more likely to be correct, as there is no record in the reporting of Australian troops’ battles prior to 25 September 1918 that contain the by-line attribution of Gullett. He certainly arrived in Egypt in November 1917 for the War Record work, but there is no record of his work for the SMH in these samples prior to September 1918. As previously mentioned, this study shows that the main way in which Palestinians (those ‘west of the Jordan’) were represented was as ‘Arabs’ (ranging from condescension to disgust) or ‘natives’ (with its

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implicit accompanying sense of cultural superiority). By contrast, the land was seen as ‘the Holy Land’ in a Christian/Jewish biblical sense and the Jews as a people rightfully expecting to ‘return’. Gullett’s official history of the war is far more revealing of these themes than his short, but colourful, burst of journalism for the SMH. While stating that the officers ‘ransacked the surrounding (Palestinian) villages for tibbin for the horses’ he says that the Australian troops stayed in Richon, a major Jewish settlement in southern Palestine (‘the Philistine plain’): The Jews provided them with fruit and vegetables, bread and honey, and sometimes wine; from the Arabs were obtained horsefeed and fresh meat [. . .] They explored the ruins of ancient Askalon, looked upon the valley where, unless tradition lies, David overthrew Goliath, flirted freely, despite the obstacle of language, with the pretty Jewish girls [. . .] and behaved like kings.122 The Palestinian homes are referred to in the same paragraph as: ‘the squalid, mud-built, flat-topped villages with their thieving and depraved Arab inhabitants’. There was no mention in the SMH reports of Australian soldiers being wined and dined in Jewish settlements. It certainly would have incensed the nearby Palestinian villagers. And again, two months later, Gullett records: The First Brigade had been for some time at Richon and the Second at Wady Hanein, and the men always recalled with gratitude those pleasant Jewish settlements with their groves of large golden oranges, their supplies of wine, and their warm-hearted people [. . .] The world-wide dream of a Jewish nation established once more in Palestine, which had for nearly 2,000 years sustained their scattered race, seemed already a reality; and in their joy they showered hospitality upon the staff officers billeted in their houses and upon the troops encamped on the surrounding sand-hills. General Chauvel [. . .] was embarrassed with their simple honours, and officers were freely invited to strange formal afternoon and evening parties [. . .] sipping of wine and feasting on raisins and oranges and sweetmeats.123

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By comparison, Gullett is withering in his summation of what he calls ‘the quality and attitude of the Arabs’. He compares the ‘Hejaz Arabs’ and other Arabs (of Palestine): Neither General Allenby nor his men had yet had any actual contact with the tribesmen east of the Jordan. They knew the wretched quality of the natives of western Palestine; but influenced perhaps by tradition rather than Army Intelligence report, they were loath to believe that the bold, proud, fighting Arab of romance was in truth scarcely superior to the lazy, cowardly, and squalid people among whom they had lived and fought during the past two years.124 And finally, Gullett wraps his narrative in an imperialist framework: Before their revolt in 1916 the tribes of Arabia and eastern Palestine were a people primitive in the extreme. They knew nothing of the industry and the civilisation of the outside world; their lives were less disciplined, and less complex, than the lives of the Israelite tribes in the wilderness. Their possessions were limited to horses, camels, tents, or squalid villages; their practice of agriculture in the fertile patches of their desert home was primitive [. . .] At the close of the war they were loosely united; they had shared in the enjoyment of what was to them a miraculous shower of golden British wealth [. . .]125 Gullett, with heavy use of hyperbole, was writing the official history of Australia’s war in Palestine. But the ideological base – dirty, prehistoric Arabs, friendly Jews, British benevolence – was a continuation of his work as war correspondent. It is simply more transparent. And it also corresponds with the dominant myths used by other soldiers of the war. Ion Idriess, later to become a popular author of Australia until the 1950s, recounts the war in his 1932 book, Desert Column, with a foreword by Lieutenant General Sir Harry Chauvel, which states: [Trooper Idriess’ book is] not only a narrative of personal adventure which is full of interest, but it is, as far as I am aware, the only ‘soldier’s’ book yet written on that campaign.

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If so, it is full of the same tropes so diligently promoted by Gullett 15 years earlier: ‘the people appear a fairly bright lot, for Arabs’;126 ‘(Khan Younis in Gaza) had a proper Sheikh too, in flowing robes and venerable beard, and cut-throat heart’;127 ‘Our Bible enthusiast is bubbling over, for Es Dud is the ancient Ashdod of the Old Testament, the Ashdod of the Philistines’;128 ‘The inhabitants hang white rags on the roofs of their houses, tell us all the lies imaginable to prevent us obtaining water for our horses’;129 ‘The inhabitants (of Richon) are very fair-skinned, mostly Jews. They are by far the most cleanly people we have yet met’;130 ‘Jaffa is very beautiful [. . .] by the old-time city is a stone quay, as good as when it was built, to tie up Crusaders’ ships.’131 Like many war correspondents, Gullett lived and worked for a time – although not as long as his colleague W.T. Massey – with the (Australian) troops he was reporting on. Having never been to the Middle East before, or any Muslim or Arab country elsewhere (e.g., Indonesia, Sudan, Morocco or India), he seems to have formed virulent views very quickly, and arguably this owes a great deal to the views shared by many Australian soldiers at the time.

Senior colleague Charles Bean What was the influence of the Australian Forces Official Correspondent Charles Bean, based first in Egypt, then Gallipoli, then France and finally London, on Gullett? Apart from their friendship, their time in London together before the war, their travels to the Western Front prior to Gullett’s appointment and Bean’s expressed admiration for Gullett, there is no direct way of knowing. But on one crucial matter to do with this analysis, it is demonstrable that their views on Arabs were highly consistent. Bean disembarked in Egypt at the historic port of Alexandria. One hundred and sixteen years earlier, Napoleon had arrived to ‘liberate’ the Arabs from the Turks, and Egypt had been an occupied country ever since. Egyptian nationalist feeling in 1914, as in Syria and Palestine, was high. As Bean caught the train from Alexandria to Cairo, he wrote in his diary that he found the countryside ‘strange’, that the women hid their faces, that the ‘native villages’ were ‘dumps’ and that Cairo, as an ‘Eastern city’, had ‘no system whatever’.132 It was certainly not like Sydney or London.

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He quickly noted that Australians were partaking of ‘sordid diversion’ and getting venereal diseases as a result. He was asked by some officers to warn readers of the SMH back home that some troops might be unfit for service and could be dishonourably discharged and sent back home in disgrace. In an article dated 29 December 1914, Bean duly wrote of this possibility. The article caused an uproar in Cairo among the troops who turned on ‘the morally prim’ Bean and threatened his life.133 It was an experience that seared him. Bean worried in his diary about being shot from ‘friendly fire’ at the front.134 It was certainly true that senior military leaders in Egypt thought that discipline with Australian troops in Cairo had broken down. On 2 April 1915, and again on 31 July, Australian troops rioted in Cairo in the brothel (Wazir) district and burned down some of the buildings. The SMH acknowledged the problem under headlines such as ‘Only a few wasters’,135 including references to the (widespread) venereal disease problem. Even 40 years later, Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian Nobel Prizewinning author of The Cairo Trilogy, had three of his characters in 1915 refer to the dangerous Australians.136 Again, at the suggestion of the four top military officers of the Australian Infantry Forces, Bean (in Cairo for less than six months) produced a book warning Australians against the dangers of Egypt. Entitled, What to Know in Egypt: A Guide for Australasian Soldiers, the book begins by stating that ‘only since the British have arrived [. . .] have the fellahin (peasants) been freed’.137 The book continues by describing how the ‘natives’ clean strawberries by putting them in their mouths first, but that with vegetables they have ‘a far filthier method’.138 Their soft drinks have a ‘disgusting colour’ in them.137 It is best to avoid restaurants: Never dream of taking your meals in a native restaurant [. . .] It is generally wiser not to talk to any native there [. . .] they may be well-dressed tricksters who would not stop at drugging a man [. . .] the only safe rule for newcomers is to be polite but never familiar with any native.140 The damp soil around any village means it is full of infection. Cairo is ‘a hotbed of gonorrhea and syphilis’ and ‘almost every village contains syphilis’.141 As for women, there is no telling, so best to steer clear:

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One word as to the veil. In Eastern countries women are sensitively modest or else the exact reverse. There are no gradations between [. . .] The only safe rule is never to speak to a native woman at all.142 This overall vision is counter-balanced in Bean’s book of advice by his view of how the British (and therefore, presumably, including Australians) are viewed by ‘the natives’: Amongst all these people we have a great reputation for high principle and manliness [. . .] The one thing that the natives have come to know about British troops [. . .] was that the British soldier never interfered with their women and never interfered with their religion.143 It is difficult to understand how Bean worries so much about soldiers’ venereal diseases while proclaiming their reputation for never ‘interfering’ with local women. This booklet was sold in 1914 to thousands of Australian and other soldiers as a Western view of ‘the natives’. It had the imprimatur of their military leaders. And, of course, it was the view that might well have informed Gullett in his conversations with Bean and on his arrival for the first time in the Middle East two years later.

The Jewish Legion In early 1918, Jews in London, organised by a leading Zionist thinker, Vladimir Jabotinsky, succeeded in finally persuading the British government that they should be able to fight with the British forces in Palestine.144 Formed as the 38th and 39th Royal Fusiliers (Jewish Battalions), they were attached to the Anzac Mounted Division in mid1918.145 Jabotinsky exercised great influence over the battalions and fought with them. While in Palestine, he was seconded to the Zionist Commission, which was negotiating with Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour.146 The two battalions were garrisoned at Ludd, not far from the Anzac Mounted Division near Surafend.147 Jabotinsky is famous in Jewish and Zionist history for his influential book, The Iron Wall, published in 1923. Whereas Herzl had set out the

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notion of a national home for the Jews, Jabotinsky believed that only force would achieve that home in Palestine. In the Iron Wall, he anticipated Palestinian resistance: We cannot promise any reward either to the Arabs of Palestine or to the Arabs outside Palestine. A voluntary agreement is unattainable. And so those who regard an accord with the Arabs as an indispensable condition of Zionism must admit to themselves today that this condition cannot be attained and hence that we must give up Zionism. We must either suspend our settlement efforts or continue them without paying attention to the mood of the natives. Settlement can thus develop under the protection of a force that is not dependent on the local population, behind an iron wall which they will be powerless to break down.148 Such an uncompromising view was, of course, a total rejection of the literal terms of the Balfour Declaration of six years earlier, agreed with Zionist leader Lord Rothschild in London. The Declaration spoke only of a ‘Jewish Home’ within an Arab nation. However, the presence of the Jewish troops with the Anzacs through 1918 raises two more issues for this study. First, how did this affect Gullett’s reporting? Second, why is there no mention in Gullett’s writing – all of which is in the period of the Jewish Legion’s arrival – of the Legion’s presence with the Anzacs? Australian troops, billeted close to major Jewish settlements such as Richon (one of the biggest in Palestine), accompanied by 2,000 Jewish troops,149 along with the Australian Press correspondent, must have seemed like a formidable ‘enemy’ force to local Palestinians.

Conclusion The evidence from a content analysis of the SMH coverage of reporting World War I in Palestine indicates a consistent narrative that is imperial, orientalist, religious and biblical. Though its sources vary across print genres such as letters, cables, editorials, headlines and correspondent reports (both British and Australian), it maintains a bifurcated vision of, on the one side, the Arab ‘natives’, and on the other, those acting on

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behalf of a great empire, ready to occupy and make (rightful) use of the land of Palestine. This chapter has also indicated the complexities of the historical context in which the Australian and British forces interposed themselves. Britain, of course, had had a century of occupation in Egypt, of struggle with the declining Ottoman Empire and with ‘opening up’ Palestine to Western economic forces. The carving up of the Middle East, especially with the discovery of oil, was a project conducted with its own interests in mind. The Australian reporting of this process assisted by declining to ‘see’ any of the underlying forces and interests involved – neither the interests, beliefs or wishes of the occupied, nor the ulterior motives of the occupiers. Instead it concentrated on wrapping its coverage on a series of myths – the creation of ‘the Anzacs’, the ‘return of the Jews’, the goodness of ‘the British Empire’, the Crusaders regaining of ‘the Holy Land’ – which neatly distracted its readership from an understanding of the real drama of international politics. In particular, it also almost totally denied the existence of an entire people – the Palestinians – their culture, their society and their history, at the very moment when their society was most under threat.

CHAPTER 2 PALESTINE'S COMPETING NARRATIVES AFTER WORLD WAR II

Only 20 years after the end of World War I, the ‘war to end all wars’ was followed by another, similarly destructive conflict between the Western powers. The interwar period for Palestine saw the end of centuries of Ottoman rule replaced by a new imperial power, Britain. The end of World War II in Palestine saw a brief interregnum of three years before war broke out between the Jews and the Palestinians for control of their land. Unlike World War I, Palestine was not invaded in World War II by a foreign force (Britain) determined to evict a current occupier (the Turks). British forces were already in occupation. Nevertheless, it became the major staging post for the British and Free French attack in 1941 on Vichy French and German forces holding out in Lebanon and Syria. Rommel’s daredevil tactics in North Africa the following year saw British (and Australian) troops involved in major battles around Tobruk, El Alamein and Ruin Ridge. At one point, it appeared Rommel would make it to the pyramids outside Cairo in Egypt and smash a way through to Palestine and Syria. British and Australian interests in the Suez Canal shipping lane, the Middle Eastern oilfields and the defence of India were seen to be at risk.1 The 6th Division of the AIF left by ship for Palestine in January 1940 following a request for Australian assistance from the British Admiralty. The 7th Division arrived in October the same year. They were both

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under the command of Major-General Sir Thomas Blamey. He flew ahead of the troops and arrived in Palestine on 20 January 1940. He immediately made links with the Jewish Yishuv. Biographer John Hetherington explains: Blamey was at ease in Palestine for a special reason: he liked Jewish people [. . .] He admired their culture, their fortitude in the face of persecution down the centuries, and the discipline of their family life [. . .] His liking had almost certainly begun with his affection for John Monash [. . .] and he was a frequent guest in the homes of many of the most distinguished Jewish thinkers in Palestine.2 Blamey’s friend, John Monash, the great Australian general from World War I, had become the Zionist Federation of Australia’s (ZFA) inaugural honorary president in 1928, in itself a very clear statement of beliefs given the divided climate in Australian Jewry about Zionism as a concept at the time.3 The ZFA worked in close association with the Jewish Agency in Palestine in 1940 to provide accommodation with Jewish families when Australian soldiers were on leave. Says Israeli historian Chanan Reich: Consequently a comprehensive schedule was arranged for excursions, including visits to factories and private homes. The Jewish Agency regarding [sic.] such official links as important steps in gaining friends for the yishuv and its aspirations.4 One Australian battalion, the 2/16 Infantry Battalion, was encamped near the northern Palestine Jewish kibbutz of Merchavia awaiting its deployment in Syria. The Haifa area in the north carried the burden of the British and Commonwealth encampments. One local Jewish observer remembered many years later: The kibbutzniks and their visitors soon found they had similar backgrounds. Both countries had been settled against heavy odds and with difficulty. The Israelis heard how hard the pioneering in Australia’s outback had been [. . .] The Israeli and Australian farmers were at one with each other [. . .] They had a quick eye for a

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pretty maid and many enduring friendships developed and even marriages occurred.5 David McNicoll, a journalist with the SMH, took leave from his job in Sydney and joined the 7th Division in Palestine as a captain. His poetry from the Front has been highly praised, but it certainly is strewn with sympathy for the Jews exiled from Eastern Europe. Thus, ‘Tel Aviv’: This is a strange, cold town, Born of oppression, hard and concrete-cold; And in the haunted faces on its streets Are stamped the horrors of the tortured years, Berlin and Prague and Warsaw, all the grim Ghetto-herding, torture, rape and shame [. . .] (1941)6 McNicoll went on to become a correspondent for Frank Packer’s Sydney DT, by then a morning competitor for the more traditional SMH, and later a chief editor and, finally, columnist for Packer’s The Bulletin magazine. It was also true, however, that not all Australian soldiers appreciated the arrangements with the Jewish Agency and the closeness with the Jewish side in the conflict in Palestine. According to Reich, the friendship was sometimes ‘frowned upon’ by British officers. Australian troops disapproved of the anti-British attitudes of Yishuv members, sometimes harboured great resentments about the official arrangements and, in a few cases, actually assaulted Jewish officials.7 The attitude of Australian military leaders like Blamey also did not reflect Department of External Affairs officers back in Canberra nor the views of either Prime Minister Joseph Lyons (1932–9) or Robert Gordon Menzies (1939–41). Both were ‘stand-offish’ about committing to either side, aware that Australian interests could be harmed by antagonising the Muslim leaders of the Middle East, Iran and India. When Prime Minister Menzies visited the troops in Palestine in February 1941, he refused to meet Jewish Agency officials for a ‘welcome’ and background talks. By October of the same year, Menzies would be replaced as prime minister by Labor’s John Curtin, the whole focus of Australian foreign military engagement would change and the attitude of the new External Affairs Minister, Herbert V. Evatt, would no

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longer mirror the pro-British bias of his department on the question of Palestine. In the meantime, Australia’s troops on the ground would be heavily involved on a day-by-day basis with one side of the Palestine conflict. This setting frames the SMH coverage of the war during 1941, first in the battle at the Litani River in Southern Lebanon on 9 June, then the major conflict with Vichy forces around the crucial Lebanese inland town of Merdayoun between 11 and 27 June, the taking of Damascus, capital of Syria, on 20– 21 June and finally the fall of Beirut. Haifa, on the northern coast of Palestine, was the base for much of the reporting when it was not attributed to a correspondent travelling with the military – for example, journalist Kenneth Slessor. It also housed the transmitter for Free French Radio. Haifa, occasionally bombed by German planes, counted as the location for ‘forward line’ reporting. Back home, the usually strict war censorship rules applied in the Fairfax office (Figure 2.1). The SMH coverage of Australian troops at war in these encounters in Palestine – largely during June and July 1941 (the Syrian campaign) – was also framed by the economic and military imperative of access to

Figure 2.1 The SMH reporters’ room, Fairfax Building, Hunter Street, Sydney, 1930.

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oilfields. During the three weeks of June 1941 in which the major Lebanese battles occurred on the way to Damascus, the paper was at pains to emphasise how important the oil pipelines to Haifa were. It published seven maps during this period, illustrating the path of the pipeline from the Haditha oilfield in Iraq to the outlets at the ports of Tripoli in north Lebanon and Haifa in northern Palestine. The reader is left in no doubt that oil was very central to the conflict in the Middle East. But, in truth, it was not as simple as the SMH represented. And again, it was a paper blind-sided by not acknowledging that much of the inhabitants saw the British presence, from World War I onwards, as an ‘occupation’, not a liberation. The SMH’s simplistic ‘empire view’ was also at odds with the longerterm trend of events. The period immediately after World War II – in Europe and in Asia – was seen by many independence movements around the world as a chance to break the shackles of colonialism. In Indonesia (Dutch), in India and East and West ‘Pakistan’ (British), in Egypt (British), Algeria (French) and Ghana (British), stirrings of (mainly armed) resistance took place during and after World War II, some leading to early independence in the late 1940s (Indonesia, India and Pakistan), and others in the early 1950s. The leaders of these national movements spoke a different language to the SMH: of nonalignment, independence and development. Sukarno, Gandhi, Jinnah, Nasser, Nkrumah and others were on the rise. Palestine was already on the agenda for many of these new leaders. Egypt’s Gamal Abdul Nasser, the man who nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956, much to the displeasure of British Prime Minister Anthony Eden and Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies, was to be an Egyptian soldier in the Infantry battalion of the Egyptian army invading Israel after 15 May 1948. He had first offered his services to the Palestinian leader’s Arab Higher Committee forces (run by Mohammed Amin al-Husayni), but was recalled to fight for his country first. He spoke publicly in 1959 about how the events of the 1930s had made such a big impression on him: As far as I am concerned I remember that the first elements of Arab consciousness began to filter into my mind as a student in secondary schools, whereby I went out with my fellow schoolboys

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on strike in December 2nd of every year as a protest against the Balfour declaration whereby England gave the Jews a national home usurped unjustly from its legal owners [. . .] My comprehension began to be clearer as the foundation of its facts stood out when I began to study, as a student in the Staff College, the Palestine campaign and the problems of the Mediterranean in greater detail. And when the Palestine crisis loomed on the horizon I was firmly convinced that the fighting in Palestine was not fighting on foreign territory. Nor was it inspired by sentiment. It was a duty imposed by self-defense.8 But, pitted against the internal complexities of Palestine and the budding global non-aligned movement soon came the reality of the Nazi Holocaust.

Perceptions of the Jewish Emigration to Palestine 1947 The enormity of the crimes committed under Adolf Hitler’s stated policy of ‘the Final Solution to the Jewish Question’ took some time to emerge in the 1940s. Poles, who early in the war told Allied forces of these plans, were barely believed.9 As German troops successfully invaded the Low Countries followed by France, but unsuccessfully invaded Russia in 1941, the intentions of Hitler’s policy towards all European Jews became clearer. By 1944, Allied bombers were flying over Germany and Poland close to camps such as Auschwitz I and Auschwitz-Birkenau II. 10 In July 1944, Churchill favoured bombing the German concentration camps, but met a brick wall in the US administration. The latter thought the best way to help the Jews was to defeat Hitler as fast as possible through strategies already in place.11 Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet Army on 27 January 1945, but estimates of those killed in the camp took months to appear. The true figure is now estimated to be 1.1 million for that one camp alone.12 On 15 April 1945, British tanks rolled into Belsen camp. The figures are shocking today, but were seen at the time in the context of a war that killed 14 million men on both sides of the conflict and 27 million civilians. The Soviet Union alone topped

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the list of civilians killed: 16 million. Britain, by contrast, lost 92,000 civilians.13 Hitler’s term ‘Final Solution’ was revealed to be a policy of mass murder by the end of the war. Its gruesome reality as Allied forces invaded was slow to sink in. Paul Johnson, in his bestseller History of the Jews, notes that when it became clear that 700,000 Jews had been murdered in one Polish camp alone, the Boston Globe on 26 June 1942 ‘buried the story on page 12’ and the NYT the next day gave it only two inches. Says Johnson: ‘In general the Holocaust news was under-reported and tended to get lost in the general wartime din of horror stories.’14 The International Military Tribunal trials of prominent Nazis, held in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Bavaria, on 20 November 1945, began to change the media coverage. The first series of Nuremberg Trials ended on 1 October 1946 after a year of shocking revelations of depravity and inhumanity. They would continue between 1946 and 1951. In all, 5,025 Nazis were convicted and 486 executed. After 1945, the world’s media carried the Jewish experience of genocide as front-page news for six years. The political effect of this in Palestine was obvious. As Israeli historian Avi Shlaim says: In the end, however, the tragedy of European Jewry became a source of strength for Zionism. The moral case for a home for the Jewish people in Palestine was widely accepted from the beginning; after the Holocaust it became unassailable.15 Many assumed that Israel was built on the back of a tide of Jewish emigrants from western Europe. Some assumed 300,000 of more arrived in Palestine in the years following the Holocaust; however, research by Yosef Grodzinsky,16 in his study of immigration patterns between 1945 and 1951 of Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) from the Nazi camps, suggests about 60 per cent of the 333,000 Jewish DPs did not immigrate to Palestine – leaving 133,300 who did.17 This is about half the figure others have estimated. The correct figure is important. In the coming years, as Shlaim says, Israel’s existence would be predicated on the moral basis of the need for a safe home for the Jewish people following the Nazi genocide of 1942–5. However, the ‘new’ Jewish community – that is, the Zionist pioneers from the 1880s onwards – was in place long before World War II.

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They complemented the ancient Jewish community that had already existed for centuries in Palestine. But even the various waves of Zionist immigration prior to World War I, in addition to the ‘old’ community, only brought the Jewish community at the first census of the British Mandate in 1922 to 60,000.18 This was 10 per cent of Palestine’s population. By the third census in 1945, after mass immigration, the Jewish community numbered 553,000 – a more than five-fold increase in 23 years. By then it was 33 per cent of the population. In reality, if Grodzinsky’s analysis is correct, only 140,000 more Jews arrived between the end of World War II and the creation of Israel on 15 May 1948. Thus, three-quarters of the Jewish population came from preHolocaust times, mainly Zionist immigration in the 1920s and 1930s. Nevertheless, in media, political and emotional terms, the story of the atrocities committed on the Jews grew as every new revelation occurred. The Jewish Agency, the Zionist government-in-waiting, quickly had Britain on the run over illegal immigration once media details became clear of the experience of the Holocaust. When the SS Exodus arrived off the coast of Palestine on 18 July 1947 packed with refugees from the German camps, the British turned the boat back to France. When the refugees refused to disembark, the ship was ordered back to Hamburg in Germany. The world’s press gave the British government a beating. The story of the SS Exodus became one of the world’s highest-selling novels 11 years later when Leon Uris, the son of Jewish American parents in Baltimore, wrote the novel Exodus.19 Even the original book was the highest-grossing novel since Gone with the Wind in 1936, and had a huge impact on American and world opinion, defining in Zionist terms the nature of the struggle to create and build the Israeli state. In 1960, it became a feature film, Exodus, starring Paul Newman as the tall, blond, blue-eyed Haganah ‘freedom fighter’. It later also became a musical of the same name. Caught between two competing nationalisms, each becoming increasingly strident, world opinion siding comprehensively with the Jews, operating in a colonial environment that put its 100,000 troops under extreme duress, and unable to get any agreement on a compromise solution, Britain by 1947 was running out of options. On 1 February 1947, Britain declared its intention to end its Mandate Trusteeship. On 2 April, it formally declared it would

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hand over control of Palestine to the UN in 1948. Events moved apace. By 15 May 1947 the UN had formed the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) to come back with a report on the government of Palestine. Australia’s External Affairs Minister, Dr Herbert Vere Evatt, played a key role as chairman of UNSCOP. (Evatt was later to become President of the UN General Assembly for two years from 1948.) For the next three-and-a-half months, Palestine’s future hung in the balance as a UN special committee of 11 nations (including Australia) decided its fate. The UN General Assembly would then receive its report and hand it to the Security Council for endorsement or rejection.

Australia’s External Affairs Minister, Dr H.V. Evatt There has been some debate in Australia about the role of Dr H.V. Evatt in achieving the final outcome in the UN on 29 November 1947 in favour of the partition of Palestine. (By contrast, his name barely figures in international accounts – both from statesmen of the time and historians.) Australia had a major role to play as a member nation of UNSCOP in 1947. As such, he played a major role in the formation of Israel. This course of events would seem very much to be the subject matter for reporting in the SMH. The scholarly literature on Evatt’s role is ambivalent. Howard Adelman, writing in 1992, sees Evatt as betraying the Jewish people in these critical years despite appearing to be their friend.20 Chanan Reich sees Evatt as simply another politician seeking personal aggrandisement while strutting the world stage, neither captured by Zionists nor averse to them.21 Daniel Mandel, on the other hand, expanding on his doctoral thesis, portrays Evatt as The Undercover Zionist (subheading to his 2004 book), who steered Australia, UNSCOP and the UN towards the creation of Israel in 1948.22 Evatt’s actions during the period of 1947 –8 would clearly have affected the coverage of Palestine and the Palestinians in the SMH. Politicians and journalists use each other in self-interested ways. Given the decisions made, the access provided, the existing knowledge of the foreign minister’s politics and predictions and the surrounding round of Australian departmental briefings, embassy contacts, Canberra ‘leaks’ and the operations of foreign posts and foreign correspondents, it would

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be reasonable to expect Evatt’s views and actions might have figured in the coverage of Palestine. Reich makes extensive use of State Archives of Israel (SAI) documents from the time, especially those of the Jewish Agency (the then government-in-waiting). Mandel makes much greater use of the Department of External Affairs documents in Canberra from this period. My own survey of select documents from the Australian Archives in Canberra was devoted to matters that might conceivably have become plain to journalists. First is the extent of Evatt’s friendship with leading Zionist figures in Australia and the USA. The most important was with the Irish-born Abram Landa, the Australian Labor Party member elected to the Sydney eastern suburbs state seat of Bondi in 1941. It was the same year Evatt became Minister for External Affairs, representing the inner-south Sydney seat of Barton, first under Curtin and then Chifley. Landa was a committed Zionist in the 1920s, opened a solicitors’ practice in Sydney opposite Evatt’s barrister’s chambers, became firm friends with Evatt and worked on Evatt’s political campaign in the state seat of Balmain in 1927. Landa frequently briefed Evatt as his barrister.23 In the late 1940s, Evatt was in constant contact with Landa, taking his advice,24 asking departmental staff to thank him (and his community),25 spending a month with him in New York while the UN considered the UNSCOP report26 and receiving him along with Zionist lobbyists in his office.27 Landa acted as a direct and active conduit to the Intelligence Bureau of the Jewish Agency.28 His son David was named ‘Evatt’ after ‘the Doc’ and Evatt became his godfather. In an address to Sydney’s Great Synagogue in 1960, Evatt referred not only to Landa’s contribution, but to another active Zionist of the time, Max Freilich, a member of the NSW Jewish Advisory Board. Freilich first met Evatt in 1942 as a part of a lobbying meeting with Evatt. At the time, Prime Minister John Curtin was successfully leading the opposition to a motion at an Australian Labor Party conference supporting Jewish statehood. Evatt promised his support to the Jewish delegation ‘when the time comes’, according to Freilich.29 A ‘close friendship’ between Freilich and Evatt developed.30 Freilich lobbied Evatt about Jewish national aims prior to Evatt leaving for San Francisco to attend the foundation of the UN.31 Freilich attended the World Zionist Organization (WZO) conference early in 1947 and advised

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Jewish Agency officials to send a delegation to Australia. Within days, a Major Michael Comay was despatched to see new Prime Minister Chifley and Evatt in Canberra. Comay arrived on 30 April (a fortnight before the formation of UNSCOP by the UN). Comay’s reception by Chifley was noncommittal, but Evatt, having given some ‘unflattering comments on the Arabs’, gave the clear impression to Comay that he was in favour of partition and a state for the Jews. Comay flattered Evatt and came away well pleased.32 Another major Zionist influence on Evatt was in New York, which was, far more than London, Evatt’s global city of choice. The Curtin administration had dramatically turned Australia’s attention to the Americans by joining forces to reverse Japan’s thrust into the south-west Pacific. American power and culture were intoxicating, including to left-wing progressive leaders like Evatt. And, of course, to Evatt personally, the new UN, in which he played such a central role, was housed in New York. In law, too, Evatt was interested in the legal philosophy of Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and (the active Zionist) Felix Frankfurter on the US Supreme Court. In New York, Evatt was also impressed by the left-wing activities of a local intellectual, journalist and editor, Freda Kirchwey. Kirchwey was associated all her life with the influential magazine Nation, but when Evatt met her, probably in the late 1930s, the magazine was struggling. But Kirchwey was becoming more influential around New York. Kirchwey was an unusual woman for her time: a strong feminist, sexual liberationist, civil libertarian and Zionist. In the 1950s, she was a strong opponent of McCarthyism. Says Mandel: [Evatt] saw her whenever he was in the United States, attending functions of the Nation Associates and participating in its dinner forums. The two respected each other and, unlike a number of Zionist officials, Kirchwey never distrusted him.33 Kirchwey introduced the Australian external affairs minister, a naturally aloof loner, to a wider audience in New York. One of her contacts was the former US Secretary of State to Roosevelt, Sumner Welles, a strong Zionist supporter. He, in turn, introduced Evatt to Jewish Agency officials in New York.

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A second area of interest to journalists might have been Evatt’s relations within the cabinet in Canberra, within his own Department of External Affairs and with the Labor Party at large. Political correspondents, diplomatic correspondents and foreign correspondents could all have been presumed to have been ‘close’ to Evatt during the crucial period of 1947 and 1948 when Evatt was in and out of Canberra, Sydney, London and New York. After all, not only Palestine, but the break-up of India, Indonesian moves for independence, the collapse of the Kuomintang regime in China and his own drive to be president of the UN General Assembly were all on the agenda. Foreign news was a major focus of the Labor movement and of the press at the time. The archives reveal a picture of a man acting alone, and often in conflict with his closest advisers and associates, to ‘crash or crash through’. Historians across the board agree that Evatt’s managerial style was to play things ‘close to his chest’, to keep even his supporters guessing and to say as little as possible while acting at the last minute. Some see this style as devious and underhand, others as determined, still others as magisterial. On Palestinian policy, Evatt seems to have been given free reign by Curtin and then Chifley. If anything, both prime ministers seemed lukewarm on partition. Chifley criticised the Jews for terrorism when he received a delegation in Canberra and was much more inclined to support the British position on Palestine – federation of separate areas within one nation rather than partition into two.34 Chifley expressed the view that Australia should absent itself from voting on the ad hoc committee about partition. He was also worried about the votes of Catholics, who, in turn, worried about losing Jerusalem. The Menzies Liberal Opposition opposed partition outright. It is also clear from the archives that, within Evatt’s team of departmental negotiators, there was strong opposition to Evatt’s propartition push. John Hood, a career senior diplomat, was appointed to the UNSCOP group as the senior one of two Australian representatives. Hood developed the view that ‘federation’ was the way forward in Palestine, following earlier British suggestions. Evatt saw this view developing and cut it off at the pass on 10 August (see Figure 2.2).35 Further, it was said it would be best if Hood ‘not embarrass the Minister’.36 Hood was then supported in his right to express his view in favour of ‘federation’ by the head of the department’s UN Division, Alec Shand.37

Figure 2.2 Secret cable from Minister for External Affairs H.V. Evatt to John Burton, 10 August 1947, warning his UNSCOP official.

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On 24 August 1947, Hood cabled from Geneva to Evatt and the Department: On balance our own feeling which we have not stated in committee is for Federation in preference to partition on grounds that by perpetuating Arab/Jewish antagonism [it] will create as many problems as it solves.38 But the view of Evatt’s delegate was rejected and he was ordered ‘not to commit’.39 Evatt was waiting for the moment to declare his own view in favour of partition. His reputation for being ‘inconsistent and devious’40 was on show. Evatt’s role in ignoring party policy, ignoring his adviser’s strongly held view and running in the face of the prime minister’s preferences required months of secret manoeuvres with his own permanent head, John Burton, and his hand-picked diplomat friend Sam Ateyo, also appointed to UNSCOP as a formal ‘alternate’ delegate, but also as an informal direct voice of Evatt on the committee. By mid-November 1947, days before the UN vote, Evatt had the Palestine issue where he wanted it – in New York. In a secret cable he sent to Burton in Canberra on 15 November (see Figure 2.3), he stated: I am making tremendous attempt to have Palestine finished in committee before Saturday 22nd instant when we are due to leave New York [. . .] we really have to choose between recommending a schema of partition on the one hand and a complete Arabian unitary state on the other, the latter state puts 60,000 Jews at the mercy of the Arabs.41 Where was the SMH in all this deal-making and breaking? The SMH failed to report any of this behind-the-scenes ‘one-man-band’ style of statesmanship. Neither the Canberra Political Correspondent Ross Gollan nor the New York Staff Correspondent A.D. Rothman, the two reporters closest to Evatt on a regular basis, gave any indication of Evatt’s lone stand within his party, department or cabinet, nor the break with Britain. Nor were readers told of the closeness of Evatt to Sydney’s Jewish lobbyists (see Figure 2.4) and his sway with some church leaders.

Figure 2.3 H.V. Evatt secret cable to John Burton, 15 November 1947. Evatt warns against a state that ‘puts 60,000 Jews at the mercy of the Arabs’.

Figure 2.4 H.V. Evatt secret cable to John Burton, 3 December 1947. Evatt sends his thanks to Abe Landa (MLA for Bondi) and the Jewish community.

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The year 1947 concluded with a disaster for the Palestinians. On 29 November, the UN adopted the UNSCOP plan as Resolution 181 of the General Assembly to Partition Palestine. The Palestinian leadership had boycotted the UNSCOP meetings between May and August, the Jewish Agency had benefitted greatly from the UNSCOP Committee’s guided tour of the Holocaust camps in Europe and the ‘Exodus’ drama in July. The UN vote was overwhelming: 33 For, 13 Against and 10 Abstaining. The UN had not only enforced partition, it had given 55 per cent of the land of Palestine to one-third of its people (the Jews) and 45 per cent to two-thirds of its people (the Palestinians). On 1 December, the Arab Higher Committee (AHC) called for a three-day strike throughout Palestine. Riots broke out across the land, accompanied by attacks on Jews and retaliation by British and Jewish forces. The sorely divided and ill-prepared internal Palestinian ‘resistance’ began while Jews around the world celebrated and ordinary Palestinians began to leave their homes in droves. The nakba – the catastrophe – had begun. In December alone, 73,000 Palestinians were on the road as refugees.

The Palestinian Catastrophe (The Nakba42) of 1947 –8 The years 1947– 8 are referred to by Palestinians as their nakba (catastrophe). This refers not simply to the partition of the traditional lands of Palestine, nor to the loss of all sovereignty over it (whether to Israel or to Jordan), but to the wholesale destruction of Palestinian society as thousands of villages were razed to the ground, thousands of people were killed or injured and 750,000 citizens made refugees, either in their own land or in neighbouring countries.43 This catastrophe occurred in two phases: first, the internal war between Palestinians and Jewish forces from the day after the announcement of the UN to demand partition (29 November 1947) to the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel on 15 May 1948; and then the invasion of Palestine (legally, parts of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank) by Arab national forces from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt from 15 May to an armistice in 1949. While the first struggle was largely (but not entirely) fought in the areas nominated as ‘Jewish’ by the UN in 1947, the second struggle involved fighting within areas nominated as ‘Arab’ by the UN. By the

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time of the armistice in 1949, Jewish forces had successfully won 78 per cent of the former land of (Mandate) Palestine for the new nation of Israel, leaving 22 per cent for the Palestinians in ‘Gaza’ and ‘the West Bank’ (of the Jordan River). Gaza was to be controlled by Egypt and the West Bank by Jordan. Henceforth, the vast majority of the original inhabitants of Palestine (two-thirds) lived in a small minority of the land.44 Those Palestinians who remained in the new nation of Israel formed a sizable minority of the Jewish state. Effectively, the Palestinians ended 1948 distributed among three ‘legal’ entities: those in the West Bank and Gaza, those in Israel and those in refugee camps run by a newly established body of the UN – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA). In addition, many had fled to Jordan and other surrounding Arab states as citizens or had migrated to the Gulf countries or even to far-flung Western countries such as Chile and Australia. A new Palestinian diaspora mirrored the Jewish diaspora. In media terms, therefore, two different refugee narratives were under way at the same time. The first was the arrival of 140,000 or more Jewish Displaced Persons from western Europe following the Holocaust and their settlement in Mandate Palestine or, after 15 May 1948, in Israel while still at war with Arab armies. The other was the loss of half of traditional Palestine’s population – 750,000 people – as they fled the occupation of their villages and cities and headed for safer ground either inside the West Bank or Gaza, or crossed into makeshift refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. In Israeli historiography, the traditional view of the year 1948 had been that the Palestinians voluntarily fled their homes or were ordered to do so by their leaders. In this narrative, the threatened people were the Jews, surrounded in their haven by a sea of violent, semi-feudal, dictatorial Arab societies. In the Palestinian view, the Jews expelled them according to a predetermined plan, carrying out their design to establish Israel ‘as a vicious, immoral robber state’.45 The Israeli release of 1948 documents in the 1980s, and again in the 1990s, has allowed historians a chance to test these two contested narratives. In general, the documents have tended to validate the Palestinian claim of a predetermined plan to ‘transfer’ them out of their land – although at the same time showing that many Palestinian leaders did advise people to leave (often expecting to be able to return).

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These ‘new historians’, publishing from the official documents of 1947–8, have caused intense controversy. Benny Morris, Professor of History at Ben-Gurion University in Israel, has analysed how 750,000 Palestinians became refugees, severely undermining the narrative of voluntary flight from their homes (The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 2004). The most detailed account of the major plan to expel Palestinians – Plan Dalet (or Plan D) – is outlined in Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006). Both historians have laid out in great detail Jewish atrocities between December 1947 to 15 May 1948, the date of the establishment of the State of Israel. A range of other historians confirm the broad analysis (Shlaim, A., The Politics of Partition: King Abdullah, the Zionists and Palestine 1921– 1951, 1988 and The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, 2000; Segev, T., 1949: The First Israelis, 2000; Kimmerling, B., Zionism and Territory, 1983). This six-month period from December 1947 to mid-May 1948, especially, is an important part of the subject of this analysis as it covers the period before Arab armies intervened and while much of the nakba took place. The new documents from the SAI in the 1980s and 1990s raise questions not just about what reporters saw of the Palestinians, Jews or British, but about the adequacy of their own reporting. The documents expose different levels of operations within the Jewish Agency leadership. In reportorial terms, it would normally take, for instance, some special steps from journalists to discover the internal workings of the ‘war cabinet’ of the Jewish Agency during these months. It would require special access, usually built up over time and the building of relationships of trust on both sides, including ‘off the record’ briefings, exclusive news interviews and official statements at short notice. The same would be true for special access to a range of other officials: the Arab League and the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee in Cairo, the British Mandate authorities in Jerusalem, the UN in New York and access to each of these stakeholders in other foreign capitals such as London, Geneva and New York. The extent to which one could reasonably expect journalists to develop such ‘contacts’ and use them to the advantage of their readers with behind-the-scenes ‘exclusives’ is debatable. However, from the day of the UN announcement that Palestine would be partitioned (29 November 1947) until 15 May 1948, when the British Mandate ended and the State of Israel was proclaimed, an

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unofficial war was in progress. Journalists in this study who covered the fighting were not given the title of ‘war correspondent’, but no one was in any doubt that the conflagration in Palestine was anything other than a brutal civil war. Hundreds of Palestinians wandered the roads of their country with a few precious items on their backs and heads, children at their side (Figure 2.5). One side (the minority Jews) accepted the UN proclamation, the other (the majority Palestinians) did not. The SMH found the standard ethic of objectivity so difficult to enforce that it appointed two different correspondents: one for the Jewish side and one for the ‘Arab’ side. Alternatively, this tactic may have been about perceptions, assuring readers that both sides would be heard. Many of the events of the nakba period were so violent and shocking that they threatened to derail the entire partition process. The USA, originally in favour of partition, began to reverse its position in the face of the violence of the civil war, especially during late March and early April 1948. The reverberations in the UN in New York are reflected in the files of the Australian External Affairs Department under Evatt. He remained an unwavering advocate of partition during this

Figure 2.5 Palestinian refugees walking away from their homes in Tantura, 1948.

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period and kept in close contact in New York with the Jewish Agency’s foreign minister, Moshe Shertok. Shertok praised Evatt’s rounding up of UN’s delegates to maintain support for partition as a ‘magnificent stand’.46 Through the release of documents from the SAI, it is clear that David Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Jewish Agency, was implementing Plan Dalet to ethnically cleanse areas of Palestine that he wanted for settlement of the Jewish refugees in the new Jewish state. The violence of this six-month period was planned and executed with clear strategic objectives in mind. Historian Benny Morris locates 10 December 1947 as the date when a ‘gear change’ towards ‘active defence, reprisals and punishment’ occurred.47 Ilan Pappe nominates what he calls ‘the Long Seminar’, from 31 December to 2 January 1948 of Jewish Agency leader David Ben-Gurion’s Consultancy group, as the date when the Jewish strategy moved from defending Jewish villages to a military policy of ‘take-over, occupation and expulsion’ of Palestinian areas.48 He quotes a diary entry of Ben-Gurion summarising the meeting: There is a need now for strong and brutal reaction. We need to be accurate about timing, place and those we hit. If we accuse a family – we need to harm them without mercy, women and children included. Otherwise, this is not an effective reaction. During the operation there is no need to distinguish between guilty and not guilty.49 This ‘brutality’ was on show for all to see, even if the planning process was not. In Palestinian terms, it constituted the public trauma of the nakba. It was so obvious that it shook diplomatic circles in Jerusalem, Cairo, New York, London and Canberra – all places where the SMH had journalists on call. It would be the norm for foreign correspondents to be talking to diplomats, to senior military commanders (on both sides), to each other and to staff of churches, non-government organisations (such as charities) and, of course, local dignitaries. Also available were several local newspapers, some in Arabic, some in Hebrew and some in English. Many sources of information were available.

CHAPTER 3 WORDS FOR WAR AND PARTITION

When Britain made its decision in February 1947 to hand back the Palestine Mandate to the UN, it was only five years after the departure of Australian airmen, soldiers and naval personnel from Egypt, Lebanon and Syria in World War II. They were to heed Prime Minister John Curtin’s call to defend Australian shores from imminent Japanese attack. After the culture shock experienced by Australian troops and correspondents in World War I, this time Palestine was not a mystery. Many correspondents had reported on the Middle Eastern theatre from Tobruk to Damascus, including some of the most famous names in Australian media history (Gavin Long, Kenneth Slessor, Frank Hurley, Ian Fitchett, Roderick Macdonald and the dashing Guy Harriott).1 In 1947– 8 both Ian Fitchett, the Sydney DT’s former Middle East correspondent,2 and Guy Harriott, the SMH’s former Middle East correspondent,3 were back in Australia working as political correspondents for their respective newspapers. The body of knowledge on Palestine was substantial. They knew Palestine well, having stayed at the Fast Hotel (renamed the Australian Soldiers’ Club) in Jerusalem. When the SMH reported on the growing frustration of the British Attlee Labour government early in 1947 with the two sides of the increasingly violent postwar Palestine dispute, it chose to round on ‘the Jewish terrorists’ attacking British troops. On 4 February 1947, its editorial declared:

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A determined drive against the terrorists is long overdue. It was they who murdered the British Resident Minister in the Middle East, attempted the assassination of the High Commissioner in Palestine, blew up British headquarters, flogged a highly decorated field officer, kidnapped a British Judge in his own court, and slaughtered in the most cowardly fashion scores of British soldiers and police.4 It added: ‘Much of the blame for the spread of the campaign of terror [. . .] must be laid at the door of the accredited Zionist authority in the Holy Land, the Jewish Agency.’ Eight days later, a second editorial blamed the entire Jewish community in Palestine for giving ‘terrorists’ the ‘all clear’ to go ahead with their campaign of ‘murder and intimidation’.5 Another editorial five days later defended Britain’s policy of seeking UN assistance and yet another, ten days later, criticised US President Harry S. Truman for an intervention ‘of a kind calculated only to increase and inflame Zionist intransigency’.6 (Between these two editorials was another defending the White Australia Policy.) Four editorials in a month on the same issue constituted a serious focus by the SMH. If a theme emerges from these four editorials, it is the SMH’s traditional concern for British troops, British officialdom and British interests and ‘prestige’. One gets the impression it roundly condemns ‘terrorism’ not so much because it might, by definition, be aimed at innocent civilians – hotel workers, judges, politicians and both Palestinian and Jewish bystanders – but because Britons suffer unduly. The second theme is that the SMH feels it is addressing Westminster about British policy. Indeed, the banner for the first editorial on 4 February 1947 reads: ‘BRITISH POLICY IN PALESTINE’. It comes in the tradition of what journalists call ‘We tell the Czar’ editorialising. Such editorials might appropriately come from the London Times or Manchester Guardian, but hardly from 17,000 kilometres away. Finally, the editorials are remarkable for their lack of the word ‘Palestinian’ (except in the term ‘Palestinian Jew’). In the face of a bitter land dispute about increasing Jewish settlement of Palestinian land, the SMH fails to see an entire people. It excoriates the Jews – not for their violence against the Palestinians – but for their treatment of the British.

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Terms of the Chosen Sample In this chapter, 409 articles that mention the word ‘Palestine’ over the period February 1947– December 1948 will be examined. This is nearly four times the number of articles (112) examined in World War I. The articles were not randomly sampled. Twelve months of that 23-month period were examined: February, October, November and December of 1947 and January, February, March, April, May, October, November and December of 1948. The rationale behind this selection of months was as follows: .

.

.

.

February 1947 was the month when the British Cabinet finally decided that it would hand back its mandated territory of Palestine to the UN. October and November 1947 provided the lead-up reporting and commentary to the decision of the UN to partition Palestine into selfgoverning territories for the Jews and the Palestinians. December 1947– May 1948 represents the entire period of the struggle within the Palestine Mandate between the indigenous Palestinians and the Jewish Agency forces for military dominance. This applied to territory both within UN-denoted boundaries and outside them. It was also the period of the first major refugee crisis. In the end, the struggle was won by the Jewish Agency and Israel was declared as a nation on 15 May. October– December 1948 provided a newspaper ‘picture’ of the final months of fighting between the new State of Israel and the Arab forces of Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt, with both sides accepting by then that Israel had defeated its enemies. (The CIA reported that even by July Arab leaders knew ‘they faced a hopeless military situation in Israel’).7

In general, this period covers three months before the partition of Palestine, the six months of hostilities prior to partition in May 1948 and three months after partition at the end of 1948. It provides much more than a sample of newspaper articles in methodological terms, constituting not only 50 per cent of the available months but scrutiny of the most intensive political discussions (1947), the most fierce fighting involving indigenous Palestinians and the ‘calm’ period of 1948 when

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Israel’s existence as a state was almost beyond question. With such a ‘sample’, it provides more than enough evidence to analyse the standard and meanings of reportage in the SMH. The 409 articles examined for content analysis were carried out using the same set of keywords as for Chapter 1 (World War I) (see Table 1.2). They are grouped around notions of people, place and religion. In addition, a separate count has been taken of certain keywords appropriate to war (‘violence’, ‘terror’ and others). However, there is an important difference in the context in which the keywords are used in everyday life. Whereas in both World War I and II, Australian reporters (as war correspondents) had a clear sense of which side they were on, in this conflict no such moral values were assumed, leaving reporters to abide by their professional code of ethics (more on this later). How these keywords operate will be discussed below. In this chapter, they form the backbone of the analysis of the statistics of usage. Nevertheless, even as statistics, they give answers to the questions: How are the people described? How is the land described? What factor does religion play? Who is and who is not labelled as ‘violent’ or its equivalent? Is the war given a rationale?

The ‘New’ SMH of 1947 –8 Before proceeding to the results of the content analysis, it is important to understand the major changes that had occurred in this Sydney newspaper since World War I as the reporting environment was vastly different. The paper now had its first foreign bureau (opened in London in 1923), a sister paper in Canberra (The Canberra Times, begun in 1926), its own stylish new Fairfax building in Sydney’s downtown Hunter Street (opened 1929), a women’s supplement (1933), subscription to a new domestic news agency (Australian Associated Press (AAP) in 1935), a second bureau in New York (1940), a new page size (a reduced broadsheet in 1941), a new Times Roman typeface (1945) and a new Herald Flying Service to deliver its papers first to regional centres (1947).8 One of the SMH’s foremost feature writers and the company’s corporate historian, Gavin Souter, recalls his impressions of the physical

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setting of the paper when he joined it as a cadet reporter from Queensland in 1947: In those days the offices were in Hunter Street in the city. It was a reasonably new building, built by the Fairfax family in the 1920s. It was pleasant to work in, marble stairway and all that, and a restaurant and cafeteria on the top floor for staff and guests. The presses were underneath the building and when they were rolling you could hear and feel the roar.9 But apart from the wealth of the Fairfax family, its new corporate arms in London and New York and its new typeface, three other factors were of much greater significance to the paper’s style of reporting. These were: its redesign; the sourcing of news from cable agencies AAP and Reuters; and the dominance of the paper’s news editor, Angus McLachlan.

Redesign of the SMH On Saturday, 15 April 1944, for the first time, the SMH put news on the front page of the paper. It was a revolutionary decision, made in the height of the war in the Pacific. While in Europe, Germany was on the retreat (D-Day was in June 1944), in the Pacific, Australian troops were still fighting the Japanese in Papua New Guinea, Bougainville and the Philippines.10 The change would usher in an era of head-to-head competition in Australia’s most competitive market.11 In a wider sense, it was also the end of a patrician attitude to the market. Says media historian Robin Walker: The Herald was the last Sydney daily newspaper to adopt frontpage news (previously the front page only had a news summary), for it prided itself on being a journal of record taken by regular subscribers rather than a paper that sought casual sales by means of arresting headlines.12 The change was dramatic. Instead of a wall of print, readers were greeted on the front page with larger, more readable layouts, taller headlines and sub-headlines, opening paragraphs in a larger typeface, a mix of news (city, state, national and foreign), a gossip column (column 8), a weather ‘box’ and even an occasional sports story. More importantly, photographs

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were featured on the front page. In addition, the news continued on the following pages. ‘News’ had moved to the ‘front of the book’. Only page 2 was reserved for opinion: the editorial, letters and ‘oped’ (commentary) articles. By September, several cartoonists were added to the armoury. By 1947, they were in full flight against the Chifley government. The overall effect was to remake ‘Granny Herald’ (its popular nickname) into an attractive and sprightly young woman. It also ushered in a circulation war that would last throughout the 1940s, and the traditional method of gaining circulation was more and more colourful writing. Says another media historian, former journalist Clem Lloyd: ‘Many of the excesses of Sydney newspaper practice in particular originated during this period.’13 This is an important factor in understanding the cast of coverage given to a ‘foreign’ story like Palestine. Whereas the SMH’s policy line, officially expressed in its editorials, was to worry about world affairs, its news reporters were now expected to write in a competitive style that would ‘grab’ readers. It meant finding the story first, writing attractive introductory paragraphs (no more than 25 words) and telling a good tale. The SMH might still be a broadsheet, but its writing was under pressure to beat the competition. The change was also driven by a fierce Darwinian struggle to survive against its major rival, the DT. A table of the two newspapers’ circulations in Souter’s history shows the tabloid DT inching up in circulation ever closer to the SMH precisely around 1944.14 Prior to World War II, the SMH’s circulation had been 234,000, some 27,000 more than the DT. After the war, in 1945, the margin was just 5,000. By early 1947, when this content analysis study begins, the DT had overtaken the SMH and was leading by a massive 26,000. As Gavin Souter, Fairfax historian remarks: Here indeed was a serious challenge to a paper which, despite some innovations, was still deeply set in its ways [. . .] Although the Herald building was modern in appearance, many of its editorial inhabitants were undeniably Dickensian in both appearance and professional behavior.15 The SMH’s early response to the DT threat in the 1930s was immediate. It raided the Melbourne Herald, run by the Murdoch family, and stole

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83

two of its best reporters, New Zealander Tahu Hole and Angus McLachlan. Both joined the SMH in 1936. Ten years later, McLachlan’s influence on the SMH’s coverage of Palestine would be profound. In the exact year in which the SMH was, for the first time, surpassed in circulation by the ‘new’ DT after a ten-year struggle, it would be Angus McLachlan who would lead the fightback. And one of the dominant issues of that year, 1947, would be Palestine.

The SMH, AAP and the House of Reuters Unlike the World War I period, the overwhelming number of SMH reports in this content analysis come from news agencies. The main source given for these reports is stated as Australian Associated Press (AAP), a non-profit cooperative company formed in June 1935 by most of the major news organisations in Australia. According to AAP’s current website, ‘[AAP] was first established so the country’s metropolitan newspapers could share the high expense of bringing international news into the country’.16 However, in the 1940s there were significant differences of opinion among Australian proprietors about the balance of sources AAP was to use. AAP had opened a London office and was almost totally reliant, under a contract agreement, on the British Reuters news agency as a source. In New York, the SMH had also opened an office and was using Associated Press for American news. Sir Keith Murdoch, Rupert’s father, was keen on the US arrangement, whereas Fairfax was pro-British. Media historian Peter Putnis says: In a 1942 report on Australia to Head Office, Reuters’ representative William Haley noted that he had found a likeminded ally in the influential editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, Rupert Henderson. Haley stated: ‘He has, far more than Sir Keith Murdoch, a genuine apprehension of American influence after the War. He is determined to combat it, and he feels a Reuter service, providing it is as good as that of its American rivals, is essential to the Australian press.’17 In that reported conversation, Sir Keith Murdoch was speaking as the original chairman of AAP from the 1930s. By 1946, he had another idea. In a meeting in London with two Reuters directors, he raised the

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REPRESENTING PALESTINE

possibility of AAP buying a share of Reuters. The Reuters directors were enthusiastic. So was Rupert Henderson back in Sydney and by December 1946 a new Reuters Trust was formed with part Australian and New Zealand shareholding. Henderson became chairman of AAP and Australia’s director on Reuters. The new financial arrangement gave the SMH full access to Reuters correspondents all over the world.18 Throughout 1947 and 1948 (the first two years of the new arrangement with the huge Reuters staff list), it is impossible to tell the form of the cable usage. However, from the body of the reports labelled ‘London (AAP)’, but reporting events in Palestine, they could be: .

.

. .

a single AAP reporter in London ‘re-badging’ the report with an ‘AAP’ tag but leaving the original correspondents’ writing largely untouched; a single AAP reporter in London taking a Reuters correspondent’s work and re-writing it for an Australian audience, using no other sources; a single AAP reporter freely using Reuters cabled reports as a ‘base’ for a report that had other elements from other unnamed sources; or a Reuters foreign correspondent in Palestine whose work was totally untouched, but remained unattributed.

Certainly, there is frequent reference within the 418 reports examined for this study to what Reuters correspondents in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Palestine believed to be happening. In many reports, there are also quotations from other journalists in Palestine, including US, British, Scottish and Canadian ones. But one thing is clear. The new arrangement with Reuters had given the SMH the opportunity to have more reports available to it for cabling back to its readers in Australia. And, at times, of course, they are complemented by the by-lines ‘Staff Correspondent’ and ‘Special Correspondent’.

The dominance of Angus McLachlan In the power structure of the SMH in February 1947, when this study begins, one man was at the height of his powers. It was the reporter from ten years ago stolen from the Murdoch stable, Angus McLachlan. During

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85

this period 1947– 8, McLachlan was news editor of the SMH. In newspaper terms, the term signified the role that set not only the crucial daily agenda of the paper but also its style, timeliness, design and ‘punch’. While the editor might sit atop the paper and the chief of staff might ensure all the stories come back in time, it was the news editor who was held responsible for editorial standards. When I asked Souter in an interview to name who was the most powerful figure in the office in terms of running the news agenda of the SMH at that time, he replied: Undoubtedly, Angus McLachlan. He had been the news editor since 1937 and would be until 1949 before he rose even higher in the management hierarchy. He performed all editorial functions, even though Hugh McClure-Smith was nominally editor. McClure Smith was responsible only for the leader [editorial] columns. He had a small team attached to him to help him with the editorials. Rupert Henderson – the General Manager – hired McLachlan and trusted him to run editorial matters.’19 Indeed, McLachlan’s force of personality and competitive nature had, over a decade, reduced the editor’s role considerably, enhancing his own into almost total control. In 1947, he was 39 years of age. He would appear often in the newsroom, full of energy and with new ideas and ‘angles’ that might make the writing of news sharper and better. His desire to be ‘first with the news’ was legendary, even years after he took the news editor position. One anecdote concerned McLachlan’s demand to the SMH’s Canberra correspondent to ring him at home, whatever the hour, if a major story broke. Ross Gollan rang from Canberra late one night and woke McLachlan to tell him of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. McLachlan leapt out of bed, but instead of ringing the news desk at the SMH to see if anyone was still there, he rang the DT. When he found no one there, he relaxed and drove into the office to organise the next day’s coverage.20 With his intimate role in the shift to page 1 news, his awareness of the opposition DT beating him in the circulation battle, his new tools of Reuters and AAP at his disposal but his troops on the ground industrially restive, McLachlan was the man to whom all looked, both from above and below, to steer the ship in its news coverage.

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REPRESENTING PALESTINE

Reporting Palestine and Israel, 1947 –8 Visibility of terms Table 3.1 sets out the number of days in various months, or group of months, that the SMH had at least one news story about Palestine. The ‘news story’ could be from any location or by cable or local reporter. It excludes editorials. This means news articles were published mentioning the word Palestine (or Israel after 15 May 1948) on 228 of the possible 312 days (taking into account there was no Sunday paper). From these statistics, it is clear that the most regular coverage came in the months of February 1947 and then the period of the civil war in Palestine, December 1947– May 1948, where the coverage was, on average at least one story per day. October and November 1947, the lead-up months to the UN decision to partition Palestine on 29 November 1947, show approximately a mention of Palestine every third day. By the three-month period of October– December 1948, mention of Palestine (or Israel) was reduced to once every second day. This highlights the special importance given by the SMH to the period between December 1947 and May 1948 in its reporting agenda. Table 3.2 shows the number of news stories on Palestine examined within each of the selected months. While Table 3.1 covers ‘at least one mention of Palestine’, Table 3.2 counts the number of news reports within each of the monthly periods. This means that on the 228 days in the period chosen for study, 348 news articles reporting Palestine were published in the SMH. Once again, the heaviest coverage was during the war within Palestine between December 1947 and the creation of the State of Israel in May 1948. The highlight of this analysis is the two-month period, April and May 1948. More than a third of all news stories on Palestine were covered in this period. Table 3.1 1947 –8.

Number of days on which SMH has a news story on Palestine,

MONTHS Feb Oct –Nov Dec–Jan Feb– Mar Apr–May Oct –Dec YEAR 1947 1947 1947 –8 1948 1948 1948 DAYS

20

17

47

45

52

47

WORDS FOR WAR Table 3.2 1947 –8.

AND PARTITION

87

Number of SMH news articles on Palestine, selected months

MONTH(S) Feb Oct – Nov Dec –Jan Feb –Mar Apr –May Oct –Dec YEAR 1947 1947 1947 –8 1948 1948 1948 STORIES

27

25

64

56

122

54

It further focuses attention not just on the ‘civil war’ period, but also on the last two months of it: April and May. The reasons for this will be examined in later chapters. Table 3.3 examines not just the news stories, but also the various traditional categories of the newspaper industry in describing the content of a daily product. This table follows the same categories used in Table 1.1 for World War I coverage, except for the loss of the ‘war notes’ category, which was not used in the SMH during this conflict. Every other category is the same. Importantly, in one instance, ‘cable’ has been expanded to include a new category ‘news/cable’, which reflects the SMH correspondent’s recent access to the new AAP and Reuters cables. The 348 news stories are divided into the following genres: Table 3.3

Genre of SMH stories/articles mentioning Palestine, 1947 –8.

Oct – MONTH(S) Feb Nov YEAR 1947 1947

Dec – Jan 1947–8

Feb– Apr – Oct – Mar May Dec 1948 1948 1948 TOTALS

GENRE cable news news/cable news feature editorials letters illustrations opinion

22 2 3 1 4 0 0 0

21 4 0 0 2 1 0 0

40 11 13 4 4 3 2 1

27 7 22 1 6 0 0 0

20 46 56 6 10 4 3 1

41 2 11 1 4 1 0 2

171 72 105 13 30 9 5 4

TOTALS

32

28

78

63

146

62

409

88 .

.

.

REPRESENTING PALESTINE

Cables, where the content simply appears from the cable agency’s reporter and has no by-line in the SMH, but an opening dateline (e.g., ‘LONDON, Feb. 29 (AAP)’). News, where the content appears simply from a SMH reporter and has a by-line in the SMH, usually ‘From Our Staff Correspondent’, and a dateline with no agency attached (e.g., ‘NEW YORK, March 16’). News/Cable, where the content appears to be a mix of the work of the SMH reporter and agency ‘copy’. In this form the ‘text’ has a byline, usually ‘From Our Staff Correspondent and AAP’ and a simple dateline, such as ‘NEW YORK, March 17’.

The other categories in Table 3.3 remain the same as in Table 1.1. The total number of articles or texts mentioning Palestine is 409, distributed by ‘genre’. Once again, the importance of the period April and May 1948 can be seen, when the SMH’s coverage was most voluminous: more than a third of all coverage (36 per cent), not just news stories, was in these two months alone. However, the big change from World War I was the decline of the role of the SMH ‘war correspondent’ and the major role now played by agency product. The cable-only category occupies 49 per cent of the source of the 348 news stories. The next biggest category within news reporting is news/cable (30 per cent) and the smallest is news (21 per cent). In these figures, there is a glimmer of hope for SMH journalists. In the period clearly regarded as crucial to the SMH (April and May), the newspaper’s own journalists seem to have come into their own: the 46 stories reported during this time form 38 per cent of the total, whereas cable-only represents 16 per cent. Of course, the news/cable category also involved SMH journalists. It is difficult to know more than 50 years later how much of the ‘copy’ of the agencies was incorporated into the London and New York correspondents’ own reports back to Sydney. However, certainly, if one adds the two categories together (news and news/cable) as being SMH-written ‘text’, then the overall proportion in this sample jumps to 51 per cent. In the April– May 1948 period, it would jump to 84 per cent.

WORDS FOR WAR Table 3.4

AND PARTITION

89

Page and placement of SMH articles on Palestine, 1947 –8.

MONTHS YEAR PROMINENCE Page 1 lead Page 1 other Page 3 lead Page 3 other Other pages

Oct – Feb Nov 1947 1947 2 4 6 12 3

1 3 4 14 0

Dec– Jan 1947 –8

Feb – Mar 1948

Apr – May 1948

4 14 7 28 6

2 12 16 21 1

24 55 9 24 16

Oct – Dec 1948 TOTAL 1 19 3 30 3

34 107 45 129 29

In reverse, though, one could also say that cables played a big part in the SMH’s output on Palestine throughout 1947 and 1948. If one adds the cable-only and the news/cable categories together, it means that AAP and/or Reuters cables made a contribution to 79 per cent of all news stories over the two years. And in the period April – May 1948, that percentage reduces only to 62 per cent. Table 3.3 also shows, however, that the SMH as a whole only got serious about coverage of Palestine in the last two months before Israel was created. Its reports from its own journalists jumped by a factor of five (7 to 46), its News Features hit their highest in the entire two-year period of the study, and it delivered no less than ten editorials in those two months. Table 3.4 follows further down the path of considering the ‘value’ that the SMH gave to the dispute in the Middle East. ‘News values’ is a highly studied and contested term, but in newsrooms it is thought to be something of a learned, and then instinctive, quality that good news editors possess. A way of testing the priority given by the SMH editorial management group in Sydney (general manager, editor, news editor) to the Palestine dispute is how the story fared within the layout of what was colloquially termed ‘the book’ (that day’s newspaper). It should be added that foreign news, for instance, had a higher front-page priority in the 1940s than it does today. ‘Importance’ rather than circulation still seemed to count more to the SMH, despite the recent format changes of 1944. Or it could be that the SMH judged then that its readers wanted more foreign news than it does today.

Table 3.5

Breakdown of content keywords used on SMH by monthly periods, 1947 – 8.

PERIOD PEOPLE Palestnians Arabs in heading in sub/heading Jews in heading in sub/heading other Palestinian Arabs Zionists Israelis PLACE Palestine Israel Holy Land þ Judaea-Samaria Middle East RELIGION Muslim Christian ATTITUDE Violent Terror (J) Massacre (J) Immigration/refugee Oil Chaos

Feb 1947 1 1H* 68 3 3 188 8 5

Oct –Nov 1947

Dec 1947– Jan 1948

Feb–Mar 1948

3

3

88 2 5 81 4 3JA** 2 12

453 16 17 404 18 24 24JA 8 10

4 1H 211 6 9 13 7 10 28JA 5 7

294

143

286

228

4 0 5

4 0 7

8 7 13

0 0

3 0

0 71 0 13 3 0

0 12 0 17 2 0

3 13

*H indicates a headline **JA refers to the Jewish Agency

Apr–May 1948

Oct –Dec 1948

9

1

486 13 29 736 34 20 36JA 10 46 1

145 9 2 184 8 6

12 4 12

602 66 36 4 27

196 62 0 3 5

17? 4

1 5

17 18

0 1

12? 4 0 16 11 1

4 16 0 10 19 3

0 42 12 10 (14 Apr) 6 2

0 4 78

0 13 1 0 0 0

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AND PARTITION

91

So in a time when India was breaking up (and Gandhi was assassinated), Princess Elizabeth of Britain toured Australia, Prime Minister Chifley launched Australia’s first Holden car, the Cold War was cranking up in Europe and Don Bradman led the Invincibles Test cricket team on their last tour of England, what prominence did Palestine have for the SMH? In newspaper terms, ‘prominence’ can be loosely defined as: . . . .

the page a story/article/text is placed on (page 1 being the best); whether the story ‘leads’ the page; whether it is accompanied by lengthy and large headlines; and whether it is adorned with photos, maps and illustrations.

In the SMH of 1947–8, photos tended to be separated from the text as special features of their own, although maps were attached to articles as illustrations. The first two of these variables are the primary indicators of news priority: page and position. In taking not only the straight news items, but also the items termed ‘news features’ in Table 3.3, the 344 articles in Table 3.4 were examined for how they were placed by page and by month. Many of the news features are listed under ‘other’ as they were placed on page 2 near the day’s editorial. Several factors are highlighted in Table 3.4. First, is the importance of the months of April and May 1948. It was in those two months that the SMH dramatically shifted its news priorities, not just in terms of numbers of news stories published (see Tables 3.2 and 3.3), but where they were placed in the newspaper. In general, the SMH shifted from a predominance of coverage on page 3 to page 1. For many weeks of April and May, Palestine is page 1 news every day. And in the four weeks from mid-April to mid-May, any Palestine stories are almost always the frontpage lead, attended by large-type headlines and several columns of print. The last weeks of the drama of the partition of Palestine were played out for all Sydneysiders to see. In these weeks, it pushed all other local, national and foreign stories aside. Second, it is important to notice that the take-up of Palestine stories as page 3 leads was also substantial in the months of December– January and February– March. Putting aside the page 1 leads and the page 1 stories during these four months, Palestine figures as page 3 leads about

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REPRESENTING PALESTINE

once a week during December and January. This then almost doubles during February and March 1948 to nearly twice a week. The mounting crisis in Palestine in 1948 (more of this in later chapters) is reflected in the news ‘structure’. Third, two contrasting periods – February 1947 and October – December 1948 – should be noted. They represent the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of the main struggle. As noted earlier, the SMH expressed its corporate view about Palestine in editorials during February 1947. In retrospect, this seems to signal that the newspaper would take the issue seriously in the future. While 27 articles seems small in comparison with later months, Table 3.4 shows that the SMH placed the stories with an eye to prominence. One-third of its stories on Palestine were page leads – whether on page 1 or 3 – a higher proportion than for any other month. By October, November and December 1948, it is clear that the SMH decided that the Arab armies of the Middle East had failed to dislodge the Israeli army and the war was over. While there was still a supply of stories – less than one a day, two-thirds of them on page 3 (and most short) – very few become leads; in fact, only four in the three months. Palestine (and Israel) was off the agenda. Table 3.5 comes to the nub of the question about content. What might be termed the ‘structural’ patterns of coverage outlined in Tables 3.1 to 3.4 – about days of coverage, overall numbers of stories, mode of coverage and prominence of coverage – depended on the single word ‘Palestine’ (or ‘Israel’) as the variable to indicate inclusion as a text. Table 3.5 takes the same set of keywords applied to the World War I sample and applies them to the 12 months sampled over the period of 1947 and 1948. There are 19 keywords. They are placed under these headings: . . . .

PEOPLE: names describing the two major combatants; PLACE: names describing the land on which the struggle was being fought; RELIGION: names describing the Palestinians by religious belief (‘Jew’/’Jewish’ is listed in the combatant category); and ATTITUDE: names commonly describing aspects of the struggle.

WORDS FOR WAR

AND PARTITION

93

Table 3.5 provides a statistical profile of how the SMH editorial output ‘saw’ the conflict in Palestine. In terms of who was fighting the war, there are no ‘Palestinians’, only ‘Arabs’. Only 21 times does the SMH refer to Palestinians as the combatants fighting for their own land. Some of those mentions are in editorials – such as ‘Palestinian Impasse’ (27 February 1947, p. 2) – so there appears to be no doubt as to who the locals were. There is also a scattering of ‘Palestinian Arab’, largely during April and May 1948, but not sufficient to break the pattern. Once again, as in World War I, Palestine was not being fought for by Palestinians but by the generic ‘Arabs’. Overwhelmingly, the dominant narrative is that this war was fought between ‘Arabs’ (1,451 mentions in all) and ‘Jews’ (1,806). The more than 350 extra mentions of ‘Jews’ is a significant number. It is statistically explained by two of the monthly periods: February 1947 (188 ‘Jews’ to 68 ‘Arabs’) and April –May 1948 (736 ‘Jews’ to 486 ‘Arabs’). The periods are significant – the first being when Britain decided to hand back its Mandate and the second being at the height of the internal conflict between the Palestinians and the Jews. It suggests, both overall but especially in those two periods, a concentration by the SMH on Jewish activity in the conflict. A small sub-theme emerges from the data in how the combatants were described. The use of the word ‘Zionist’ to describe the Jewish Agency forces was a small, though constant, practice. In April –May 1948, it rises, as does almost every keyword category. In terms of how people are described in that month, the 46 mentions of ‘Zionist’ constituted four per cent of mentions in that two-month period. Along with the mentions of ‘Jewish’, the two together constitute 61 per cent of the mentions. Palestinians (nine mentions) and Arabs (486) occupy the other 39 per cent. Where does the SMH place the war? There is no bifurcated set of narratives here. Overwhelmingly, ‘Palestine’ is the name of the land. This is so in 85 per cent of all mentions of the land. Even six months after Israel was created, the SMH was still naming the land ‘Palestine’ in 196 cases over ‘Israel’ in 62 cases. The practice of giving the land its biblical names of ‘Judea’ or ‘Samaria’ occurs in only 18 cases over the 12 months. The major sub-theme to ‘Palestine’ as a place name was ‘Holy Land’/‘Holy Places’/

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REPRESENTING PALESTINE

‘Holy City’ (Jerusalem). This also occurs as a small, though constant, practice. Finally, religion. Largely, the SMH avoided religion as a major factor in the war – with the significant exception of the Jewish biblical theme of ‘return’ to a long-lost land. The word ‘Muslim’ makes an appearance in December–January, mainly based on fears of what the SMH termed ‘holy war’. The same occurred again as fears of the external Arab army attacks rose in May 1948. ‘Christian’ is used only in association with defending ‘the Holy Land’, and especially Jerusalem, from pillage. Unlike in World War I, there is no sense of a Christian ‘crusade’. Mention should be made of the ‘attitude’ data. In large part, there are too few statistics to see them as significant. However, ‘violence’ in various forms, when put together (‘violent’/’terror’/’massacre’) does constitute a sub-theme. In almost all cases, it referred to Jewish violence, terror and massacres. And it rises to its own crescendos in two instances seen previously: in February 1947 and April– May 1948. The SMH’s reporting links the violence/terrorism directly and explicitly with Jewish actions in both periods.

The bulge of April– May 1948 The keyword tables above track the number of times various words were used and in which month or bundle of months. But at the same time, the articles, or ‘stories’, in which they appeared were listed by date, page, source and mode. Location on the page was registered when on page 1 or 3, the main daily news pages. In one sense, the first tracking – keywords and their usage – seems to pertain to ‘meaning’ and the second tracking – newspaper categories – seems to pertain to details of layout and production. But I would maintain that both have symbolic value and pertain to meaning. The value that is given to some stories over others – and all the devices editors and sub-editors used to enhance or detract from that value – communicates to the readers the importance (or lack of it) which the newspaper not only gives to the individual story, but also to the intellectual content of the subject it is reporting. In the case of the SMH in 1947 and 1948, many of the stories came by cable, whether from the agencies or the reporters using cables in London, New York or Jerusalem. But the cable copy that chatted out on the telex

WORDS FOR WAR

AND PARTITION

95

machine, in a special corner of the SMH’s Hunter Street editorial floor in Sydney, was merely raw material for the editorial team, who would then ‘mark it up’ ready to go to the compositors down on the printing floor. That ‘marking’ involved many judgements about the keywords used in the initial ‘copy’ of the reporter. But it also involved many more judgements, not just about the individual ‘copy’ or ‘text’ but about the story’s place in the overall line of production – what the early media studies literature called ‘gatekeeper’ decision making21 – about page, length, language, typeface size and boldness, photos, captions, by-lines, graphics, headlines and sub-headlines, maps and street posters. Each stage of this production process affected the ‘meaning’ of the story – meanings understood differently by the reporter, the production team and the reader. It is therefore of great importance to this study that Tables 3.1 to 3.3 focus attention on the months of April and May 1948. This might seem obvious at first; 15 May was the date that slowly became the set date for Britain’s physical exit from Palestine. The departure date at first had been set in August but was then moved forward. The Jewish Agency was at great pains to ensure that 15 May would also be the date on which it would declare the new State of Israel – even though the fighting on the ground continued throughout May, especially in Jerusalem. But it might not have been so. Neither Britain’s departure nor the Jewish Agency’s victory were assured in the earlier months of 1948. In March of 1948, the violence in Palestine was so intense and shocking that world opinion swung away from partition as a practical solution to the Palestine problem. The US Administration was part of the swing, even including Truman. The UN Security Council was to hear a resolution from the USA suggesting a different path; however, the intended reversal came under diplomatic pressure, not just from the Jewish lobby but also from some of the original supporters of partition. Australia’s Foreign Minister, H.V. Evatt, was among others strongly urging the US and the UN to hold the line in favour of the original decision. Therefore, in terms of news values, it would have made sense for the SMH to have lifted both the volume and intensity of its coverage earlier than April 1948, particularly out of New York where much of the rethinking was occurring.

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REPRESENTING PALESTINE

Another important factor counted, too. We now know, thanks to the research work of the Israeli ‘new historians’ in the Israeli archives of the 1980s and 1990s, that Plan Dalet envisaged ethnically cleansing not just the seaports of Haifa and Jaffa, but also the mountain villages of the Galilee in the north, the coastal villages between Haifa and Tel Aviv/ Jaffa, the villages along the hills between the coast and Jerusalem and the villages of the Negev Desert to the south. Reporting the process of village-by-village assaults, driving out the Palestinian villagers and the occupation of the houses by Jewish immigrants required a commitment by the SMH to get out of the big cities during the months of December 1947 and January– May 1948. This ‘cleansing’ did not just happen over April – May, it also occurred over the preceding four months. But it is not reflected in the number of stories during January – March 1948. However, it is certainly the case that the most intense period of the internal war between the Jewish Agency forces and the Palestinians occurred during April and May. The 46 articles penned by the SMH’s own reporters in April and May – overturning the previous reliance on the cable agencies – reflects the SMH ‘catching up’ with the loss of Palestine. In early May, it decides to send its own reporter from Sydney. The Fairfax Archives reveal only one SMH reporter leaving Australia for Palestine during these months. The letter is quoted below. It is dated 6 May 1948 – nine days before David Ben-Gurion declared the State of Israel – and makes a virtue of necessity by hoping to cover post-British Palestine. Letter to Consul-General for Lebanon, MOSMAN. Dear Sir, We confirm that Mr J.H.K. Flower has been appointed to act as the representative of ‘The Sydney Morning Herald’ for the purpose of covering the events subsequent to handing over of the British mandate in Palestine [. . .] Yours faithfully, JOHN FAIRFAX AND SONS PTY LIMITED Secretary.22

WORDS FOR WAR

AND PARTITION

97

The absence of ‘the Palestinians’ Of the 3,477 references to the people residing in the land of Palestine, on only 21 occasions were they named ‘Palestinians’ in the 12 months of coverage by the SMH in this study. This is a remarkably small number. While it may have been true that Palestinian nationalism (in the Western sense) was in its infancy in World War I – Palestine was struggling to emerge from rule by the Ottoman Empire from Istanbul – there is no doubt that it was a fully formed movement by 1947.23 It had its own leaders, its own clubs, its own (underground) fighting force, its own intellectuals and its own newspapers. Ironically, the British ‘liberation’ of Palestine from the Turks by 1918, and its promise to the Jews to settle the land in the 1920s and 1930s, had provoked a more violent nationalism that erupted in the riots of the late 1930s. The context is also important. By the late 1940s, new nation states had recently been created by the colonial powers Britain and France on the boundaries of Palestine: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt. It is impossible to believe that reporters could have missed the Palestinian desire for freedom and independence in their own land. Culturally, too, Palestinians were clearly not part of an undifferentiated ‘Arab’ presence in the Middle East. Divided from Egypt by the huge Sinai desert, from the newly created ‘Transjordan’ by the Jordan River and the desert beyond it, from Syria by the high Golan plateau in the north-east corner and from Lebanon’s Shi-ite Muslims and Maronite Christians by the Litani River, they were proudly both Palestinian and Arab. As Australian troops and correspondents knew from both world wars, Palestine was a small oasis between the river and the sea defined mostly by its mountains, coast, agriculture, food and religious heritage. It was populated by people who knew who they were – ‘filastini’, Palestinians. For outsiders to call them ‘Arabs’ was equivalent to Indonesians invading Australia and calling the residents ‘Anglos’. Palestinians were a nation-inwaiting. Reporters could have travelled in an hour to Jaffa to talk to Isa al-Isa, the editor of Palestine’s main daily, Filastin, about Palestinian aspirations. Reporters often take their cue from their own newspaper about nomenclature. Interestingly, of the 21 times the residents of Palestine

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were called Palestinian, five of them were in SMH editorials. A reporter in 1947 looking at ‘the clippings’ from the Fairfax Library on ‘Palestine’ prior to assignment would have not only found the previously mentioned ‘Palestinian Impasse’ from February 1947, but also the editorial of November 27 that stated: ‘For despite Britain’s unequivocal announcement that she will take no part in implementing a plan opposed by the majority of Palestinians.’24 And later in the leader: ‘Not only the Palestinian Arabs, who outnumber the Jews there by two to one’. On 20 February 1948, the SMH headlined its latest editorial on Palestine the ‘Palestinian Dilemma’, as it called for ‘a complete reconsideration of the Palestine problem by the United Nations’.25 On 5 March, the SMH satirised the UN Palestine Commission holed up in Jerusalem trying to broker peace ‘cordoned by barbed wire and Palestinian guards’. Even by 28 May, the newspaper was fighting the notion of partition, refusing to recognise what it termed in inverted commas ‘Israel’, and suggested a rethink: It is a pity therefore that the call for a suspension of hostilities was not associated with a declaration that the whole Palestinian question would be reopened.26 [author’s emphasis] It is clear that there was certainly no bias from the SMH editorial management against the use of the term ‘Palestinian’. The editor, McClure-Smith, was using it himself. And, as we shall see in Chapter 6, with some sympathy. So why did reporters not use the term in their own SMH reportage, rather than the somewhat inaccurate ‘Arabs’? There are several possible explanations. One is that many Palestinians then, as now, may have referred to themselves in short-hand as ‘Arabs’ or ‘Palestinian Arabs’.27 To the Palestinians, this hardly denied them their nationhood, but it did identify themselves as part of the wider Arab peoples, and, sometimes, part of the wider Muslim umma (community). While Palestinian nationalism was real and contemporary, Arab culture also had a long tradition dating back to Roman and Byzantine days of being one people. It was then, and is expressed today, in such institutions as ‘the Arab League’.

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A second reason is that it could well have been an easy ethnic description of the faces of the people the reporters saw from the windows and verandahs of their offices in Jerusalem. It may well have been their own lack of knowledge of distinguishing one Arab – Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian, Palestinian – from another. All looked similar, spoke the same language (Arabic), wore similar clothes and, often, prayed to the same God, Allah. Jews were defined more by their religion, their language (Yiddish or Hebrew), tended to wear more Western clothes and more of them spoke English. In basic terms, it was easier to describe these two ‘Semitic’ peoples as fighting over the same piece of historic turf. Such nuances as differing Arabic accents, differing Jewish geographic origins (Ashkenazi v. Sephardic), and differing class backgrounds may have escaped correspondents, especially if they were working from cables in London or New York, let alone Jerusalem. Finally, there was a more professional factor. There is no indication in the SMH records or histories that, apart from World War II, any Fairfax bureaux were maintained in the Middle East prior to 1948. It is therefore highly unlikely that any visiting correspondent had time to learn the language of Arabic. In any case, as we have seen, ‘Jack’ Flower arrived too late to see much of the action. He almost certainly knew no Arabic. It is quite possible that the SMH’s New York chief correspondent – A.D. (‘Abe’) Rothman – knew Hebrew as a New York Jewish journalist who fully supported Israel as a Zionist state.28 But in terms of SMH correspondents on the ground in Palestine, none appears to have known the language of the Palestinians. In this situation, they would have relied on their correspondent colleagues and other English-speakers and English-language radio and newspapers. The only English-language newspaper in Palestine was The Palestine Post. The ‘Post’ was widely regarded as pro-Zionist. Says Giora Goodman in her study of the Jewish Agency’s effective public relations campaign in Palestine and the USA in this period: With dozens of correspondents spread around the country, the Hebrew press was a large source of news items for foreign journalists, mostly residing in Jerusalem, who also employed many Jewish press correspondents as stringers [. . .] Of greater value was the Palestine Post. Its offices in Jerusalem were a hunting ground for many foreign correspondents. The Jewish Agency

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always emphasised the newspaper’s editorial independence, but with good reason it was regarded by all as its semi-official mouthpiece. Its highly-respected American-raised editor and managing director, Gershon Agronsky, was a regular advisor to the Jewish Agency’s political and information departments. Agronsky believed that ‘the best propaganda is produced by non-official means’, such as a newspaper.29 By July 1946, the Jewish Agency had opened its first formal Public Relations Office (JA PRO) in the Eden Hotel in Jerusalem. Its first action was handing out bulletins to foreign correspondents and maintaining contact with them. By August 1947, the JA PRO had begun daily noon press conferences. The PRO’s head was Walter Eytan, a pipe-smoking 36-year-old Oxford lecturer with a deputy and five fulltime and part-time staff. It offered foreign correspondents typing facilities, digests, a small library and press ‘cuttings’. Eytan also had an official duty to organise ‘hospitality and tourist arrangements for visiting correspondents’.30 An Austrian anti-Zionist journalist, George Maranz, complained that Eytan’s unit subverted the truth and said he was threatened with death. Back in Paris, he wrote an article in the World Free Press in 1947 that British propaganda in Palestine was limited, Arab propaganda practically non-existent and Zionist propaganda dominant.31 In addition, the Jewish Agency’s military wing, Haganah, ran its own propaganda service, the radio broadcast Voice of Israel with ten-minute daily news services in Hebrew, Arabic and English. British attempts to close it down failed.32 With the English-language Palestine Post readily available and the services of the Oxford-accented Walter Eytan at the JA PRO just across town at 5 Ben Yuhuda Street, the 30 or more foreign correspondents in Jerusalem had ready means to ‘solve’ their language problems. No such Palestinian facility existed. The end result was the overwhelming omission of the word ‘Palestinian’ in the pages of the SMH during this period. By doing so, the SMH played into the hands of those who denied the specificity of the Palestinian claim to nationhood. If Australian readers thought of them as simply ‘Arabs’, then they could decamp anywhere in the Middle East where other ‘Arabs’ existed. Refugees maybe, but not losing ‘their’ land

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and culture. The symbolic force of this absence of the word ‘Palestinian’ is very powerful.

Arabs v. Jews 1948 If the war within Palestine was seen by the SMH as a battle between the Jews and the local Arabs, the analysis of the SMH content suggests some interesting ways in which both sides were portrayed. In both the periods in which Jews are mentioned in much larger numbers than Arabs – February 1947 and April – May 1948 – they are also mentioned in association with heightened ‘terror’ and as ‘terrorists’. ‘Terror/ist’ exists as a word in the SMH 71 times in February 1947 – the highest of any period, especially considering this is only one month, not a pair. It is also the month in which Jews are mentioned 188 times compared to Arabs only 68. It is true that the SMH at various points throughout the 12 months reported on ‘Arab’ ‘terror’ and ‘terrorist’ acts, but these figures suggest the major association was with the Jews. There is also an association for the April– May period between the higher number of mentions of Jews and the appearance of the word ‘massacre’. This association will be investigated in Chapters 4, 5 and 6. In summary, this quantitative analysis has shown a variety of variables at play in the 12 months of texts of the SMH during 1947 and 1948. They are, in terms of intellectual content, as in World War I: the Palestinians were not represented as players in their own destiny; instead, the combatants were seen mainly as the Jews and secondarily as the ‘Arabs’; the Jews were associated with ‘terror’ and ‘massacres’; in terms of the newspaper’s production, the new cable arrangements with AAP and Reuters resulted in half of the paper’s content being outsourced; this left the other half to reporters on the ground, in Jerusalem, London and New York; and finally, only in April and May 1948, late in the struggle for Palestine, do the SMH’s own staff begin to make up much of the editorial priorities of the paper. These are important statistical indicators of the SMH’s coverage over an extended period. All six indicators have important implications for the structural nature of the coverage. They give a broad outline of the SMH’s view of the conflict, how it felt necessary to use its resources and when it felt it necessary to make its own intervention.

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In the following two chapters, that intervention is examined. A more nuanced analysis is conducted from a qualitative viewpoint. It concentrates on the ways in which the SMH’s own paid employees reported on the increasingly violent months of fighting (April and May 1948) and struggled to make sense for the home audience of the strands of meaning arising from the violence. Important for this study also is how the SMH editors chose to fulfil the paper’s own charter as a ‘newspaper of record’. In Chapter 4, I will examine the use of self-styled SMH ‘news’ journalists reporting from Palestine – in the first instance, the work of a Palestine-based Special Correspondent from the end of March to the end of May 1948.

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At the funeral service of Angus McLachlan, in August 1996, one of the speakers was senior journalist and corporate historian, Gavin Souter. He told two anecdotes that went to the journalistic values McLachlan held dear. The first was one of his first memories of McLachlan, then 38, as news editor: In 1947 I was sometimes rostered as police rounds cadet telephoning police stations for late night news in a glass cubicle while sub-editors were preparing copy for the next day’s paper. One night, between the first and second editions, Mascot police said that a passenger plane had just ploughed into Botany Bay on take-off. Soon after that I saw the News Editor dashing to the lift to stop reporters going home, then discussing the best means of coverage with the Chief of Staff, and a remake of Page 1 with the Chief Sub.1 McLachlan had always been a stickler for being ‘first with the news’. The other anecdote was more recent, describing the difference between the then two senior management figures at Fairfax, Rupert (‘Rags’) Henderson and Angus McLachlan: Irene Thirkell, who was successively secretary to both men from 1938, recalls Rupert Henderson once saying: ‘The only trouble with McLachlan is that he always sees two sides of a question.’

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That may have been a minus to an indubitable tycoon as Henderson, but to many who regarded McLachlan with respect and affection as one of Australia’s most distinguished and honourable media figures, it was more of a plus.2 Being first with the news but being balanced in telling the story were well-known values inculcated in cadet journalists under McLachlan in 1947. Chairman Warwick Fairfax had expressed a similar value a few years earlier when somewhat loftily explaining in 1944 why the SMH had, for once, supported Labor in the 1943 federal election. The SMH tradition, he wrote, was one of ‘impartiality’ and ‘the peculiar sense of philosophic detachment from the world with which every day they deal’.3 Even in 2013, when the SMH went to tabloid size for the first time in its history, the new editor-in-chief said: ‘The Sydney Morning Herald, since inception, has been about quality journalism. Fair and balanced coverage is why people have read us for almost two centuries.’4 Accuracy, timeliness, fairness and balance were accepted, explicit corporate values.

The Journalists’ Union New Code of Ethics It is worth noting that the journalists’ union of the mid-1940s, the Australian Journalists Association (AJA), was not as certain that the public understood the ethical standard by which journalists worked. With press proprietors Packer, Murdoch and Fairfax battling over paper costs, censorship, circulation and syndication rights – even to the point of personal abuse and physical standover tactics – journalism was getting a bad name in Sydney. The NSW branch of the AJA moved to assure their public that ‘integrity and fair play, rather than devotion to profit or through political servitude’ determined their behaviour and drew up a Code of Ethics.5 It met with fierce resistance from all three proprietors, who saw such a code as determined by journalists’ employers, not workers. The AJA adopted it nationally. For the first time, journalists were seeing themselves as separately bound to professional standards. In a case before the Full Bench of the Commonwealth Arbitration Court in 1947, the employers lost their case.

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From this date on, all members of the AJA were bound by rules, including: . . .

.

‘To report and interpret news with a scrupulous honesty’. ‘Not to suppress essential facts nor distort the truth by omission or wrong or improper emphasis’. ‘Not to allow his [sic.] personal interests to influence him in the discharge of his duties, nor to accept or offer any present, gift or other consideration, or benefit or advantage of whatsoever kind that may have the effect of so benefitting him’. ‘To use only fair and honest means to obtain news, pictures and documents.’6

In the coming decades, the Code of Ethics would be refined and rewritten to catch up with changing perspectives – including new technologies, feminism and racism, lobby pressures, corporate behaviour and conflicts of interest – and it would also become widely distributed and known among union members. But, in 1947, the key elements – especially those quoted above – were a codification of ways of acting already accepted by journalists. They were the standards by which they wished to be known to be acting.

‘Facts’ v. ‘Opinion’, ‘News’ v. ‘Features’ There was another ‘value’, underpinned by considerable philosophical baggage, which inhabited the culture of the SMH in the late 1940s. It was the clear distinction between ‘facts’ and ‘opinion’. And upon this distinction was built a power superstructure: ‘facts’ were for reporters to accurately report in their news stories and ‘opinions’ were the domain of the management and ownership of the SMH. Each day, the news editor (McLachlan), the editor (McClure-Smith) and the general manager (Henderson) would retire upstairs to the directors’ room for lunch to discuss policy. They would be joined on an occasional basis by the chairman and owner, Warwick Fairfax. The discussions would turn not just on the day’s news and how to handle it in the next day’s edition, but also on national and international affairs. Fairfax and McClure-Smith had been at Oxford together and McLachlan had studied arts and journalism at the University of

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Melbourne – although Henderson was a man from the (then) working-class Sydney suburb of Glebe, not tertiary-educated but ‘self-made’ and a former SMH cadet. Together, this group formed ‘opinion’. And, of course, ‘official’ corporate opinion in the editorials. In the middle of this reasonably clear distinction fell ‘feature writing’. Such writing could be profiles of people, countries, places or movements. Clearly, only trusted staff would be given the task of expressing opinions on these matters. Sometimes this involved SMH journalists, sometimes freelance journalists. Finally there were ‘opeds’: opinion articles expressed on the editorial page. The opinion genre was seen as controlled by the elite of the SMH, but news reporting was a sacred trust given to Fairfax-trained reporters. Opinion was to be avoided in the news genre. The young cadet journalist would be taught the news formula: ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘when’. The ‘why’ was not to be included. If the news story involved division on ‘how’ an event occurred (e.g., a traffic accident), both or several perspectives should be included. The primacy of fact over opinion in news stories reflected the dominant philosophical currents of the day. While linguistics had toyed with the notion of ‘structure’, ‘signs’ and ‘signifiers’ in the writings of the 1930s (e.g., Saussare and Heidegger), post-World War II angst was best expressed in 1940s ‘existentialism’ (Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus). Even the hero of the libertarian ‘Sydney Push’ in the 1940s – Sydney University’s Professor of Philosophy John Anderson – believed in the primacy of ‘facts’. The philosophy that was to make inroads into belief in facts and ‘objectivity’ – post-structuralism – was not to appear until a decade later, and then in Europe. The news formula was still sacred in the SMH when I became a SMH police rounds cadet in 1968 – exactly 20 years after Gavin Souter. Accuracy of facts was the most basic of lessons for ‘objective’ journalism – still taught by the SMH’s first-ever female chief of staff from the 1940s, Katherine Commins. One by-product of this strongly held belief in the 1940s, however, was a different attitude to the role of the interview in journalism. Direct quotation was a more rarely used device. This is clear from the large sample of stories on Palestine used as the textual basis for this book. It is also clear from a casual reading of the major stories in the SMH in 1948. If interviews took place, they were more often expressed descriptively,

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summarising the views of the interviewee without quotation marks. The reporter was entrusted with the task of giving an accurate and ‘factual’ account of the interviewees. Philosophically, the 1940s were also the era of the ‘great men of history’ view of history and this sample concentrates on heads of state, foreign ministers and military commanders. The era of ‘social history’ – the voice of the ‘lower classes’, innocent bystanders and ordinary people – did not emerge until the 1960s. The more standard form of ‘interview’, therefore, in the SMH in the 1940s in Palestine was a description of a view of a leader. There were honourable exceptions, but the standard of the time needs to be noted.

By-Line Policy: Names, ‘Special Correspondent’ and ‘Staff Correspondent’ It was consistent with the beliefs of SMH management that it would be reluctant to give a by-line to any individual reporter. The SMH’s desire was to be seen as a trusted institution going back to the 1840s – a ‘paper of record’. It saw itself as a lineal descendent, maybe even the Antipodean cousin, of The Times of London. Its staff were not above the institution; they were its servants. The SMH had joined in the resistance of the proprietors’ group to the AJA adoption of a Code of Ethics on these grounds. However, the rise of the Packer and Murdoch newspapers – more populist in tone and format – forced the SMH into a new era after World War II. One of the SMH’s outstanding foreign correspondents during the war had been Guy Harriott and he had cabled his masters from the Middle East and demanded to know why his compatriot journalists on the Melbourne Herald (Murdoch) and Sydney DT (Packer) had by-lines and he did not. In a report to his superiors in Sydney in 1941, news editor Angus McLachlan wrote: Our practice of anonymity [. . .] tends to obscure the fact that we have our own staff mentioned stationed abroad. Very many thousands of our readers, I am certain, fail to appreciate the full significance of the difference between an AAP acknowledgement line and an ‘Our Own Correspondent’ line. I do not suggest for one minute that we should plaster across our pages the names and

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portraits (God forbid!) of our correspondents whenever we publish despatches from them, but it does seem to me that we should occasionally publish our correspondent’s name when we have a long and important despatch from him.7 By 1942, the august SMH had descended from these lofty heights and agreed to publish the names of Harriott, three war correspondents from various theatres of war and the name of the Canberra correspondent, Ross Gollan. But again, after the war, when the work of journalists was much less hazardous, it became harder for journalists to get by-lines. The cult of celebrity journalism was still a long way off. The SMH’s compromise position in 1947–8 was two terms: ‘By a Special Correspondent’ and ‘By Our Staff Correspondent’. The term ‘Staff Correspondent’ was clear: the reporter was on the paid full-time staff of the newspaper; however, ‘Special Correspondent’ was not so clear. One person who arrived at the SMH just as it was entering the ‘by-line era’ in the 1960s – in fact, in 1960 – was Peter Allen. He was to spend 40 of his 48 years (now retired) in Fairfax as a senior journalist and then editor (of The Sun-Herald and later Fairfax Community Newspapers). When I interviewed him in 2012, I asked him how the system worked for by-lines listed as Special Correspondents rather than Staff Correspondents. He replied: [I believe] it will be impossible to identify exactly who wrote what under the generic by-lines of Staff Correspondent or Special Correspondent. However, based on our knowledge of how the London Office operated in those years, Gavin Souter and I are both certain that before Stan Monks was appointed to London in 1948 anything appearing under the name ‘Staff Correspondent’ would have been written by the editor/manager Irvine Douglas (1945– 9). Prior to Monks’ arrival in 1948, London would have been a one-man operation, with Irvine, and his secretary, the only full-time ‘staff’ appointments. He would have employed others to help provide the SMH’s UK and European coverage, but they would have been casuals or freelancers, not staff journalists, writing under a Special Correspondent by-line.

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When Monks arrived, as Irvine’s first full-time Sydneyappointed assistant, both he and Irvine would have written under the ‘Staff Correspondent’ by-line. This would have been in line with the company’s no-personal-by-lines policy that continued for many years, certainly well into the 1960s.8 Based on this explanation, it appears that reference to Special Correspondent involved articles written by correspondents who were not on the SMH full-time staff but were employed on a short-term (casual or freelance) basis to write for a period on a certain subject. In the remainder of this chapter and Chapter 5, I will examine all the stories filed as ‘news’ from Palestine in the SMH during the 12 months of this study by correspondents employed by the SMH either as Special Correspondent or Staff Correspondent. In this sense, the stories filed had the absolute imprimatur of the SMH: chosen by the paper’s editorial staff in association with the correspondent, without use of AAP-Reuters cables and sub-edited and published in Sydney. There were, of course, many other stories published about Palestine from ‘Special Correspondents’ or ‘Staff Correspondents’, but not from Palestine. This chapter looks at ‘the view from Palestine’ as represented by the SMH’s chosen people. Apart from the explicit opinions emanating from Sydney and published in the SMH, these two correspondents seem to be the next-best indicator of the view of and about Palestine and the Palestinians that the SMH was prepared to give. By comparison, the two ‘Staff Correspondents’ in London and New York appear to have been more concerned about high statecraft. In Palestine, theoretically, there was a chance to see up close what was happening. A request to the Fairfax company for a search of its files to determine the names of the ‘Special Correspondents’ and ‘Staff Correspondents’ in Palestine used in the sample 12 months of this study was not successful. Instead, a search was conducted by a senior employee of the company’s files, but no names were found. As noted earlier, the name of the one Staff Correspondent who gained a by-line in this study in Palestine – J.H. (Jack) Flower – was established and his departure date and covering letter, but I was told no further detail could be found. The news stories now to be examined as texts in this chapter are from the Special Correspondent based in Palestine. Only late in May 1948 does the Staff Correspondent appear. Nevertheless, as SMH reporters,

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both were bound by then-existing company editorial values and trade union codes of ethics.

News Reporting from Palestine Despite news editor Angus McLachlan’s memo to his bosses that SMH readers may not notice or understand the significance of a by-line apart from a cable acknowledgement, in retrospect, even a casual reading of the SMH in which either Special Correspondent or Staff Correspondent appears makes it clear that by adding this special by-line the newspaper was giving added authority to the reports. In all the months of the sample period, 348 ‘news’ stories were published about Palestine. Of these, only 23 came from SMH-paid employees based in Palestine – listed either as ‘Staff’, ‘Special’ or by name, 21 of which appeared in the two months of April and May 1948. Of the 23, 16 were placed on the front page; two were front-page leads: 13 April (‘Special Correspondent’) and 22 May (‘Our Staff Correspondent’). All had local datelines, such as ‘Jerusalem’, ‘Tel Aviv’, ‘Tiberias’, ‘Nablus’ and ‘Amman’. Interestingly, in the light of Henderson’s worry about McLachlan’s special concern to always ‘see two sides of a question’, the SMH sometimes adopted a special formula in its May 1948 coverage by giving readers assurance about balance. When the journalist was reporting on the war with Jewish forces, the by-line became ‘Special Correspondent with the Jews’. When the journalist was reporting on the war with the Palestinian side, the by-line became ‘Our Staff Correspondent with the Arabs’. In some editions, two such stories were placed side by side (e.g., 18 May, page 1). The layout of the paper was used to reassure readers of the SMH’s lack of bias. There is little doubt that, despite the SMH news editor’s somewhat disparaging view of some readers of the SMH, he relied on these key bylines to register with readers the belief that the SMH, at a crucial time in a violent conflict, was doing its best to maintain its standards of accuracy, fairness and balance in its news pages. In this context, one side issue needs to be noted. It is tempting to use the modern term ‘embedded’ to describe the situation both correspondents found themselves in at different times. ‘Embedded’ has come to mean travelling with, housed with and fully dependent on one side in a war zone.

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Its major connotation is loss of independence for a ‘war correspondent’. I do not use the term for these correspondents for the following reasons: .

.

.

a clearly defined ‘war’ did not occur until Arab armies from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt invaded after 15 May 1948 (the date of British withdrawal); the Special Correspondent, whose main contribution was before 15 May, was more in the manner of a ‘Foreign Correspondent’, not travelling with an army; and even the Staff Correspondent, including when nominated as ‘with the Arabs’ (the Jordan-based Arab League army), appeared able to travel freely away from the scenes of war and report on other areas.

Like the SMH, I note in my analysis the times when the correspondents appear physically (or ethically) restricted by their closeness to one side or the other, but their ‘embeddedness’ in the modern sense always varies. The 23 stories fall neatly into two categories: those before 13 May 1948 and those after that date, which marks the arrival of Jack Flower from Sydney to take his post as ‘Our Staff Correspondent in Palestine’. Prior to 15 May, all reports (apart from one in February 1947) are listed as ‘Special Correspondent’ or ‘Our Special Correspondent’. While some Special Correspondent reports occur after 13 May (e.g., 18, 25, 29 and 31 May), the overwhelming number after 13 May are from Flower as Staff Correspondent (11 reports). It appears as if the SMH was relying on its Special Correspondent and decided to fly in its own Staff Correspondent from 13 May onwards. As a result, I will examine the ‘news’ reports in two sections. In this chapter the work of the Special Correspondent (almost certainly, a local casual or freelance ‘stringer’) from his or her first report on 30 March 1948 through to the last report in my sample of 31 May 1948 (11 in all) will be analysed. Then in Chapter 5, I will examine the work of Jack Flower, the Staff Correspondent from his first report on 13 May 1948 to his final report in my sample, 31 May 1948 (12 in all). The methodology adopted for this analysis of both correspondents will be to consider the journalistic standards of the stories or ‘texts’ expected by employers and the union at the time and specific linguistic techniques of representing the conflict and participants:

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accuracy – factual details of names, places, dates and the like provided to verify the propositions attested; interviews – in the sense of ‘on-the-record’ quotations or ‘off-the-record’ summaries of their thoughts – with leaders, troops or bystanders; balance in representing both sides of the narrative; transparency in acknowledging sources and possible conflicts of interest (e.g., acceptance of favours); ability to write an article that gives the reader some idea of the conditions on the ground; and a ‘sense of distance’ from and/or lack of partisanship towards one side.

Techniques to be noted include: . . . . . . .

Representation of emotion a: are emotions attributed to any participants? Representation of emotion b: does the language used evoke an emotional response in the reader? Agency: are participants written about with active or passive verbs? Are participants written about as individuals, even if not named or interviewed, or as collectives? Are participants interviewed to get their views of events? Positioning a: how does the perspective position one side in relation to the other? Positioning b: how does the language of the article position the audience? From what vantage point are they positioned to see the events described?

The SMH’s ‘Special Correspondent’ in Palestine a. ‘Holy City’s Easter Bloodbath’, 30 March 1948, ex-Jerusalem, page 1, 9 paragraphs This story reports the irony of war in the Holy Land at Easter time. As the first of Special Correspondent’s contributions to the SMH coverage, the story is written in a colourful style about the ferocity of the war in and around Jerusalem and Bethlehem just as Christians call themselves to pray over Jesus Christ’s death. The Christian ‘Arabs’ (Palestinians) are represented as the aggressors, the Jews as their victims.

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The story attributes emotions to the group collectively identified as ‘Arabs’. Those involved in attacking are indicated to be ‘jubilant’ or ‘savage’. The decision to watch ‘from the rooftops’ conveys the emotion of fear of conflict or desire for personal safety with the suggestion of a lack of courage. No emotions are ascribed to the Jews. The ‘Arabs’ are associated with a series of active verbs: ‘Travelling’, ‘watching’, ‘attacking’, ‘poured’, ‘to see’, ‘flipping a coin’, ‘carried’ and ‘stopped’, whereas the Jewish group is associated only with an adjective as ‘besieged’ and later as ‘had been killed’ and whose car ‘had been blown up’. The Arabs have agency, the Jews none. The ‘Arabs’ are positioned as moving freely and acting purposively in a number of situations, whereas the Jews are described in vulnerable and passive situations: ‘besieged’, a ‘little stone house’ and as ‘blown up’ as occupants of an armoured car. The readers back home are positioned as Christian by the marked reference to ‘sacred precincts’, ‘Holy Churches’ and the ‘YMCA’. This action takes place in a Christian religious context – Easter – and in a religious setting (Bethlehem/Jerusalem). While Jesus is regarded as a major prophet by Muslims, in this story it is only Christians for whom Easter has significance. No Jews are interviewed about the alleged massacre, nor Christian leaders. No eyewitnesses are interviewed. One ‘Christian Arab’ bystander is interviewed: he is asked about ‘flipping a coin’ to decide whether to go and watch the ‘battle’, implying a ghoulish and flippant curiosity. This story represents the Arabs as having freedom and agency, to the point where some Arabs inflict death, humiliation and otherwise severely ill-treat Jews, who are represented as passive and without agency, therefore apparently unable to defend themselves.

b. ‘Hunger Peril Creeps On Holy City’, 1 April 1948, ex-Jerusalem, page 1, 9 paragraphs This story reports on how a blockade of food to Jews in Jerusalem is succeeding, causing widespread hunger; however, Jewish leaders have refused British assistance.

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The story is the first of a series on Jewish people trapped in Jerusalem. Since Jerusalem had for many centuries been a multi-religious city (Muslims, Christians and Jews), various quarters and districts held peoples of different faiths (see Figure 4.1) but the reporter does not make clear in which part of the city the alleged siege has occurred. It breaks the first rule of providing ‘where’ the action is occurring, let alone adding context. The story attributes emotion to one side – the Jews – as the ‘hunger peril’ ‘creeps’ towards their community. They are said to feel ‘dissatisfaction’ and have a good reason to feel so as indicated in this quotation: There is no meat in the Jewish districts, and no bread, cheese or vegetables [. . .] Private houses, hotels, and restaurants have nothing to offer, except soup and a few dried biscuits. No emotions are attributed to the Palestinian side. The ‘Arabs’ are the active participants in this suffering through the use of the active verb ‘control’ as in: ‘[. . .] the Arabs control every road leading into the city.’ The Jews are positioned as subject to a blockade, vulnerable and facing starvation. The ‘Arabs’ are portrayed as the active entity using starvation as a weapon of war. The Western audience is positioned to imagine daily life with ‘no meat’, ‘no bread, cheese or vegetables’, ‘nothing’, only ‘soup and a few dried biscuits’. No Jews are interviewed, nor any Palestinians. The article does report a statement of the Mandate Palestine government offering help to break the food blockade, but states that the Jewish Agency has not asked for British aid. The reason for the Jewish Agency’s inaction is not explained, given the ‘peril’ faced. No descriptions of individual Jews or Palestinians are given. Each side is treated as a mass. In all, the story represents the Arabs as having control and therefore agency of the blockade of the city of Jerusalem, causing possible starvation of the Jews. The trapped Jews are represented as passive and without agency – although possibly also lacking agency as a result of their own representatives’ decisions. It fails to identify the location of the action.

Map 2

Map of Jerusalem, 1947.

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c. ‘STARVING JEWS: Food Convoy Attacked’, 3 April 1948, ex-Jerusalem, page 1, 11 paragraphs This story reports that some food supplies have made it through to starving Jews in Jerusalem, but not enough. It calls on the British to help the Jews. The reporter follows up on the story of two days earlier about the ‘siege of Jerusalem’. It is almost as if Jerusalem is a Jewish-only city. The impression given by the reporter misleads the reader. The story attributes emotions to the Jews who are represented as ‘starving’, ‘heartened’ at the news that a food convoy might break through the blockade and that ‘housewives’ were ‘critical’ of the Jewish Agency for allowing the situation to develop. The ‘Arabs’ are not represented as having emotions in enforcing the blockade. In this report, the Palestinians are associated with the active verbs: ‘attacking’, ‘blockading’, ‘capturing’ and ‘destroying’. The Jews are the passive receivers of these actions, with food as the object. The ‘Arabs’ have agency, the Jews do not. However, in this story, the reporter introduces a new actor, the British. Having stated in the previous report (two days earlier) that the Jewish Agency had not called for assistance, he or she states that many believe the British ‘must’ act, as in this quotation: It is widely suggested that, since the British cannot allow the Jewish community to die of starvation, they must provide escorts for the British convoys or bring in food themselves. It is not clear who the sources are for ‘widely suggested’ and, again, no interviews provide evidence of views either way. The use of the words ‘cannot’ and ‘must’ are of interest here. ‘Cannot’ appears to suggest a moral or ethical ‘cannot’ as well as a political or military ‘cannot’. Both senses of the words are contrasted with the ‘Arabs’ who, seemingly, ‘can’ (morally and militarily) starve its opposition. ‘Must’ appears to suggest that the Jewish Agency has approved British aid, although there is no statement reported in the story to this effect. The sentence is therefore a declamatory statement that the British have the active power to intervene – unlike the Jews – and should use it. It betrays a bias to one side.

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The story is, as mentioned, a follow-up to the previous report of two days earlier. Both appeared on page 1 of the newspaper. It again positions the ‘Arabs’ as lacking the civilised values of ‘the British’. For the audience, it is the second in a series of reports about the ‘Arabs’ starving the Jews. There are no interviews in the traditional sense (i.e., ‘on-the-record’) in this report. No single person or spokesperson is interviewed; however, the reporter suggests that he or she has sources – ‘it is widely suggested’ and ‘[Jewish] housewives say’. In a situation where ‘near-starvation’ is alleged, it would have been expected that interviews would have been sought both with the suffering Jews and the blockading Palestinians – or, at least, their representatives. No such interviews occur. Indeed, no individual from any side – Palestinian, Jewish or British – is interviewed for this story. In summary, and in the context of a confusing delineation of Jerusalem, the story maintains the sense of ‘Arab’ agency; this time forcing Jews to the point of ‘near starvation’. Jews remain passive sufferers, although ‘requiring’ assistance from the third entity with agency, the British military. The reporter also explicitly inserts his or her own view about what the British ‘must’ do to save the Jews.

d. ‘EVE OF WAR IN PALESTINE: British Hold Weakens’, 13 April, ex-Jerusalem, page 1 (lead), 18 paragraphs This story reports the famous massacre at the ‘Arab’ village of Deir Yassin by a Jewish terrorist group and shows that British control is weakening and full-scale war is imminent between the two sides. The story of the massacre at Deir Yassin (‘150 dead’) was one of the most crucial turning points of the Palestinian–Jewish war and occurred just west of Jerusalem, under the ‘watch’ of the SMH’s Special Correspondent. In the correspondent’s important page 1 lead story (of a lengthy 18 paragraphs), the story has been broken up into the following paragraphs: . . . . .

1: British hold weakens. 2: Deir Yassin massacre outrages Arab world. 3– 5: British inaction, hold weakens. 6– 8: Deir Yassin: worry about ‘Arab’ reprisals on Jewish women. 9– 10: Deir Yassin: Jewish military faction fights about control.

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11– 13: ‘Arab’– Jewish fighting surrounding Jerusalem generally. 14– 15: Jews fear slow starvation in Jerusalem as fight goes on. 16– 18: Clear signs of British packing up to leave Palestine.

At no point does the reporter describe what happened in the massacre. There are no details of the event, no interviews from either side and no description of the village. This is a major failure. However, the lack of basic reporting is covered by a different content theme: that of the consequences of the British departure. The concentration of this article, from the first (large-typeface) paragraphs onwards, on the withdrawal of British power, also allows for a narrative about ‘two sides’ violently squabbling with each other. In a sense, the reader is made to feel powerless, because the moderate ‘umpire’ – the British administration – is alleged to be leaving the stage. The writer says that ‘Arabs and Jews have noted [. . . that] the British will look the other way’. Since there are no interviews demonstrating this belief by ‘Arabs and Jews’, it remains a statement rather than a fact or allegation. It would seem in a story about a massacre that a single group would be given agency, but in this story the correspondent diffuses the concept. While in paragraph 2, agency is clearly attributed to ‘Jewish sacking of the peaceful Arab village’, by paragraphs 3 and 4 it is being complicated by ‘no action’ or ‘inaction’ by British forces. With the subheadline ‘British Hold Weakens’, it is almost as though the article is suggesting British weakness as being responsible for the ‘massacre’. Equally, there is confusion in the reporter’s prose about exactly who on the Jewish side is responsible. Since the massacre was primarily the work of Menachem Begin’s Irgun group, the reporter refers to ‘the Jewish terrorists responsible’; however, he or she never uses the word ‘Irgun’. It is only in paragraph 9 that the reporter speaks of the mainstream Jewish military force, the Haganah, ‘taking over’, which gives a clue to changing agency; he or she is distinguishing between ‘the terrorists’ (who massacre) and the official Jewish military, the Haganah (who do not). The story uses many words to indicate emotions on both sides, but they are overlaid from a distance rather than arising organically within the prose. Homogeneous ‘Arabs’ are said to be ‘horrified’, ‘inflamed’ and ‘restless’ (possibly for revenge), while the homogeneous ‘Jews’ expressed

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‘outrage’ that the massacre was ‘shocking’ and ‘deliberate’ in its ‘brutality’. Two sub-themes of emotion also become clear. The correspondent feels that Arabs as a race find it difficult to keep their emotions under control and fears for reprisals: The Jewish outrage was so flagrant and so deliberate, and the brutality so shocking that it would be a miracle if the Arabs, hotblooded and easily aroused, disregarded its seeming calculated provocation. [author’s emphasis] The other is that the correspondent returns at the end of the story, in another five paragraphs, to the previously reported ‘horror’ of possible Jewish ‘slow starvation’ in Jerusalem. The correspondent has a tendency for generalisations of the mass of Arabs (e.g., ‘hot blooded’, ‘easily aroused’) and of the Jews (e.g., ‘skilled’ and ‘determined’), but appears to have little interest in testing these out in everyday human form. Even given the temper of the times, which might have required interviews with senior figures (of which there are none), there is a remarkable lack of sympathy for the ordinary person. A good way of illustrating this deficiency is the story immediately following the Special Correspondent’s on the same front page. The SMH ran a separate story from London, using ‘Our Staff Correspondent and (Reuters) AAP’, reporting statements in the House of Commons from the Colonial Secretary condemning the barbarity of the attack. In this second story, sent the same day, the Reuters journalist was also said to be based in Jerusalem. The Reuters journalist interviewed the International Red Cross representative who went to Deir Yassin and found bodies in the well and 50 other bodies strewn around the village. He or she also interviewed the Palestinian representative, who spoke of many pregnant women being mutilated and their babies killed. And another Jerusalem correspondent found a 12-year-old Palestinian girl, Fatimeh Zeidan, with a grenade wound. She told reporters: My baby sister started to cry and a Jew found us. The Jews drove us in a lorry with other women and children to the edge of Jerusalem.

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Then they told us to get down. The men formed a circle around us and Jewish girls stripped us naked and took our rings and earrings. While we were naked they took pictures, and then told us to walk to the Jaffa Gate. The London-based Staff Correspondent story finished by saying Fatimeh Zeidan’s mother, grandmother, grandfather and two older brothers and a three-month-old sister perished in the attack. Her father, brother and another sister were still in hospital. As this evidence shows, it was clearly not true to say that such graphic accounts of the ‘who’ ‘what’ ‘where’ and ‘when’ – the classic ‘news’ formula – of Deir Yassin were not available. It is possible that the SMH relied on the cables to provide the detail and the Special Correspondent on the ground to provide the context. But this would have been a reverse of the normal practice. The correspondent had access not only to the graphic accounts gained by the Reuters correspondent, but also to the other key figures in Jerusalem who would have known the background to this massacre. This Special Correspondent does not appear in the SMH’s news pages for another fortnight and, by then the SMH has begun the process of applying to get a passport for their own full-time Staff Correspondent in Palestine, Jack Flower. It may well have dawned on the news executives back in Sydney that the Special Correspondent comprehensively failed to report one of the biggest stories of the Palestinian–Jewish conflict, in not describing what happened at a ‘massacre’ of a Palestinian village by Irgun terrorists on 12 April 1948.

e. ‘ARABS’ WARNING TO CONVOY’, 1 May 1948, ex-Jerusalem, page 1, 5 paragraphs This story reports that a British troop convoy is under threat from Palestinians. In the dying days of Mandate Palestine (less than a fortnight before 15 May), both Jewish and Palestinian forces had given up hope of British ‘protection’ and were critical of British alleged sympathy for the other side. This short story represents the ‘Arabs’ as the agents of violence against the British.

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The story begins with the statement that ‘Anti-British feeling is rising so quickly among the Arab areas of Palestine’ and that the strength of this feeling is so great that it is forcing the British police to take extra precautions. It quotes a Palestinian leader as sending ‘a threat’ to them that a convoy to Haifa ‘will be attacked’. No emotions are ascribed to the British or Jews. The threat is serious enough for British forces to ‘re-organise’ as a result and add a strong military escort to the convoy to Haifa. The convoy will remain under threat: ‘It will be forced to spend one night in a completely Arab town [. . .] It is there the gravest danger will arise.’ [author’s emphasis] The ‘Arabs’ are described as taking their fate into their own hands through the use of violence. However, their victims this time are not Jews but the British, who are said to be under threat, despite having a convoy of 1,000 police. The SMH audience is positioned as sympathetic to the British, who are themselves trapped in Mandate Palestine, neutral arbiters just trying to keep the two sides apart. There is one statement by a Palestinian leader Fawzi Bey Kauwkji, issuing the threat to British forces. However, it is unclear whether the text comes from a press release, a press conference, an interview or recall by British police. Interestingly, the quotation does give a rationale for the Palestinian threat. The ‘attack’, it says, was ‘a reprisal for the help given by the British to the Jewish forces in Haifa’. No other context is provided to explain events in Haifa. The article represents the ‘Arabs’ as aggressors, this time against British troops. However, it also provides a view from the Palestinian side explaining their stance.

f. ‘TERROR IN JERUSALEM’, 3 May, ex-Jerusalem, page 1, 10 paragraphs This story reports that ‘terrified’ Jews are left trapped in the collapsing city of Jerusalem. The story begins as a profile of a city in decline as the transition between British control and the battle between invading Arab armies (especially Transjordan) and Jewish forces for supremacy takes place. However, it ends as a call for sympathy for ‘terrified (Jewish) shopkeepers

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and professional men’ who are not allowed to flee Jerusalem and must stay behind. The story is written in an extremely tabloid and colourful style – possibly on instruction from Sydney. ‘Fear and death stalk side by side’ in the ancient city, it states in paragraph 1; the city is ‘dying before one’s eyes’ in paragraph 2. The ‘menace’ and ‘rumble’ of war, heard daily, occurs in paragraph 3. Only with the Jews are emotions ascribed. It begins with this sentence (paragraph 9): ‘For the Jews the situation is much more serious. They are not allowed to leave.’ Jewish Agency Haganah guards patrol Jewish districts to ensure noone can leave: ‘The mass of terrified shopkeepers and professional men [. . .] must remain and watch with heavy hearts.’ This line produces the headline for the article: ‘TERROR IN JERUSALEM’. According to the reporter, Jerusalem is ‘undergoing’ collapse because of war. The ‘Arabs’ take positive action by ‘packing up’ and ‘departing’ the city, whereas ‘the Jews’ are the victims because they ‘must remain’. The ‘Arabs’ are represented as being in charge of their own fate and leaving their city of their own volition. The ‘Jews’ are positioned as the victims, acted on not just by the war, but by instructions from their own army. The reader is positioned as Christian, seeing this story in a historically tragic moment. Jerusalem, the Holy City, is ‘dying’, with only the Jews remaining to care for it in the future. The (largely Muslim) ‘Arabs’ are leaving their city, despite its important religious significance. There are no interviews in this story. Neither ‘Arabs’ who have fled, nor ‘terrified (Jewish) shopkeepers’ who have not. The reporter is not illustrating the story with evidence. Despite its populist tone, there are no characters or individuals to ‘carry’ the narrative. The story almost suggests Jerusalem is a vacant city (‘deserted except for abandoned dogs and cats’) at this time, which is patently false. While mass evacuation occurred (as in all of Palestine), Jerusalem, with its more than 200,000 inhabitants, did not become a ghost city in 1948 with only Jewish residents remaining. There were many opportunities for profiles of both Palestinians and Jews. Overall in this report, the ‘Arabs’ get no sympathy because they have deserted; the Jewish residents deserve sympathy because they are

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‘terrified’ (hence the headline) and allegedly trapped by vigilant Jewish soldiers.

g. ‘HOLY CITY MAY BE SPARED: Truce Bodies’ Hopes’, 6 May 1948, ex-Jerusalem, page 1, 12 paragraphs This story reports that two international organisations have made progress with both sides over peace and security for Jerusalem in the midst of heavy fighting. Concern for ‘the Holy City’ of Jerusalem is, as the tabulated data have shown, a sub-theme of several stories in the SMH during this period. This concern rose to a peak as the handover period approached and several stories along these lines preceded this one. What marks out this story is its optimism, detail and distinct lack of ‘colour’. It is soberminded and sticks close to the facts. It reads like the work of a different Special Correspondent. There are few emotions expressed in this story, and none accorded to either side of the dispute. If there are any, they are directed towards the ‘Holy City’ itself, as in the headline and in the dramatic (and short) first paragraph: ‘Peace may soon be restored to Jerusalem itself’. The active verbs in this story are all about the international organisations ‘taking over’, ‘organising’, ‘contacting’ and ‘discussing’. In the one mention of Palestinian and Jewish bodies, both are said to be equally ‘drawing up’ requests to the International Red Cross. The ‘Jews’ are positioned as united, local and accessible, whereas the ‘Arabs’ are portrayed as disunited, inaccessible and largely living outside Palestine. This could be an accurate picture of the Palestinians following the Deir Yassin massacre, which triggered an internal refugee crisis. Nevertheless, the effect of the statement seems to suggest to the reader that the Jews are the ‘natural’ local inheritors of the British presence and that the Palestinians have fled the scene of their own volition. I will discuss this theme in later chapters. There are no interviews in this story. The report has more of the style of a ‘Diplomatic Correspondent’ and relies on contacts within several bodies to construct a political and strategic story. In summary, this is a reasonably balanced article that concentrates on the detail of negotiations for peace and security in Jerusalem with one dismissive comment about ‘absent’ Palestinians.

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h. ‘“HERALD” WAR DESPATCHES – With Jews’, 18 May 1948, ex-Tel Aviv, page 1, 13 paragraphs This story describes how, regardless of air raids and war, the Jews of Tel Aviv are ‘happy’ and ‘gay’, sure of defeating their Arab enemies. This story is placed directly alongside another, labelled ‘With Arabs’, which will be examined in the next chapter. It is below a common introductory paragraph from the SMH editor, which states: ‘“Herald” correspondents with the Jews and the Arabs sent the following despatches yesterday’. Importantly, the story is also written three days after the declaration of the State of Israel by David Ben-Gurion. The reporter describes the war-like conditions Jews now live under in ‘their’ new state – strafed by Arab League Spitfires, attacked in settlements by Arab League armies – and then quickly goes on to describe the ‘gaiety’ of all he or she has met in Tel Aviv: Yet, in spite of the future, Tel Aviv [. . .] has an almost heroic air. The people walk the pavements as if they owned them. Sunbaked youngsters, boys and girls dressed alike in tight shorts, ironshod ammunition boots, and horrid little pixie sunhats, seem to be living in a perpetual holiday camp. They stroll arm in arm or sing out from the back of lorries on their way to military training as if the whole perilous adventure was an outing. The story gives the ‘Jews’ the active agency of their own destiny – as it should since the correspondent is being allowed to report one side of the struggle. But it also does so in parts with a sense that the Jewish joy is unnecessarily extreme. This is the first time the Jews are represented as confident and assured. The ‘Arabs’ are represented as merciless ‘attackers’, taking ‘no prisoners’ and, in one interview with a (Jewish) taxi-driver, as poor fighters as well. The audience is positioned as sympathetic to a young, struggling nation that has ‘sunbaked youngsters’ living along the Mediterranean coast in a city with ‘suburbs’, but who are nevertheless brave and heroic. It is an analogue of Sydney’s Bondi Beach during the war. There is only one interview. It is with ‘Sammy May’, described simply as a ‘taxi-driver’. The correspondent makes a broad statement about his views: ‘Like all the other Jews here he has a bottomless

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contempt for the fighting qualities of the Arabs, particularly the Palestinian Arabs.’ For the first time in this correspondent’s work in the SMH, the word ‘Palestinian Arab’ is used; it is used to disparage Palestinians as fighters. It is also the first time there is an interview with an individual (Sammy May). However, the single quotation of the taxi-driver in explaining his contempt for the Palestinians borders on racism: ‘After all, we have something to fight for.’ Even given the licence that might have been given by having this correspondent working with the Jews within ‘Israel’s’ most Jewish city, this report is biased towards the Jewish perspective, combining sympathy and admiration for their cause while displaying contempt for their enemies.

i. ‘BESIEGED JEWS RELIEVED’, 25 May 1948, ex-Jerusalem, page 1, 7 paragraphs This story describes how Jewish ‘shock troops’ easily broke the ‘Arab’ siege of 1,500 Jews in a part of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. This is the second story in which the reporter is described as ‘A Special Correspondent With The Jews’. Despite the detail of this military operation, it is unclear from the text of the story whether the reporter attended the military operation by the Palmach company of the Israel Defence Force (IDF) or not. There is no first-person observation and there are no interviews. Nevertheless, in first paragraph concludes with the statement that ‘the attack succeeded with surprising ease’. It is not clear who is ‘surprised’ and whether it is the opinion of a Jewish commander, an observer or the reporter. No emotions are attributed to the ‘Jewish shock troops’ in this report of another attempt to reach 1,500 Jews trapped by an ‘Arab’ siege in the Old City of Jerusalem. However, ‘Arabs’ are said to have been ‘sent dazed and shaken’ and ‘flying for shelter’. This attracted the sub-headline: ‘ARABS FLED’. The Jewish troops are cast in a heroic light by active verbs of the type ‘attack’, ‘taking’, ‘softening up’, ‘pouring’ (bullets), ‘disrupting’ (defences) and ‘rushing through’. The Jews are described as moving their troops through the crucial Zion Gate into the Old City Jewish

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Quarter ‘with surprising ease’. From there on, the Jews are reported as meeting little ‘resistance’, suggesting the ‘Arabs’ were weak fighters. Through use of the term ‘Palmach boys and girls in British commando uniform’, it suggests that the powerful Jewish troops were young and had ‘borrowed’ clothing left by the British. The reader is taken on a military exercise from one point of view and, as with all such reporting, does not get to hear the other side. There are no interviews in this story, nor are there are any profiles of Palmach soldiers or Palestinian fighters, officers or commandos. The correspondent elicits an easy familiarity with the Jewish troops through phrases such as ‘the Palmach boys and girls’, but the reader does not get to meet one. In all, this short story at the bottom of page 1 continues the theme of this correspondent that the Jews are tough fighters (‘shock troops’) and the ‘Arabs’ are deficient fighters (‘ease’/‘flying for shelter’/‘fled’), beaten by ‘boys and girls’.

j. ‘JEWISH RECOVERY IN NORTH’, 29 May 1948, ex-Tiberias, page 3, 8 paragraphs A report from an old Jewish settlement in the Galilee in north-eastern Palestine where villages change allegiances day by day. This is the third story to include the by-line ‘Special Correspondent with the Jews’ and, as on 18 May, it is set beside a story from ‘Our Staff Correspondent with the Arabs’. The latter takes precedence (longer story and bigger headline). Five of the paragraphs of the story are about villages in the Jordan Valley south of the Lake of Galilee. The first paragraph opens with a declaratory statement: ‘Except in the dry wastes of the Negev, south of Jerusalem, there are no Arab soldiers on the soil of Israel.’ This is an unusual first paragraph for a news story. It hardly fits the SMH’s news style. Its religiosity immediately positions the correspondent as tied to a Jewish viewpoint. It is also inaccurate. Arab troops were entering Palestine from all directions at this point, including Jordan, Syria and Iraq, and it would be another seven months before the war ended. The correspondent attributes agency to both sides in the wavering fortunes of this war. For example: ‘The Arabs early took Samakh at the southern tip of the lake (Galilee). They lost it the other day.’ He or she

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credits the Jews with ‘making some recovery’ in northern Palestine and the Jordan Valley, but not on the road to Jerusalem and in the Negev Desert. There are no interviews in the story with military personnel to back the reporter’s analysis of the state of the war, nor any ‘voice’ given to any Jewish or Palestinian actor. In this short report from the Galilee, the reporter seems somewhat at pains to impose a single narrative on the surrounding conditions. The news value of the report is difficult to discern.

k. ‘100,000 JEWS MAY STARVE’, 31 May 1948, ex-Amman, page 3, 16 paragraphs This story reports that ‘Arabs’ have taken the Old City of Jerusalem and 100,000 Jews living in the New City area are therefore under siege and facing starvation. This is the final story from the Special Correspondent and mirrors the theme of the first story in late March. It is the danger of food being used against 100,000 Jews by ‘Arabs’ as a weapon of war: ‘Starvation will provide a victory for them in Jerusalem before long if nothing is done to relieve these Jews.’ In this report, however, unlike any other, a truly firsthand account in the first person is given: I have just arrived in Amman after being a virtual prisoner in the New City for a fortnight. A large part of the southern suburbs of Jerusalem has been thoroughly looted and pillaged. I saw shops burst open, and empty cases littering the streets. In this case, the reporter’s graphic descriptions are tied to real events he or she has witnessed firsthand. It makes the story more pointed and more real. And, for the first time, something positive is said of ‘the Arabs’. In describing the surrender of the Jews of the Old City, the reporter states that the Jewish Agency had said a surrender would see Jews massacred by Arabs. But the correspondent writes from Amman in Jordan:

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There wasn’t any massacre. Under the strict orders and control of the Arab Legion, the victors supervised and helped the evacuation into Jewish territory of 1,300 men, women, and children. Among the evacuees were between 200 and 300 Haganah girls – trained women fighters – who had been bearing arms in defence of the quarter. Their arms were taken and they were set free. Strangely, no individual or group emotions are attributed to Jews or Arabs in this military analysis of an alleged campaign of starvation by siege by the ‘Arabs’. But ‘Arabs’ – probably the Transjordanian Army by this stage – are associated in this story with agency. Active verbs like ‘conquering’, ‘besiege’ and ‘exploit’ are attributed to them. The Jews are the besieged and, allegedly, likely, to remain victims once more. The Jews are represented as having lost a crucial battle, being wrong in their predictions, but preparing for further attacks. The reader could be confused between these contrasting images represented by the correspondent. This is especially so because, again, the correspondent provides no interviews and fails to give a human face to either side. This is despite first-person reporting about experiencing the feeling of being trapped in the New City of Jerusalem. In all, through reporting impending starvation by ‘Arabs’ of Jews, this time of half a city, the reporter also acknowledges an act of gallantry and humanity by ‘Arabs’ not harming captured Jews. The journalism also involves firsthand eyewitness reporting.

The Body of Work of the ‘Special Correspondent’ The SMH had a clear set of expectations of its news reporters. In the main, they were to keep some personal ‘distance’ from the story, to see both sides’ viewpoint, to be ‘first with the news’ and to not mix ‘fact’ with ‘opinion’ to the extent possible. In addition, the Australian Journalists’ Association – the reporters’ trade union – had recently published its own Code of Ethics for its members, stressing:

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reporting news with scrupulous honesty; not distorting the truth through improper emphasis; not allowing ‘personal interests’ to influence his reporting; and to use fair and honest means to get the story.

While the Special Correspondent was almost certainly not a staff member of the SMH – rather, a freelance or casual employee – such standards would still have been expected in Sydney’s long-standing ‘quality’ morning newspaper. Editors and sub-editors would also have upheld SMH standards. In this instance, the analysis of the reporter’s 11 stories in this sample of eight weeks shows that he or she broke several of the standards expected of him or her. The stories contain a consistent pro-Jewish bias, lack ‘distance’, do not present both sides and do seem to involve the reporter’s personal interests intruding on the stories. The reporter appears to have ‘distorted the truth by [. . .] improper emphasis’ and/or ignored the requirement to ‘not allow his personal interests to influence him in the discharge of his duty’ in at least three of his or her 11 stories. This has been done by: .

.

.

reporting (c) that unnamed sources suggest that Britain ‘must’ help the Jews break the Arab siege because it ‘cannot’ allow them to starve; reporting (h) that a taxi driver has contempt for the fighting qualities of Palestinians because, unlike Jews, they have nothing to fight for; and reporting (j) in the first paragraph (inaccurately), that, except for the Negev Desert, there were no Arab soldiers on ‘the soil of Israel’.

In each of these instances the reporter has crossed the line into opinion about the conflict. The reporter implies cowardice on the part of Palestinian or Arab fighters on several occasions (see also a and i) and praises Jewish troops (h and i). He or she also appears to have broken the first rule of journalism: getting the facts right. In story (f) on 3 May 1948 about Jerusalem, the Special Correspondent states: ‘The Arab and mixed Arab– Jewish residential suburbs are silent and deserted’.

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As subsequent events in May show, there were many ‘Arabs’ (Palestinians) left in the city as the battle for control of the city continued. While many were forced to flee after attacks from Jewish troops in West Jerusalem, many more stood their ground in East Jerusalem. And in the Old City of Jerusalem (part of the east of the city), most of the residents were Palestinian. The reporter’s statement is a significant inaccuracy. The reporter does not conduct interviews with Palestinians, except in one instance (threatening British troops), nor with members or leaders of the Arab League troops after the invasion of 15 May. Individuals, as such, do not appear in ten of the reporter’s 11 stories. Both sides are seen as a homogeneous mass with key characteristics. Only once are Palestinians described in any detail (30 March 1948) and it is negatively. However, the most important failure of journalism standards by the Special Correspondent is the coverage of the Jewish attack on the Palestinian village, Deir Yassin, just outside Jerusalem, on 9 April 1948 (d). In this article, he or she fails even to describe what happened in the attack – for example, the slaughter of many Palestinian women and children and the dumping of their bodies down a village well – and fails to interview any Palestinian participants or Jewish observers. By contrast, the Reuters Jerusalem correspondent fulfils all these basic requirements of news reporting (published on the same SMH page). To make matters worse, the Special Correspondent adds the emotive and unsourced assertion that, Arabs being ‘hot blooded’ and ‘easily aroused’, may go on to attack a Jewish village. A summary of the descriptive techniques of the prose used by the Special Correspondent in these 11 stories shows further evidence of his or her opinions in representing the conflict. In most of the reporter’s stories, emotions are not attributed to the participants, whether they are ‘Arab’/Palestinian or Jewish. But when they are, the emotions attributed to Palestinians are negative ones (a: ‘savage’ and ‘jubilant’, e: ‘threat’ to ‘attack’ British or i: ‘dazed’ and fleeing Jewish troops). On the other hand, when Jewish emotions are described they are as a result of being victims of Arab/Palestinian violence (b: ‘hunger’, c: ‘starving’ or f: ‘terrified’). This emotional context fits with the agency given to the Palestinians and Arab League troops in eight out of the 11 stories of this reporter. In more than half of the reporter’s stories, the Jews have no agency, they

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are simply victims of (largely) Palestinian brutality and violence. Only in the occasional story do the Jews gain agency; for instance, once Israel is created and they have a cause to ‘happily’ fight for (see story (h) from Tel Aviv, 18 May). The Palestinians are positioned as aggressive and cruel in most stories (six of 11), only once as victims (the Deir Yassin massacre). The Jews are positioned as victims of the Palestinians (usually in the continuing siege of the Old City of Jerusalem) throughout April and in the first weeks of May. Only when Israel becomes a state are Jewish fighting qualities lauded. Interestingly, one theme emerges strongly from the perspective of the SMH reader. It is the religious significance of Jerusalem. The first report of the Special Correspondent is about the irony of Easter in the Holy City and how Palestinians conduct ‘savage’ attacks during such a period of alleged peace and charity. Many follow. It should be noted that, after 15 May, when the Jewish Agency declares the State of Israel, the SMH refers in three cases to this reporter as ‘Our Special Correspondent with the Jews’. This almost certainly means two things: . .

that the reporter travelled with the Jewish Agency/Israeli troops; and that the SMH was expecting both more access to one side’s point of view and that the reporter might reflect that view in their report.

However, it is unlikely that the SMH would have expected or allowed a denial of the basic standards by which it was judged by readers. In those three instances, some leeway would have been given, but not a licence to stray too far. As we will see in Chapter 5, the Staff Correspondent who arrived in Palestine from Sydney in May would take a quite different path.

CHAPTER 5 `

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When SMH journalist Jack Flower received a memo from the Fairfax management in early May 1948 advising him of how to send his ‘news messages’ (using the code HERAFLOW); the second paragraph advised that it was essential ‘to keep us regularly informed’ of his whereabouts so that the editorial staff would have ‘the best chance of getting in touch with you’.1 Flower was 27. This was not the ‘light touch’ that more seasoned SMH correspondents like Jack Percival (Pacific) and Guy Harriott (Middle East) had had a few years before. It was an opportunity for Flower to prove himself, but it was also a signal that Sydney would be involved in his coverage. Flower grew up on Sydney’s upper North Shore and joined the SMH as a cadet in the late 1930s. When World War II broke out he did not become a war correspondent but joined the Royal Air Force as a member of 354 Squadron based in India. He became a pilot of Catalina aircraft scouring the Indian Ocean and rose to officer level. In his spare time, he became a champion boxer. Peter Allen, long-time SMH senior journalist and editor, now retired, recalled Flower’s abilities as a journalist: I have only second-hand knowledge of his work as a journalist. He had been promoted to senior management before I joined the company. What I can tell from personal knowledge is that he was thoughtful and meticulous in everything he did and had a keen,

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analytical mind. A tall, ruggedly good-looking, impressive man, with an imposing record as a World War II bomber pilot, he always had a commanding presence – even though quietly spoken [. . .] Unfortunately, most, if not all the journalists from Jack’s era who could offer recollections about him are no longer with us. However, there is no doubt that he was a very capable reporter, and held in high regard, otherwise he wouldn’t have been among the SMH editorial elite of the day. His skill level can best be gauged from the fact that he served as a Herald staff correspondent, was London manager for a time and was also editor of The SunHerald for a short period during its foundation years.2 This appraisal gives a rounded picture of Flower, but at 27 he was facing his first big challenge – a foreign posting. The terms of his appointment, as set out in the Fairfax letter of 6 May 1948 (Figure 5.1), to the Lebanese Consul-General in Mosman, Sydney, were to ‘cover the

Figure 5.1 Letter from SMH management requesting travel assistance for J.H. Flower.

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events subsequent to the handing over of the British Mandate in Palestine’.3 As someone who had completed a cadetship at the SMH a decade earlier but had returned to the fold after the war, Flower would have been keenly aware not just of the company’s values and view of its place in the Sydney market – the ‘paper of record’ at the ‘quality’ end of the spectrum – but also of more recent competition from the Packer camp and the need, as stressed by his news editor, Angus McLachlan, for breaking news, getting it out first and wrapping it in readable prose. He would also have been aware of the NSW Branch of the AJA’s new Code of Ethics. The evaluation of Flower’s work will use the same journalist standards and linguistic techniques as applied in Chapter 4 to the freelance Special Correspondent. Each of Flower’s 13 stories over the three weeks he was in the Middle East are analysed. His first reports were from Cairo (Egypt) and Amman (Jordan). By the time he arrived in Palestine, the Jewish Agency had declared the State of Israel (15 May) and the ‘state’ had been invaded by Arab League armies. He was, by then, effectively, a ‘war correspondent’. In seven of Flower’s 13 stories his by-line stretches to ‘Our Staff Correspondent with the Arabs’ as he is travelling with the Jordan-based Arab League forces.

The SMH’s ‘Staff Correspondent’ in Palestine a. ‘Report of Split in Arab Forces’, 13 May 1948, ex-Cairo, page 3, 7 paragraphs From Cairo, Jack Flower reports that Jordan’s King Abdullah has split from other members of the Arab League, leaving the Arab forces disunited on the eve of the invasion of Palestine. The story reports a statement from King Abdullah in Jordan’s capital, Amman, that his forces would not work with Palestinian leaders (through their ‘Arab Higher Committee’) or Syrian and Lebanese leaders (through their ‘Arab Liberation Army’). He would work only with Iraqi forces, run by another member of his Hashemite family. Egypt would be left to fight in the south, near Gaza. The story had dramatic implications, not only exposing Arab disunity, but also revealing Abdullah’s plans to squeeze out Palestinian

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leaders and effectively expand the borders of Jordan into Palestine. Since this was Flower’s first report in the region, it represented a man ‘hitting the ground running’. Flower added subjective analysis to his story by reporting that ‘European observers in Cairo’ believed the many ‘family feuds’ among the Arabs had burst through to the surface. He also reported that ‘many’ observers, surprisingly at this stage, were predicting that King Abdullah ‘may come to terms with the Jews’ on the Palestine issue. As Shlaim has shown from the State Archives of Israel (SAI),4 this was already true. Flower had already picked up the (possibly diplomatic) gossip about Abdullah – that he was ‘ratting’ on the Palestinians – and had picked up this scent for his first report. As a result, in this story there is no Jewish ‘side’. It is about splits within the non-Palestinian, although Arab, alliance. The Arab ‘families’ are said to be ‘feuding’ among themselves – the implication being, at the expense of the Palestinians – and one family, the Hashemites, are ‘ambitious’ to grab Palestine for themselves. The agency of this story is therefore all with the King of Transjordan, Abdullah, who ‘breaks’ (with other Arabs), ‘joins’ (with his family ruler in Iraq) and ‘accuses’ the Palestinian leader of ‘bringing chaos to Palestine’, thereby excluding him from the Arab League forces about to invade Palestine. The Palestinians are positioned as playthings of the Arab leaders, easily pushed aside (‘the Arab Higher Committee no longer existed, [Abdullah] said.’). The reader is positioned as an observer to a scene of Arab political chaos on the verge of the exit of the last remaining British troops and police. It is clear in this story where the new Staff Correspondent is getting his information. The first is a statement issued by King Abdullah the previous day about breaking with other Arab forces. The second is ‘observers’. This latter anonymous category is mentioned three times in the story. This was (and is) a standard device, usually to cover ‘off-therecord’ discussions with diplomats, academics, senior public servants or other ‘insiders’. In all, the story is a very good example of a foreign correspondent breaking an important story, suggesting other ‘leads’ and putting his own facts in context.

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b. ‘Refugees Invade Arab States’, 14 May 1948, ex-Cairo, page 3, 15 paragraphs The reporter here paints a picture of confusion surrounding the outcome of the Palestine dispute as tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees pour into neighbouring Arab states and various governments have different attitudes to the war. This story was very much ‘the view from Egypt’ on the Palestine dispute. The Staff Correspondent reports on 4,000 refugee arrivals into three Egyptian cities and 30,000 more into Syria and Lebanon. This is one of the few reports that concentrates on the refugee crisis of the Palestinians rather than that of the Jews from Europe. The reporter is at pains to pay due respect to both sides. Even from Cairo he declares: ‘It is plain that both Arabs and Jews have organised an efficient Palestine Administration and an efficient fighting machine.’ This is a long way from the notion that Arabs were poor soldiers and weak fighters, suggested by the Special Correspondent. Although the refugee crisis of the Palestinians dominates the first third of the story, no emotions are attributed to the refugees. But when the correspondent comes to the warring factions of the Arab forces again, he attributes negative emotions to the leading participants, as in: ‘The Palestine situation is [. . .] bogged down in a morass of intrigue and jealousy between Arab ruling families and even within those families.’ He also attributes to the street-level Arab Egyptians a lack of real sympathy for the Palestinians, refusing to join armies to fight in Palestine because ‘I work here [Egypt]’ and ‘my wife and children are here’. This story has a mixture of agencies. Arabs are seen as divided in various ways. At the elite level, they are ‘bogged down’, at the street level they are ‘shaking their heads’ about participation. The Arabs are positioned as masters of their own fate but squandering it. The reader is introduced to the complexities of Middle Eastern Arab politics, but the correspondent implicitly describes the disagreements as harmful and self-interested. We begin to see interviews. Flower mentions the views of ‘European Embassy officials and business people’ in Cairo and, later, ‘taxi-drivers, hotel porters, waiters, tradesmen, and clerks.’ Flower concludes on this basis that most ordinary Egyptians are not interested in fighting the

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Jews for Palestinians. His (limited) conclusions appear to be based on his own evidence. It seems to be the 1940s version of today’s television ‘vox pop’. Overall, in this report the Staff Correspondent adds three new perspectives to SMH readers’ knowledge: that the Palestinian refugee problem will be a new refugee tragedy, that both sides are efficient fighters and that good-hearted Arabs in Egypt are reluctant to fight for Palestine. In a short story, it is a good contribution.

c. ‘War-like Scenes In Amman’, 15 May 1948, ex-Amman, page 1, 25 paragraphs This story reports that Amman is swelling with Jordanian and Iraqi troops ready to fight the Jews, but also with tens of thousands of fleeing Palestinian refugees. The long report is strategically placed on the front page beside the lead story (from ‘Our Staff Correspondent’ in London), hours before the declaration by the Jews of ‘the State of Israel’. It is one of several items on Palestine in the SMH that day, including an editorial and a cartoon. Amman presents a picture of an Arab city about to go to war. The story has the immediacy of a first-person account, but with an exaggerated bravura about the excitement of war: I dined last night in a glittering new restaurant to the tune of rifleshots from lorry-loads of Arabs passing through the city towards the Palestine border. They fired their rifles in the air and sang lustily as they passed through the narrow streets at terrific speed. No more cosmopolitan scene could be imagined than in the restaurant where I sat. This almost mimics the Special Correspondent’s pro-Jewish piece of 18 May from Tel Aviv, but it lacks the optimism and racism about the opposition that was portrayed in the other report. The story is critical of the ‘chaos’ in Amman and moves quickly from the Arab tradition of firing guns in the air to the darker story of Palestinian (and Jewish) refugees: ‘The population of Amman has swollen from 10,000 to 80,000 in the past few weeks. ‘Most of the new arrivals are refugees.’

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It reports on the Jewish Haganah warning the British about plans by the Stern Gang to murder a top British official as he was leaving Haifa and reports the 50,000 Jews fleeing Iraq for Palestine. The end result is not propaganda, but a balance of sympathies. No direct emotions are attributed to Arabs through adjectival or verbal means in the story, but the correspondent manages to construct scenes that are in some ways typical of soldiers at war (‘sang lustily’) and some ways unique to Arab culture (‘fired their rifles in the air’). ‘Palestinian Arab refugees’ (one of the few times the word ‘Palestinian’ is used) are said to be ‘well-dressed’, an indicator that many of those leaving Palestine have left well-off homes and assets behind. The Arabs in this story are associated with a range of active verbs. From the first paragraph (‘The Arab city of Amman [. . .] presents a fantastic picture [. . .]) onwards, Arabs are ‘dining’, ‘firing’, ‘singing’, ‘sitting’ (around camp-fires) and ‘coming’ (to join ‘the Arab cause’) with apparent glee. The British, leaving Jerusalem, are also given agency, ‘taking’ precautions to avoid terrorism. And at the end of the story the Jews are given agency as they ‘take over’ Spitfire aircraft to bomb Arab armies. Only the (50,000) Jews of Baghdad are said to be in a ‘panic rush’, as though their perceived fate has come upon them at the last minute. The Arabs (not Palestinians, but from the Arab League army) are positioned as highly motivated, moving purposefully and freely towards all-out war. The Palestinian refugees, who comprise most of the 70,000 arrivals to Amman, are not described at all, simply as ‘swelling’ the city’s numbers. The reader is left with a picture of purposeful war-making on both sides. On one side, the correspondent gives a somewhat glowing view of Arab confidence, on the other he concludes with Jewish efficiency at buying armaments. The reader is left to draw his or her own conclusions. There are no formal interviews in this report, even though Flower made it clear he spoke with a Royal Air Force officer travelling to Akaba in southern Jordan. However, there are no quotations from the officer, although his views are represented. This is a first-person account of observations of life in Amman and it contains many descriptions of individual people and their experiences and perceptions. It is a very well-written story, especially his description of sleeping on the lounge-room floor of his hotel, The Philadelphia, to

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make way for Arab League officials who have just arrived and need rooms. The vignette of the RAF officer, his wife and child, leaving Palestine but making preparations to leave his family again to join the Arab army adds another human dimension. It was also an indication of where some British sympathies lay. In all, this front-page report offers a wide-ranging, personal profile of an Arab city preparing for war, but concentrates again on an important issue – the refugee crisis in the region – in the context of balanced journalism.

d. ‘SMH War Despatches: “With Arabs”, 18 May 1948, ex-Nablus, page 1, 14 paragraphs The reporter travels into Palestine and on to the frontline of the Arab League troops of King Abdullah and their welcome arrival in the Palestinian northern city of Nablus on the West Bank of the Jordan River. The story reports on Jordanian troops being bid farewell in Amman by King Abdullah amid waving crowds and the army arriving in Nablus to ‘excited’ Palestinians. It is headlined as a report ‘With Arabs’, with a similar-length report listed as ‘With Jews’ on the lower front page. There are no negative stereotypes of Arabs or Palestinians – nor of Jews. There appears to be some admiration in Flower’s description of the Palestinians’ struggles in Nablus: ‘Most Arab men in Nablus carry rifles, bandoliers, and pistols and have been actively engaged for a long time in guerilla war against the Jews.’ And there is even some warmth towards a local Nablus militiaman: To lodge this dispatch at Amman tonight, I had to persuade an Arab, who had been fighting all night, to drive me back from Nablus, 120 miles of winding and hilly road. He did it in two and a half hours. There are no references in this story to Jews, so no emotions are attributed to them. However, there are two groups of Arabs, although both are lumped under the same title (‘Arabs’): the men of the newly arrived Arab Legion, and the local Palestinian people of the northern Palestine town of Nablus.

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The people of Nablus are said to have been ‘excitedly’ greeting the army from Transjordan. The Arabs of Amman, in Transjordan, are said to have ‘cheered’ King Abdullah as he drove to the mosque to pray and ‘cheered’ again when he broadcast to his people to help their fellow Arabs in Palestine. The headline reads ‘ARAB ENTHUSIASM’, recording such scenes of emotion as: ‘There were crowds firing into the air in the customary Arab salute on the way to battle [. . .]’. This presents a scene of united opposition to the enemy – grateful Palestinian people and an Arab neighbour happily helping his fellow Arabs across the border. The Palestinian Arabs are associated with active verbs of agency in this report, such as ‘welcoming’, ‘gathering’ and ‘engaging’ (in ‘guerilla war’). The Transjordanian Arabs are also associated with agency, with verbs such as ‘packing’ (the streets), ‘cheering’ and ‘firing’. This fits with the notion being reported that both Arab groups are ready for war. This is a profile of war preparations in a very straight, professional manner. The Arabs, whether Palestinian or not, are seen as freely deciding their own fate by engaging in war. In this report, there are no references to the Jews (unlike the balancing report from the correspondent with ‘the Jews’, which not only mentions ‘the other side’ but makes several derogatory comments on ‘the Arabs’). The audience is positioned as understanding the geography of the coming battle (through references to distances, towns and hills) and understanding the role of the Arab forces within Palestine, now that the Jews have declared their ‘State of Israel’. Again, there are no interviews in this story. As in the previous story from Amman, the correspondent gives ‘pen pictures’ of the Arab people he has observed. The most striking is his compliment to the Arab driver who has driven him back to Amman so he can meet his deadline for the SMH. But so, too, is his praise of the ‘Arab’ (Palestinian) official in Nablus who has recently taken over administration of the town now the British have left: ‘[. . .] there are no signs that the town services are in any way broken down.’ Along with his description of armed ‘Arab men’ in Nablus, this is the first time in the SMH that the reader sees a picture of battle-hardened Palestinian men. It is neither exaggerated nor derogatory, but descriptive all the same.

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Again, despite being at such close quarters to the Arab Legion and Palestinian forces, Flower appears to maintain his distance from his subjects, while at the same time resisting the temptation to demonise his guests’ enemies.

e. ‘Religious Issue in Jerusalem’, 21 May 1948, ex-‘Near Jerusalem’, Page 1, 13 paragraphs This story states that with the military battle for Jerusalem underway, the Arab League has successfully claimed East Jerusalem, including the crucial Old City area, and the Jews hold the West of the city. The story begins with a statement about the importance of each side’s religious interests (largely, Jewish v. Muslim) when considering Jerusalem, but proceeds to outline significant Arab gains. In doing so, it contradicts the notion that the Arabs are deficient fighters and lists a number of major gains: firstly, within Jerusalem, secondly along the Jerusalem– Tel Aviv road to the coast and thirdly the Palestinian town of Tulkarem in the north, which is also close to the sea. Such gains might soon ‘cut the Jewish area in half’, he surmises. In addition, the report makes clear that Jewish fighters, holed up in Hebrew University in Jerusalem, are being pounded by Arab shells landing in the university. It should be noted that the dateline is, unusually, ‘Near Jerusalem’, and the term ‘with the Arabs’ has been added to ‘Staff Correspondent’, so it should be assumed that he is again travelling with Arab forces. The ‘Arabs’ in this story refer to the Arab League army based in Transjordan. There are almost no references to Palestinians. The battle for Jerusalem is referred to as ‘bitter’ due to its religious nature: It is plain here that the bitter battle for Jerusalem is a straight-out religious fight [. . .] The Jews are fighting for their Wailing Wall and Great Synagogue, and the Arabs for the Dome of the Rock. There are no other emotions ascribed than this ‘bitterness’ of both sides. The Jews are associated in this story with taking control of key points of Jerusalem – ‘preparing’, ‘occupying’ and ‘firing’ (from the grounds of Hebrew University). But, equally, the correspondent attributes the Arab army with recent ‘attacks’, ‘scoring’ (successes, along the Jerusalem– Tel Aviv road), ‘strengthening’ their position and ‘capturing’ and

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‘controlling’ key towns along the coast. It is a narrative of Jewish preparation but Arab victories. The story began with battles in Jerusalem eventually being won by Arab army forces and ends with a wider analysis of Arab victories elsewhere in Palestine. There appear in this report to be no Jewish victories. It appears that the correspondent was not in Jerusalem at the time of writing, but nevertheless ‘with the Arabs’. Unlike his other reports, he does not concentrate on firsthand observation, but speculates on victories wider afield. It is not clear what his sources are, although presumably ‘with the Arabs’ (army). This may have skewed his reporting. There are no interviews in this story. The pen pictures that featured in the correspondent’s previous stories are also absent from this one. Unlike previous reports, this is more of a military analysis and contains no more human perspectives to speak of. This report appears to come from Flower travelling with Arab League forces outside Jerusalem. Some discounting should be taken for his enthusiastic endorsement of Arab victories.

f. ‘DESPERATE ASSAULTS BY JEWS – Grim Fight in Jerusalem’, 22 May 1948, ex-Jerusalem, page 1 lead, 32 paragraphs This story reports that Arab League forces are surrounding Jewish remnants in the Old City, despite sniper fire from Jewish placements outside. Meanwhile, Palestinian residents of Jerusalem go about their daily business as though nothing much has happened. This was Flower’s most important piece of news reporting in his time as correspondent. Not only is it the leading story on page 1, but it includes a large map of Jerusalem and is also long. It is broken into two distinct parts: a military report on sections of the city taken by each side, and a personal account of his meetings with ordinary citizens. It is of interest that Flower is not described this time as ‘with the Arabs’, but simply as the SMH’s ‘Staff Correspondent’ in Jerusalem. However, he makes it plain in the story that he is the same person who was in Jericho the day before, near the Jordan River, presumably with the Arab Legion. The style of the prose is distinctly his.

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In each description of the fighting, Flower seems at pains to describe how Jewish resistance has been overcome by superior Arab firepower. He refers to the heavy casualties suffered by the Jews, the ‘withering fire’ of the Arabs against snipers and the taking of synagogues, including the Great Synagogue, by the Arabs. He portrays it as a comprehensive campaign. In this story, the Jews are said to be ‘desperate’, ‘suffering’ heavy casualties. Meanwhile, local Palestinians get on with daily life, a father ‘angrily scolding’ his child for running where sniper fire might get him, but otherwise, ‘cheerful’, ‘smiling’, ‘waving’ with ‘words of welcome for the stranger [Flower]’. This contrast of Jewish desperation and Palestinian hospitality is rare. There is a clear contrast in the agency given to each side in the text. The Arabs (army and ‘irregulars’, meaning Palestinians) ‘consolidated’ then ‘captured’, ‘advanced’, ‘pounding’ the Jews with artillery and, finally ‘blowing up’ a dump of their explosives. The Jews are said to be ‘failing’, ‘scrambling’, ‘suffering’ (heavy casualties) and ‘surrendering’ – all indicators of impending encirclement, defeat and forced exit from the Old City. The Arabs are positioned variously as efficient fighters working to a strategic plan to capture the Jews of the Old City Jewish Quarter and expel them, or as (in the second story) resilient ‘Arabs’ (Palestinians), putting up with the inconvenience of war, seemingly expecting this will soon be over. The Jews, on the other hand, are represented as ‘on the run’, heavily outnumbered and reliant on occasional support from snipers outside the Old City walls. They seem trapped, awaiting their fate. The audience – Sydney readers – is positioned to see this battle not just in military, but religious, terms. When it comes to a description of the life of the city, Flower begins by speaking in biblical terms of his ‘approach to Jerusalem through the Judean Hills’, a term that would have pleased his Christian and Jewish Zionist readers back home. He is also concerned to show that, as the sub-headline says ‘HOLY PLACES [ARE] STILL INTACT’. Given the emphasis in editorials on saving ‘the Holy Places’ (see Chapter 7), Flower may well have been – or felt – under instruction to give them some priority mention. There are no interviews with quotations in this report – somewhat surprising given the close proximity Flower clearly comes to troops and civilians alike.

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Like his report of 18 May, also on the front page (but not the lead), this story gives some firsthand pen pictures of Palestinian life. They do not include interviews or names, but they are empathetic nevertheless: Behind me to the left there were stone houses where women were cooking an evening meal [. . .] The agony this city has gone through for months now does not appear to have affected the scores of children in Bethany and the Old City. They are well-fed and cheerful and have a smile, a wave, and words of welcome for the stranger. The sub-heading is ‘Tragic scene’, but the prose is naturalistic and human. This is one of the few times when the narrative in a front-page story is not political, military, religious or historical. It simply captures Palestinian families caught up in war. This story justifies the decision of the SMH to send Flower to Palestine as their own Staff Correspondent. It reports both the battle for Jerusalem and the lives of the inhabitants caught up in the fighting around the Old City. By not relying on journalists based in London or New York, or local casual or freelance employees, the SMH achieves quality journalism in this story.

g. ‘Palestine Air War Intensified’, 24 May 1948, ex-Amman, page 1, 23 paragraphs This story reports on the role of air forces in the war over Palestine. It has increased, with both sides bombing key areas. Meanwhile, the war for the city of Jerusalem becomes more desperate. Listed from here on as ‘Staff Correspondent with the Arabs’, it appears that Flower is travelling with the Jordanian forces. He is back in Amman, then near Bethlehem and then returns to Jerusalem. This is essentially a military report. Flower states that he had conducted ‘visits to Arab headquarters in Jerusalem and Ramallah’. There, ‘I met for the first time Iraqi and Egyptian Air Force liaison officers’. He has been told of Arab planes bombing the Tiberias-Samakh area in the north, Tel Aviv city in the west and the town of Latroun on the key Jerusalem – Tel Aviv road.

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No individual emotions are attributed to ‘Arabs’ in this largely military report. However, Jews, trapped in the Old City, have been ‘prepared to surrender to the Arabs a few days ago, but Haganah had refused to allow this.’ This suggests a split between Jewish civilians – probably long-term residents of the Old City Jewish Quarter – and the Jewish Agency, but the source, Flower makes clear, is second-hand, a Swedish journalist he met. While the correspondent gives agency to both Arab and Jewish air forces bombing selected targets, he is disparaging of the Jewish effort (flying ‘small’ planes and dropping ‘home-made bombs’). He gives the impression of Arab forces ‘bombing’ and ‘strafing’ many targets throughout Palestine and, in Jerusalem, ‘repulsing’ Haganah attempts to relieve Jews in the Old City. Jews are certainly the victims in this story. The ‘Arabs’ are described as moving freely to overcome Jewish resistance. This time, this dominance is represented both in the air and on the ground. From this story one might imagine the Arab–Israeli war to be all over soon. From the audience viewpoint, the introduction of air power could be seen as an exciting new technological advantage for the Arabs, although the source of this dominance is not explained within the story. Always close at hand, too, is the reassurance to Australian readers that the ‘Holy City’ is ‘intact’. Whatever the human toll, the SMH seems at pains to ensure the monuments of the three religions remain untouched. Flower states in the story that he has spoken with three different sources: . . .

Iraqi and Egyptian Air Force liaison officers in Ramallah; (Arab) ‘Legionaries’ [sic.] in Jerusalem; and a Swedish journalist who had been trapped in the (Jewish) New City of Jerusalem.

However, while he goes on to describe their information, he does not name or quote them. In summary, Flower, again with Arab League forces, reports on the war in strict military terms, but also makes clear the cost to ordinary Jewish citizens of Jerusalem.

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h. ‘Cease-fire Call In Jerusalem Ignored; UNO Fixes New Time-limit For Its Truce’, 26 May 1948, ex-Jerusalem, page 1, 23 paragraphs This story reports that Arab morale is high after victories in Jerusalem as they meet to consider a request by the UN for a ceasefire in the city. This long report, at the top of page 1 but on the right-hand side, is above another from New York. The headline doubles up, summarising both reports. This is Flower’s attempt to portray the struggle for Jerusalem. He makes it clear the Arab Legion forces are winning the battle against strong Jewish resistance. And, again, as in previous reports, he reassures readers (and possibly his superiors) that ‘the Holy Places’ (the subject of a sub-heading) are intact. This information has come from an interview he conducted with Tawfik Husseini, the cousin of the powerful Mufti of Jerusalem. Jewish ‘snipers’ are still said to be causing trouble. In the Old City, Palestinian emotions are said to remain unaffected by the war: Children scamper about the tiny laneways, while mixed flocks and sheep and goats have no difficulty in finding their way home through the wilderness of twisting lanes and passages. They had been taken outside the Old City walls to graze. I admired a man in a chair of a tiny barber’s shop, who did not stir when a shell burst on the tower of a synagogue only 300 yards away, while the barber just as calmly went on shaving him. And wider Arab emotions were represented as not just relaxed but ecstatic: I travelled back to Amman this afternoon to find crowds lining the streets, cheering and waving flags as lorry-loads of Arab irregulars who have been fighting for months in Palestine returned on leave. From what the visitor to Jerusalem and Amman can see [. . .] the morale of Arab troops is at its highest. Correspondent Jack Flower uses a similar formula to the one in several of his earlier reports: military analysis, civilian pen pictures, political analysis and final anecdote. The Arabs are allegedly on the verge of

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victory (sub-headline: ‘MORALE HIGH’) and the Jews, especially in the capital Jerusalem, are facing a sharp defeat. The audience could rightly expect the end to be near. Once again, the state of the Holy Places is assured for presumably Christian and Jewish readers back home. Flower gives positive pictures not only of the Arabs’ fighting prowess, but of ordinary Palestinians. Flower states that he spoke with the cousin of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Mr Tawfiq Saleh Husseini, to get assurances about the state of the main religious buildings (Muslim, Christian and Jewish) in the city. This time, while there is a name, there are still no direct quotations. And while he says the ‘man in the street’ in Amman wants ‘unconditional Jewish surrender’, he does not quote any. He summarises their demand as requiring that ‘no Jewish state will follow’. Flower’s style is to take the reader on a journey. In this story he describes where he saw a battle, walked through the Old City, talked to a sheik and ‘travelled back to Amman’ to see cheering crowds. In some of these instances, he describes a scene containing Palestinians, though not Jews (even though he must have met them). Nevertheless, his pen pictures are warm and intriguing, although seemingly not completed with quotations. In summary, there is an authenticity about Flower’s work that comes through in his ability to combine military and religious perspectives with human and cultural ones. He makes his links (to the Arab Legion forces) transparent in his reporting, but appears to make an effort to go beyond them.

i. ‘600 Jews Killed in Ambush’, 27 May 1948, ex-Jerusalem, page 1, 20 paragraphs The Arab Legion forces claim they have killed 600 Jews in an armoured column of buses coming up the Tel Aviv– Jerusalem road to relieve Jews in the Old City. If true, this ambush would make it the biggest victory to date for Arab or Palestinian forces since the beginning of the conflict. However, the high number of Jewish fighters killed – and their failure to break the siege of the Old City – still did not make this story the page 1 lead (which, instead, was held for political and strategic news from London and New York about Palestine). This is surprising.

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The correspondent describes Palestinians in Jerusalem as ‘excitedly cheering’ at the first news of this major Jewish defeat, involving, allegedly, 600 deaths. No emotions are ascribed to Jews. While the cast of the story suggest Arab defeat of the Jewish troops, it also makes it clear that Jews were fighting to the last. The armoured buses were designed to relieve the trapped Jews of the Old City and, as such, constituted a positive report of Jewish agency. Indeed, in the end of the story, it quotes the Arab League commander as reporting that an Irgun force (previously dubbed ‘terrorists’ in the SMH) ‘launched a suicide attack’ on the Zion Gate to break through. This gives agency to the Jews. Clearly, a number of active verbs give agency to the Arab attackers – ‘take’, ‘ambushed’, ‘killed’ and ‘rounded up’. Again, the Arabs are positioned as on the attack, leaving Jews as the victims in the battle for Jerusalem. However, these Jews are not described as vulnerable and passive, simply defeated while fighting. For the audience, this is the description of a massacre, although of one army (Jewish) by another (Arab League). At a distance, ‘excitedly cheering’ might sound like ghoulish behaviour by the Palestinians to Sydney readers. ‘The Arabs’ who ‘excitedly cheer’ were also treated as a mass of Palestinians and have no individual character. And there is no profile given of the anonymous Arab League commander. Unusually, this story includes a multitude of quotations. Flower quotes two sources for his report of a ‘severe Jewish defeat’: .

.

the transcript of the English (and Arabic) broadcast made throughout the Old City announcing the deaths of the convoy sent to save the trapped Jews; and an interview with the ‘Arab League commander in the Old City’ (in quotes).

Although the name of the commander is not given, his description of the attack is detailed and measured. Nevertheless, the broadcast to the Old City could be discounted as propaganda designed to frighten the Old City Jews, and the statement of the commander and his estimate of 600 dead should be reported.

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Three points might be made of this reported ‘victory’: . . .

It might have been advisable to add the word ‘alleged’ to the number 600 (it was later thought to be much lower). The headline ‘600 Jews Killed In Ambush’ made a statement out of an allegation. In this situation, it would have been normal to get a response from ‘the other side’ (in this case, the Jewish Agency).

In all, while the headline to this story makes a clear assertion, the story gives only one side of the allegation that 600 Jewish fighters were killed. However, the by-line (‘with the Arabs’) and the names of the sources at least make it clear who the sources were. The story would have been much better had it included a Jewish response. The reader is left to judge for themself the claims of war.

j. ‘Relief From Air By Jews Fails’, 28 May 1948, ex-Jerusalem, page 1, 12 paragraphs This story reports an attempt by Jewish aircraft to drop supplies into the Jewish quarter of the Old City, which fails as Jewish suffering continues behind the lines. This on-the-spot report from the ‘Staff Correspondent with the Arabs’ is a smaller, ‘colour’ story beside the page 1 lead (from New York), which focuses on the ‘big picture’ of negotiations for a ceasefire. The layout of the front page indicates that global ‘high strategy’ reports are considered more important to the SMH executives than reports of the misery of war. Again, the reporter has sought out the Arab League commander and secured an interview that fills out the alleged human details of the siege. The commander speaks of the ‘desperate shortage of food and ammunition’ of the Jews and emphasises his military advantage, despite the allegedly unsuccessful plane drops. The Arab commander leading the fighting in the Old City of Jerusalem is ascribed emotions of care and compassion for the Jews: The Legion commander said his forces had blown up sections extending to as close as five yards of the Great Synagogue, but he instructed his demolition squads not to touch the synagogue.

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He said he believed most of the women and children of the Jewish quarter were sheltering in the synagogue. There is no reference to Jewish feelings. Since this is essentially a military report, and the correspondent is ‘with the Arabs’, Flower is at pains to describe the stranglehold the Arab Legion has on the Old City. The Jewish forces ‘try’, ‘flew’, ‘dropped’, ‘fired’ and ‘moved’ to relieve their people but ‘fail’. This is confirmed in the main headline (‘Fails’). The Arabs maintain the agency not only because the Jews have failed to drop any of their seven packages of food and ammunition in the Old City, but also because the Arab army continue to ‘bomb’ closer and closer to the Jewish quarter. The audience was reading day-by-day of this slow strangulation of a community – on the one hand, seemingly sympathetic to their plight, but, on the other hand, aware that this was a war. There is clearly an interview in this text (of the Arab commander), but, again, there is no name or direct quotations. The reader has to trust that the summary of the commander’s words is accurately reported by the correspondent. The first-person account of the correspondent near the Great Synagogue helps, but he clearly did not cross the military lines to see the people inside. In large measure, this report, like others, pits the homogeneous ‘Arabs’ against the homogenous ‘Jews’. But as in other Jack Flower reports, while there are no profiles of particular individuals, there is empathy and context. Flower’s reportage includes a trip inside the Old City at night with the Arab soldiers: Being close to this desperate underground fighting near the great Synagogue is a horrifying experience, particularly at night, when the observer goes slipping and sprawling over the stone rubble of sections already blown up or into holes in the tiny laneways which lead to small rooms underground. At one point we heard a baby’s cry which appeared to come from the depths of the earth. This feeling for the Jews sheltering inside their quarter comes from the SMH’s man ‘with the Arabs’ and it was clear he was distressed by what he found. An interview with one of the Jewish families would have helped

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even more – if he were allowed to cross that military line. The subeditor picks up on this paragraph, giving it the sole sub-heading of the article: ‘Holes, rubble’. In summary, there is a real attempt at balanced reporting in this text, despite working with the Arab troops and having only the Arab commander’s view of the battle.

k. ‘GREAT SYNAGOGUE FALLS TO ARABS’, 29 May 1948, ex-Jerusalem, page 3, 12 paragraphs This story reports that Arab League troops have taken the Old City of Jerusalem, including occupation of the Great Synagogue, and invited King Abdullah of Jordan to visit his father’s grave near the Dome of the Rock. This short story (and on page 3) is from the reporter ‘with the Arabs’. It is above another from the reporter ‘with the Jews’ and is introduced by three lines from ‘a Staff Correspondent’ in London. It is followed by a Staff Correspondent’s report, unusually, from Washington. (See Chapter 4 for a close analysis of the reporter with the Jews on the same day.) The Palestinians are represented as returning to a normal, peaceful existence now that the battle for Jerusalem is almost at end. They are said to be ‘emotional’ in welcoming King Abdullah to the Old City and ‘talking endlessly’ in the bazaars. There is no description of Jewish feelings about losing this battle. From the reader’s viewpoint, the Arab taking of the Great Synagogue suggests a Muslim triumph in the heart of a Christian and Jewish sacred space (hence the large sub-head: GREAT SYNOGOGUE FALLS TO ARABS). To this extent the headline is misleading about the demographic and religious importance of Jerusalem to Muslims. There are no interviews in this story. Despite Flower’s usual style to add a sense of human colour into his otherwise military reports, this time it is less personal and quite broad-brush. After noting the arrival of King Abdullah to claim an Arab victory, Flower makes a wide claim: Life in most of Arab Palestine is back to normal. Villagers crowd the bazaars to sip coffee and talk endlessly, while in the fields, the Arabs are harvesting bountiful crops of barley and wheat after good rains.

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Apart from the violent fighting west of Jerusalem, some fighting is going on just outside this peaceful Arab State area. He then mentions three areas with the word ‘skirmishes’: Ramleh, Lydda and Tulkarem. In fact, all of these became major battlegrounds. He also fails to mention a whole series of other areas of Palestine where Jewish– Palestinian clashes were occurring. It is an inaccurate and romantic picture of Palestine, which indicates how his short time in Jerusalem, largely covering the siege of Jerusalem, has misled him into thinking he has the country ‘covered’. This story is a disappointing piece of work from Flower, both within the context of the story of the surrender of the Old City of Jerusalem, but also in relation to his claims that the rest of Palestine is ‘back to normal’.

l. ‘ARABS OCCUPY OLD CITY: Dramatic Scenes As Jews Surrender’, ex-Jerusalem, 31 May 1948, page 3, 22 paragraphs This story records that the Jews of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem have surrendered, the young men and women of the Haganah fighting force have been taken prisoner and the remaining Jewish civilians sent from their homes to the New City areas in Jerusalem. In this highly emotional page 3 lead story, there are virtually no emotions attributed to the victorious Arabs or nearby Palestinian Arabs, although in one instance they are said to be ‘helping’ to their feet Jewish women who have collapsed in sorrow as they leave the Old City. However, the story as a whole is about Jewish suffering as they surrender and abandon the Jewish Quarter. In the second paragraph, the correspondent refers to the Haganah fighters captured in the Old City as being sent to ‘Arab concentration camps’ – surely a symbolic reference at the time to the recent events in Germany and Poland. However, this was an international conflict between warring armies and the term was strictly inappropriate. Similarly, the Jews leaving the Old City are described in the sixth paragraph as an ‘exodus’. This not only has biblical resonance, but would have recalled the controversy over the denial by the British Mandate authorities to allow the SS Exodus to land the previous year in Palestine loaded with Jewish refugees.

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In describing the Jewish troops and civilians walking from their homes, he describes them ‘staggering’ and ‘tripping’, releasing ‘a wave of wild, hysterical crying from the women and children’ and, finally, ‘fleeing’ to New Jerusalem. The Arab Legion soldiers are shown to have the primary agency in this story, ‘taking’ (560 prisoners), ‘closing in’ (on Tel Aviv), ‘ordering’ (1,300 civilians to assemble), ‘getting among’ and ‘helping’ (groups of women and children). But the Jews, defeated and sorrowful, conduct ‘fruitless haggling’ about the surrender, ‘panic’ in walking away, and watch their children ‘tripping’ and ‘sprawling’ through the rubble. Although the story is sympathetic to their plight, it still portrays the Jews as victims. This story is almost entirely dominated by the ‘exodus’ of the Jews from the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. The correspondent correctly states in the first paragraph that the disappearance of the Jews from the ancient Jewish Quarter is important news. However, the narrative of the story follows the narrative of the headline: ARABS OCCUPY OLD CITY. This misleading headline suggests that the Old City of Jerusalem had not previously been a largely Arab city. The use of the word ‘OCCUPY’ in the headline decontextualises this reality. Arabs were not ‘occupying’ the Old City. It had been Arab and Muslim since at least the seventh century. For 1,500 years, Jerusalem had been an overwhelmingly Muslim city, allowing Christian and Jewish minorities to co-exist within its walls. This was the legacy of Saladin’s famous generosity in victory over the Crusaders. For the Sydney audience, these words matter. The Jews-as-victims story reported here would have resonated with the recent revelations of Germany and Poland. ‘Old men and women, some carrying their Jewish bibles’ would have struck a chord of empathy and sympathy in Sydney. In this very firsthand account, it is surprising that Flower does not conduct ‘on-the-record’ interviews with some of the Jewish people leaving their homes, carrying what they could on their backs. Even if Flower did not speak Hebrew or Yiddish, some of the Jews (or Haganah commanders) would have spoken English. Yet there are no interviews, despite the fact that there are very close-up pen pictures of distressed families. He reports a claim of the Jewish Agency without quotation

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(that Jews fought to the last bullet). There are also no interviews with Arab troops or Palestinian residents. This story is probably the most emotional of Flower’s entire oeuvre, as he seemingly walked with the Jews as they left their homes. Yet there was not one family he profiled, but several, and not one Orthodox Jew, but several as a group. He does make one startling observation, following weeks of allegations that the Palestinians, and now the Arab armies, had been using ‘starvation’ as a gruesome weapon against the Jews (see the many reports of the Special Correspondent on this issue). He says: ‘All (Jews) were dirty and terribly tired but they appeared to have had sufficient to eat.’ The revelation earns a special sub-headline from the sub-editors table back home: ‘NO STARVATION’. This was a graphic firsthand account of 1,600 Jewish residents leaving their homes in the ancient Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. While it quoted one statement from the Jewish Agency, it interviewed none of the departing Jews. It revealed that they did not seem close to starvation, as previous reports emphasised. However, in all, it was highly sympathetic to the Jews’ plight.

m. ‘ARABS CLAIM NEW GAINS’, ex-Jerusalem, 31 May 1948, page 3, 7 paragraphs This story reports that the ‘Arabs’ claim to have made military gains north, east and south of Tel Aviv, possibly splitting Palestine in two. This is a short story at the bottom of the same page 3 as analysed above. It reports on ‘Arab claims’ of several victories 10– 20 miles (15– 30 kilometres) away from Tel Aviv, including along the crucial Tel Aviv– Jerusalem corridor road. The report’s by-line is simply ‘Staff Correspondent’, although it adds ‘and AAP’, which seems to mean some paragraphs had been added by sub-editors in Sydney. There are no emotions attributed to either side in this strictly military report about gains and losses on the battlefield. The by-line to this report does not say ‘Staff Correspondent with the Arabs’ (as usual), despite there being only one Staff Correspondent in Palestine at this time – Jack Flower. The story, like those above, gives agency largely to the Arabs. However, for the first time he adds the words ‘claim’ and ‘Arabs said’ rather than reporting statements as facts.

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Therefore, the agency is qualified: Arabs ‘claim [. . .] gains’, ‘said they had attacked and occupied’, [might] ‘consolidate’ and, again, ‘claim’ (to have ‘entered’ Lydda and Ramleh). Interestingly, he simply states Jewish fighting as occurring: ‘The Jews [. . .] threw a brigade [. . .] into the Latrun area’. In this short story, Flower seems to be distancing both himself and the reader from Arab claims of several victories. The Arabs are positioned as possibly stretching their claims, the Jews as simply fighting in the Latrun area (en route to Jerusalem). The audience is left to judge whether Arab claims are trustworthy. In summary, this is a short, detailed description of ‘claims’ of Arab victories. It was of interest that when reporting Jewish military activity, Flower described them without the word ‘claims’ and simply as fact. It was also Flower’s last by-lined report.

The Body of Work of the Staff Correspondent In summary, the Staff Correspondent seems to display the key components of the journalistic standards expected of SMH reporters at the time. Part of this adherence can probably be explained by Flower’s intimate knowledge of the standards expected, having been trained as a cadet at the SMH and having worked in its news room before his posting. But part may also be a result of Flower’s own individual approach as a journalist. This adherence is evidenced in the following ways: . . .

breaking news (a: Arab League splits and disunity; and b and c: Palestinian refugee crisis); keeping ‘distance’ from sources (d: trip to Nablus with Arab forces; and m: use of the word ‘claim’ for Arab victories); and balance in seeing both sides of the story (f, g and j: sympathy for Jewish civilians as Arabs attack), although he is travelling with the Arab forces.

Flower does not allow his own personal politics to intrude on his journalism. When describing each side’s fighting qualities, he says of both that they are ‘efficient fighting machines’ (b: 14 May). His regular pen pictures of the civilians on both sides humanise, rather than

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demonise, one side (see d). He appears in many stories to be using a structural formula: military analysis, civilian profiles, political context and final anecdote. The formula serves to add nuance and complexity to his reports. It should be said that Flower’s output in the three weeks of the sample is at a very high rate – almost a story every day. It includes travel around Palestine/Israel as the two armies clash, as well as occasional trips back across the border to Amman. (The rate of production of the Special Correspondent during the ‘guerrilla war’ phase between the Palestinian and Jewish forces was about one story a week.) On at least two occasions, Flower’s usual high standards drop. The first is in story i (27 May) about an Arab army attack on a Jewish military convoy carrying arms and food to trapped Jews in the Old City of Jerusalem where Flower accepts the claims of 600 killed and provides no interviews or independent sources (or even Jewish witnesses) to confirm the claim. The second is Flower’s claim in a story two days later (k: 29 May) that ‘life in most of Arab Palestine is back to normal’ as Jerusalem’s Old City falls to the Arab League army. Fighting continued throughout Palestine for nearly a year. On the other hand, his long story of 22 May (f) is an outstanding piece of reporting as a war correspondent. It fulfils all the requirements of a news editor like Angus McLachlan – emotion, people, battles and on-the-frontline reporting in the context of the Holy City. McLachlan rewarded it with page 1 lead status, added a map of Jerusalem and a second story on the battle from the Staff Correspondent in London using Reuters cables for further colour. A summary of the descriptive techniques used by the Staff Correspondent in Palestine in these 13 stories shows a different way of seeing the conflict (for Flower, involving three sides – the Palestinians, the Jews and the Arab League army). In describing emotions, Flower’s reporting tends to follow the thread of war and the journey he undertakes with the Jordan-led Arab League army. In several stories he is staying in Arab towns (e.g., Amman or Nablus) and there are seemingly few, if any, Jews to report. On the other hand, in Jerusalem, he is at pains to report Jewish suffering. There is a balance of emotions, depending on place. But, in general they distribute as:

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Palestinians are given emotions in about half his stories and they are largely positive (f and k: ‘emotional’ in welcoming King Abdullah to Jerusalem); Arab League leaders are given emotions in about half the stories, but they are mixed (a: ‘feuding’ among themselves; e: ‘bitter’ fighting, but also j: ascribed care and compassion in an interview for not bombing a synagogue with women and children in it); when Jews are mentioned they are described in sympathetic terms (c: ‘panic rush’ as they flee Iraq for Israel; f: ‘desperate [. . .] suffering’ trapped in the Old City; and l: suffering ‘exodus’ as they leave their homes in Jerusalem).

The Arab League forces (with whom Flower is often travelling and listed as ‘with the Arabs’ in eight of the 13 stories) have total agency in Flower’s reports. However, agency is distributed elsewhere in Flower’s stories. The Palestinians are taking agency into their own hands as refugees in surrounding Arab countries (in four stories). And the Jews have agency in four stories as they attempt to fight their way out of the Old City. Jews are certainly seen as victims once their defeat in Jerusalem is clear (three stories). Interestingly, Palestinians are not positioned at all in Flower’s reports, except, importantly, as refugees. The Jews are also not positioned, except as victims in defeat. But the Arab League has a complex profile from Flower’s reports. They are seen as efficient but squabbling. The reader of the SMH back in Sydney is left to judge for themselves in this three-sided contest for recognition. But again, as with the Special Correspondent, one theme is dominant from Flower’s reports. The major theme (even more than for his colleague on the ground) is the religious nature of the conflict. His first report on arrival in Jerusalem states that ‘the bitter battle for Jerusalem was a straight-out religious fight’. Many in Palestine might have contested this proposition, seeing it more about land. But from this report onwards, he is at pains to give the reader an update (see f, g and h) on the physical state of the Christian, Muslim and Jewish holy sites. It is almost as though the SMH editors have asked him to have a small update in every story. As a result, Flower put a religious hue on almost every story, consistent with his belief that the war in this place was about religion.

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Flower does conduct interviews with the Arabs he meets along the way as he travels from Cairo to Jerusalem via Amman and Nablus in northern Palestine. It is part of his signature style. Some of the Arabs are Palestinians (h: on two occasions, very positively), some are Arab troops of the Arab Legion forces (c and g) and some are Egyptians (a and b). Flower provides no interviews with Jews. As previously mentioned, this is a failing, especially in the story about 600 Jews allegedly killed. The same technique is adopted in terms of individualisation. Where the story is necessarily related to ordinary people – four times in the case of Palestinians, four of other Arabs and once of Jews leaving the Old City – Flower composes substantial pen pictures of civilians and their lives in the midst of war. The interviews and profiles form part of the correspondent’s humanising approach. Therefore, the textual analysis of the reporter’s 13 stories over the three weeks in this sample shows that Jack Flower largely fulfilled his brief to ‘cover the events subsequent to the handing over of the British mandate in Palestine’. He arrived just after David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel and as Arab League troops invaded Palestine. Apart from his early trip to Nablus, he stayed in Jerusalem to watch the battle for that city – and, in particular, for control of the Old City in East Jerusalem. He chose to make this battle the centrepiece of his reporting from Palestine. Flower’s reportage maintained the standards that might have been expected of a SMH reporter in a difficult war zone. It was most likely that his editors were well pleased with their decision to send him. He broke stories, kept his distance from his sources, maintained a balance between both sides and exhibited no overall bias. For the most part, his stories were readable and interesting. An analysis of the descriptive techniques reflects Flower’s more complex style. He is close to the Arab army and by-lined in many instances as ‘with the Arabs’. However, this does not seem to constrain his journalism. Palestinians are given emotions as people in much of his narrative. They are troubled by the need to flee their land, but many carry on despite the war. Arab cultural life (bazaars, mosques and business) is respected. Jews are described in detail in their entrapment in the Old City. Compassion is expressed for their synagogues and lives. Understandably, the Arab League army dominates his perspective, having agency as it defeats Jewish forces (temporarily, as it happens) in

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Jerusalem. There are no demonised people in Flower’s landscapes as he individualises the opponents in this war with personal profiles. For readers, Flower attempted to leave it up to his reader to make their own minds up about the combatants in this conflict. Where he did not do this, it was when his reports were heavily wrapped in the religious significance of Jerusalem (for all three faiths) or called on the recent experience of the Jews in Europe to evoke an image.

One Land, Two Reporters: The Special Correspondent and the Staff Correspondent With both these correspondents paid by the SMH – one as a freelance or casual employee, the other as a member of staff – the editors could have expected they were covering the most important parts of the conflict in Palestine. The political and diplomatic realities could be – and were – covered from the SMH’s London and New York bureaux. Both bureaux also had newly acquired, improved access to Reuters cables and correspondents at their disposal. In its wisdom, the SMH decided it would rely on the Special Correspondent for what might be termed the ‘civil war’ or the ‘guerrilla war’ between the Palestinians and the Jewish Agency, and then send their own man for the Arab – Israeli war that would begin once the British Mandate ended on 15 May 1948. The result was that the Special Correspondent reported on the month of April and the first two weeks of May, a six-week period when violence was at its height in Palestine and caused major consternation and rethinks in London and Washington. It also meant that Jack Flower, Staff Correspondent, who arrived in Palestine after the ‘State of Israel’ was declared, got to see nothing of the fight by Palestinians alone for their land and almost nothing of the Arab League fight for Palestinians outside Jerusalem. A further consequence was that the task for the Special Correspondent in terms of journalistic standards was to give balanced coverage between the Palestinians and the Jews, whereas Flower’s task was to do the same for both the Arab League army and the Jews. By the time the SMH’s own man arrived, the Palestinians had become the minor story. In a sense, the SMH recognised the difficulty of ‘balanced reporting’ by dividing the two correspondents and calling one ‘Our Special

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Correspondent with the Jews’ and the other (Flower) ‘Our Staff Correspondent with the Arabs’. However, this division, and these bylines, only occurred after 15 May. This was the SMH’s (and, probably, Angus McLachlan’s) way of indicating to the readers that it was trying to ‘get both sides’ of the story. If he could not rely on the Special Correspondent to be balanced, another device was found. How the SMH viewed its two correspondents is elicited by comparing both the length of space given each of them and the placement of both when they had reports on the same page. The average length of the Special Correspondent’s stories published in the SMH is 10.7 paragraphs. The average length of the Staff Correspondent’s stories is 17.3 paragraphs. Clearly, the Staff Correspondent was the more favoured reporter. And on the three occasions in this sample where both have stories appeared on the same page (18, 29 and 31 May), the Staff Correspondent’s story leads the Special Correspondent. Jack Flower, despite his young age, was the SMH’s most trusted reporter. Therefore, the pattern was to employ the Special Correspondent to do occasional reports over a longer period, but have them at shorter length, and then to have their own correspondent come and do almost daily reports at longer length. We have seen in Chapter 4 how the Special Correspondent went beyond normal SMH journalistic standards and used linguistic techniques to portray the Palestinians as cruel aggressors against the Jews, although at the same time representing them as weak and cowardly fighters. The Staff Correspondent arrived and to an extent redressed this imbalance, not by being pro-Palestinian or pro-Arab, but by dominating the coverage with a more complex, balanced and nuanced journalism that demonised neither side. It is highly likely that the senior editors in Sydney noticed the imbalance and took steps – the (late) appointment of Flower and the device of separate by-lines – to correct it. As stated earlier (Chapter 4), there was a strong belief in the distinction between ‘fact’ and ‘opinion’, and news reporting was in the former category. Opinion was to be expressed only by an elite of trusted SMH staff and news reporters were to simply report the news without fear or favour. Chapters 4 and 5 have established that the ‘news’ reported from Palestine before Flower’s arrival was in fact biased towards the Jewish viewpoint. Flower arrived too late to report on the Palestinians’ fight for

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survival. He found himself instead in a war between foreign Arab armies and the Israel Defence Force. After our sample ends, he decamped to Amman, along with many other foreign correspondents, as the war became too dangerous to report. It was also when further massacres of Palestinians took place. Finally, one similarity between the Special Correspondent and the Staff Correspondent was that both reported the conflict in Palestine as though it was, at least in part, all about the ‘Holy City’ of Jerusalem. Both correspondents had Jerusalem as their overwhelmingly most common dateline and both concentrated their reporting on one single event: the siege of Jews in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City in East Jerusalem. All the other battles around Palestine – in the Galilee, in Haifa, in Jaffa, in the Negev and on the Lebanese border – were never mentioned. With both reporters promoting the war as having religious significance – others might see it as about land, refugees and human rights – it is little wonder that winning the war in Palestine from a SMH perspective came to mean saving important buildings in Jerusalem. It is also possible that, with the battle of circulation statistics happening in Sydney, the SMH chose ‘Jerusalem’ as its selling point and directed both reporters accordingly.

CHAPTER 6 OPINION ON PALESTINE: EDITORS AND SPECIALISTS

Mr Rupert Albert Geary Henderson, aged 51, was a powerful figure in the Fairfax world at Hunter Street, Sydney, in mid-1947. Unlike his fellow managers, he was a boy from the working classes. Educated at the public school in Sydney’s inner city Glebe, he got a job as a cadet at the SMH aged 19 in 1915. He rose through the ranks as a reporter in the 1920s and then as manager of the London office of the SMH. By the time Angus McLachlan was news editor, ‘Rags’ Henderson (as he was known, a little fearfully) was general manager of John Fairfax and Sons Pty Ltd. He was also chairman of Australia’s cable news agency, AAP. Henderson’s writ from the board of directors was to make profits for the company. The classified advertising pages of the SMH were the rock on which the company stood. The cover price and other advertising also contributed. It was Henderson’s role to keep an eye on costs (newsprint, wages, transport and distribution), to deliver dividends to shareholders (mainly the Fairfax family) and to keep ahead of key competitors such as the Murdochs and the Packers in the paper’s daily circulation. The new arrangement with Reuters was part of a cost-saving exercise. But Henderson knew he had a special product in the Sydney Morning Herald. His drive to sell the paper had to include respecting its editorial traditions as Sydney’s long-standing (by then 100-year-old) ‘paper of record’. He kept a close eye, through attendance at the daily editorial news conference with McLachlan and the editor, Frank McClure-Smith, on major stories and how they were covered. He also knew that the major

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owner and chairman of the board, Warwick Fairfax, also considered himself a bit of a hand from his Oxford days at discussing and writing about world events. Therefore it was no surprise that when Henderson flew out of Johannesburg, South Africa, at 4.30 am on 18 July 1947, heading home after a week spent trying to convince the South African media companies to join the new Reuters arrangement and join the board (of which he was a member), that he flew back to Sydney via Palestine. The British had already announced they were leaving Palestine and the UN was trying to find a solution between the Jews and the Palestinians. Henderson spent a week in Egypt and Palestine, getting to know, firsthand, the feeling on the ground.1 It almost certainly also involved dropping in on the local Reuters correspondents in Cairo and Jerusalem to introduce himself. The SMH had always regarded the Middle East as crucial to Australia’s links to Britain and he was checking out the scene for himself. He arrived back in Sydney on 25 July. He would have reported back to the small group that attended the daily news conference on editorial priorities exactly what he thought of the Jews’ and the Palestinians’ prospects in their dispute. We have no way of knowing what was said, but Henderson was not a man to hold back. Nor was the chairman, Warwick Fairfax. Several times he burst into print in the paper he owned and not just through the editorials (or ‘leaders’, as they were known on the editorial floor). The owner sometimes used the Special Correspondent by-line to add his personal views to his newspaper’s mix of ideas, particularly on foreign affairs and especially if it involved a defence of British interests. Whereas Angus McLachlan as news editor tended to be a man of the future, savouring the new US connections, and ‘Rags’ Henderson was the pragmatist (having opened the New York office a decade earlier to make use of the passing of the imperial baton to the USA), Warwick Fairfax remained the nostalgic defender of the Old Country. In domestic affairs, the SMH was traditionally conservative, both socially and politically. The key editorial executives all lived in the elite eastern suburbs (Bellevue Hill, Potts Point and Elizabeth Bay) and, of course, the Fairfax mansion at Bellevue Hill was known for hosting the social elite of Sydney at its regular dinner parties. If there was a Sydney ‘establishment’ to rival Melbourne’s, this was it. Fairfax newspapers supported Liberal Party leader Robert Gordon Menzies; although, in

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1941 it caused consternation among party supporters when it surprisingly switched its support to Labor’s John Curtin. From then on, however, it switched back to Menzies and campaigned strongly (and successfully) in its editorials in 1949 for a return to Menzies’ Liberal Party over Labor’s Ben Chifley. As we have seen, Gavin Souter remembers a clear distinction between the newspaper’s ‘upper management’ and reporters on voting intentions when he arrived as a cadet in 1947.2 It should be made clear that the ‘upper management’ Souter referred to were the chairman (Fairfax), the board members, the general manager (Henderson) and the editorial elite who liaised with them on a daily basis each lunchtime (editor McClure-Smith and, probably, McLachlan). The ‘lower management’ of 1947 and 1948 would have included the chief of staff (Harry Williams, former World War II war correspondent), the deputy chief of staff (Kath Commins) and the chief sub-editor and chief cable sub-editor (Lindsay ‘Lin’ LeGay Brereton) – the latter running the foreign correspondents. Whereas the editor and news editor had separate rooms, the ‘lower management’ sat within the ‘newsroom’ with the reporters. Liaison with your sub-editor was a plus, not a minus. It was this ‘newsroom’ that largely supported Labor. Therefore, the SMH management and staff had distinct political sympathies on a variety of state, national and foreign affairs. Even within the management there were nuanced differences and presumably the same would have been true within the editorial floor. As Gavin Souter’s reminiscences show, the differences were well known within the office at the time. One other matter should also be raised. It is the extent to which religion mattered in the SMH office of the time. The Fairfax family came from a ‘low’ Anglican background in England and continued this allegiance in Australia. They were active church-goers. Angus McLachlan came from a Presbyterian background and was proud of his Scottish heritage. Catholics were largely not welcome in the SMH of the day, and management made this clear in its hiring practices. Souter recalls his successful bid for a cadetship in 1947: I think I got on with him (McLachlan) also because we both had a Scottish Australian background. He had been to Scotch College in Melbourne and I had been to Scots College in Warwick,

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Queensland. McLachlan was Presbyterian, the Fairfaxes were Anglican and there were virtually no Catholics on the editorial staff.3 The late 1940s was still a time in Australian history when animosity and doctrinal differences between Catholics and Protestants was a reality of life. In many Sydney institutions – like the NSW Police – Irish Australian Catholics dominated. In many others – such as elite retail stores such as David Jones – Scottish or English Australian Protestants dominated. The Fairfax media were explicitly Protestant. It was in this environment that decisions were made by both the ‘middle management’ on the newsroom floor and the ‘upper management’ at daily news conferences – sometimes including the chairman and major shareholder, Warwick Fairfax – about how to commission reports on Palestine from correspondents in Palestine, London and New York, and how to express what the SMH as an institution thought about the conflict.

The Organs of Opinion in the SMH As outlined in Chapter 4, ‘opinion’ was contrasted with ‘fact’ in the SMH culture of the 1940s. The cadet reporter would be told that ‘all we want from you is the facts’, expressed in the who/what/where/when formula. The news reporter was not there to express opinion, but to report – accurately and without bias – the ‘facts’. The cadets of the day, like apprentices in a factory, would learn from senior reporters and figures like deputy chief of staff Kathleen Commins or news editor Angus McLachlan that facts were sacred. The ‘rounds’ that cadets were given to begin their careers – shipping, weather, police to begin with – were, above all, training grounds in fact-gathering. It was clear, in this culture, who ran ‘opinion’ in the SMH. It was, as Gavin Souter recalls, the ‘upper management’. This was expressed in two different ways: the editorials and a variety of opinion-based texts in which trusted employees were permitted to put their view or interpret events. These were the letters, cartoons, opinion commentaries (often called ‘opeds’) and finally, news features, which mixed news reporting with commentary. The latter category all appeared on the opinion page next to the editorials (page 2). They were deliberately isolated from the ‘news pages’.

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Editorials in the SMH, 1947 – 8 By far the most important of these organs of opinion was the editorial (or ‘leader’). It represented the view of not only the SMH editor, but the Fairfax ownership. It was one vehicle by which the proprietor could explicitly address his concerns and affect public policy. It was assumed that, given the paper’s age, record and standing in the community, the editorial would have a powerful effect on public opinion and, possibly, voting intentions in elections. Leaders of business, the law, politics, medicine, academia and the public service followed the SMH’s daily view on events and issues. Internally, it was a matter of great honour and trust to be asked to write a ‘leader’. The editorial had a literary style that set itself apart from every other genre in the newspaper: knowledgeable, authoritative, opinionated, sometimes satirical, taking a strategic overview of events. To some extent, the ‘heroic’ style, which might seem out of place today, was a sign of the SMH’s confidence in its place in Sydney society and the national debate. Mere reporters would take note of the Fairfax company’s views on policy issues of the day through the ‘leaders’. In 1947 and 1948, the task of writing the editorials was that of the editor, Hugh McClure-Smith. He had been the editor for a decade, but saw much of his editorial control of the paper weakened by the ambitious and energetic Angus McLachlan’s takeover of news features, cartoons and letters.4 Educated at Melbourne Church of England Grammar, then Balliol College, Oxford, McClure-Smith was a personal friend of Warwick Fairfax (with whom he had shared a room at Oxford) and often lunched in the directors’ dining room along with Fairfax, Henderson and McLachlan. He had been a member of various conservative clubs in London during his student days. Of McClure-Smith in the 1930s, Souter recalls: McClure-Smith could easily have been mistaken for an Englishman [. . .] he had later studied law and accountancy in London, being called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1929 [. . .] In March 1933 he was appointed assistant correspondent for the London Times in New York [. . .] in 1936 he joined the London staff of the Times, where he specialised in Imperial and American affairs, economics, political theory and drama. Although

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McClure-Smith thought of himself as a possible editor of the Times [. . .] a more immediate opportunity, already offered by Warwick Fairfax, was the editorship of the Herald.5 In the 12-month period of this sample over the two years of 1947 and 1948 – namely, the months of February, October, November and December in 1947 and January – May (inclusive) and October – December (inclusive) in 1948 – the SMH ran 30 editorials on the subject of Palestine. Table 6.1 shows how they were distributed across the months. The most editorial-intensive months (four or more) are April and May 1948, followed by February 1947. In the next group are December 1947 and February and March 1948, which have three editorials per month. The last months of 1948 (October, November and December) are when Palestine is addressed least as an issue. The intensity of the editorial outspokenness reflects the news coverage as analysed in Chapter 4: apart from February 1947 (when Britain decided to relinquish its Mandate in Palestine), the war between the Palestinians and the Jews prior to the end of the Mandate on 15 May 1948 and the declaration by the Jewish Agency of the State of Israel on the same day, were the key periods of interest by the editorial writer at the SMH. These were the months of February – May 1948. Table 6.1

Number of SMH editorials on Palestine, selected months 1947–8.

1947

GROUP A GROUP B

1948

GROUP C

GROUP D TOTAL

February October November December January February March April May October November December

4 0 2 3 1 3 3 4 6 1 1 2 30

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More broadly, the four groups of sampled SMHs above reflect four themes that mark turning points in the struggle between the Palestinians and the Jews: Group A: The decision by the British Cabinet to hand its Mandate back to the UN. Group B: The lead-up to and announcement of the UN’s plan to partition Palestine. Group C: The war between the Palestinians and Jews as the Mandate ends. Group D: The acceptance that the Jewish forces had defeated the Arab League armies. In this schemata it should be noted that, since the UN decision to partition Palestine was announced on 28 November 1947 and guerrilla war began within hours of its announcement, the December 1947 SMHs will be considered as part of Group C. To see how the 30 editorials of the SMH make sense of the unfolding events in Palestine, they will be examined in terms of the themes of the four groups mentioned above.

Group A: Britain hands Mandate over Palestine back to the UN There are four editorials in February 1947 (4, 7, 17 and 27 February). In the first two (4 and 7 February), the SMH expresses its disgust at the actions of Jewish terrorists in Palestine against British targets (see Chapter 3). It calls for ‘the law’ to be imposed on the ‘fanatical Zionists’ and their ‘campaign of terror’ and blames the top Zionist body in Palestine, Ben-Gurion’s Jewish Agency and its ‘illegal Army, Haganah’ for ‘declaring war’ on Britain. It also worries several times in both editorials about Britain’s ‘prestige’ and ‘standing’ in the Middle East. The Palestinians are seen as an intransigent party regarding talks. The second two (17 and 27 February) are less strident about Jewish actions in Palestine and more thoughtful about the British position, being caught between both sides in the conflict. It implies that the British proposal – a five-year trusteeship with semi-autonomous Jewish and Palestinian areas – is still alive and that Britain may still not ‘quit’. It calls for more active UN help and ‘American statesmanship’ rather than advice and criticism.6 Ten days later, the SMH accepts the reality of

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Britain’s referral to the UN in an editorial titled, interestingly, ‘The Palestinian Impasse’ – one of the few times the word ‘Palestinian’ is used in the paper. The referral is only ‘common sense’, the newspaper says, and ends with a none-too-subtle swipe at US President Harry Truman: both logic and justice surely dictate that President Truman is justified in giving advice to the Mandatory Power only if he is prepared to accept an equivalent degree of responsibility. What clearly exasperated Mr Bevin (British Foreign Secretary) was, however, the knowledge that these attempts at intervention were linked with the internal politics of the United States.7 Once again, while the Jews are still mentioned as ‘terrorists’, the Palestinians are in the background as one side of ‘the problem’.

Group B: The UN decision to partition Palestine There were no editorials on the issue in October, but in the month leading up to the UN General Assembly decision on Palestine on 29 November – with its Special Committee on Palestine report recommending partition – there were two: 12 November 1947 and 27 November 1947. The first editorial begins by accepting that partition seems to be the only practical solution but points to ‘a fundamental omission’ in the plan: It is all very well to make an award, but who is to enforce it? If both Jews and Arabs agreed to the principle of partition, the rest would be plain sailing. But the Arabs have repeatedly and unequivocally declared that, far from accepting division, they will use armed force to resist it.8 The SMH points to the recent ‘blood-bath on the Indian pattern’ as an example of what could lie ahead. Two weeks later, the paper uses the same Indian analogy and underlines that Britain will take no part in implementing a plan opposed by the majority of Palestinians [. . .] The (UNSCOP) committee had fair warning of what to expect. Not only the Palestinian Arabs, who outnumber the Jews there by two to one, but also the neighbouring Arab

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States have plainly and repeatedly declared their intention of opposing partition by all the force at their disposal.9 The editorial goes on to blame the ‘Zionists’ for the precarious situation the Jews would find themselves in: The responsibility for this dangerous prospect rests squarely on the Zionist leaders. Had they been content to accept a National Home in Palestine, instead of pressure for a Jewish State, the bitter opposition now engendered amongst the Arabs would have been avoided.10

Group C: The war between the Palestinians and the Jews, December 1947 – May 1948 December 1947 There were three editorials in the final month of 1947, appearing on 2 December, 11 December and 19 December. Under the heading ‘UNO’s FATEFUL SESSION’, the SMH proclaims, in its 2 December edition, that only time will tell whether the decision on Palestine is ‘statesmanship’ or ‘a fatal error’. If the latter, the Palestine question could damage the UN itself, it says.11 Just over a week later, another editorial is already aghast at the immediate rise in ‘disorder and bloodshed’. It worries how Britain would cope with a civil war in Palestine, whether Russia would ‘fish in the troubled waters’ of the Middle East and whether we could see ‘the death knell of the United Nations’.12 There is an air of panic in the SMH’s next editorial (‘THE ARABS MEAN BUSINESS’) a week later. ‘Many Arabs’, it reads, see the coming war with the Jews as a ‘holy war’ or ‘racial war’ against ‘the Crusaders’, dividing Asia from the West. Many Jewish communities in the Middle East may suffer the same fate as under Hitler in such a war, possibly equating Arabs with the Nazis. Finally, Western access to Middle Eastern oil could be ‘imperiled’. This scenario could be, says the SMH, ‘the ultimate conflagration’.13 January 1948 There was only one editorial, on 7 January, much along the lines of the previous one in December. It returns to the need for ‘enforcement measures’ to separate the two sides and make them keep to agreed lines.

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‘Some form of international security force must obviously be found’, it says. It also returns to the notion that, if there are no checks, the 200,000 Jews in Arab states ‘would face a grim fate’.

February 1948 The three editorials of 5, 20 and 26 February 1948 see the SMH come out forcefully against the UN decision to partition Palestine. The first editorial discusses the difficulties facing British forces in the midst of transition. It again refers to the ‘great majority of Palestine’s inhabitants bitterly opposed’ to the partition plan, and states that Britain is not to blame for this situation and repeats ‘[the] UNO can redeem an increasingly obvious blunder only by the provision of an international force to police partition.’14 The next editorial (headlined ‘PALESTINIAN DILEMMA’) of 20 February bluntly outlines the ‘impossible’ task given to the UN to prevent violence between the two sides and impose two states on them. This had been shown by the deaths so far, it said, since 29 November of 1,300 Arabs, Jews and British soldiers and police. Enforcement, in fact, is impracticable. But without enforcement partition is impractical. This being so, the time is surely ripe for a complete reconsideration of the Palestine problem by the United Nations. And the SMH said the USA should provide the leadership: [. . .] the United Nations will be justified in looking to America for a lead since it was undoubtedly American influence and American conviction that partition was the right solution that led to its adoption.15 Six days later, on 26 February, another editorial details how the USA has failed to ‘lead’ and gives a realpolitik explanation of US policy: The negative American policy undoubtedly reflects the dilemma of an Administration reluctant, especially on the eve of an election, to offend influential Jewish voters by withdrawing support of

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partition, and equally reluctant to prejudice Arab-controlled oil supplies by insisting on its strict enforcement.16 In these circumstances, says the SMH, ‘partition must be abandoned’ and, as the Colombian delegate to the UN says, referring back to the UN General Assembly: ‘The original decision has been proved to be wrong.’ And it goes much further, suggesting the UN itself has acted illegally: A review of the Assembly verdict is the more necessary since doubts have now been cast on its jurisdiction in such a matter. The Syrian delegate’s challenge on this point deserves full and careful consideration. Is the Assembly, in fact, competent to ‘violate the basic principle of Palestine’s integrity’ and to create two new States? Could armed international contingents properly be levied to curb, not aggression, but the popular protest of a majority against the arbitrary disposition of lands it calls its own? These are grave and important questions and they might well be referred to the International Court.17 In these three editorials, the SMH effectively agrees with the Palestinian and general Arab position. It is also in conflict with the policy of the federal Labor government of the day, which, through the active prosecution of the partition case by Foreign Minister H.V. Evatt, had not only chaired the UNSCOP recommendations, but also strongly backed partition in the General Assembly and continued to do so at this time. The SMH was taking a pro-Arab and anti-Labor line.

March 1948 The stridency of the February 1948 editorials is replaced in March by more neutral, possibly resigned attitudes to the inevitability of war in Palestine (6, 20 and 26 March). The first editorial, titled ‘Cast Away’, is a Saturday satirical reflection on the hopeless task of the members of the UN Palestine Commission – locked away in a flat in Jerusalem trying to gauge popular feeling from behind barbed wire and protected by ‘Palestinian guards’.18 A more serious editorial the next Saturday notes that the Arab League’s opposition to an international police force to implement

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partition is predicated on their confidence that ‘a straight-out Arab– Jew conflict could only end in their favour’. Once again, the SMH calls on the USA to refer the partition decision back to the General Assembly for review: ‘The alternative is to abandon Palestine to anarchy and the Middle East to a convulsion of incalculable dimensions.’19 At Easter time, the SMH devotes its Good Friday editorial to ‘THE LESSON OF THE CROSS’, an epistle on Christianity. Below it, is ‘THE PALESTINIAN IMPASSE’ (again), an editorial which blames the Americans for partition but mentions a new US proposal being floated to temporarily ‘postpone partition’ to avoid violence. Such fumbling in the councils of the UN is tragic. With only seven weeks to go before the end of the British Mandate [. . .] it is difficult to see how large-scale warfare can be averted.20 In the next few days, the SMH hired a local freelance journalist to become its Special Correspondent to report on the ‘warfare’ it had now accepted as inevitable. He or she would report on the seven weeks of violence before the end of the Mandate (see Chapter 4).

April 1948 The SMH now turns its mind to what needs to be saved in the expected conflagration (7, 14, 24 and 28 April 1948). Top of the list are the ‘Holy Places’ in the ‘Holy City’ of Jerusalem. In its first editorial of April, it calls on the UN to safeguard the city with a small international police force. It says there are ‘world-wide misgivings over the future of Jerusalem’ and, although acknowledging that the city is ‘sacred to three great religions’, declares it had little confidence in Arabs and Jews when war began: ‘If racial passions are allowed to rage unchecked, the Holy Places can hardly escape damage or even destruction.’21 In this view, both Palestinians and Jews are seen as unable to control their unbridled emotions, despite a history of doing just that for centuries in the city of Jerusalem. The next editorial, ‘TOWARDS DISASTER IN PALESTINE’, responds to what the SMH describes as ‘the Jewish massacre of Deir Yassim’ [sic.]. ‘Open war’ between the two sides is now about to occur, the paper states, after this ‘disastrous decision to partition the Holy

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Land’. The task of the UN Security Council is to ‘work out a means to prevent a holocaust’.22 Nearly two weeks later, the SMH takes the Chifley government to task. As the Truman Administration in Washington begins to have second thoughts and the UN General Assembly prepares to reconsider its original policy of partition, the SMH lambasts the Australian federal government as being ‘lost to realities’ in pressing the General Assembly to adopt a resolution that would benefit one side (the Jews) over the other (the Palestinians). It accuses the government of suggesting actions Australians would not take themselves: Would Australians willingly join in what would be virtually an armed invasion designed to take from the Arabs lands in which they have lived for several hundreds of years? It finds it ‘disturbing’ the way in which Australian policy is out of step with both its main allies: Despite Britain’s long and intimate experience of Middle Eastern problems, and her special interests there, Australia is taking the lead in advocating a conflicting policy in respect of Palestine. She is equally at variance with the United States.23 Once again, the paper supports the Palestinian/Arab position, expresses its deep commitment to the British and criticises the federal Labor government. At the end of April, the SMH, almost plaintively, reiterates that Britain has shown ‘realism’ from the outset, but this needs to include an ‘international force to re-establish and maintain order’.24

May 1948 By the time the SMH next addresses the issue of Palestine, it is more in sorrow than in anger. There are six editorials in May: 4, 15, 18, 21, 24 and 28. With only ten days to go before the British Mandate concludes, the paper simply bemoans the ‘UNO’s sorry display of impotence’, President Truman’s hollow words fearing war and the twin fears that have crippled America’s ability to act: access to Arab oil and Russian designs on the Middle East.25

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On the day the Mandate ends – and Mr David Ben-Gurion, head of the Jewish Agency, announces the formation of the State of ‘Israel’ – the SMH’s editorial tone is gloomy. With Britain forced out of Egypt, Iraq and now Palestine, the waters of the Middle East are available for Russia to fish in, it says. ‘The consequences for civilization may be serious indeed’. The UN ‘has done nothing to carry out the responsibilities it assumed’. The war for Palestine will now begin and the Jews are to blame, in the SMH’s view: For Palestine’s desperate situation today the Zionist must shoulder the major share of the blame. Had they but been content to accept the terms of the Balfour Declaration for the establishment of a national home, turmoil and bloodshed could have been avoided. But their fanatical insistence on a National State has not only alienated many sympathisers but provided a fierce reaction throughout the whole Arab world.26 In the next editorial, only three days later, the ‘leader writer’ is concerned with two issues: that there will still be time to enforce peace because both sides appear to be sticking to their UN-defined areas; and that Australia should follow Britain, not the USA, by taking time to consider the new State of Israel’s demand for immediate recognition. On the latter, America had been ‘over-hasty’ in recognising Israel, says the SMH: It is not an example which the Commonwealth should follow. Australian policy in this matter should conform with the decision of Britain, who, it is understood, will wait until the new State has proved it can maintain itself and fulfill its international obligations. This is the logical and commonsense procedure.27 The editorial three days later returns to the theme of protecting the ‘Holy Places’ in the ‘Holy City’, Jerusalem. In ‘DESECRATION OF THE HOLY PLACES’, the SMH warns the UN that it has a direct responsibility, under the terms of the partition plan, to protect Jerusalem as an International City. But it had become a ‘battlefield’, with shells and mortar bombs falling ‘about’ the Garden of Gethsemane and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.28

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This editorial is interesting for at least two reasons: first, that its news reporters consistently reassure the SMH readers of the safety of the ‘Holy Places’, even to the point of interviewing an Arab commander about protecting the Jews’ Great Synagogue; and secondly, there is an assumption that Jewish and Arab commanders and troops would not, of themselves, protect these sites. Another editorial on Palestine, on 24 May, discusses the new diplomatic complications presented for Britain by supplying arms to a close ally, Transjordan, as it invades the new State of Israel. The SMH rushes to the defence of Britain in the American press in endorsing Russia’s criticism of Britain for allegedly ‘fighting Israel through Transjordan’: [This] will astonish all who recall what Jewry owes to British support. For the present tragic situation, Britain bears no share of blame. The major responsibility rests squarely among the Zionists [. . .] Nor can it be forgotten that it was American advocacy of partition [. . .] which set the match to the flame.29 The sixth editorial in May – two weeks after the 15 May deadline and declaration – appears amazed at the fact that both sides, Arab and Jewish, have largely stuck to the lines accorded them by the UN partition plan. (The SMH did not know, nor report, the secret prior agreement between Jordan’s King Abdullah and the Jewish Agency’s Golda Meir – that each would avoid the other.)30 It praises the Arabs for abiding by UN plans, sympathises with their anger at the rush to recognise Israel by both the USA and Russia, and notes the Arabs’ ‘willingness to compromise’. When the SMH refers to Israel in this editorial, it puts the noun in quotation marks – ‘Israel’. The paper is yet to accept its legitimacy.31

Group D: Acceptance that the Jewish forces have defeated the Arab armies This period of three months at the end of 1948 was marked by several new realities since the editorials of May. The Jewish forces had largely defeated the invading Arab armies and the Palestinians who fought with them. Only the terms of the settlement were to be decided. The Jewish forces had gone well beyond the UN partition plan lines and occupied

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further areas not allocated to them by the UN (e.g., the Negev desert), leaving the Palestinians with just 22 per cent of the original Palestine. Jordan had become the de facto administration of the Palestinian areas, including east Jerusalem. West Jerusalem had become a Jewish-only area. Armistice agreements with surrounding Arab countries were yet to be agreed. In this context, it is surprising that the SMH still overwhelmingly refers to ‘Palestine’ in its news reporting and repeats this term in its editorials. It appears reluctant to accept the new reality of Israel’s power. Of the four editorials in the period of the sample – the fewer numbers an indicator of Palestine going ‘off the agenda’ – the first three refer only to ‘Palestine’ in the headline, while the last, in December, refers to ‘Israel’. (Australia did not recognise Israel until January 1949.) The SMH’s sole editorial in October that year (21 October 1948), is a call for recognition at some point soon for the reality of the Israeli state and for further assurances for the Arabs: [Current plans] recognize, too, the real fears of the Arab states that Israel, with unlimited immigration and the support of world Jewry, would prove an aggressive and expansionist neighbour, and emphasizes that no solid settlement is possible unless the Arabs receive reasonable guarantees.32 Similar defence of Arab interests can be detected in the SMH’s sole editorial on the issue in November. It criticises Australian government policy at the UN: ‘Contrary to British policy, it would give to the Jews the essentially Arab area of Negeb [sic.].’ It is shocked at Australian support at this point for Israel’s entry into the UN: The Australian plan breaks new ground in calling for the admission of Israel to UNO – surely a somewhat premature step, seeing that the boundaries of the new State are not yet defined.33 Two editorials in December (4 and 17 December) again concentrate on the twin issues of the UN’s inability to enforce its will and the State of Israel’s push for recognition and admission to the UN. In both cases, the

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SMH disapprovingly highlights Australia’s seeming pro-Israel bias. The editorial of 4 December notes that Israel is due to expand its territory over the Negev Desert, with Russian, US and Australian support. What the SMH describes as the UN’s ‘fumbling expediency’ has dealt the entire institution a ‘heavy blow’ to its ‘prestige’.34 Two weeks later, the SMH editorial (‘ISRAEL AND THE UNO’) fumes at putting Israel into the UN: the proposal to admit Israel to UNO is untimely from the point of view of the conciliation effort and premature as a matter of policy [. . .] Israel is only just emerging from a background of turmoil and bloodshed to which some of its components contributed an appalling campaign of treachery, murder and terrorism. There is something indecent in the haste with which this regime is being ushered into UNO.35 The SMH finishes its editorial (and this sample) with a somewhat schoolmasterly lesson for Israel: By far the more preferable decision would be on the lines of Canada’s proposal, that the application be deferred until Israel has shown by moderation, restraint and readiness to concede that she merits a place among peace-seeking nations.36 In outlining the key arguments put forward by the 30 SMH editorials over the 12-month period of this sample, it can be said that there are several continuing themes: criticism of Jewish terrorism, violence and unwillingness to compromise; criticism of US (and Australian) support for the partitioning of Palestine; criticism of the UN for its failure to enforce its resolutions; defence of British policy and its inability to get Jews and Arabs to agree; and concern for the ‘Holy Places’ in the ‘Holy City’ of Jerusalem. Although the SMH is critical of Jewish, Zionist and, finally, Israeli, actions and opposes partition in many editorials – and even continues to call the land ‘Palestine’ long after the British Mandate was finished and Israeli forces had won their war – there is very little mention of the Palestinians as a people. Several times the editorials make it clear that the Palestinian majority is being robbed of its country, but there are very

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few references beyond that to its leaders or people. The SMH appears more anti-Jewish/Zionist/Israeli than pro-Palestinian. Taking the 30 editorials one by one, and considering the explicit themes above, they can be broadly summarised as falling into four categories along a spectrum of support for either Jewish/Israeli or Palestinian/Arab sides of the struggle, as seen in Table 6.2. The four categories are: . . . .

support for Palestinian/Arab position or opposed to Jewish/Israelis; support for Jewish/Israeli position or opposed to Palestinian/Arabs; antagonism towards both sides; and neutral or concerned with other subjects (e.g., British or Australian policy).

There are several points to be made about this distribution: (1) The ‘neutral’ category mainly concerns the SMH’s view of international politics on the Palestine issue and how the UN, USA, Britain, Russia, Australia and others are dealing with it. A further breakdown reveals that in six of the 30 editorials the SMH is critical of the USA or of President Harry Truman on this issue. In eight of the 30 it is highly supportive of or defends Britain and its conduct. (2) For the two occasions in the ‘Pro-Jewish/Israeli’ or ‘AntiPalestinian/Arab’ category, it is not support for the Jewish position as such, but fear of Arab rhetoric about ‘holy war’ and what Arabs might do to Jews in Iraq and elsewhere that is significant. (3) In both of the editorials, in the ‘neither’ category it is about care for Jerusalem as a holy city and the belief that neither Arabs nor Jews can adequately look after it. (4) The size of the bias towards the Palestinian/Arab position is mainly composed of disagreement by the SMH with the notion of partition when the majority of the population (the Palestinians) opposed it. This point is repeated many times; however, the other sub-theme is ‘Jewish terrorism’. This, too, is repeated many times, beginning in February 1947, again in the months of April and

Table 6.2 Support expressed for either side in SMH editorials, selected months, 1947 –8.

Date 4 February 1947 12 February 1947 17 February 1947 27 February 1947 12 November 1947 27 November 1947 2 December 1947 11 December 1947 19 December 1947 7 January 1948 5 February 1948 20 February 1948 26 February 1948 6 March 1948 20 March 1948 26 March 1948 7 April 1948 14 April 1948 24 April 1948 28 April 1948 4 May 1948 15 May 1948 18 May 1948 21 May 1948 24 May 1948 28 May 1948 21 October 1948 25 November 1948 4 December 1948 17 December 1948 totals (30) percentage

pro-Pal/Arab; anti-Jewish/ Israeli

pro-Jewish/ Israeli; anti-Pal/Arab

neither

U U

U U U

U

U U

U U

U

U U

U

U U

U U U

U U

U U

U

U U U U U 14 46.6

neutral

U

2 6.7

2 6.7

12 40

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May 1948 (especially in the editorial after the massacre at Deir Yassin), and again in the final months of 1948.

‘News Features’ in the SMH, 1947 –8 The news features category was (and is) close in genre to news (see analyses, Chapters 4 and 5) on the one hand and an opinion piece or ‘oped’ on the other. While it was often written by a senior news reporter – especially a Staff Correspondent – it allowed the reporter to express more of their expertise than simply describing a news event. In so doing, he or she may express opinions about developments or people in their area of expertise. As a result, it was customary to place the article on the same page as the editorial, letters, cartoons and others in the opinion genre. In this period of the SMH, this was page 2. As a result, a list of the news features from the 12-month sample of writing on Palestine finds that they all appear on page 2. There are 13 of them. They have eight different by-lines: . . . . . . . .

‘Ian Bevan, A Staff correspondent who was recently in Palestine’ (SMH, 5 February 1947). ‘Special Correspondent’ (6 and 15 January 1948; 9 April 1948). ‘Special Correspondent in the Middle East’ (22 April 1948). ‘J.H. Flower, Staff Correspondent with the Arabs’ (24 and 26 May). ‘New York Staff Correspondent’ (3 and 10 December 1947; 27 May 1948). ‘Special Correspondent in New York’ (17 February 1948). ‘Staff Correspondent formerly in the Middle East’ (29 April 1948). ‘Special Correspondent in London’ (8 November 1948).

As noted earlier, this was a period when named by-lines were a rare occurrence, but some anonymity here could also have been for safety reasons. Only Ian Bevan and Jack Flower have named by-lines in this list, although SMH staff would have known that ‘Staff Correspondent in New York’ meant the chief staff correspondent and manager of the New York office, A.D. ‘Abe’ Rothman. It should be noted that on only four of the 11 reports is there a claim that the reporter is on the ground in Palestine (Bevan, Flower and ‘Special Correspondent in the Middle East’), although, as the analyses below suggest, the two reports from the Special

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Correspondent appear from the text to be from Palestine. However, it is also the case that much of Palestine’s future was being decided in New York at the UN, where at least four of the reports come from. Since this genre, published on the opinion page, allowed senior reporters to put aside some of the management and union restrictions on straight news reporting and express opinion, what does an analysis of these 13 reports show? In this section, the analytical tools used in Chapters 4 and 5 – designed to reveal hidden themes in texts – will not be used, as the genre does not demand ‘objectivity’ through fairness and balance. Not unlike the editorials and the opinion pieces, their leanings are clearer.

i. ‘Fanaticism of the Jewish Terrorist Gangs’ by Ian Bevan, a staff correspondent who was recently in Palestine (5 February 1947) Bevan’s piece is an apologia for those the SMH previously labelled as ‘terrorists’ – members of the Irgun and Stern Gang. He represents the members of these bodies as ‘patriots’ who are forced to fight for the land they see as theirs. Fellow Jews who are not members defend them, too, says Bevan, because they refuse to assist ‘the [British] authorities’. He reports a conversation with a solicitor for a detained young Irgun member. The solicitor calls such members ‘young, idealistic and intensely proud of what they are doing’. Bevan makes the point that it was the British who trained these men and women in military tactics. In all, Bevan’s is an extremely sympathetic portrait of Jewish ‘terrorist gangs’. ii. ‘Palestine Crisis A Supreme Test for UNO’ by a staff correspondent in New York (3 December 1947) This article reports the feelings of Jewish leaders in New York about events in Palestine and looks at the hurdles to partition yet to be faced. It makes the point that ‘the actual centre of partition planning is here in New York’, but sees the US State Department, ‘which always has been lukewarm towards partition’, as a problem for President Truman who ‘has never lost sight of the fact that certain of the New York electoral districts are likely to be vitally important in the Presidential race next year’. No ‘Arab leaders’ were interviewed or their views summarised. This is the Jewish/Zionist viewpoint from New York.

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iii. ‘Fear of Arab – Jewish War growing in U.S.’ by a New York staff correspondent (10 December 1947) Once again, this article is written from an entirely Jewish viewpoint. He reports the view of Jewish Agency Political Department head Moshe Shertok, visiting New York, that Palestinian unrest in Palestine stemmed from ‘Arab hooligans inspired by agents of the exiled Mufti of Jerusalem’ and does not represent the feelings of their people. He also states that ‘Jewish leaders here’ expected a split in the Arab League forces. Their ‘long view’, he says, is that only massive Jewish immigration to Palestine – maybe a million Jews – would bring security and peace. No ‘Arab leaders’ are reported. Interestingly, the reporter also breaks a new story: that King Abdullah is allegedly talking to the ‘(British) Colonial Office and the Jewish Agency’ about: [. . .] a joint proposal that he should annex the Arab half of Palestine if the Palestinian Arab leaders refuse to set up a separate Arab state under the partition plan. He summarises what Jewish leaders said over the last ‘week-end’.

iv. ‘Fear Deepens in Palestine’, by a special correspondent (6 January 1948) It is not clear whether this correspondent is based in Palestine or outside it. It is more of a strategic commentary than an on-the-spot report. Neither side’s leaders have been interviewed; however, the image drawn is of a future Jewish state threatened by ‘an insurgent movement (Palestinians) larger than the revolt that defeated the British in Ireland.’ The writer compares the Jewish situation with Britain’s before Dunkirk in World War II. The article constitutes an appeal to pro-British readers to understand the Jews’ predicament. v. ‘This is Palestine’s Danger Spot’ by a special correspondent (15 January 1948) The ‘danger spot’ referred to in the headline of this refers specifically to the fears of various Jewish settlers in the largely Palestinian area of the

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Galilee. The story speaks of ‘we’ and ‘theirs’. ‘They’ are the Arabs and it is predicated on the reader identifying with the vulnerable Galilee Jews bravely defending their outposts in a sea of Arabs. These settlements bulge with sturdy young men and women, hand-picked Haganah detachments, advance guard of the Jewish Army. They are well-armed, well-trained and ready for anything [. . .] But they are surrounded by Arabs. The theme of the industrious Jewish community continues: ‘From 5 am until sundown everyone works, applying enormous industry plus modern methods of agriculture to land which has been neglected for centuries.’

vi. ‘U.S. Oil Shortage May Affect Palestine’ by a special correspondent in New York (17 February 1948) This is a short ‘news feature’ at the bottom of page 2, which revolves around one train of thought: a cold winter is starting to highlight to Americans how dependent they are on access to Middle Eastern oil. Policy on Palestine is being handled ‘more gingerly’, says the reporter: ‘[. . .] the oil companies’ appeals for protection and for a less one-sided foreign policy in the Middle East will be listened to with a good deal of attention.’ The story is overwhelmingly about oil heaters, but concludes with a political edge. vii. ‘Police Are leaving Palestine’ by special correspondent (9 April 1948) This is a story from a former member of the British Palestine Police Force who profiles the daily work of the force as they prepare to leave after 30 years. It is a very sympathetic portrait – he refers to the force’s ‘fine history’ – but points to the thankless task it has become, especially from the Jewish press in Palestine. Any action undertaken within the Jewish community, he said, receives the same reports: ‘And he must expect at all times to be individually and collectively labeled antiSemitic and Fascist.’ The article is neither pro-Palestinian nor anti-Jewish; it is, if anything, pro-British.

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viii. ‘Jews Are Facing Heavy Odds’ by a staff correspondent recently in the middle east (29 April 1948) This feature is more a military assessment of both sides as they head towards the crucial date of 15 May when the British Mandate ends and Arab League armies are likely to invade. The article represents the Palestinian ‘irregular’ fighters as poor, having been ‘ill-trained and poorly-organised’. However, by contrast, the Jewish Haganah, and its core element the Palmach, are seen as well-trained and well-led. Crucial to any war will be the leadership skills of the Arab armies, the writer says, which are generally regarded as poor. He or she doubts whether Egypt will join the fight. This article is marginally more sympathetic to the Jewish forces. iv. ‘Tense days In Arabs’ War Centre’ by J.H. Flower, staff correspondent with the arabs (24 May 1948) This is the first ‘news feature’ where one can see the Palestinian viewpoint, not necessarily from the writer, but expressed in interviews. The SMH correspondent appears to be based in Amman in Jordan for this article and gives a comprehensive picture of Arab life in the city. As in his news reports, he is concerned about the number of Palestinian refugees. He also seems to be suggesting that Transjordan have taken over the Palestinian area of the partition plan, appointing administrators and its army occupying towns like Nablus. He also reports the young Arabs signing up to defend Palestine: These Arabs regard the Jews as straight-out aggressors who are trying to seize their lands and their kinsmen in Palestine. The present Partition Plan horrifies them. They say it gives the Jews the best areas [. . .] Furthermore, they are convinced that the Jews aim at the eventual control of the whole of Palestine. The sub-headline, given these thoughts, is: ‘Plan Horrifies Arabs’.

x. ‘To War, Perilously, In An Arab Taxi’ by J.H. Flower, staff correspondent with the arabs (26 April 1948) This is a light-hearted piece, part travel writing on a journey from Amman to Jerusalem and then back via Ramallah and part pilgrimage of

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Biblical sites (the ‘Judean hills’, the Jordan River, the Mount of Forty and an Arab woman – as ‘in the Scriptures’ – going to the well with an urn on her head).

xi. ‘U.S. Jewry Hostile To Britain’ by our New York staff correspondent (27 May 1948) There is something of a disjunction between the text of this article and the headline. It appears true that the headline was correct at this time, but the article makes a wider claim of ‘anti-British feeling in America’ as a whole. Then, within the article, it restricts its claim mainly to New York. Finally, it quotes the New York Post as evidence that the Jewish community would be antagonistic towards Britain. It goes on to explain US action to hurry to recognise the new State of Israel as ‘part of a drive for votes in the Presidential election’ and to beat its Cold War enemy Russia to the punch. In general, the article raises the spectre of serious conflict between Britain and the USA if Britain arms Jordan and the USA arms Israel. xii. ‘Britons Now Sorry They Joined The Arab Army’ by a special correspondent in the Middle East (22 October 1948) This story reports the alleged disillusionment of the many British soldiers and police who joined the Arab armies to avenge the deaths of their friends by Jewish forces during the British Mandate. Many are ‘leading a hand-to-mouth existence’, have not been paid as promised and are not getting passports to Arab countries. On the other hand, says the reporter, the relative minority who joined up with the Jewish side are well-paid and some have ‘married Jewish girls’. There are no interviews with either the ‘happy’ Britons with the Jews or the ‘disillusioned’ Britons with the Arab forces. xiii. ‘Opportunity For Peace In Palestine’ by special correspondent in London (8 November 1948) This article is more in the manner of an ‘oped’, or opinion piece, in that it ends with a ringing call for Britain to accept that the USA was right to back the more efficient fighting force, the Jews, than those who ‘had the numbers’ (the majority Palestinians and their Arab neighbours).

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The writer states that the Israelis have won the war and Britain should face the facts. Table 6.3 shows how support is expressed for either side in the news features using the same categories as Table 6.2. In the sub-genre of ‘opinion’ in the SMH, Table 6.3 reveals a substantial bias towards the Jewish/Zionist/Israeli position on behalf of a variety of correspondents writing news features on the editorial page (page 2) over two years. Eight of the reports favour the ‘Jewish’ position, four are neutral and only one could be classed as being more sympathetic to the Palestinian/Arab position. More than half of the articles (seven of 13) contain the word ‘staff’ in them and therefore carry the authority of the SMH. The rest are from ‘special’ correspondents, presumably freelance or casual, but with the SMH’s endorsement (of their expertise, not position) by virtue of publication on this important page. Of interest is that five of the seven ‘staff’ articles are pro-Jewish/Israeli. Of those five, three of those are from the SMH’s ‘Staff Correspondent in Table 6.3 Support expressed for either side in SMH news features, selected months 1947–8.

Date 5 February 1947 3 December 1947 10 December 1947 6 January 1948 15 January 1948 17 February 1948 9 April 1948 29 April 1948 24 May 1948 26 May 1948 27 May 1948 22 October 1948 9 November 1948 TOTAL

pro-Pal/Arab; pro-Jewish/ and anti-Jewish/ Israeli; antiIsraeli Pal/Arab U U U U U

U

U U U

1

8

neither

neutral

U U U U 4

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New York’. These three articles comprise his total contribution to the news features page. Only one other news feature comes from New York in this period and it is neutral. The New York Staff Correspondent, A.D. Rothman, was a 52-yearold ‘tall, leathery, crew-cut New Yorker’ who had set up the SMH’s office in 1939, having worked previously as a journalist at the US International News Service and AAP.37 Rothman’s politics at the time were strongly Zionist. Far from keeping his politics and his journalism apart, Rothman mixed the two. As mentioned previously, he was a friend of Australia’s External Affairs Minister, H.V. ‘Doc’ Evatt. In the 1960s, Rothman wrote that he: ‘worked very closely with him (Evatt) to achieve an object which I thought was near to both our hearts, the creation of the state of Israel.’38 In a two-part series of articles on Evatt in 1967 in Australia’s Nation magazine, Rothman recalled how Evatt called him to his office in New York in 1947 to ask him ‘What would you do about Palestine?’ and Rothman urged that the UN take ‘strong and quick action to settle the dispute’, knowing that Evatt already knew he (Rothman) was in favour of partition.39 Rothman says he then got in touch with the Jewish Agency’s ‘foreign minister of the ‘shadow government’, Moshe Shartok in New York, and told him of his talk with Australia’s External Affairs Minister. During this period, late 1947, Rothman was actively assisting the Jewish Agency in the same city not just for articles he might write, but to pass on political information that would be of use to the agency. In the same series of articles in 1967, Rothman outlined how Shartok (who Hebraised his surname later to Sharett) asked him to find out British intentions for him: Sharrett told [Rothman and an American Zionist friend] that the Jews could make no definite plans because they were uncertain whether Britain really meant to withdraw from Palestine. Could I find out? [. . .] I picked a young attache´ at the Australian Embassy in Washington who I knew was on very intimate terms with the chaps at the British Embassy and confided my mission to him. Forty-eight hours later he brought me the information I sought [. . .] I hurried back to New York to impart the information to Sharett.40

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Rothman continued this association with the new Israeli government and its delegation to the UN throughout 1948 and 1949. A search conducted for this study in the State Archives of Israel in Jerusalem reveals Rothman also provided political information to Gideon Rafael, a senior member of Israel’s UN delegation in late 1949, about the new Menzies government in Australia. The following is a written report from Rafael to the then Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett: Abe Rothman, who is a great expert on Australia, to whose credit one should say he has always warned us against the irresponsible behavior of Evatt, told me that the new Government will reduce dramatically the Australian activity in the UN. The new Prime Minister said: Australia was too involved in too many conflicts, that is how we got entangled with England [sic.], the Dominions and the USA. Australia would now co-ordinate its policy with England and the USA and tighten the co-operation.41 It could be argued that Rothman was simply keeping his contacts ‘warm’ and that the relationship was of mutual benefit to both parties, the Jewish Agency/Israel swapping information with Rothman, who, in turn, could use this and other information in his articles. This might be the argument of a political, diplomatic or war correspondent. However, there are two points to make about the closeness of Rothman’s relationship with this ‘foreign’ government and its officials: it appears that Rothman was an emissary for the agency and acting as a go-between on a self-described ‘mission’ to secure purely diplomatic information for one party; and nothing similar seems to have occurred with the Palestinian/Arab side, as shown by his lack of contacts in his three news features in the SMH. Rothman appears to have been on a mission to prosecute the agency/ Israeli case in the SMH while working with the same ‘government’ (as he describes it) to fulfil mutual Zionist objectives. The view from New York for SMH readers would undoubtedly have been an important one during this time as the action moved from Palestine to the UN in New York and as London began to be less and less important. Both the US Truman Administration and the Australian

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External Affairs Minister, H.V. Evatt, were pro-partition and Rothman enhanced this position. So did the majority of his news features. While Jack Flower in Palestine provided a short counterbalance, this sub-genre is solidly pro-Jewish and pro-partition. A survey of opinion expressed in the SMH in the 12 months of this sample over 1947 and 1948 is a study of how the editorial page sees the conflict between the two sides. The editorial was on page 2, following the front page, where Palestine often figured as the leading news item. The reader was able to get an idea of what their newspaper itself thought through elements on the editorial page: the editorial and news features. In this survey, it is clear that differing opinions were allowed to co-exist. The 30 editorials favour by a large margin the Palestinian and Arab position, although with sub-themes defending British actions and interests and with a strong concern for the holy places in the city of Jerusalem. The SMH frequently condemns ‘Jewish terrorism’ and points to the fact that the majority of the country did not want partition. On the other hand, the 13 news features overwhelmingly favour the Jewish/Israeli side of the dispute, especially the reports of the ‘Staff Correspondent in New York’ where much of Palestine’s future was determined. Only one of the news features favours the Palestinian/ Arab side. The SMH reader in 1947 and 1948 might have been a little confused about the newspaper’s stance on Palestine. If they read the editorials they may have been shocked by the level of ‘Jewish terrorism’ and understood why Britain might want to leave the entire Mandate. By the time partition arrived in late 1947 they may have hoped it would work, but would be quickly disabused of this notion by early 1948 when extreme violence broke out across ‘the Holy Land’. As the SMH called for a rethink of partition, they may have agreed, although this small window of time was soon lost as war took over. By the end of 1948, as Israel won the war, they might have wondered at the SMH’s continuing support of ‘the Arabs’. The confusion would not have been helped by the fact that the Liberal Opposition, under Robert Gordon Menzies, opposed partition, and the Labor government supported it.

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One way of viewing this variety of opinion is to applaud the SMH for its democratic disposition. It allowed a variety of views in its crucial opinion page; it encouraged the reader to make up his or her own mind, all mindful of the SMH’s reputation as a ‘paper of record’ and authority. Another view might be to see it as a battle of wills and opinion within the Fairfax institution – including between offices in New York v London and Palestine. Overall, mixed messages were the order of the day on page 2 of the SMH during 1947 and 1948.

CHAPTER 7 HOW TO MISS THE PALESTINIAN NAKBA, 1948

On the first day of January 1947, Mandate Palestine’s population was 1,845,560 people. Of these, 58 per cent were Muslim, 33 per cent Jews, 8 per cent were Christians, and 1 per cent were ‘other’. Jewish immigration since the 1920s had dramatically increased the size of the Yishuv, but it was still only half the size of the Muslim and Christian Palestinians. The geography and timing of the Palestinian refugee problem of 1948 was relevant to the reporting of the conflict in the SMH. The great majority of the Muslims lived in the hundreds of small villages dotted across Palestine: 747,970 Muslims (70 per cent) were classified as ‘rural’ dwellers. By contrast, the vast majority of Jews, 447,840, or three in every four, lived in cities. The same was true of the Christians: 115,980, or four of every five, lived in cities. The ‘big picture’ meant that Palestine had a slight majority of its people – 52 per cent – in rural villages, of whom close to 80 per cent were Muslim. The average village size was 800 people. Apart from Jerusalem and the two large port areas of Haifa and Jaffa/Tel Aviv, Palestine was an agricultural country dominated by villages. In the war of 1947– 8, 13,000 Palestinians lost their lives. However, many more lost their homes, their work, their lands and their social structure. The UN partition plan meant that Jews were not just seeking a ‘home’, as Lord Balfour had said in 1917, but a state. ‘Sharing’ the land of Palestine was no longer on the Jewish agenda; instead, a war of

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‘independence’ (as the Jews called it), or ‘occupation’ (as the Palestinians called it) proceeded. Within the year, some 750,000 Palestinians became refugees – more than half their population. Palestinian historian, Walid Khalidi, compiled a mammoth compendium of all the rural villages that were occupied and depopulated by the Haganah and/or Israeli forces in 1948, published as All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and depopulated by Israel in 1948 (1992). It lists 418 villages, of which 70 per cent were ‘totally destroyed’ and 22 per cent were ‘largely destroyed’. He states: the 418 villages that are the subject of this book constituted almost half of the total number of Palestinian villages that existed within the borders of Mandatory Palestine on the eve of the UN General Assembly partition resolution in November 1947. From these, some 390,000 rural refugees radiated into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip or streamed overland across the borders or by sea to neighbouring Arab countries.1 Khalidi estimates the ‘urban refugees’ as numbering 254,000 and semisedentary Bedouin refugees as 70,000– 100,000. It is from Khalidi’s close analysis that the widely used figure of 750,000 refugees, regarded as constituting the Palestinian nakba (catastrophe), comes. He states that it constitutes ‘54 per cent of the total Palestinian population in Mandatory Palestine’.2 From Khalidi’s statistics, it is clear that the rural refugees bore the brunt of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1947 – 8. These predominantly Muslim areas made up the numerical majority of the nakba. By 15 May 1948, when the ‘civil war’ ended and the regional Arab– Israeli war began, one historian, Rosemarie Esber, estimates that half the total number of Palestinians to be expelled in the 1947–9 conflict were already gone. While Khalidi reports the number gone by 3 May 1948 as ‘175,000–200,000’,3 Esber’s later count states it as ‘more than 400,000 civilian Palestinian Arabs from some 225 rural locales and urban centers’.4 Ilan Pappe settles on the estimate as 250,000.5 Historian Avi Shlaim says: the first and largest wave of refugees occurred before the official outbreak of hostilities on 15 May. The bulk of the refugees ended

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up on the West Bank, in the Gaza Strip, and in neighbouring Arab countries, especially Transjordan, Syria and Lebanon.6 Whichever figure is correct, the civil war between the Palestinians and the Jews is central (December 1947–15 May 1948), as is the centrality of the rural nature of the nakba. The two factors (timing and geography) are relevant to the content of the coverage by the international media in representing the conflict. Essentially, to see what was happening, reporters had to leave cities like Jerusalem and get into the Palestinian countryside. In this book on the SMH coverage, most of the focus therefore is on the ‘civil war’ between the Jews and the Palestinians leading up to 15 May 1948. April and May 1948 also represent the ‘bulge’ in many tables. Of this period, Khalidi states: in many ways the civil war was the more crucial and certainly the more devastating for the Palestinians. The civil war ended with the establishment of the state of Israel but also with the virtual destruction of the Palestinian community.7 The word nakba is a conceptual term that has developed after the event as a normative description that attempts to encapsulate in a single word the power and cultural range of the phenomena. A reporter on the ground in Palestine in 1947–8 could not have been expected to use such a term to describe what he or she was seeing (nor its English-language equivalent, ‘catastrophe’). However, key elements of the phenomenon were very public: . . . .

. .

the widespread destruction of Palestinian villages; the waves of fear following massacres, such as Deir Yassin; the active use of terror tactics against non-combatants, such as women, children and the elderly; the thousands of refugees fleeing their homes in panic and walking the roads and paths to other parts of Palestine, crossing borders or boarding boats to other countries; the emptiness of cities like Haifa and Jaffa as the ‘Arab quarters’ of cities were ‘cleansed’; the huge pens and prisons for captured male Palestinians or those attempting to return to their homes and gather possessions;

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the widespread looting of Palestinian possessions in homes in major centres such as Tiberias; and the occupation of Palestinian homes by civilian Jews in places such as West Jerusalem.

Were these elements reported, either singly or together? Apart from the battle-by-battle reports, how did the SMH fare in ‘seeing’ these elements or, more importantly, putting some or all of them together as part of a contextual picture of what was happening to Palestinians and Palestinian society? These are new questions. They could not have been justly asked before the early 1990s. The previous chapters of this book could have been written any time between 1949 (when the various armistices were agreed between the new State of Israel and its various neighbours) and 1990. But the results of the work of the Israeli ‘new historians’ – predominantly, Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim and Tom Segev – using a mass of newly disclosed documents from the SAI, has exposed the ways in which Jewish Agency, Haganah commanders and Israeli leaders and generals carried out the nakba. The documents reveal how the Jewish Agency elite intended not to live beside the indigenous Palestinians, as envisaged by Lord Balfour in 1917 and decided upon by the UN in 1947, but to ‘transfer’ Palestinians from their lands and replace them with Jews.8 There is disagreement among the ‘new’ Israeli historians. Some believe there was a written ‘plan’ of ethnic cleansing with military tactics, operational guides and rules of engagement – Plan Dalet or ‘Plan D’. Others accept the reality of Plan Dalet as a military plan, but see the ‘cleansing’ as a late, desperate move. There is agreement, however, that ‘transfer’ and ‘cleansing’ of Palestinians became a deliberate policy. The Palestinian nakba was thus the direct result of the policy framework. The archive materials reveal that the destruction and expulsions were not an accident of war, but a war aim. Jewish Agency military leader, Israeli general and later prime minister Moshe Dayan acknowledged this basic truth in 1969: Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages [. . .] There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.9

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This chapter therefore does not involve a consideration of the debate around the ‘new historians’ and whether or not Palestinians fled of their own accord or on instruction from their leaders (as alleged by the consensus view of the Israeli elite for many years). Instead, it compares the minimum accepted readings of the Israeli archive documents by these historians, avoiding their disagreements (historiographical and political), and comparing them with what the SMH reported. In setting a standard for this comparison, a timeline of what might be called ‘nakba events’ has been constructed. Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006) contains a specific timeline of events. It is useful in summarising the key events of 1947 and 1948. Benny Morris’s The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (2004) is itself a comprehensive chronological narrative of the refugee crisis. Walid Khalidi’s All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 contains a useful timeline and describes the nakba district by district, including every village demolished or depopulated within each district. Rosemarie Esber’s Under the Cover of War: The Zionist Expulsion of the Palestinians (2009) includes crucial Palestinian refugee testaments and highlights the major examples of ‘cleansing’ in Haifa, Jaffa and the Galilee. In addition, three scholars have focused on three important centres and the attacks on them: West Jerusalem (Nathan Krystall), Safad in the Galilee (Mustafa Abbasi) and Jaffa (Itamar Radai). Hugh Humphries followed the reports of The Scotsman newspaper and the London Times to produce Countdown to Catastrophe (2000), which outlines a monthly chronology of the nakba. Finally, there is Michael Palumbo’s early (1987) book, The Palestinian Catastrophe, covering similar ground (see bibliography for full citations). It is also clear, both from Ben-Gurion’s statements from 1946 onwards,10 and the pattern of Haganah military tactics once the UN partition decision gave the majority of the land to the Jews, that the priorities for the Jewish Agency before May 1948 were: Jerusalem, the two port cities of Haifa and Jaffa and the coast between them, and the Galilee centres of Safad and Tiberias and surrounding villages.11 From these sources, a timeline of events occurred between 29 November 1947 (following the UN partition decision) and 30 May 1948, which could be described as ‘nakba events’. They do not constitute a comprehensive list of all such events, but they do represent a representative sample of destroyed villagers, depopulated towns and

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villages and massacres. The events are defined as the use of military force or terror to cause expulsion of the Palestinian inhabitants from their homes and land. These events do not include Palestinian attacks on Jews or Jewish forces, nor do they include everyday military action between Jewish and Palestinian fighters. They are taken from the books and journal articles above, all of which specialise in the nakba. In this chapter, the events as described by the scholars listed above using SAI documents of Haganah commanders on the ground will be compared with the coverage given by the reporters from the SMH. A few explanatory points should be made: .

.

.

.

The death of ten people in the centre of a village of 800 (the average village size) could terrorise the population and may therefore be included in the list. Many of the key centres ‘cleansed’ (such as Safad and Tiberias in the Galilee or Jaffa and Haifa on the coast) experienced months of attack and counter-attack before falling. Many Palestinian residents left out of fear of an impending attack, particularly after the brutality of the Deir Yassin massacre on 14 April became common news. Many Palestinians left their homes expecting to be able to return ‘when the fighting died down’, but found they were barred from reentry to their villages.

In determining whether the SMH did or did not cover a ‘nakba event’, the period given to check for publication of reports was seven days from the event. Some discrete events will be described below, but in the main, the occasions in which substantial ‘cleansing’ occurs will be taken as a whole, even though it may have occurred over months (e.g., Tiberias). As we know from earlier chapters, most reports in the SMH came from the Reuters cable agency, although a step up the ladder of news importance is indicated by the addition of a SMH Staff Correspondent by-line along with the cable acknowledgement. Most of the news reports below fall under this latter category. In late March, the SMH also hired a freelance Special Correspondent in Palestine and then in May it sent its own Staff Correspondent to Palestine. This survey of SMH coverage is

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from all sources – cables, cables used by correspondents (e.g., in London), Special Correspondent and Staff Correspondent. What was realistically ‘visible’ to these journalists if they were to report the nakba? The most important physical evidence would have been the sight of Palestinians on the move. How many were there on any one day or week? If we take the lower of the two figures alleged by Khalidi and Esber of Palestinians to have been made refugees between 1 December and 15 May – Khalidi’s 200,000 – and divide this by the number of days in this period – 163 days – this means that something like 1,227 Palestinians were expelled from their homes and land each day. Since Khalidi estimates that the majority of those refugees were from villages and rural centres and we assumed 55 per cent of the 1,227 were rural refugees, this would result in a figure of approximately 675 rural refugees leaving their homes and land each day. This would also mean approximately 550 urban refugees leaving their homes per day. These figures rely on the lower of the two estimates listed above. Since the average village had about 800 villagers,12 the 675 figure is very close to a village per day disappearing in Palestine in these five-and-a-half months leading up to 15 May 1948. This roughly accords with Esber’s figure of ‘205 rural locales’ in this period, and also with Khalidi’s broader figures of the total of 418 villages having been ‘cleansed throughout the whole of 1947– 48’. Half that period would approximate to 200 or so villages by 15 May, if not a few more. Therefore, on average, the inhabitants of one of Palestine’s villages – 800 people or so – fled their long-held homes and land every day and took to the roads of Palestine. A map of ‘all the depopulated villages’ can be found in the back pocket of the Walid Khalidi compendium.13 A companion Khalidi text is Before their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians, 1876–1948, which contains photos of the nakba in process. The urban refugee problem was, of course, easier to ‘see’. There were few large urban centres in Palestine and they held vastly more people than the villages. Jerusalem, Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jaffa and some of the major regional centres could be classified as ‘urban’ and when the exodus of refugees happened in them it was often in dramatic and obvious ways. It was less a matter of urban refugees per day leaving their homes than thousands – sometimes tens of thousands – fleeing under gunfire and mortar shells.

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Nevertheless, Palestine was not a large country, and many of the villages that were demolished or emptied of their inhabitants were clustered in the three areas that the Jewish Agency’s leader David BenGurion determined were first on the list for cleansing and securing: . . .

the Galilee in the north-east and the corridor from Haifa to the interior; the coastal villages between Haifa in the north and Jaffa in the south; and the corridor from Tel Aviv/Jaffa to Jerusalem.

Broadly, these areas corresponded to those designated for the Jewish state under the UN partition resolution – with two major provisos: .

.

many of the towns and villages to the west of Jerusalem (like Latrun) and to the east of Haifa (like Nazareth) were still designated for the Palestinian state; and there was no suggestion in the UN resolution of replacing Palestinians with Jews in the towns and villages in the new Jewish state.

These three areas, which were to see daily battles between Haganah forces, the terrorist groups Irgun and the Stern Gang, and the Palestinians in the months leading up to the end of the Mandate, were not difficult for reporters to get to. Nor were the many rural centres and villages. Palestine had a good road system crisscrossing the country and a train line from south to north with spur lines to Jerusalem, Jaffa/Tel Aviv, Nablus and Jenin, Baysan and Samakh.14 Jerusalem to Jaffa/Tel Aviv via Lydda was about 50 kilometres, or a one-hour ride, Jaffa to Haifa about twice that. Cars, trucks and taxis were common. The Reuters office was in Jerusalem, along with a long list of foreign reporters from around the globe. Many newspapers, like the Scotsman, the London Times, the Chicago Herald-Tribune and the NYT had their own staff correspondents on the ground, although based in Jerusalem, throughout 1948. The local pro-Jewish Palestine Post was published daily in Jerusalem, but so was the Palestinian Filastin. Each reported the war in their own terms.

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Relying on the Reuters correspondents, then its Special Correspondent and finally its own Staff Correspondent, Jack Flower, how did the SMH report the visible elements of the phenomenon we now know, particularly from military commanders’ actions and comments at the time, held in the SAI as the nakba? The following compares the evidence with the reporting.

i. 9 December: Commander ‘Arik’ Sharon bombs 2 vehicles, 6 Palestinians inside Benny Morris writes: The first evidence of the hardening Haganah strategy was the HGS/Operations order of 9 December to the Alexandroni Brigade, responsible for the coastal plain from just south of Haifa to just north of Tel Aviv. This order called for ‘harassing’ and ‘paralyzing’ Arab traffic on the ‘Qalqilya-Ras al ‘Ein-al-Tira-WilhelmaYahudiya’ road. The units were ordered to hit vehicles or both passengers and vehicles. Alexandroni sent out at least one unit, commanded by one ‘Arik’ (probably the young Ariel Sharon), which duly ambushed two vehicles. ‘Arik’ reported hitting them with Molotov Cocktails and the ‘wounded Arabs were (burned) inside’; Six appear to have died. The ambushers, he explained, recalled previous Arab attacks on Jewish convoys and were filled with ‘hatred’.15 There is no report in the SMH of this incident.

ii. 13 December: Irgun rolls explosives barrel into Jaffa cafe´, killing 9. Panic ensues Itamar Radai writes: Attacks by the Jewish organization IZL (Irgun Tzva’I Le’umi) in the border areas (between Jaffa and Tel Aviv) grew bolder and more violent [. . .] In one attack, on 13 December, a barrel packed with explosives was dropped from a vehicle next to the entrance to the Alhambra (al-Hamra) Cinema, adjacent to the Jaffa City Hall on King George Boulevard. The barrel rolled down the street and

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came to a stop outside Cafe´ Venezia. Some of the clients noticed it and rushed to take shelter in the kitchen or fled out the back door. The ensuing explosion killed six clients and passers-by, among them a 10-year-old boy, the others aged 16– 24.16 There is no report in the SMH about this incident or several like it over the following days in Jaffa. (Earlier, the page 1 lead of the SMH edition of 8 December, with the headline ‘Open Warfare in Palestine: Jews launch Attacks on Arab City’ has a Reuters cable reporting two major Jewish attacks from Tel Aviv on Jaffa leaving ‘entire Jaffa slum areas [. . .] in flames’. It states: ‘The terrorist organization Irgun led the offensive’.)

iii. 18 December: Village of Khisas (near Safad) attacked, 10 killed Mustafa Abbasi writes: At the end of 1947, the Palmach (the mobile striking force of the Haganah) began increasing its activities in the region of Safad [. . .] On 18 December 1947, the village of Khisas in the north of the Hulah Valley was attacked after a Jew was assaulted and killed nearby. Although there was no proof of any connection between the Arabs of the village and the deed, and despite the village’s good relations with the nearby Jewish settlements, the Third Battalion’s commanding officers decided to carry out an act of reprisal against the village [. . .] During the raid, 10 of the village’s residents were killed, and a number of houses were blown up and demolished.17 This incident is reported in the SMH by a Reuters cable from London in a small three-paragraph story at the bottom of page 3, 20 December 1947, under the heading ‘Jewish Attack in Galilee: Children Killed’: Jews attacked Khisas, near Safad, Upper Galilee, today with bombs and guns, says the Jerusalem correspondent of the Associated Press. Ten Arabs were killed, including five children [. . .]

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However, it should be noted that the story: . . .

does not report the incident as a reprisal for an earlier murder of a Jew; relies on a third-hand source (AP) for its information; and does not mention the destruction of houses in the village.

iv. 28 December: Village of Lifta, west of Jerusalem, attacked, seven killed, cleansed Of the attack on the village of Lifta, Pappe writes: Social life in Lifta (population: 2,500 people) revolved around a small shopping centre, which included a club and two coffee houses. It attracted Jerusalemites as well, as no doubt it would today if it was still there. One of the coffee houses was the target of the Hagana when it attacked on 28 December 1947. Armed with machine guns the Jews sprayed the coffee house, while members of the Stern Gang stopped a bus nearby and began firing into it randomly [. . .] when they realized the assault had caused villagers to flee, they ordered another operation against the same village on 11 January (1948) in order to complete the expulsion. The Hagana blew up most of the houses in the village and drove out all the people who were still there.18 There is no report in the SMH about either of these two attacks on Lifta.

v. 30– 31 December: Haifa, Jewish attack, 6 killed; Palestinians respond, 41 killed; Jews kill 60 Palestinians in nearby villages of Balad al-Shaykh and Hawassa, cleansed Esber writes: A major IZL (Irgun) terrorist action disrupted the Haifa oil refinery [. . .] At about 10.20 am, some IZL members threw two grenades from a car into a crowd of Arab laborers who were standing on the roadside awaiting casual employment. The explosion killed six people instantly and injured approximately 42 others [. . .] News of the attack spread rapidly [. . .] By 10.30 am

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some 1,800 Arabs and 44 Jews joined a melee during which Arab workers attacked and beat Jewish workers to death with stones and sticks. The Arab rioters killed 41 Jews and injured 48 others [. . .] In reprisal for the oil refinery massacre, a Palmach force of 170 attacked the Arab village of Balad al-Shaykh and Hawassa on December 31, where a number of refinery workers lived [. . .] they killed 60 Arab civilians, including women and children.19 The SMH does report the murders, riots and reprisals in Haifa at the bottom of page 1 of the 31 December 1947 issue and again in three paragraphs at the bottom of a major story on illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine on page 3 in the 2 January 1948 edition. In the first report the headline is: ‘Wild Arab Riot Follows Jewish Bomb Outrage’. It asserts that ‘the trouble started’ with the Jewish bomb which caused ‘heavy casualties’, and then led to Arabs turning on any Jews they could find, killing many. No death or injury statistics are given. In the second report, headlined ‘Shock tactics’, it states: Haganah shock troops, in their biggest punitive operations yet, stormed villages inhabited by Arab oil workers in the Haifa-Jaffa [sic.] area. They killed between 40 and 50 Arabs and wounded 60. The raids apparently were in retaliation for Arab rioting against Jewish workers at the Consolidated Oil Refinery on Tuesday. No mention is made of the Arab villagers evacuating their homes. Nor of the original cause of the ‘Arab rioting’ – the Irgun killing of Arab men waiting in line for jobs. Finally, a report the next day in the SMH from the (British) Mandate government revises the number of Arabs killed in the villages as four. Esber’s figures (of 60) are probably more accurate.

vi. 4 January: Haganah blows up the Semiramis Hotel in Qatamon (Arab) suburb of west Jerusalem, killing 26 civilians. Arab exodus of civilians begins Krystall writes: [. . .] on 4 January 1948 the Haganah blew up the Semiramis Hotel in the prosperous Arab neighbourhood of Qatamon,

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claiming to have suspected that the hotel served as the headquarters of local irregulars. In fact, 26 civilians, most from two Christian Arab families of Jerusalem, were killed, causing major panic and triggering the exodus of Arab residents from Qatamon and Talbiyya (a nearby Arab suburb). Hala Sakakini described the situation in her neighbourhood: ‘All day long you could see people carrying their belongings and moving from their houses to safer ones in Qatamon or to another quarter altogether. . .’ Concurrent with the Haganah’s campaign to clear West Jerusalem of Arabs was the settling of their homes by Jews [. . .] By 28 January, 25 Jewish families [. . .] had been moved into Shaykh Badr.20 The SMH does report the bombing of the Semiramis Hotel in Jerusalem three weeks later on 26 January, page 3, under the headline ‘15 Killed in Jewish Outrages’, using a Reuters cable report from London. The Semiramis Hotel bombing is described in only two paragraphs: It is officially reported that so far six bodies have been recovered from the stone, three-storied Semiramis Hotel, Jerusalem, which was blown up this morning. It is feared that other bodies are buried in the wreckage [. . .] The Semiramis Hotel is reported to have been the headquarters of two Arab National Youth organisations – Najjadeh and Futuwah. Najjadeh is the most powerful of Palestine’s three Arab ‘armies’. The report adds that it was reported the Spanish Consul died in the explosion. However, it should be noted that the story: . . .

does not mention the much higher death toll; does not mention the flight of Palestinians from the suburb; accepts the Haganah explanation for the bombing – that it was a military target; and

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does not contextualise the hotel as being in a prosperous Arab neighbourhood.

More importantly, there are no reports in the SMH over the next month of the flight of Palestinian Jerusalemites from their homes in most of the areas of West Jerusalem – nor of Jews replacing them in their homes.

vii. 4 January: Stern Gang leaves truck with bombs in Jaffa, explosion kills 28 Radai writes: On 4 January, two Lehi (Stern Gang) men entered Jaffa in a booby-trapped vehicle disguised as a truck carrying oranges. They parked the truck, which contained about half a ton of explosives, next to the Saraya, the building that housed the Jaffa National Committee (al-Lajna al-Qawmiyya), located in Clock Square, in the heart of Arab Jaffa [. . .] A tremendous explosion gutted the building and killed 28 Arabs [. . .] Most of the fatalities were men, although apparently not from the National Committee but people working in the area, passersby, and employees of the Jaffa Municipality’s social welfare department, which ran a food kitchen and a school assistance project for poor children in the building.21 The SMH did report this incident in Jaffa in these three paragraphs: Yesterday’s outrage occurred at Jaffa, where a lorry loaded with ‘orange box’ bombs exploded after being parked in Clock Square. The explosion, which blasted the Arab Committee building [sic.], Barclay’s Bank, the central police station, and 15 shops, is officially stated to have killed nine persons and injured 71. Reuters correspondent in Jerusalem says that Arabs state that at Jaffa Jews parked the loaded lorry outside Barclay’s Bank, then drove off in an accompanying jeep.

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British troops and police in armoured cars immediately began a house-to-house search for the persons who parked the lorry. They detained 50 Jews for interrogation. It should be noted that Jaffa was famous for its oranges and was the main export point for Palestine’s orange producers. The SMH report: . . .

underestimates the death toll, although it relies on ‘official’ sources; concentrates on the buildings lost rather than the people; and does not mention that the terrorist Stern Gang was responsible.

viii. 31 January: Some 15,000 of the Palestinian residents of Jaffa leave Radai writes: A key stage in the disintegration of society in Jaffa was the departure of the city’s affluent citizenry and middle class. They moved either to homogeneous Arab areas in Palestine considered safe, or even to neighbouring Arab countries [. . .] According to one report, 15,000 Arab residents had left Jaffa by the middle of January, about a fifth of the population. Many sailed from the port, bound for Gaza or Acre, or for Egypt or Lebanon.22 The SMH did not report the exodus of these 15,000 people from Jaffa.

ix. 14 February: Village of Sa’sa (near Safad) attacked, estimates of between 11 and 60 Palestinians killed Pappe writes: The February operations, planned by the Consultancy (group developing Plan Dalet – author),23 differed from the actions in December: no longer sporadic, they formed part of a first attempt to link the concept of unhampered Jewish transport on Palestine’s main routes with the ethnic cleansing of villages. The order to attack Sa’sa came from Yigal Allon, the commander of the Palmach in the north: ‘You have to blow up 20 houses and kill as many ‘warriors’ (read ‘villagers’)24 as possible.’ Sa’sa was attacked at midnight [. . .] Kelman’s troops

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took the main street and systematically blew up one house after another while families were still sleeping inside [. . .] ‘We (Kelman) left behind 35 demolished houses and 60 –80 dead bodies’ (quite a few of them were children).25 Pappe notes in his reference that ‘the figures listed in the official report were more modest, detailing the blowing up of 40 houses, the killing of 11 villagers, and the wounding of another 80’.26 Abbasi accepts the official report of 11 dead.27 Khalidi quotes the Haganah report as saying ‘tens’ of people died.28 The NYT, travelling with the Haganah, accepted the figure of 11 dead. The SMH did not report the attack on the village of Sa’sa.

x. 2 March: Village of al-Manara (near Tiberias) attacked, ‘evacuated’ Esber writes: The Zionist siege of Tiberias resulted in the first large-scale eviction of Palestinian Arabs, even while British forces were still stationed in the town [. . .] Haganah forces began attacks in the area in early March. The neighbouring village of al-Manara (pop. 568) was raided on March 2 [. . .] The Haganah chased out the villagers, destroyed some houses, and ‘left leaflets behind warning the inhabitants not to return because the village had been mined.’ The villages of al-Ubaydiyya (pop. 1,009) and al-Manshiyya, south of Tiberias, fell next.29 Walid Khalidi writes: Eyewitnesses, who related that the village was attacked by Haganah forces on 2 March, provided further details to Palestinian historian Nafez Nazzal [. . .] The attack greatly demoralised the residents of Tiberias. It was also the first step in the isolation of the city, cutting it off from the south and increasing the sense of beleaguerment.30 The SMH did not report the attack on any of the three villages, nor the displacement of the Palestinians.

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xi. 3 and 4 March: Truck bombs explode in Haifa – outside Haifa high school and Haifa central business district, killing 15 Palestinians Esber reports: Zionist forces introduced truck bombs to communal violence, and Arab forces soon adopted the technique. A large oil-bomb exploded outside the garden wall of the English High School on March 4. Headmistress Emery wrote an angry letter of protest to the Haifa Jewish Community Council, saying, ‘This cruel attack was made to terrify and probably to harm the people in the school.’31 The SMH did not report the bomb explosion outside the high school on 4 March, but it did report a similar car bomb explosion the previous day (3 March) under the front-page headline ‘Explosion Kills 15 in Haifa’. In a cable report from London, it states: A truckload of explosives blew up in the business section of Haifa today killing 15 Arabs. Several children were among the dead. The American Associated Press correspondent in Jerusalem says 27 persons were injured. The explosion wrecked the Salameh building, one of the city’s tallest structures, and smashed two nearby houses [. . .] The Jewish Stern Gang later claimed responsibility for the explosion. The car bomb reported in the SMH, unusually, is not mentioned in the major scholarly texts, although they do mention the attack on the high school.

xii. 12 March: Village of Husseiniya (near Safad) attacked and ‘cleansed’ Abbasi writes: The Palmach carried out another major raid on 12 March 1948 on the village of Husseiniya (Kelman, commander of Palmach’s Third

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Battalion, called it ‘Ahsiniya’), in the center of the Hula Valley [. . .] In a joint action of the Helata Squad and some of the forces in Ayelet Hashahar, the soldiers burst into the village, placed explosives, and blew up houses. Kelman adds (Hagana Archives) that he rose early the next morning and mounted the fence around kibbutz Ayelet Hashahar to look out over the village. He saw that it had been destroyed, except for one house. He states that the action killed scores of villagers and four among his own forces. Husseiniya was the first village in the Safad region to be destroyed and emptied of its Arab residents.32 The SMH did report the military action in Husseiniya in only one paragraph in a general report from Reuters in London on page 3 of the 15 March edition, entitled ‘More Heavy Fighting in Palestine’. Under a subhead, ‘Village raided’, it reads: A large force of Jews raided the Arab village of Hussena, in Upper Galilee, and blew up 12 houses. They killed 17 Arabs, and wounded about 20. It should be noted that the SMH report: . .

does not mention the expulsion of virtually all villagers from Husseiniya; and agrees with the NYT report of this attack in the number killed, despite the Palmach commander estimating ‘scores of villagers’ dead.

xiii. 20 March: Forced evacuation of village of Umm Khalid (coastal plain) (pop. 970) Morris writes: Like the Bedouins, the Sharon villagers decamped over December 1947– March 1948, mainly because of Haganah or IZL attacks or fear of such attacks. Al Haram, on the Mediterranean coast, was evacuated on 3 February out of fear of Jewish attack. Al Mirr was evacuated the same day, but some of its inhabitants returned on 15 February, fleeing for the final time a month later. Umm Khalid, east of Netanya, was evacuated out of fear on 20 March.33

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Khalidi writes: This coastal area was the site of a heavy concentration of Jewish settlements and was regarded by the Zionist leadership as the core of the planned Jewish state. In their view it was therefore desirable that Arab residents be made to leave before May 15.34 There are no SMH reports of the evacuation of coastal plain villages – nor specifically, of these villages.

xiv. 6 April: Operation Nahshon of ‘Plan D’ begins – first village Dayr Mahsir (in Jerusalem–Tel Aviv corridor) destroyed, residents (pop. 460) flee Krystall writes: The Haganah’s Operation Nahshon [. . .] began on 6 April 1948. It was the first operation within the framework of Plan Dalet, which aimed to enlarge the boundaries of the state allotted to the Zionists under the UN partition plan and simultaneously conquer dozens of villages from which the Palestinian Arab inhabitants would be expelled [. . .] Yitzhak Rabin, then an officer in the Palmach’s Harel brigade, had the mission of razing the Palestinian villages upon which ’Abd al-Qadir Husayni relied for support, from Dayr Mahsir in the west to Kolonia and Kastel in the east. Rabin later explained the ultimate goal of the operation as follows: ‘By not leaving stone on stone and driving all the people away, and without those villages, the Arab bands were not going to be able to operate effectively.35 Walid Khalidi asserts that the village was levelled and Morris that the inhabitants had fled. Khalidi also asserts that the NYT reported the first attack of Operation Nahshon at the village (closer to the coastal town of Al-Ramle than Jerusalem). The SMH did not report the attack on Dayr Mahsir.

xv. 9 April: The massacre at the village of Deir Yassin (near Jerusalem), 100– 120 dead, village demolished Morris writes:

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On 9 April, 80 IZL and 40 LHI troopers, for part of the battle supported by armoured car squads, attacked and took Deir Yassin [. . .] The units had advanced from house to house, lobbing grenades and spraying the interiors with fire [. . .] They blew up several houses with explosives. The attackers shot down individuals and families as they left their homes and fled down alleyways. They also rounded up villagers, who included militiamen and unarmed civilians of both sexes, and murdered them, and executed prisoners in a nearby quarry [. . .] Altogether about 100–120 villagers died that day. The IZL and LHI troops subsequently transported the remaining villagers in a victory parade through west Jerusalem [. . .] However, the most important immediate effect of the massacre and of the media atrocity campaign that followed was to trigger and promote fear and further panic flight from Palestine’s villages and towns.36 Pappe writes: Fahim Zaydan, who was 12 years old at the time, recalled how he saw his family murdered in front of his eyes: They took us one after the other; shot an old man and when one of his daughters cried, she was shot too. Then they called my brother Muhammad, and shot him in front of us, and when my mother yelled, bending over him – carrying my little sister Hudra in her hands, still breastfeeding her – they shot her too. Zaydan himself was shot too [. . .] he was lucky to survive his wounds.37 Walid Khalidi writes: After the massacre, the Irgunists and Sternists escorted a party of U.S. correspondents, including from the (New York) ‘Times’, to a house at the nearby settlement of Giv’at Sha’ul. Over tea and cookies, the perpetrators ‘amplified the details’ of the operation.38 The SMH reported the massacre over the following days, as more details arrived. The massacre was described in one paragraph the next day (Saturday, 10 April 1948) in a short story from the Staff Correspondent in

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London, using Reuters cables. It appears in paragraph 10 of a 12-paragraph story about the Arab siege of Jews in the old City of Jerusalem and reads: Jewish sources reported that Irgun Zvai Leumi, Jewish terrorist organization, last night stormed Deir Yassin, an Arab village outside the western outskirts of Jerusalem, and were holding it as a strongpoint dominating the Christian Arab township of Ainkarim. In its next Monday edition (12 April), again from the Staff Correspondent in London using Reuters cables, but this time the page 1 lead and also focusing on the siege of Jerusalem by the ‘Arabs’, there are four paragraphs on the Deir Yassin events at the bottom of the page under the subheading ‘Massacre of Arabs’: The Observer’s correspondent says confused fighting is going on around Deir Yassin, on the city’s perimeter. Deir Yassin, an Arab village, was captured by members of the Stern Gang and Irgun Zvai Leumi on Thursday night, and is now held by Haganah troops. The Jews claim to have killed more than 250 Arabs in the village – half of them women and children. Survivors of the village have been handed over to the British authorities, the Jewish sources said. The major SMH report about Deir Yassin appeared on Tuesday, 13 April 1948 – this time from the paper’s own Special Correspondent in Palestine and was datelined ‘Jerusalem’. A full analysis of this report was conducted in Chapter 4 (see d). The analysis finds that the correspondent failed to report the massacre in any detail, although the political implications (particularly British inaction) were highlighted. The analysis points to a more detailed description of the massacre by the SMH Staff Correspondent based in London, using Reuters cables, in a separate report below the same front-page lead. In this report: .

the Red Cross representative in Jerusalem states that he found many Arab bodies down a disused well in Deir Yassin and other bodies were found in the village; and

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a 13-year-old girl, Fatimeh Zedian, describes in Jerusalem the way her family had been murdered and she had been paraded through the streets of west Jerusalem in a truck, then stripped naked, had photos taken of her and her rings and earrings stolen and let go.

While the Special Correspondent failed, this account from London made some of the details of the massacre clear, and, by implication, reported a violent expulsion of Palestinians from their homes. However, it was the violence of the massacre that was foregrounded, not the creation of more homeless refugees. Where did the Deir Yassin survivors go, once let go from the trucks outside the Old City? How did they feel? How did their former Jewish neighbours feel about the non-belligerence pact being so brutally broken? These would have been standard journalists’ questions (and, possibly, readers’ questions) that naturally arose from such a scene. They were not answered in the text.

xvi. 10 April: Haganah bombs major town of Tiberias in Galilee area Morris writes: The first Arab urban community to fall was that of Tiberias, the mixed town (6,000 Jews, 4,000 Arabs) on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee.39 The (final) battle of Tiberias began on 8– 9 April, when shooting once again erupted. On 10 April the Haganah bombarded ‘the Arab population (i.e., the residential area)’ with mortars [. . .] On 16 –17 April, units of Golani (Brigade) and the Palmach’s 3rd Battalion, freshly introduced into Tiberias, attacked in the Old City, using mortars and dynamite, blowing up eight houses. The attack caused ‘great panic’. Arab notables apparently sued for a truce but the Haganah commanders refused to negotiate; they wanted a surrender [. . .]40 In any event, at around noon on 18 April, a de facto truce took hold [. . .] The Jewish population observed the exodus of their former neighbours from windows and balconies.

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The SMH does not report events in the major regional town of Tiberias or surrounding villages until two paragraphs appear in a front-page lead story from London on 23 April (many days later), focusing on events in the port of Haifa. The paragraphs say: Arab forces have been driven out of Tiberias, on the sea of Galilee, after a brief attempt to relieve the town. Messages reaching Amman (Transjordan) report Jewish brutality to Arab women and children in Tiberias. It should be noted that the SMH story: . . . .

does not report that the entire town was ‘cleansed’ of its 4,000 Palestinians (rather than ‘Arab forces’ being driven out); does not report widespread Jewish looting of Arab shops and homes; sources its report from Amman rather than its own freelance reporter; and fails to specify the ‘brutality’, either in Tiberias or surrounding villages.

xvii. 11 April: Village of Qalunya destroyed in west Jerusalem, ‘cleansed’ Walid Khalidi writes: The New York Times reported that Haganah units occupied Qalunya on 11 April and that they ‘blew up scores of houses and left the entire village ablaze’. Israeli sources give differing accounts of how the village was depopulated [. . .] An eyewitness account by an Anglo-Jewish resident of Jerusalem, Harry Levin, who accompanied the Palmach force during the assault on 11 April counted 14 dead ‘but there were more.’ When Levin left, ‘sappers were blowing up houses. One after another the solid stone building, some built in elaborate city style, exploded and crashed.’41 The SMH did not report the demolition of the village of Qalunya or the expulsion of its 1,260 residents.

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xviii. 18 –22 April: Haganah attacks Palestinians in Haifa port, 50,000 flee Esber writes: The port was the sole exit from Haifa because ‘Jews had blocked the eastern and western sides’ of the city. Sailboats, steamers, and motorboats departed and returned each day. Fifty-person boats were overcrowded with 300 to 400 people. Some of the fleeing population fell into the water and drowned. In September 1947, there were approximately 80,000 Arabs in Haifa. Departures due to ‘unsettled conditions’, including the atmosphere of directed violence, had reduced the number to about 40,000 by April 1, 1948. Approximately 35,000 fled thereafter, during the April 21 – 23 fighting, leaving ‘no more than 5,000 Arabs in Haifa’ Sa’ad (head of the local Arab Bank) said.42 Morris quotes a statement of a British Intelligence Officer, who provided this description of the scene at the port entrance a few hours later the same day: During the morning (the Jews) were continually shooting down on all Arabs who moved both in Wadi Nisnas and the Old City. This included completely indiscriminate and revolting machinegun fire, mortar fire and sniping on women and children sheltering in churches and attempting to get out [. . .] through the gates into the docks [. . .] there was considerable congestion outside the East gate of hysterical and terrified Arab women and children and old people on whom the Jews opened up mercilessly with fire.43 The SMH did report the taking of the port city of Haifa in a major page 1 lead story on 23 April from its Staff Correspondent in London using Reuters cables. The Haifa story was featured again the next day, on 24 April, on page 1 by the same Staff Correspondent in London using cables. And two days later, on 26 April, in a report on Jaffa, it also had some paragraphs on Haifa.

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In all, the three stories do make for a comprehensive coverage of the events of 18 – 22 April. They include claims from all three sides (Jewish, Palestinian and British). The first story’s sub-heading, ‘Arabs Report Massacre’, is balanced by Haganah statements denying the claim. The page 1 story on 24 April mentions ‘thousands of Arab refugees’ reaching Lebanon by boat aboard ‘a ‘Dunkirk fleet of 20 schooners’, although it accepts the lower casualty figures (100 killed) of the British commanders. The third story states: The Arab National Committee announced yesterday the entire Arab population of Haifa would be evacuated in the next few days. Reuters says that 9,000 Arab refugees have reached Beirut from Haifa. Another 15,000 Arabs were to have left Haifa today.44 However, while mentioning refugees, it is in the context of bitter fighting rather than a plan by Jews to ‘cleanse’ the port city of Arabs.

xix– xx. 20 April – 9 May: Haganah implements Plan D on village of Ein Zeitun (xix) and regional town of Safad (xx) in the Galilee, 70 dead, 12,000 Palestinians ‘cleansed’ from the town The battle for Safad – a town with 1,800 Jews and 10,000 Palestinians – occurred in two stages over three weeks, starting with attacks by the Haganah Third Battalion on the villages surrounding the regional centre (20 April –1 May), and then the attack on Safad itself (2– 10 May). The first stage of attacks came as a result of the commander of the Haganah Third Battalion’s Moshe Kelman feeling that he needed to raise his troops morale after some failures in earlier military clashes with ‘Arab’ units in Safad.45 Abbasi writes: Kelman wanted to use the conquest of Ein Zeitun and decided, as he says ‘to blow up the village buildings one by one during daylight hours so that the Arab residents of Safad who were on the opposite ridge could see what was in store for them.’ Peled (commander of a Palmach unit) described what happened at Ein Zeitun: ‘at noon, our men began blowing up the village. The intoxication of victory blinded them and they went berserk, breaking and destroying property [. . .] by order of Commander

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Kelman, they shot and killed 70 or so Arab prisoners, apparently including 37 village youngsters who had been taken captive [. . .] For the residents of Safad, this was the end. . . The stream of fugitives deserting the city and villages in the Hulah region became even larger; thus, Kelman’s purpose was achieved through the destruction of the Ein Zeitun village.46 The SMH carries three small mentions of the battle for Safad on 4, 10 and 11 May. All three are from the Staff Correspondent in London, using access to Reuters cables. The 4 May mention is two sole paragraphs in a page 1 wrap-up story, mainly about Jerusalem, and comes from a Jewish Agency spokesman: ‘A Jewish Agency spokesman today reported a “mass exodus” of Arabs from Safad, a mixed Arab and Jewish town in upper Galilee. He added that Palestine Arabs had developed a “flight psychosis”.’ The 10 May mention is three paragraphs in a page 1 wrap-up story, mainly focusing on events in Jerusalem. The 11 May mention is one paragraph (the last in the report) in a page 1 lead story focusing on several events in Palestine. It says: ‘A communique´ today from Arab Headquarters in Damascus admitted that Arab forces had been forced to retreat at dawn from Safad, in northern Palestine, after destroying the Jewish quarter.’ In summary, the SMH misreports the events in Safad and gives no clear sense of what happened in the town. In particular: . .

. .

‘retreat’ in the 11 May story suggests the notion of return, when in fact the Arab forces were defeated; none of the stories describe or explain the evacuation of the entire Palestinian population from this overwhelmingly Arab town – although a Jewish claim is published suggesting an ‘exodus’ was a result of a ‘psychosis’; no mention is made of the destruction of Safad’s surrounding villages and the fate of the inhabitants; and no reference is therefore made to the massacre in Ein Zeitun in which 70 prisoners were murdered.

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xxi. 25 and 27 April and 13 May: Jaffa encircled by Irgun terrorists, exodus of 35,000– 45,000 Palestinians and surrenders to Haganah 13 May; 3,000 left Itamar Radai estimates that half of Jaffa’s Palestinian population left the city between December 1947 and late April, when further attacks were carried out by the Irgun (see earlier reports ii, vii and viii). Jaffa was an almost entirely Palestinian city, sitting within sight of its newer northern neighbour, the almost entirely Jewish city of Tel Aviv. Radai writes: The final collapse of the city was triggered on 25 April when the IZL attacked the northern suburb of Manshiyya. The defenders put up a fierce resistance but the area was taken after a three-day battle. A mortar barrage on the center of the city during the assault fomented tremendous panic, and generated a mass flight via the sea from the port – 4,000 fled on the first day of the fighting alone. Years later, Fatah leader, Salah Khalef said: ‘Not yet 15, I was overwhelmed by the sight of this huge mass of men, women, old people and children [. . .] making their way painfully down to the wharfs in a sinister tumult.’ On 13 May, the day before the termination of the British Mandate and the declaration of Israel’s independence, the Emergency Committee signed Jaffa’s surrender. The city’s population had been reduced to 3,000.47 The SMH reports the taking of the Palestinian coastal city of Jaffa by the Irgun and Haganah forces in four reports: 26 April (front page lead), 27 April (front page lead), 3 May (front page) and 13 May (page 30). All are from the London Staff Correspondent using Reuters cables. The 26 April report is headlined ‘JEWISH ATTACK ON JAFFA: Heavy Mortar Barrage’ and states that the mortar barrage was ‘the biggest [. . .] yet used in the Arab– Jewish conflict in Palestine’ and that ‘Arab resistance was weak’, allowing Jewish forces to claim villages, then suburbs and a police station. The 27 April report is a similar ‘battle’ report, although it ends with strong Arab attacks on Tel Aviv. The 3 May report states that the British Army has entered the city to keep the ‘no man’s land’ between Jaffa and Tel Aviv intact. It adds:

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British United Press says Jaffa is a dead city. Only 15,000 are left of the original population of 60,000. The 13 May story, in three paragraphs, reports the final surrender of Jaffa to the Haganah. The SMH reports are concentrated on the military aspect of the confrontation between Haganah, Irgun, Palestinian and British forces. Despite important front-page treatment, the human dimension of the flight of an entire city under mortar fire is ignored. Of the 23 paragraphs over four days of reporting, only the final two on page 3 of the 3 May edition refer to the ‘cleansing’ of the 35–45,000 people that has taken place. What can we make of this sample of nakba events? The 21 examples above were chosen from the nominated literature of the nakba: the violence and terror that drove the Palestinian expulsion. The nearest example of a listing of all such ‘nakba events’ would be Walid Khalidi’s compendium48 listing all villages depopulated. But the 21 examples chosen from the literature do: . . . .

give a sense of the continuing campaign from early December 1947 to mid-May 1948; provide coverage from the three main areas of Palestine targeted by the Jewish Agency for early military attention: provide a balance of some key villages, regional centres and the major urban centres of Haifa, Jerusalem and Jaffa; and give a sense of the massacres now known to have occurred in various villages centres and cities.

The evidence from this selection of main ‘nakba events’ is provided in Table 7.1 in summary form. The columns are divided up as follows: . . . . .

Village (pop. 0 –3,000), regional town (3,000–10,000) or city (10,000 and above). Official district of Mandate Palestine. ‘Story’ – whether the events are described in any news report at all. ‘Story but no reference’ – whether the event is reported, but no or little mention is made of the expulsion the population. ‘Story þ reference’ – event is reported with reference to expulsion.

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‘Massacre’ – whether or not a massacre occurred in the reported event.

From Table 7.1, several patterns can be discerned: . . . . .

11 of the 22 ‘nakba events’ are not reported at all (50 per cent); of the 11 events not reported, seven are from villages (64 per cent), two are from the city of Jaffa and two from the city of Haifa; eight of the 22 are ‘not reported with reference to violence expulsion’ (38 per cent); four of the 22 ‘reported with reference to violence/expulsion’ all involve massacres (Jaffa, Deir Yassin and Haifa); and eight of the 22 ‘nakba events’ are in the six weeks of 6 April – 15 May (the major offensive under Plan D), but six of those either had no reporting or ‘no reporting with reference to expulsion’.

In all, 19 out of the 22 events either have no report at all or inadequate coverage of the violence and/or expulsion of Palestinians. This is 86.4 per cent of the whole. It means that more than four times out of five the SMH failed to report the key events of the nakba. A point should be made about the preponderance of non-reporting of village ‘nakba events’ – usually simple demolition of a village and expulsion of its inhabitants. As shown at the beginning of this chapter, Palestine’s demography in 1947– 8 was more than 50 per cent rural. Village life was the lifeblood of the Palestinian economy, culture and identity. While the West may have thought of Palestine as ‘the Holy Land’ dominated by ‘the Holy City’ (Jerusalem) and ‘the Holy Places’ (including biblical names such as Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jericho), the reality was that modern Palestine was agricultural in its economy, largely Muslim in its religion, nationalist in its politics and multicultural (including Jews) in its social structure. Since the 1920s, most villages had schools for their young men and women and most villages had histories dating back hundreds, or in some cases, thousands of years. Of the 11 villages chosen in this sample – victims of ‘nakba events’ – seven received no coverage in the SMH when their villages were demolished. Two others got a mention, but did not record the flight of the inhabitants. This absence of coverage in the SMH shows a

Table 7.1 Number i ii iii iv v vi vii viii ix x xi xii xiii xiv xv xvi xvii xviii xix-xx xxi Total

Mentions of key ‘nakba events’ in the SMH, 30 November 1937–15 May 1948. Date 9 December 1947 13 December 1947 18 December 1947 28 December 1947 30– 31 December 1947 4 January 1948 4 January 1948 31 January 1948 14 February 1948 2 March 1948 3 March 1948 4 March 1948 12 March 1948 20 March 1948 6 April 1948 9 April 1948 10 April 1948 11 April 1948 18– 22 April 1948 20 April –9 May 1948 25– 27 April and 13 May 1948

Village/town/city

District

Story

Haifa Jaffa Khisasa village Lifta village Haifa þ two villages Qatamon Jaffa Jaffa Sa’sa village al-Manara village Haifa Haifa Huseiniya village Umm Khalid village Dayr Mahsir village Deir Yassin village Tiberias Qalunya village Haifa Ein Zeitu village þ Safad Jaffa

Haifa Lydda Safad Jerusalem Haifa Jerusalem Lydda Lydda Safad Tiberias Haifa Haifa Safad coastal plain Ramla Jerusalem Tiberias Jerusalem Haifa Safad

NO NO

Lydda

NO

Story but no reference

NO NO NO NO (village) 11

Massacre

YES YES YES YES

NO NO NO NO

Story þ reference

YES

YES YES YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES YES Safad YES 8

> 4

6

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fundamental ignorance of the importance of village life in Palestine in the late 1940s. It appears that the SMH concentrated its attention on the three major cities: Jerusalem, Haifa and Jaffa. In previous chapters, that concentration on a Jerusalem-centric approach, justified in large part by the need to protect its religious heritage, made it all the easier for correspondents to ignore the Palestinian hinterland, where much of the action was occurring. Haifa was also the crucial oil-exporting city and the ultimate base for British forces in the months before they left. The coverage of the overwhelmingly Palestinian city of Jaffa, and its fate, was clearly of lesser importance – the villages around it were not reported on and the depopulation of the city was barely recorded. This pattern of sporadic coverage by the SMH – not reporting the villages, barely reporting the regional centres and concentrating on Jerusalem and Haifa – might well have been set as policy from Sydney. On the other hand, the SMH hired a Special Correspondent in late March, coincidentally a week or so before the onslaught of the Haganah’s implementation of Plan Dalet in villages, towns and cities. However, there is only one report covering the 21 events above from the Special Correspondent during the six weeks he or she was the sole on-theground representative of the SMH. That report – about the massacre at Deir Yassin – was reviewed in Chapter 4 and found to be highly inadequate. It is difficult to understand how the journalist could have not ‘seen’ or heard of any of these events, including many that were within easy access of his or her base in Jerusalem. The SMH’s own Staff Correspondent, Jack Flower, arrived too late to make any contribution at all to this reporting of the nakba. By the time he arrived in Palestine, the Arab League troops were in action and he reports a conventional war between troops from two sides. The ‘guerrilla war’ between Palestinians and the Jews – the apex of the nakba – had effectively already been enforced by the Jewish Agency. The agency’s own journalists reported the war (see Figure 7.2) and Flower does remark in several news reports (see Chapter 5) on the waves of Palestinian refugees arriving in Jordan, but it is in the context of his war reporting. In the absence of reporting from the Special Correspondent in Palestine, it was left to the London Staff Correspondent, with access to the Reuters correspondents and others’ work, to piece together from afar what was happening in Palestine. The result is a pro-British, Jerusalemcentric style of war reporting throughout these five-and-a-half months,

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which mentions Jewish ‘terrorism’ (often in relation to attacks on British troops) in the context of mortar battles, but which misses the ‘big picture’ of the ethnic cleansing of more than half of Palestine. From London, it would have been impossible to ‘see’ the thousands of Palestinian refugees walking the country roads and paths, hiding in caves, impounded in makeshift pens (if they were male), carrying as many goods as possible on their backs. The result was virtually no coverage of the phenomenon the Palestinians, from the beginning of the 1950s, referred to as their nakba. A final comparison should be made. It is clear that other world newspapers, such as the NYT (travelling with the Jews), did report the attacks on many villages and the expulsion of their Palestinian inhabitants. Khalidi refers many times to the NYT reports throughout this period before 15 May. The Jewish-oriented Palestine Post often accompanied Haganah operations and reported their ‘victories’. The long-standing Palestinian newspaper Filastin also closely followed events in regional centres and villages across Palestine, let alone the cities. Most journalists avidly read their competitors’ reports and most also use local sources (such as the two local papers mentioned above). In the case of the SMH, seemingly, to no avail. It was also the case that the Jewish Agency was photographing its own nakba activities, as Israeli visual studies scholar Ariella Azoulay has recently shown. In her From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947–1950 (2011), she uses photos from the SAI to show Jewish journalists interviewing Palestinian refugees who were walking the streets, being loaded onto buses or locked up in temporary prisons. The photos also show a range of incidents from the nakba: wells where bodies were thrown (see Figure 7.1), the rubble of villages after destruction, Jews dancing outside Palestinian homes they have occupied and Palestinians running for their lives in the port of Haifa. It is difficult to believe these journalists did not speak with their colleagues from London or Australia and tell them of what they saw. In summary, there is a major absence in the reporting of the SMH throughout the conflict between the Palestinians and the Jews in 1947 and 1948. It is the single reality of the depopulation of Palestine of half its people. This is not a fault of commission, but of omission. The roots of this failure lie at several levels:

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Figure 7.1 The circle of stones covers a well where bodies were dumped at Deir Yassin, 1948. .

.

. .

the seeming inability of the freelance Special Correspondent to ‘see’ and/or acknowledge what was happening around him or her (late March– May 1948); the bad timing of the SMH editorial managers in choosing to send the paper’s own Staff Correspondent only to cover the set-piece war after 15 May 1948; the inability of the London Staff Correspondent to see a larger picture than the story-by-story war reports from its cable correspondents; the success of the Jewish Agency public relations machine, its links with other journalists and correspondents, and its agreements with

Figure 7.2 1948.

Jewish Agency journalist tries to interview a Palestinian elder,

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papers such as the NYT to invite its reporters along with its forces; and the seeming editorial bias of the Sydney-based management of the SMH to stress Jerusalem as the dominant factor in the coverage of the war.

The result is the SMH readers got to see the fighting in Palestine as a purely military contest with one side (the Jews) winning over the other (the Arabs). As in the SMH’s coverage of World War I, the people in the middle, the indigenous people of the land, are not ‘seen’ in any humanistic sense. Neither are they ‘seen’ in the unrelenting focus of the Special Correspondent on the siege of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem (see Chapter 4), nor in the reporting of the war between the new State of Israel and its Arab neighbours from the Staff Correspondent from 15 May 1948 onwards (see Chapter 5). In missing the depopulation of Palestine, the SMH also missed an important social, political and diplomatic reality. When the UN decided in November 1947 to partition the land of Palestine, it envisioned two states. For many centuries, Muslims, Jews and Christians had lived together under Ottoman rule. There was no public expectation that a Jewish state involved ‘transfer’ of the Palestinian population out of the areas nominated for that state. The precedent of the disaster in India, where hundreds of thousands died and millions made refugees when the country was divided up along Muslim and Hindu lines to create Pakistan, was less than nine months earlier in 1947. It was uppermost in policy minds. However, the notion of ‘transfer’ had long been thought through in Jewish policy circles (see Chapter 2). The ‘terrorism’ inflicted on Palestinian villages, towns and cities in the areas within and around the nominated ‘Jewish state’ shocked not only the victims, but British, US and UN policymakers. The SMH omission of the nakba from its reporting, arguably contributed to the Labor government in Australia being able to forge on with its pro-partition policy in the USA and the UN just as others were having second thoughts. Australia’s External Affairs Minister H.V. ‘Doc’ Evatt’s flurry of diplomatic lobbying stiffened the back of US and UN policymakers and gave the Zionist forces in Palestine the crucial time they needed to finish the job.

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Later in the year, the SMH, despite its opposition to partition, admitted that the Jews had ‘won the war’. However, it had never reported that the events in Palestine had amounted to not just a war, but a major ethnic cleansing operation contrary to Geneva Conventions and international law.49 The ‘losing the war’ narrative consigned the Palestine question to bad luck or bad management. The ‘ethnic cleansing’ narrative would have raised questions of human rights and, specifically, the right of return of Palestinians to their homes and property. In Australia, the federal Labor government represented the victory of the Jews as a victory to a people who had recently suffered as refugees from the terrible crimes in Germany and Poland. The SMH failed to report that what had just happened under its nose was another massive refugee problem – partly inflicted by those Jews who had suffered the same fate less than five years earlier. The nakba would remain a secret for nearly 40 years, until Israel finally opened its archives. Some Israeli historians challenged the dominant national myth that ordinary Palestinians had fled of their own accord or been told to leave by their leaders. The ‘new history’ had reopened the question of human rights.

CONCLUSION PALESTINIANS:FROM LOW TO HIGH VISIBILITY

Why and how do the media seem to round on certain groups and demonise them? Do newspapers (like the SMH) report what they see on the ground or give readers what the editorial managers believe the readers want? What role do owners and senior management and their own views play? Can foreign or war correspondents maintain their independence and codes of ethics when travelling (or ‘embedded’) with their nation’s military? This book is a contribution to the knowledge of those commonly asked questions. It has taken one group – the Palestinians – and looked at how they are represented in the SMH at peak periods over the course of a century. It accepts the facts of current portrayals, but seeks to find the lineage. In doing so, it has taken unique periods where Australian reporters were called on to describe Palestine and its inhabitants for extended months at a time – 70 and 100 years ago – and compares the relationship of past portrayals with those of the twenty-first century. Chapter 1 covered the first peak period, between March 1917 and late September 1918, when Australian troops fought their way through Palestine as part of a broader Allied strategy to drive Turkey out of the (then Ottoman) Middle East to protect the Suez Canal, control Iraqi oilfields and clear a route to the alleged ‘soft underbelly’ of Germany. The Official Australian War Correspondent, Charles Bean, had already gone to cover the war at the Somme. The SMH chose to rely on a British war correspondent for its coverage of this new theatre of the war,

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the British Official War Correspondent with the EEF, W.T. Massey. The Australians were part of the EEF and Massey travelled with the EEF’s General Sir Edmund Allenby and shared his despatches with the SMH. The SMH’s own correspondent, H.S. Gullett, only joined the campaign in August 1918, for the final three months of the war. His first by-line appears on 25 September 1918. This study has sampled every battle involving Australians and some days following the battles. As a result of Gullett’s beliefs and background, the SMH’s coverage was coloured by a solidly imperial hue. Even the now-famous Beersheba battle of the Anzac Mounted Division – the courageous ‘charge of the Light Horse Brigade’ – barely gets a mention in the SMH. Instead, it was seen as a fine piece of strategy by Allenby. This empire-centric theme sat comfortably with the tenor of the times: the superiority of the British ‘race’, Australia’s need to support the empire and the importance of the White Australia Policy. However, what it meant for the Australian reader was a thoroughly British view of the campaign. The elements of this view mirrored the ‘orientalist’ outlook outlined in Edward Said’s Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. Lord Kitchener, military architect of the Gallipoli failure, was also the one to offer the Arabs of the Hejaz nationhood after the war if they switched sides and supported the fight against the Turks.1 The SMH supported the view that Britain was bringing modernity to Palestine, that the Ottomans were medieval (one editorial scoffed at the Caliph’s jihad threat), that Lord Balfour’s promise to the Jews would bring new agricultural benefits to Palestine and that the Holy Land had to be protected (presumably, from the Muslims, who could not be trusted with it). Within this worldview, the SMH failed to report a single Palestinian in Palestine in World War I. The content analysis of keywords shows that the Palestinians were only ever referred to as ‘Arabs’ – and, even then, the worst kind of Arab. Unlike the Arabs of the Hejaz, they were portrayed as ‘thieving and depraved Arabs’, as Gullett referred to them in his official history after the war.2 A common descriptor of the Palestinians by Gullett in the SMH is as ‘native/s’. Palestinian intellectuals, professionals, politicians, sheiks, churchmen, farmers (the fellahin), industrial workers (in Haifa, Jaffa and elsewhere), shopkeepers and householders were all lumped together as ‘natives’. They were all part of a shadowy background to the warring parties. At a time when Palestinian nationalism was blossoming in papers such as Filastin, the

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reporting in the SMH comes close to the prevailing Christian Zionist concept of a ‘land without people for a people without a land’. Australians would recognise the idea by another term – terra nullius – applied to Aboriginal people in the early days of the colony. In sum, during World War I the SMH represented the people of Palestine (when it mentioned them at all) as no more connected to the place of Palestine than a whole lot of Arabs throughout the Middle East. One of the surprises of this study was the virulence of Gullett’s (and Bean’s) disgust for Arabs and their culture. It is little wonder that the SMH greeted the Balfour gift to the Zionist Jews of a ‘home’ in Palestine as a good thing. Chapters 2 and 3 examined the second peak of coverage – the partition of Palestine, the internal war with Palestinians, the birth of Israel as a nation state and its war with its Arab neighbours. The peak lasted between February 1947, when the British government announced its intention to relinquish its Mandate, and December 1948, when the war with Israel was effectively over. The sample examined involves every edition of the SMH from 12 of the 23 months. Then once again, 30 years after World War I, the evidence establishes that the Palestinians did not exist in the SMH’s reportage of their own drama (Chapter 3). Whereas in my 2000– 2 study3 they were seen as the epitome of the violent terrorist, in 1917– 18 and in 1947–8 they were barely visible. This is despite three decades of struggle and resistance under the British Mandate to assert their national aspirations, despite a plethora of explicitly ‘Palestinian’ (‘filastini’) institutions in cities such as Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa (libraries, newspapers, garages, banks and companies), despite Palestinian leaders on hand during the civil war and despite the SMH editorials written in Sydney occasionally using the word ‘Palestinian’ in its text and headlines. Why was this the case? This absence of an identifier has major symbolic consequences and implications. (It mirrors the current division today between those media outlets – such as Britain’s The Economist – which routinely use the word ‘occupied’ when describing Palestine, and those that do not.) If Palestinians are not identified as a people in Australian reporting, it is much easier to see Palestine as a blank space awaiting redemption by occupying powers. It makes resistance against such a process all the more perplexing, the use of violence irrational and somehow endemic to ‘primitive’ people. It also invites a solution to

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Palestinians’ 1,800-year or more occupation of their own land: since they are just Arabs, move them elsewhere (e.g., Jordan) if the Jews have a greater need of a ‘home’ (as Balfour wrote). However, another surprise of this study was the portrayal of Jews in this peak of coverage. Unlike World War I, Jews were no longer portrayed as the saviours of the land. From February 1948 onwards in my sample, there is a consistent narrative of Jewish terrorism. It was partly based on events such as the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in July 1946 and the violent campaign of terror conducted by Irgun and the Stern Gang throughout 1947 and 1948, but the SMH takes it further. It blames the Jewish Agency and the entire Jewish community. It does so in its editorials, but also editorially in its consistent use of the words ‘Jewish terrorism’ in the text and headlines of the news and news features. As a result, the SMH takes the (British) line in its official pronouncements that Palestine should not be partitioned and that the Palestinian majority is undemocratically being denied its birthright. Even late in 1948, the SMH used the word ‘Palestine’ to refer to places in Israel. To study how the SMH correspondents based in Palestine in mid1948 saw the Palestinians (if at all), the work of both the Special Correspondent (sometimes referred to in the by-line as ‘with the Jews’) and the later Staff Correspondent (sometimes ‘with the Arabs’) were analysed in Chapters 4 and 5. By contrast to the SMH’s official position, the freelance Special Correspondent represents the Palestinians in his or her news texts as aggressors who act upon the Jews. The reports lack a sense of distance and balance and reflect the journalist’s personal biases. Since the Special Correspondent was the SMH’s only reporter on the ground for the six weeks prior to 15 May 1948, when many of the massacres of the nakba were committed, many major stories were missed. Eventually sent from Sydney, the Staff Correspondent, Jack Flower, rescued the SMH’s journalistic standards, but missed the big stories of the massacres. He was sent to cover an Israeli– Arab war, and therefore was not present during most of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Like Gullett in World War I, he was sent too late to provide an Australian angle and insert SMH values into the journalism. For the first time in any reports, he referred to the massive Palestinian refugee crisis, but only in passing on the way to the Arab League army fighting to rescue Jerusalem from the days-old Israeli Defence Force.

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Therefore, the deficient Special Correspondent (‘with the Jews’) was in charge of the SMH coverage while the nakba was in full swing and Jack Flower arrived for ‘the war’. The result of this arrangement – as shown in Chapter 7 – was that a whole range of journalistic opportunities to describe the cleansing, destruction and depopulation of villages and towns across Palestine were missed. Not only did the SMH miss the Palestinians on the ground, but they did not see (or report) the massive refugee crisis deliberately caused by the Jewish Agency to clear the land for a new nation, including Jewish refugees from Europe. As villages and cities were emptied of 750,000 Palestinians, there was either no or minimal coverage provided to readers back in Sydney. Edward Said wrote in an introduction to a book of memories of Jerusalem in 2000: One feels a kind of horror at what those many thousands of victims went through as they were driven from their houses, forced to march great distances, dying or being precariously re-settled in camps, makeshift houses, and temporary arrangements in several neighbouring Arab countries. All this was in essence designed to be lost, it was planned to remain hidden, it was purposely made invisible and inaudible.4 Palestinians, of course, immediately called their experience of 1948 the nakba. Books about it began appearing in the 1950s.5 The Palestinian historian ‘Arif al-‘Arif, brought out a three-volume history called Al-Nakba (the Catastrophe) between 1956 and 1960.6 Nevertheless, there is a sense in which Said’s suggestion of a deliberately hidden history applied for decades as the Israeli twin counter-narratives of both the nonexistence of Palestinians and the allegation that they all fled of their own accord took hold. The documentary evidence from the Israeli ‘new historians’ challenges Said’s notion of a purposely invisible catastrophe. The nakba was easily visible. It was seen by journalists; it was photographed and recorded by Jewish Agency journalists whom foreign correspondents met at agency public relations briefings. Western journalists, like those from the NYT, travelled ‘with the Jews’. After the massacre at Deir Yassin, journalists were entertained by Irgun soldiers. It was broadcast on Haganah radio. If anything, it was designed to be seen and to

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terrorise. Reporters could not miss it. Ilan Pappe, one of the ‘new historians’ states: It was in and around Haifa that the ethnic cleansing operation gathered momentum [. . .] Fifteen villages – some of them small, that is with less than 300 people, some of them huge, with around 5,000 – were expelled in quick succession [. . .] wiped off Palestine’s map within a sub-district full of British soldiers, UN emissaries and foreign reporters.7 And again, Pappe refers to a ‘a common sight’: A common sight in rural Palestine in the wake of the cleansing operations were huge pens in which male villagers, ranging from children to the age of 10 to older men up to the age of 50, were being held after the Israelis had picked them out in the ‘searchand-arrest’ operations that had now become routine. They were later moved to centralized prison camps.8 The pens were in operation long before 15 May, when Israel as a state was born. Therefore, if the nakba was so easily visible, how is it that the scale of the tragedy – and all the village-by-village incidents that went to make up the whole – was not published in Sydney’s quality morning newspaper? Was it reported by the Reuters correspondents in Palestine, but not passed on by the Staff Correspondent in London? After late March, when the Special Correspondent in Palestine began, did the reporter fail to leave Jerusalem and travel around the rest of Palestine? Was it bias towards the Jewish side that caused a reportorial blindness? Or were the reports sent to Sydney thought to be too disturbing to publish? This study cannot speculate on the questions raised by the absence of reporting a refugee crisis involving half the Palestinian population. It can only assert that, given what we now know from the State Archives of Israel, only a very small portion of the crisis received a mention in the pages of the SMH. It was a major failure of reporting. In doing so, it portrayed the Palestinians – inasmuch as they were identified as the traditional owners of the land – as simply having lost a war for their country. The injustice of ethnic cleansing remained their

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secret. Only in the 1960s would it burst forth in the form of Yasser Arafat (a fighter from 1948) and his Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Their claims to the land, after nearly two decades of silence, would hardly be understood. It was not reported. They were on the way to being labelled ‘terrorists’. Taking into account the key findings of the content analysis and textual examination, the context of Palestinian, Jewish and British involvement, the institutional politics of the SMH and the interplay of Australian politics, it would be incorrect to read from the evidence that there is a strict causal connection between the portrayals in these two periods and those of 2000 –2. If anything, Palestinians were seen by the SMH in 1917– 18 as naive, innocent bystanders, ‘natives’ and homogeneous Arabs who would benefit from a dose of modernity, whether British or Zionist. By 1947– 8, their portrayal in the SMH was more complicated. They were seen more as victims of Jewish terrorism – except during the period of the Special Correspondent’s reporting, when the opposite was suggested – and of a UN decision that unfairly gave away their majority sovereignty. Therefore, from neither period could it be said that these representations of the Palestinians – with the proviso that their nomenclature was almost always just ‘Arabs’ – contributed to the later portrayal, 52 years later (2000– 2) as ‘terrorists’. The discontinuities reflect the differing events of the times (World War I and partition). However, at a deeper level there were many continuities and connections. These lay at the level of myth. In both peak periods there was an Anglophile orientation that was extreme in 1917– 18 (‘empire’) and substantial in 1947– 8. Both periods of SMH coverage explicitly saw support for Britain as a primary concern of the newspaper. In both periods, this was accompanied by editorial support for Australia as a ‘white’ nation. Then there was the explicit support for saving the Christian and Jewish heritage of ‘the Holy Land’ and the ‘Holy Places’ in the ‘Holy City’ of Jerusalem. In both periods, journalists regularly used biblical language in their descriptions of Palestine – although it should be acknowledged that many official maps and documents (which they may have used) did so as well. Arabic names for hills and, sometimes, cities, were replaced with biblical names (also used by Zionists). It would have been understandable if English-speaking Palestinians thought the

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SMH correspondents used ‘Crusader’ descriptions. Jack Flower declared on his arrival in Jerusalem that the war was purely ‘religious’ between the Jews and the Muslim and Christian ‘Arabs’. Then, too, for the Jews was the associated theme of ‘the return’ after 2,000 years. While the original Herzl idea was about a state that would be a refuge for all Jews (following anti-Semitic purges in eastern Europe), the added idea of ‘the return’ gained prominence on 15 May 1948 in David Ben-Gurion’s proclamation of the State of Israel. It was also a theme of SMH editorials. At this deeper level, many of these concerns do connect with the 2000–2 portrayals. Anglophilia has been replaced by the ‘Anglosphere’ and Palestinians do not fit the definition. Christian Zionism, particularly in the USA, has focused on Israel as a site of redemption and Palestinians as ‘the Other’. The modern demands to recast Israel as a ‘Jewish state’ also leave the large community of Israeli Palestinians as foreigners in their own land. All echo the deep concerns expressed earlier in the peak periods of the twentieth century. This helps to explain how the SMH could demonise this ‘Other’ in 2000– 2. This is despite the fact that Australia is less ‘Anglo’, less religious and more Muslim than it was 60 years ago. Old myths of identity take a long time to change. Another continuity is the orientalist trope. An example is Jack Flower’s references to Arabs as ‘excitable’. He clearly finds ‘the Arabs’ a noisy lot. As referred to in Chapter 6, he has the local Arabs ‘excited’ in an SMH page 1 story (18 May 1948),9 ‘excitedly cheering’ again (27 May 1948)10 and ‘emotional’ and ‘talking endlessly’ as they greet the conquering King Abdullah of Jordan in Jerusalem (29 May 1948).11 Flower’s references give the Palestinians a child-like quality, which adds to the theme of naive ‘natives’ used more explicitly by Gullett 30 years earlier. This trope closely parallels the theme of the description of Palestinians and Arabs in the same newspaper after 11 September 2001. Similar depictions are found in various incarnations in the newspaper from 1917 (Gullett) to 1948 (Special Correspondent) and 2001 (Ross Dunn) and the triumph of the myths in the earlier periods roll over the underlying narrative of the Arab as ‘Other’. This triumph is assisted by the two major absences: the lack of Palestine having people called ‘the Palestinians’ in the SMH in either peak period; and, in 1947–8, the lack of reporting of the massacres and

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expulsions that constituted the nakba. By not reporting either reality, the SMH leaves the symbolic space open for new labels in the future. If, by the year 2000, Australian readers were mystified about what troubled the Palestinians, the door was open for other definitions to take hold. The major question raised by this evidence is what the journalists on the spot in Palestine ‘saw’. The evidence suggests certain events were impossible to miss, but what did the correspondents ‘see’? A similar question was raised by foreign correspondent Patrick Cockburn in The Independent on Sunday, under the headline ‘Foreign media portrayals of the conflict in Syria are dangerously inaccurate’. He says: Every time I come to Syria I am struck by how different the situation is on the ground from the way it is pictured in the outside world. The foreign media reporting of the Syrian conflict is surely as inaccurate and misleading as anything we have seen since the start of the First World War.12 What is ‘seen’ is a very old question, dating back to John Berger’s original deconstruction of Kenneth Clark’s BBC series Civilisation and publication of the influential Ways of Seeing. Australian linguistics scholar Dr Annabelle Lukin has examined how ABC journalism ‘saw’ the opening days of the war in Iraq.13 Israeli fine arts scholar Ariella Azoulay has asked the same questions about Jewish Agency portrayals of the Palestinian nakba in her important From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947–1950.14 It extends the work of the ‘new historians’. It is possible that the SMH Special Correspondent chose not to see the worst excesses of the Haganah, Irgun and the Stern Gang, and therefore not send reports to Sydney. While his or her pro-Jewish bias is clear from the text, unethical behaviour beyond that cannot be alleged. A generous interpretation would be that it falls into the category of ‘not seeing the wood for the trees’. In such a chaotic scene as Palestine in 1948, the emphasis on ‘war reporting’ may have encouraged a battle-bybattle approach that failed to see the bigger picture of so many Palestinians being made refugees. They were simply ‘collateral damage’. Pappe suggests another scenario:

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[. . .] it seems that none of the foreign correspondents dared openly to criticize the actions of the Jewish nation just three years after the Holocaust.15 It is also true that the instructions from Sydney to the correspondents would have had a powerful and restrictive effect. Flower was specifically told to keep in close contact with the editors back home. The hand of the management was heavy upon him. The timing of his arrival and the phrasing of the memo to him make it clear that he was there as Staff Correspondent to report on a war between Israel and the Arab countries after 15 May 1948. That is what he did, even though in some reports he notes in short paragraphs the many Palestinians (‘Arabs’) fleeing to neighbouring countries. Some correspondents might have insisted more robustly to their foreign editors on telling this other ‘good story’ from Palestine. And finally, it is true that editorial perceptions of what ‘the reader’ may want clearly played a large part. The SMH deemed the survival of the ‘Holy City’ of Jerusalem was what the readers wanted to know about, thereby further restricting correspondents to watching the action in that one famous icon of Palestine. So many factors could have played into the missing of the wider story. Page and placement of SMH articles on Palestine, 1947 – 8 (see Table 3.4) show clearly that the SMH regarded the events in Palestine as a continuing drama of major world significance. Palestine dominated the front page and/or page 3 for many months. But, the context got lost in the decisions of the reporters, the editors and the editors’ perceptions of what the audience back home wanted. A better newspaper might have had its Staff Correspondent sent to Palestine in December 1947, not May 1948, to see the civil war before the regional war (as the NYT did, except it seemed to keep to one side, the Jews), and allow him or her to travel more widely over the country and set their own agenda. Surprisingly, it chose to be late and restricted in its agenda. It was the Palestinians who lost out so far as Australian coverage was concerned. It is of interest that Australian attitudes to Jewish settlement in Palestine changed between the two peak periods of the coverage in this book. In the 1917– 18 period the SMH approved of the Jews coming to bring ‘development’ to Palestine. At the time, Australian politicians

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were worried about the Suez Canal being blocked by enemy forces and disrupting communications to Australia from Britain. Australia’s trade and strategic lifeline to Britain was threatened; however, by 1947–8 different perspectives arose. The SMH was less enamoured, to say the least, of the Jews struggling to build their Balfour-inspired ‘home’ in Palestine. The paper refused to recognise the new state and favoured holding off on diplomatic recognition by Australia until Israel could prove its willingness to act like a good international citizen. During this period, Australia’s relationship with the Arab world was of greater importance as a result of the substantial discoveries of oil, the threat to the Suez Canal having passed and undersea cables safely laid. Therefore, it was clear that Australia was not propelled by its selfinterest to support the Jewish drive for statehood. The result was a series of bureaucratic skirmishes within the foreign affairs establishments in Britain, the USA and Australia. Britain opposed partition and favoured a federal state in Palestine. The State Department was not on board with President Harry S. Truman’s pro-Jewish and pro-partition agenda.16 In Australia, many under H.V. Evatt in the External Affairs Department also favoured federalism over partition. All of these ‘dissenting’ public advisers were concerned about getting the Arab Middle East offside and losing access to its oil. By 2000 – 2, the relationship had changed again. Israel was now a major force in its own right (e.g., arms trading, nuclear weapons and IT exports), tied umbilically to the USA as its top recipient of foreign aid and using its military arsenal on Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, Syria and Egypt on a variety of occasions. But Australia had also developed a huge meat and wheat exporting trade with the Arab Middle East. Australia developed what Reich called an ‘ambiguous relationship’ with Israel.17 This changing of interests through the three peaks is mirrored in the changing newspaper coverage. After 11 September 2001, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was at pains to portray the Palestinians as his own backyard ‘terrorists’, much like Osama bin Laden had become to the USA. It was echoed in the SMH. There is little doubt about the connection between sustained media portrayals and public policy. As Cockburn said in the same 2013 article:

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A result of these distortions is that politicians and casual newspaper or television viewers alike have never had a clear idea over the last two years of what is happening inside Syria.18 A similar point is made in Kathleen Christison’s study of how the US media covered Palestine through a succession of US presidents, Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on US Middle East Policy. In analysing the Truman period in 1947 and 1948, she says: The interaction between the press and the Zionists, the press and policy-makers, the press and the public in this period is in fact an interesting study in the interplay at work in the creation of a conventional wisdom [. . .] From the moment partition was voted for at the UN the press played a critical role in building a framework for thinking that would endure for decades [. . .] Virtually all reporting was from a Jewish perspective.19 In the SMH, the reporting was more nuanced than in the USA, but the point that Cockburn and Christison make about the influence of press perspectives and its interplay with official policy is worth consideration. The ‘disappearance’ of the Palestinian, both as a people and as their lived experiences, opened the way for portrayals in the next century that would completely misrepresent them. Australian public policy and the relationship with the Arab world would be all the poorer. In failing to describe the Palestinians, a whole ethnicity, society and culture is never reported. They are an undistinguished mass, a backdrop to wars. There are no distinctions drawn between the peasants ( fellahin) and the ‘notables’, the village and the city dwellers, the industrial workers and the middle class, the fishermen and the mountain dwellers, the sheiks and their flocks. Even the number who died in World War I and the nakba are never mentioned. The SMH failed to report the biggest story of all three periods: the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and lands in 1948, their nakba. The scale of the event was unmissable – almost half the original people of Palestine walking the roads and tracks of their country. But Sydney readers never got to hear of it in their ‘paper of record’.

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In constructing ‘the Palestinians’, it stuck to the old tropes of Empire, the Holy Land and its Holy City, the ‘return’ of the Jews and the need for Australia to pull its weight to help the British, but it failed to say who these people were who lived on the land of Palestine. It would be the perfect vacant slate for a later portrayal that suited the Western powers of the day – the ‘Palestinian’ as irrational, violent and inhumane.

NOTES

Introduction 1. Daniel Lane, ‘How Sydney in 2000 made the Olympics a winner and impacted on so many lives’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 September 2015. Available at http://www.smh.com.au/sport/how-sydney-in-2000-made-the-olympics-awinner-and-impacted-on-so-many-lives-20150912-gjl0xw.html. 2. Rafael Epstein, ‘Front-line police clash with commanders over Cabramatta drugs’, PM Archive, 6 March 2001. Available at http://www.abc.net.au/pm/ stories/s255706.htm. 3. Ian Walker, ‘Mustapha Dib: A “two-time killer” before the age of 18’, The Daily Telegraph, 13 October 2015. Available at http://www.dailytelegraph. com.au/news/nsw/mustapha-dib-a-twoti. . .fore-the-age-of18/news-story/ 5b56cfd58a749634941dd24b5a53e823. 4. Greg Bearup, Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), 4 November 1998, p. 1. 5. Walker, ‘Mustapha Dib’ The Daily Telegraph. 6. Scott Poynting, ‘When “Zero tolerance” looks like racial intolerance: “Lebanese Youth Gangs”, discrimination and resistance’, Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 109 (November 2003), p. 61. 7. Sydney Sun-Herald, 15 October 2000, p. 34. 8. Peter Manning, ‘Arabic and Muslim people in Sydney’s daily newspapers, before and after September 11’, Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy, 109 (2003), p. 61. 9. Ibid., p. 61. 10. Ibid., p. 62. 11. Ibid., p. 64. 12. Sunday Telegraph, 26 August 2001, p. 3. 13. Howard statement, 28 October 2001. See Lateline, ABC TV, 21 November 2001; also available at http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/detention-policiesto-be-reformed/455454.

NOTES TO PAGES 4 –17

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14. Peter Manning, Us and Them; A Journalist’s Investigation of Media, Muslims and the Middle East, Random House (Sydney, 2006), pp. 256 – 67. 15. Peter Manning, ‘Arabic and Muslim people in Sydney’s daily newspapers before and after September 11’, ibid., pp. 50 – 70. 16. Edward W. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient, Penguin (London, 1978). 17. Edward W. Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World, Vintage (London, 1997). 18. Manning, ‘Arabic and Muslim people in Sydney’s daily newspapers’, p. 69. 19. Ibid., p. 58. 20. Patrick Cockburn, The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq, Verso (London, 2006), pp. 106– 7. 21. Gavin Souter, Heralds and Angels: The House of Fairfax, 1841– 1990. Melbourne University Press (Melbourne, 1991), pp. 106 – 8. 22. M.A.K. Halliday, Functional Grammar (2nd edn), Edward Arnold (London, 1994), pp. 250– 74. 23. Nick Couldry, Listening Beyond the Echoes: Media, Ethics, and Agency in an Uncertain World. Paradigm Publishers (Boulder, CO, 2006), pp. 9 – 33. 24. Teun A. van Dijk, ‘Ideology’, in Gianpietro Mazzoleni (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Political Communication, John Wiley and Sons (Hoboken, NJ, 2015). 25. Pierre Bourdieu, Acts of Resistance: Against the New Myths of Our Time, Polity (Cambridge, 1998). 26. Raymond Williams, Keywords, A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Oxford University Press (New York, 1983), pp. 11 – 27. 27. Robert M. Entman, ‘Framing U.S. coverage of international news: Contrasts in narratives of the KAL and Iran air incidents’, Journal of Communication, 41/4 (1991), pp. 6 –27. 28. Said, Orientalism; Culture and Imperialism. 29. Martin Bell, ‘The death of news’, Media, War and Conflict, 1/2 (2008), pp. 221 –31.

Chapter 1

Reporting Palestine in World War I

1. Jeffrey Grey, Military History of Australia, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 1999), p. 85. 2. Dudley McCarthy, Gallipoli to the Somme: The Story of C.E.W. Bean, John Ferguson (Sydney, 1983), pp. 85 – 8. 3. Kevin Fewster, Gallipoli Correspondent: the Frontline Diary of C.E.W. Bean, Allen and Unwin (Sydney, 1983), pp. 9 –21. 4. A.J. Hill, ‘The Australian imperial force in Sinai and Palestine, 1914 – 1918’, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914– 1918, Vol. VII, Australian War Memorial (Canberra, 1983).

NOTES

TO PAGES

17 –21

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5. Butrus Abu-Maneh, ‘The Christians between Ottomanism and Syria nationalism: The ideas of Butrus Al-Bustani’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 11/3 (1980), pp. 287 – 304. 6. David Commins, ‘Religious reformers and Arabists in Damascus, 1885–1914’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 18 (1986), pp. 405–25. 7. Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age – 1798– 1939, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 222– 324. 8. Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness, Columbia University Press (New York, 1997), pp. 28, 143. 9. Haim Gerber, ‘“Palestine” and other territorial concepts in the 17th century’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 30 (1998), pp. 563– 72. 10. Albert Hourani, Philip Khoury and Mary Wilson (eds), The Modern Middle East: A Reader, I.B.Tauris (London, 2004), p. 87. 11. Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, Cambridge University Press (2nd edn) (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 383– 7. 12. Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall – Israel and the Arab World, Penguin (London, 2000), pp. 2 – 3. For the Zionist movement, see Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, Harper (New York, 1987), pp. 374– 5. 13. Gershon Shafir, Land, Labor and Palestine 1885– 1914, University of California Press (Berkeley, 1996), pp. 135 – 87. 14. Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, pp. 119 –45. 15. Shafir, Land, Labor and Palestine 1885– 1914, p. 51. 16. Ilan Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples. Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 66 – 7. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Grey, Military History of Australia, p. 117. 20. Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty: From the Crimea to Vietnam: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth Maker, Quartet (London, 2000), pp. 110 –11. 21. McCarthy, Gallipoli to the Somme, p. 76. 22. Fewster, Gallipoli Correspondent, pp. 15 – 16. 23. McCarthy, Gallipoli to the Somme; Ken Inglis, ‘Bean, Charles Edwin Woodrow (1879 – 1968)’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University (Canberra, 1979), pp. 226 – 9; Fewster, Gallipoli Correspondent. 24. Inglis, K.S., C.E.W. Bean, Australian Historian, University of Queensland Press (Brisbane, 1970), p. 3. 25. Fewster, Gallipoli Correspondent, p. 16. 26. Ibid., p. 13. 27. Knightley, The First Casualty, pp. 99, 116. 28. Grey, Military History of Australia, p. 116. 29. Inglis,‘Bean, Charles Edwin Woodrow’, pp. 8 – 9. 30. Bean, quoted in McCarthy, Gallipoli to the Somme, p. 293.

244

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21 –31

31. SMH, 6 August 1914, p. 6. 32. Tania Rose, Aspects of Political Censorship, 1914– 1918, University of Hull Press (Hull, 1995), p. 17. 33. Ibid., p. 21. 34. Gavin Souter, Company of Heralds, Melbourne University Press (Melbourne, 1981), p. 116. 35. Ibid., p. 117. 36. G.N. Hawker, ‘Gullett, Henry (Harry) (1837– 1914)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 9, Melbourne University Press (Melbourne, 1983). Available at http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gullet-henry-harry-6504/text11155. 37. Ibid. 38. Rose, Aspects of Political Censorship, pp. 17 – 19. 39. SMH, 31 March 1917, p. 1. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. SMH, 22 March 1917, p. 7. 43. Strictly, Amman, Es Salt (Jordan) and Kaukab (Syria) are today in adjoining countries to ‘Palestine’, but they are included here for three reasons: first, the SMH refers to them itself as part of the ‘Palestine’ campaign; second, they were fought from a base in Palestine as part of the nominally ‘Palestine’ campaign; and third, in all three cases, the borders of ‘Palestine’ were porous in the sense that, under the Ottomans, this was officially all part of Syria and Palestine was within three sanjaks (Jerusalem, Nablus and Acre) as part of a broader client state. So, for instance, the defence of the Suez Canal in Egypt and the taking of Damascus, both involving Australian troops, are not included in this analysis. 44. Chris Coulthard-Clark, The Encyclopedia of Australia’s Battles, Allen and Unwin (Sydney, 1998), pp. 124– 6. 45. David Walker, Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia, 1850– 1939, University of Queensland Press (Brisbane, 1999); Fred Alexander, Australia Since Federation: A Narrative and Critical Analysis. Thomas Nelson (Melbourne, 1967), p. 77; Inglis,‘Bean, Charles Edwin Woodrow (1879 – 1968)’; Fewster, Gallipoli Correspondent. 46. Nick Dyrenfurth and Frank Bongiorno, A Little History of the Australian Labor Party, University of New South Wales Press (Sydney, 2011), p. 42. 47. Grey, Military History of Australia, p. 112. 48. A.J. Hill, ‘Chauvel, Sir Henry George (Harry) (1865– 1945)’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 7, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University (Canberra, 1979), p. 625. 49. Souter, Company of Heralds, p. 114. 50. Ibid. 51. Grey, Military History of Australia, p. 114. 52. Hill, ‘Chauvel, Sir Henry George (Harry)’, p. 625. 53. SMH, 9 November 1917, p. 6. 54. Grey, Military History of Australia, p. 87.

NOTES

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55. SMH, 2 April 1918, p. 6. 56. SMH, 3 April 1918, p. 10. 57. SMH, 15 November 1917, p. 6. The ‘alien’, ‘foreigner’ and ‘stranger’ would have been known to refer to the Irish-born Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Dr Daniel Mannix, who campaigned strongly against conscription at this time and a week earlier had used the phrase ‘Australia first and the Empire second’ as a campaign slogan (see Melbourne Argus, 8 November 1917, p. 8). 58. SMH, 17 November 1917, p. 13. 59. SMH, 3 October, p. 7; SMH, 5 October 1917, p. 13. 60. SMH, 18 September 1918, p. 7. 61. Grey, Military History of Australia, p. 115. 62. Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine, p. 73. 63. Louis Fishman, ‘The 1911 Haram al-Sharif incident: Palestinian notables versus the Ottoman administration’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 34/3 (2005), pp. 7–8. 64. Abdelaziz A. Ayyad, Arab Nationalism and the Palestinians, 1850– 1939, Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA) (Jerusalem, 1999), pp. 45 – 7. 65. Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 7. 66. Adam M. Garfinkle, ‘On the origin, meaning, use and abuse of a phrase’, Middle Eastern Studies 27/4 (1991), pp. 539 – 50. 67. Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 7. 68. SMH, 9 April 1917, p. 7. 69. Ibid. 70. SMH, 24 April 1917, p. 8. 71. SMH, 8 May 1918, p. 11. 72. SMH, 23 September 1918, p. 7. 73. SMH, 25 September 1918, p. 11. 74. William Thomas Massey, Allenby’s Final Triumph. Constable (London, 1920), p. 206. 75. SMH, 28 September 1918, p. 13. 76. SMH, 5 October 1918, p. 13. 77. Walid Khalidi, All That Remains: the Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, Institute for Palestine Studies (Washington, DC, 1992), pp. 426– 551. 78. Raymond Williams, Keywords, A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Oxford University Press (New York, 1983), pp. 215– 16. 79. SMH, 9 April 1917, p. 7. 80. SMH, 8 May 1918, p. 1. 81. SMH, 30 September 1918, p. 7 82. SMH, 2 October 1918, p. 11. 83. Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, pp. 13, 152. 84. Norman Davies, Europe – A History, Pimlico (London, 1997), p. 870. 85. Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine, pp. 33 – 5. 86. SMH, War Notes column, 13 March 1917, p. 13.

246 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123.

NOTES TO PAGES 41 – 49 SMH, 9 November 1917, p. 7. SMH, 13 November 1917, p. 7. Ibid. Ibid. SMH, 18 September 1918, p. 7. SMH, 23 September 1918, p. 7. SMH, 25 September 1918, p. 10. Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, Faber (London, 1991), p. 97. Ibid., pp. 288 – 9. Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine, pp. 35–7; M.K. Oke, ‘The Ottoman Empire, Zionism, and the question of Palestine (1880–1908)’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 14 (1982), pp. 329–41; Shlaim, The Iron Wall, 1–10. Oke, ‘The Ottoman Empire’, p. 331. Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine, pp. 94, 112. Ibid., p. 69. Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, pp. 119– 45. SMH, 31 September 1917, p. 13. SMH, 4 May 1918, p. 13. Ibid. SMH, 14 September 1918, p. 8. SMH, 25 September 1918, p. 10. Paul Daley, Beersheba: A Journey through Australia’s Forgotten War, Melbourne University Press (Melbourne, 2009). Peter Stanley, Bad Characters: Sex, Crime, Mutiny, Murder and the Australian Imperial Force, Pier 9 (Millers Point, New South Wales, 2010). Paul Daley and Mike Bowers, Two Men on an ANZAC Trail, Miegunyah Armageddon Press (Melbourne, 2011), p. 8. Henry Somer Gullett, Australian Imperial Force in Sinai and Palestine, 1914– 1918. Angus and Robertson (Sydney, 1923), p. 787. Ibid., p. 789. Ibid., p. 790. Stanley, Bad Characters, p. 222. Ibid., p. 221. Paul Daley, Beersheba: A Journey Through Australia’s Forgotten War, Melbourne University Press (Melbourne, 2009), pp. 300 – 2. Ibid., p. 277. Walid Khalidi, All That Remains, pp. 411 –13. Stanley, Bad Characters, p. 181. Hawker, ‘Gullett, Henry (Harry) (1837 –1914)’. Ibid. Gullett, Australia in Palestine, p. v. Hawker, ‘Gullett, Henry (Harry) (1837 –1914)’. Gullett, Australian Imperial Force in Sinai and Palestine, 1914–1918, pp. 503–4. Ibid., p. 529.

NOTES 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148. 149.

TO PAGES

50 –58

247

Ibid., p. 556. Ibid., p. 785. Ion Idriess, The Desert Column, Angus and Robertson (Sydney, 1932), p. 176. Ibid., p. 177. Ibid., p. 277. Ibid., p. 279. Ibid., p. 283. Ibid., p. 287. McCarthy, Gallipoli to the Somme, p. 88. Ibid., p. 95. Ibid., p. 97. SMH, 3 April 1915, p. 13. Naguib Mahfouz, ‘Palace walk’, The Cairo Trilogy, Doubleday (New York, 1991), pp. 333, 353, 449. Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean, What to Know in Egypt: A Guide for Australasian Soldiers, Societe´ Orientale de Publicite´ (Cairo, 1915), p. 9. Ibid., p. 11. Ibid., p. 13. Ibid. Ibid., p. 14. Ibid., p. 28. Ibid., pp. 28 – 9. Martin Watts, The Jewish Legion and the First World War, Palgrave Macmillan (London, 2004), pp. 201 – 5; Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Story of the Jewish Legion, Bernard Ackerman Inc (New York, 1945), p. 103. Massey, Allenby’s Final Triumph, p. 339. Watts, The Jewish Legion and the First World War, p. 210. Ibid., p. 205. Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 13. Massey, Allenby’s Final Triumph, p. 339.

Chapter 2

Palestine’s Competing Narratives after World War II

1. Thomas Bruce Millar, in Chanan Reich, Australia and Israel: An Ambiguous Relationship, Melbourne University Press (Melbourne, 2002), p. 3. 2. Quoted in Reich, Australia and Israel, p. 9. 3. Roland Perry, Monash, the Outsider Who Won a War, Random House (Sydney, 2004), p. 490. 4. Ibid., p. 4. 5. Ibid., p. 5. 6. David McNicoll, Air Mail Palestine, Dymock’s Book Arcade (Sydney, 1943), p. 20. 7. Ibid., pp. 6 – 7.

248

NOTES

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61 – 65

8. Nasser, in James Jankowski, ‘Egyptian responses to the Palestine problem in the interwar period’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 12, 1 (1980), pp. 1 – 38. Nasser’s whole statement is recorded in The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict edited by Walter Laqueur and Dan Schueftan, Penguin (New York, 2016), p. 89. 9. Norman Davies, Europe – A History, Pimlico (London, 1997), p. 1023. 10. Ibid., pp. 1026 – 7. 11. Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, Weidenfeld and Nicholson (London, 1987), p. 505. 12. Davies, Europe – A History, p. 1027. 13. Ibid., p. 1328. 14. Johnson, A History of the Jews, p. 504. 15. Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall – Israel and the Arab World, Penguin (London, 2000), p. 23. 16. Yosef Grodzinsky, In the Shadow of the Holocaust: The Struggle Between Jews and Zionists in the Aftermath of World War II, Common Courage Press (Monroe, ME, 2004), pp. 115– 17. 17. Barbara Bloch, ‘Unsettling Zionism: Diasporic consciousness and Australian Jewish identities’. PhD thesis, University of Western Sydney (Sydney, 2005), p. 134. 18. Ilan Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples. Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 2004), p. 73. 19. Leon Uris, Exodus, Doubleday (New York, 1958). 20. Howard Adelman, ‘Australia and the birth of Israel: midwife or abortionist’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 38/3 (1992), pp. 354 – 74. 21. Chanan Reich, Australia and Israel: An Ambiguous Relationship, Melbourne University Press (Melbourne, 2002), p. 30. 22. Daniel Mandel, H. V. Evatt and the Establishment of Israel: The Undercover Zionist, Frank Cass (London, 2004). 23. Ibid., p. 55. 24. SAI, 27 October 1947, ibid., p. 137. 25. Evatt 2 December 1947 National Archives of Australia NAA document AA A9420/1 PT1. Addressed by Evatt to Departmental Secretary John Burton on 2 December 1947 following the UN’s endorsement of partition of Palestine, it states: Wire Landa MLA many thanks for your letter. I have received numerous wires from Jewish public men in Australia [. . .] Decisive struggle was in the Ad Hoc Committee where, as Chairman, I had to overcome inertia and prevent sabotage delays. See Figure 3.3. 26. 27. 28. 29.

Mandel, H. V. Evatt and the Establishment of Israel, p. 114. Ibid., p. 113. Ibid., p. 115. Max Freilich, Zion in Our Time: Memoirs of an Australian Zionist, Morgan Publications (Sydney, 1967), p. 114.

NOTES TO PAGES 65 –77 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

249

Mandel, H. V. Evatt and the Establishment of Israel, p. 59. Ibid., p. 60. Ibid., pp. 73 – 4. Ibid., p. 62. Mandel, H. V. Evatt and the Establishment of Israel, p. 74. Evatt NAA 10 August 1947 AA, document Series A1838 Item 852/19/1/1: For Burton from the Minister’ on 10 August 1947. AA 22 August 1947 doc. NAA document Series A1838 Item 852/19/1/1. On 22 August 1947 the Middle East Section of the UN Division of the Department replied there would be no such embarrassment. See also AA 22 August 1947 NAA document Series A1838 Item 852/19/1/1 on same day from Shand, who said, ‘Hood [should] be given discretion’. Hood AA 24 August 1947 NAA document, Series A1838 Item 852/19/1/1 from Hood in Geneva to Canberra. External Affairs, 25 August 1947. NAA document, Series A1838 Item 852/19/1/1, ‘Note from Department to “Australian delegation”: Most important we should not be committed to any recommendation.’ Peter Ryan, ‘Ball, William Macmahon 1901– 1986’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University (Canberra, 2012). Evatt 15 November 1947 NAA, document AA A9420/1 Pt.1 accessed by the author. To Burton, head of the External Affairs Department from his Minister H.V. Evatt, marked ‘Top Secret’. The Arabic word nakba (catastrophe) has several spellings in English. In this book I will use the word as spelt by Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi in All That Remains: the Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, Institute for Palestine Studies (Washington, DC, 1992). Ibid., pp. xxxi – xxxiv. Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 2006), p. 29. Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 2004), p. 20. Mandel, H. V. Evatt and the Establishment of Israel, p. 74. The statement comes from a State Archives of Israel SAI document cable from Shertok to Evatt on 26 March 1948. The nakba was in full swing by then. Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, p. 73. Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, pp. 61 – 72. Ibid., p. 69.

Chapter 3 Words for War and Partition 1. See Tony Stephens, ‘Hooray for Heroes’, SMH, 2 December 1997, p. 34. 2. John Farquharson, ‘Fitchett, Ian Glynn (Fitch), 1908–1988’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 17, Melbourne University Press (Melbourne), 2007.

250

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77 –100

3. Gavin Souter, Company of Heralds, Melbourne University Press (Melbourne, 1981), p. 284. 4. SMH, Editorial, 4 February 1947, p. 2. 5. SMH, 12 February 1947, p. 2. 6. SMH, 17 February 1947, p. 2; SMH, 27 February 1947, p. 2. 7. Ibid., p. 52. 8. Souter, Company of Heralds, pp. 594– 7. 9. Gavin Souter interviewed by Peter Manning, 12 September 2012. 10. Chris Coulthard-Clark, The Encyclopaedia of Australia’s Battles, Allen and Unwin (Sydney, 1998), pp. 244– 9. 11. Clem Lloyd, Profession: Journalist. A History of the Australian Journalists’ Association, Hale and Iremonger (Sydney, 1985), p. 242. 12. Robin Berwick Walker, Yesterday’s News: NSW Newspapers 1920– 45, Sydney University Press (Sydney, 1980), p. 192. 13. Lloyd, Profession: Journalist, p. 243. 14. Souter, Company of Heralds, p. 616. 15. Ibid., p. 160. 16. Australian Associated Press. ‘Our history’. Available at http://www.aap.com. au/our-history/ (accessed 8 August 2017). 17. Donald Read, The Power of News: The History of Reuters (2nd edn). Oxford University Press (Oxford, 1999), p. 251; Peter Putnis, ‘The business of empire: Henry M. Collins and the early role of Reuters in Australia’, Australian Journal of Communication, 24/ 3 (1997), p. 19. 18. Souter, Company of Heralds, p. 277. 19. Gavin Souter interviewed by Peter Manning, 12 September 2012. 20. Souter, Company of Heralds, p. 200. 21. David White, ‘The “gate keeper”: A case study in the selection of news’, Journalism Quarterly, 27/4 (1950), pp. 383– 90; Hans Magnus Enzensberger, The Consciousness Industry, Seabury (New York, 1974). 22. Letter, Fairfax Company Archives, 2012. 23. Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness, Columbia University Press (New York, 1997), pp. 177– 81. 24. SMH, Editorial, 27 November 1947, p. 2. 25. SMH, Editorial, 20 February 1948, p. 2. 26. SMH, Editorial, 28 May 1948, p. 2. 27. Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, p. 175. 28. Souter, Company of Heralds, 634n. 29. Giora Goodman, ‘“Palestine’s Best”: The Jewish Agency’s press relations, 1946– 1947’, Israel Studies 16/3 (2011), p. 5. 30. Ibid., p. 8. 31. Ibid., p. 12. 32. Ibid., p. 4.

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251

Chapter 4 The ‘Special Correspondent’ in Palestine, 1948 1. Gavin Souter, Speech given at Angus McLachlan’s funeral, 1996. 2. Ibid. 3. Robin Berwick Walker, Yesterday’s News: NSW Newspapers 1920– 45, Sydney University Press (Sydney, 1980), pp. 192– 30. 4. SMH, 25 February 2013, pp. 1, 6. 5. Geoffrey Sparrow, Crusade for Journalism: Official History of the Australian Journalists’ Association, Australian Journalists’ Association (Sydney, 1960), pp. 131 –9. 6. Ibid., p. 139. 7. Gavin Souter, Company of Heralds, Melbourne University Press (Melbourne, 1981), p. 208. 8. Peter Allen interviewed by Peter Manning, 13 December 2012.

Chapter 5

The ‘Staff Correspondent’ in Palestine, 1948

1. Jack Flower letter of appointment to Palestine, 6 May 1948, Fairfax Company Archives. Accessed 2012. 2. Peter Allen interviewed by Peter Manning, 13 December 2012. 3. Jack Flower letter of appointment to Palestine, Fairfax Company Archives. 4. Avi Shlaim, The Politics of Partition: King Abdullah, the Zionists and Palestine, 1921– 1951, Oxford University Press (Oxford, 1988), p. 80.

Chapter 6 Opinion on Palestine: Editors and Specialists 1. Report for the Reuter Board – Mission to South Africa, 6 August 1947, p. 9. Reuter Archive, London. It states: ‘Mr Henderson left Johannesburg [. . .] on his return journey to Sydney via Egypt and Palestine.’ 2. Gavin Souter interviewed by Peter Manning, 12 September 2012, transcript p. 87. 3. Ibid., p. 2. 4. Gavin Souter, Company of Heralds, Melbourne University Press (Melbourne, 1981), p. 232. 5. Ibid., p. 169. 6. SMH, 17 February 1947. 7. SMH, 27 February 1947. 8. SMH, 12 November 1947. 9. SMH, 27 November 1947. 10. Ibid. 11. SMH, 2 December 1947. 12. SMH, 11 December 1947.

252 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

NOTES

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170 –193

SMH, 19 December 1947. SMH, 5 February 1948. SMH, 20 February 1948. SMH, 26 February 1948. Ibid. SMH, 6 March 1948. SMH, 20 March 1948. SMH, 26 March 1948. SMH, 7 April 1948. SMH, 14 April 1948. SMH, 24 April 1948. SMH, 28 April 1948. SMH, 4 May 1948. SMH, 15 May 1948. SMH, 18 May 1948. SMH, 21 May 1948. SMH, 24 May 1948. See Avi Shlaim, The Politics of Partition: King Abdullah, the Zionists, and Palestine, 1921– 1951, Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1988. SMH, 28 May 1948. SMH, 21 October 1948. SMH, 25 November 1948. SMH, 4 December 1948. SMH, 17 December 1948. SMH, ibid. Ibid., p. 634. Abe D. Rothman, ‘Dr Evatt in “Apogee”’, Nation, 22 April 1967, p. 13. Abe D. Rothman, ‘Dr Evatt and Israel’, Nation, 6 May 1967, p. 15. Ibid. Gideon Rafael to Moshe Sharett, 29 December 1949 in State Archives of Israel, Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel, Volume 4, May – December 1949, Jerusalem 1986, p. 770.

Chapter 7 How to Miss the Palestinian Nakba, 1948 1. Walid Khalidi, All That Remains: the Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, Institute for Palestine Studies (Washington, DC, 1992), p. xxxii. 2. Ibid., p. xxxiii. 3. Ibid., p. 577. 4. Rosemarie M. Esber, Under the Cover of War: The Zionist Expulsion of the Palestinians, Arabicus (Alexandria, VA, 2009), p. 382. 5. Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 2006), p. 119.

NOTES

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253

6. Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall – Israel and the Arab World, Penguin (London, 2000), p. 31. 7. Quoted in Esber, Under the Cover of War, p. 33. 8. See Benny Morris, ‘The idea of “transfer” in Zionist thinking before 1948’, in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 39 – 65. 9. Walid Khalidi, All That Remains, p. xxxi. 10. Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, pp. 25 – 7. 11. Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, pp. 73 – 5. 12. Walid Khalidi, All That Remains, p. xviii. 13. Ibid. 14. See ibid., Map 3. 15. Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, p. 72. 16. Itamar Radai, ‘Jaffa, 1948: The fall of the city’, Journal of Israeli History: Politics, Society, Culture, 30/1 (2011), p. 28. 17. Mustafa Abbasi, ‘The Battle for Safad in the War of 1948: A revised study’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 36 (2004), p. 25. 18. Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, p. 67. 19. Esber, Under the Cover of War, pp. 231– 2. 20. Nathan Krystall, ‘The de-Arabization of West Jerusalem 1947– 1950’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 27/2 (1998), pp. 8 – 9. 21. Radai, ‘Jaffa, 1948’, p. 28. 22. Ibid., p. 30. 23. Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, pp. 37 – 8. 24. Author’s (Pappe) comments in brackets as they appeared in the original piece. 25. Ibid., pp. 77 – 8. 26. Ibid., pp. 270 – 1. 27. Ibid., p. 26. 28. Ibid., p. 496. 29. Esber, Under the Cover of War, p. 211. 30. Walid Khalidi, All That Remains, p. 531. 31. Esber, Under the Cover of War, p. 233. 32. Abbasi, ‘The Battle for Safad in the War of 1948’, p. 26. 33. Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, p. 129. 34. Walid Khalidi, All That Remains, p. 563. 35. Krystall, ‘The de-Arabization of West Jerusalem 1947– 1950’, p. 10. 36. Morris, ibid., pp. 236 – 9. 37. Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, p. 90. 38. Walid Khalidi, All That Remains, p. 291. 39. Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, p. 181. 40. Ibid., p. 183. 41. Walid Khalidi, All That Remains, pp. 309 –10. 42. Esber, Under the Cover of War, pp. 246, 247, 251. 43. Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, p. 191.

254 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

NOTES

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216 –239

SMH, 26 April 1948, p. 1. Abbasi, ‘The Battle for Safad in the War of 1948’, pp. 33 – 4. Ibid., pp. 34 – 5. Radai, ‘Jaffa, 1948’, pp. 34 – 5. Walid Khalidi, All That Remains. Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, pp. 1 – 10.

Conclusion

Palestinians: From Low to High Visibility

1. Edward W. Said, in Serene Husseini Shahid, Jerusalem Memories, 1st edn, Naufal Gro up SARL (Beirut, Lebanon, 2000), p. 238. 2. Henry Somer Gullett (ed.), Australia in Palestine, Angus and Robertson (Sydney, 1921). 3. Peter Manning, ‘Arabic and Muslim people in Sydney’s daily newspapers, before and after September 11’, Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy, 109 (November 2003), pp. 50 –71. 4. Ibid., Foreword. 5. Walid Khalidi, All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, Institute for Palestine Studies (Washington, DC, 1992), p. xv. 6. Ibid. 7. Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 2006), p. 109. 8. Ibid., p. 200. 9. See Chapter 5, story d. 10. Chapter 5, story i. 11. Chapter 5, story k. 12. Patrick Cockburn, ‘Foreign media portrayals of the conflict in Syria are dangerously inaccurate’, in The Independent on Sunday (30 June 2013), p. 36. 13. Annabelle Lukin, ‘The meanings of war: From lexis to culture’, Journal of Language and Politics. 12/3 (2013), pp. 424 – 44. 14. Ariella Azoulay, From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947– 1950, Pluto (London, 2011). 15. Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, p. 109. 16. Peter L. Hahn, Caught in the Middle East: US Policy Toward the Arab– Israeli Conflict, 1945– 1961. University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, 2004); Lawrence Davidson, ‘Truman the politician and the establishment of Israel’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 4 (2010), pp. 28 – 42. Institute for Palestine Studies, Washington, DC. 17. Chanan Reich, Australia and Israel: An Ambiguous Relationship, Melbourne University Press (Melbourne, 2002). 18. Cockburn, ‘Foreign media portrayals of the conflict in Syria’, p. 36. 19. Kathleen Christison, Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on US Middle East Policy, University of California Press (Berkeley, 1999), p. 80.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Unpublished Sources Archives

A series of files were requested from the National Archives of Australia (NAA) in Canberra of correspondence of the 1940s Australian Minister for External Affairs, both within his department and to colleagues outside. Most requests were granted. They related for the most part to the period of the SMH samples viz. February 1947 to December 1948. Some are quoted in the text of this book. The accessed files found relevant to this book are listed below by series number and item number, along with some descriptions from the NAA. A5954 2255/2 Three memos between UK Government and Dominion governments re Palestine dated 4, 10 and 14 February 1947. A1838/283 852/19/1/1 Ten memos within the department re the ‘Special Committee On Palestine (UNSCOP)’ dated 11, 26 July and 10, 18, 22 (4), 24 (2) August 1947. A9420 1 and 2 Five memos of the ‘Assembly trip (UN) to Dr Evatt’ dated 28 October, 13, 15, 16 November and 2 December 1947. A4534 43/5/3 Pt. 1 Statement of the Minister opposing renewed ‘Trusteeship’ idea dated 22 March 1948. A1838 852/20/2 Pt. 5 Nine memos to and from the Minister about ‘second thoughts’ during April 1948 about partition. Dated 1, 2, 3, 12(2), 15, 17, 19, 29 April 1948.

Interviews

Two interviews were conducted in 2012 for this study. They were: . .

Peter Allen, former senior journalist and editor at Fairfax; and Gavin Souter, Fairfax journalist from 1947 and company historian.

256

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Bloch, Barbara, “Unsettling Zionism: Diasporic consciousness and Australian Jewish identities”, Doctorate of Philosophy thesis presented at the University of Western Sydney (Sydney, 2005). Ibrahim, Jamal Muhammad, “Palestinian attitudes and reactions towards the policies of the British Mandate and Zionist activities in the 1920s as reflected in the contemporary Palestinian Arabic press with special emphasis on Filastin newspaper”, Doctorate of Philosophy thesis presented at the University of Sydney (Sydney, 1995).

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Filmography

Ansara, Martha, Producer, I Remember 1948. Ballad Films, Sydney. Director: Fadia Abboud. Co-producer: Sohail Dahdal. 24 mins DVD. Broadcast on Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS TV, 2005). Manning, Peter, Director and Co-Executive Producer, Lebanon Burning, Tyre Films, Co-Executive Producer, Mohsen Safieddin. 55 mins DVD (Arab Film Festival, Parramatta, Sydney, 2008).

INDEX

Page numbers in italics refer to figures, page numbers in bold refer to tables. 9/11, 4– 5, 238 Abbasi, Mustafa, 196, 201, 207, 208 – 9, 216 Abdullah, King of Jordan, 134, 135, 139, 151, 157, 176, 183, 235 Adelman, Howard, 64 agency, representation of, 11, 12, 112, 130 – 1, 157 Agronsky, Gershon, 100 Allen, Peter, 108 Allenby, General Sir Edmund, 30, 31, 32, 37, 40, 41, 43, 46, 50, 229 Allon, Yigal, 206 Amman, 19, 25, 35, 110, 127– 8, 137– 9, 144 – 5, 185 Anderson, Benedict, 17 Anderson, John, 106 Anglophilia, 12, 234 Anglosphere, 235, 240 Arab nationalism, pre World War I, 17 as ‘other’, 7, 235 Arafat, Yasser, 234 al-‘Arif, ‘Arif, 232 Ashley, Lord, 35 Ateyo, Sam, 69

Australia media bias against Arabs/ Palestinians and Muslims, 6 Australian Associated Press (AAP) news agency, 80, 81, 83– 4, 85, 87, 88, 89, 101, 107, 109, 119, 154, 162, 168 Australian Journalists’ Association Code of Ethics, 80, 104 – 5, 107, 128 –9, 134 Australian Light Horse Brigade, 17, 30–1, 47, 48, 229 Azoulay, Ariella, 223, 236 Balfour declaration 1917, 35, 43 –4, 54, 61, 175 Balfour, Lord, 35, 43, 192, 195, 229, 238 Bean, Charles, 16, 23, 48, 228, 230 Official History 1914– 1918 War, 19– 21 as Official War Correspondent, 19– 21 possible influence on Gullett, 51– 3 What to Know in Egypt: A Guide for Australian Soldiers, 52– 3 Beersheba, battle for 1917, 25, 26, 31, 32, 229

268

REPRESENTING PALESTINE

Bell, Martin, 13 Ben-Gurion, David, 76, 96, 124, 158, 175, 196, 199, 235 Berger, John, 236 Bevan, Ian, 181, 182 Bevin, Ernest, 169 Biblical place names, use of, 29, 40– 1, 54, 93, 143, 186, 220, 234 Biblical themes see Jewish ‘return’ bin Laden, Osama, 238 Blamey, Major-General Sir Thomas, 57 Bourdieu, Pierre, 11 Brereton, Lindsay ‘Lin’ LeGay, 164 Britain decision to return Palestine Mandate to UN, 63– 4, 77–8, 79, 168 opposition to partition, 231, 238 Burton, John, 68, 69, 70, 71 al-Bustani, Butrus, 17

Daily Telegraph (London), 21, 25, 32 Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 6, 23, 58, 77, 82–3, 85, 107 on Lebanese immigrants 2001, 3 mentions of Arabs/Muslims 2000 –2, 5 not used in 1917 – 18/1947 – 8 Palestine study, 10 Daley, Paul, 45 Dayan, Moshe, 195 de Beauvour, Simone, 106 Deir Yassin massacre, 117– 20, 130, 131, 181, 210–13, 222, 224, 232 demonisation, 4, 7, 12, 19, 235 Desola, Mr (David de Sola Pool), 43 Dib, Mustapha, 2 al-Din, Salah, 40 Douglas, Irvine, 108, 109 Downes, Rupert, 46 al-Dumyati al-Luquami, Mustafa, 47 Dunn, Ross, 6, 235

cable reports, use of, 80, 83– 4, 87– 9, 101, 197 Cairo 1948, 57, 74, 76, 134 – 7, 158 World War I, 16, 19, 43, 51, 52 Camus, Albert, 106 Canberra Times, 80 Carr, Bob, 2 censorship restrictions, 20, 21– 2, 23, 26, 59, 104 Chauvel, Lieutenant-General Sir Harry, 30, 31, 43, 49, 50 Chifley, Ben, 66, 67, 164 Christian Zionism, 35, 230, 235 Christison, Kathleen, 239 Churchill, Winston, 61 Cockburn, Patrick, 6, 12, 236, 238– 9 coding, 11 Comay, Major Michael, 66 Commins, Katherine, 106, 164, 165 Couldry, Nick, 11 Coulthard-Clark, Chris, 45 Cox, Brigadier General George, 47 Crusades, references to, 23, 25, 41– 2, 51, 55, 170, 235 Curtin, John, 58, 65, 67, 77, 164

Eden, Anthony, 60 editorial opinions, 105 – 6, 165 see also SMH editorials embedded journalism, 6, 12 –13, 110 –11, 228 emotion, representation of, 12, 112, 130, 156–7 Entman, Robert, 11 Esber, Rosmarie, 193, 196, 198, 202 –3, 207, 208, 215 ethics, code of, 80, 104– 5, 107, 128 –9, 134 ethnic cleansing see ‘transfer’; Plan Dalet Evatt, H.V., 14, 58, 95, 172, 188, 189, 190, 226, 238, 248n coverage by SMH, 69 friendship with Autralian and US Zionists, 65 –6 relations with Autralian politicians, 67– 9 support for partition, 64 –71, 75– 6 Eytan, Walter, 100 Fairfax, Warwick, 104, 105, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167 Fewster, Kevin, 20

INDEX Filastin newspaper, 34, 43, 97, 199, 223, 229 Fisher, Andrew, 19 Fisk, Robert, 12 Fitchett, Ian, 77 Fleming, Claude, 36– 7 Flower, J.H. ‘Jack’ see SMH Staff Correspondent in Palestine 1948 framing, 5, 11, 33 Frankfurter, Felix, 66 Fraser, Malcolm, 1 Freilich, Max, 65 Gallipoli campaign, 16, 17, 19, 229 George, Lloyd, 31, 43 Gibbs, Philip, 20 Gollan, Ross, 69, 85, 108 Goodman, Giora, 99 –100 Grey, Jeffrey, 30, 45 Grodzinsky, Yosef, 62, 63 Gullett, Henry, SMH correspondendent in Palestine 1918, 10, 17, 21, 22– 3, 25, 27, 34, 36, 38, 39, 41, 45 –6, 47, 48– 51, 53, 54, 229, 230, 235 The Australian Imperial Force in Sinai and Palestine 1914 – 1918, 19– 21, 49– 50 and Charles Bean, 21, 51– 3 does not mention Jewish Legion’s presence with Anzacs, 54 does not report burning of Surafend 1918 until 1923!, 44 –8 and imperialism, 50 portrayal of Hejaz Arabs, 50 portrayal of Jews, 49– 50 Gullett, Lucy, 48 Haas, Amira, 12 habitus, 11 Haganah, 14, 100, 118, 168, 185, 199, 200, 202, 203 –4, 207, 213, 214, 215 – 16, 218 – 20 Haley, William, 83 Hall, Stewart, 11 Harriott, Guy, 77, 107, 108, 132 Harriott, M.A.K., 11 Heidegger, Martin, 106

269

Hejaz Arabs, 29, 35 –7, 50 Henderson, Rupert ‘Rags’, 83, 84, 85, 105, 110, 162, 163, 164, 166, 251n.2 Heney, Thomas, 48 Herald-Tribune (Chicago), 199 Herzl, Theodor, 42, 53, 235 Hetherington, John, 57 Hill, Tony, 48 Hitler, Adolf, 61, 62 Holdich, Sir Thomas, 44 Hole, Tahu, 83 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 66 Holocaust, 61 –2, 63, 72, 73, 237 ‘Holy City’, Jerusalem as, 40, 94, 112, 113, 122, 123, 131, 145, 156, 161, 173, 175, 178, 179, 220, 234, 237, 240 Holy Land, Palestine as, 18, 25, 29, 39–40, 49, 55, 78, 94, 112, 190, 220, 229, 234, 240 see also Jewish ‘return’ ‘Holy Places’, saving heritage of, 24, 93, 143, 146, 147, 173, 175, 176, 178, 190, 220, 234 Hood, John, 67, 69 Hourani, Albert, 17, 18, 42 Howard, John, 4 Hughes, William ‘Billy’, 31 Humphries, Hugh, 196 Hurley, Frank, 77 al-Husayni, Mohammed Abdul, 60, 210 Hussein bin Ali, 10 Husseini, Tawfik Saleh, 146, 147 ideology, 11 Idriess, Ion, 50 imperialism, 7, 8, 11, 20, 30, 33, 39, 50, 54, 229 independence movements, 60 individualisation, 12, 112, 114, 117, 122, 125, 130, 138, 150, 158, 159 Indonesian asylum seekers, Australia 2001, 4 Inglis, Ken, 20, 21 interviews, use of, 12, 106–7, 112, 124–5, 130, 136, 148, 149–50, 158

270

REPRESENTING PALESTINE

Iraq invasion 2003 –11, 5, 6 –7, 13, 236, 238 Jews leaving 1948, 138, 157, 179 and World War I, 19, 228 and World War II, 60, 97 Irgun, 118, 120, 182, 199, 200 – 1, 202, 211 – 12, 218 – 20, 231 Israel Australian relationship with, 2000– 2, 238 declaration of State of (15 May 1948), 72, 74, 86, 96, 124, 131, 134, 137, 140, 158, 159, 167, 235 Israeli– Palestine conflict 2000 –2, Australian reporting of, 6 Jabotinsky, Vladimir, 53– 4 Jerusalem, 116, 185 bombing of King David Hotel, 231 religious significance of see ‘Holy City’ siege of, 112– 17, 121 – 3, 125– 6, 127 –8, 141 – 55, 156 SMH Special Correspondent reporting from, 112 – 24 SMH Staff Correspondent reporting from, 146 – 55 Jewish Agency, 63, 74, 99, 168, 231 forces seen as Zionists, 93 Public Relations office, 100 and Zionist Federation of Australia, 57 Jewish emigration to Palestine post Holocaust, 62 pre Holocaust, 62– 3 SMH attitude 1917 –18, 237 – 8 SMH attitude 1947 –8, 238 Jewish Legion, 53 –4 Jewish ‘return’ to Holy Land, 24, 42, 43, 49, 55, 94, 235, 240 Johnson, Paul, 62 Jones, Alan, 4 journalistic balance, 110, 155, 159 –60 journalistic standards, 103 – 4, 105– 6, 112, 128– 31, 134, 155 –6, 158 Kauwkji, Fawzi Bey, 121 Kelman, Moshe, 206 – 7, 208 – 9, 216– 17

keyword analysis, 7, 8 – 9, 10, 11 SMH reporting Palestine and Israel 1947 – 8, 80, 90, 92–4 SMH reporting Palestine World War I, 26, 27– 9, 28 Khalef, Salah, 218 Khalidi, Walid, 47, 193, 194, 196, 198, 207, 210, 214, 219, 223 Khrystall, Nathan, 196, 203 –4 Kimmerling, Baruch, 74 Kirchwey, Freda, 66 Kitchener, Lord, 229 Landa, Abram, 65 Lawrence, T.E., 36 Lee, Edward, 2 Levin, Harry, 214 Lloyd, Clem, 82 Long, Gavin, 77 Los Angeles Times, 13 Lukin, Annabelle, 236 Lyons, Joseph, 58 Macdonald, Roderick, 77 McGeogh, Paul, 12 McLachlan, Angus, 81, 83, 84– 5, 103 –4, 105, 107–8, 110, 156, 160, 162, 163, 164–5, 166 MClure Smith, Hugh, 85, 98, 105, 164, 166 –7 McNicholl, David, 58 Mahfouz, Naguib, 52 Mandel, David, 64, 65, 66 Manning, Peter, 6, 11, 106 Mannix, Daniel, 245n Maranz, George, 100 Massey, W.T., 21, 25, 32, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 51, 229 Maude, Sir Stanley, 31 May, Sammy, 124, 125 media portrayal, connection with public policy, 13, 166, 238– 9 Meir, Golda, 176 Menzies, Robert Gordon, 23, 58, 60, 163, 164, 190 Monash, John, 57 Monks, Stan, 108, 109

INDEX Morris, Benny, 14, 74, 76, 195, 196, 209, 210 – 11, 213, 215 Murdoch, Keith, 20, 83 Mussa Kaizir Effendi, 24 Nablus, 25, 34, 38, 41, 110, 139 –40, 155, 156, 158, 185 nakba (catastrophe), 14, 72– 6, 194– 5, 199, 231, 232 –3 agents see Haganah; Irgun; Palmach; Stern Gang coverage Filastin, 199, 200 Jewish Agency, 222, 223, 224– 5, 225, 232, 236 New York Times, 199, 207, 209, 210, 214, 223, 226 Palestine Post, 199, 223 SMH, 219 –27, 221 see also nakba (catastrophe), events appoints correspondents for both Jewish and Arab sides, 75 sources used, 197, see also SMH Special Correspondent in Palestine; Staff Correspondent; SMH Staff Correspondent in Palestine sporadic coverage, 222– 6, 233, 236 – 8, 239 events, 196 – 7 Balad al-Shayk, 202 –3 Dayr Mahsir, 210 Deir Yassin massacre, 117 – 20, 130, 131, 181, 210–13, 222, 224, 232 Ein Zeitun, 216–17 Haifa, 200, 202– 3, 208, 215– 16 Hawassa, 202–3 Huseinya, 208 – 9 Jaffa, 200–1, 205– 6, 218–19 Khisas, 201– 2 Lifta, 202 al-Manara, 207 Qalunya, 214 Safad, 216–17 Sa’sa, 206–7 Semiramis Hotel, Qatamon, 203 –5

271

Tiberias, 213 – 14 Umm Khalid, 209 –10 and Holocaust, 237 invisibility, 232 and Israeli ‘new historians’, 14, 96, 195 – 6, 233 Israeli view, 73, 74 and Palestinian refugees, 192 – 4, 198 Palestinian view, 73– 4 and Plan Dalet, 74, 76, 96, 195, 210 threatens partition process, 75 visibility, 198 – 200, 223, 232– 3 Nasser, Gamal Abdul, 60– 1 Nazzal, Nafez, 207 ‘new historians’, 14, 96, 195 – 6, 233 New York Times, 10, 13, 62, 199, 207, 209, 210, 214, 223, 226, 232, 237 news v. features, 105 –6 orientalism, 5, 37, 54, 229, 235 Packer, Frank, 58 Packer newspapers, 58, 104, 107, 134, 163 Palestine historical concept, 17 –18 and independence leaders, 60– 1 US media coverage, 239 in World War I, 19 in World War II, 56– 9 Australian involvement, 56– 9 and oilfields access, 59– 60 SMH coverage, 59– 60 Palestine Liberation Organisation, 234 Palestine Mandate British decision to hand back to UN Feb 1947, 63– 4, 77– 8, 79, 168 – 9 Palestine partition Australian ambivalence, 67 Australian opposition, 67, 69, 190 Australian support, 64– 72, 75– 6, 190, 238 British opposition, 231, 238 opposed in SMH editorials, 171 –2, 174, 178, 179, 190, 231 supported in SMH ‘news features’, 190 threatened by nakba, 75

272

REPRESENTING PALESTINE

UN adoption, 72, 74, 79 US support wavers, 75, 95 Palestine Post, 99, 100, 199, 223 Palestinian identity, denial of, 34 –5 Palestinian –Jewish civil war, 8, 72, 75, 86– 7, 159, 170, 193– 4, 230 – 7 see also nakba (catastrophe) Palestinian nationalism, 18, 43, 97– 8, 229 Palestinians 1917– 18 portrayal, 229 –30, 234, see also analysis under SMH and World War I 1947– 8 portrayal, 230–3, 234, see also analysis under SMH: reporting Palestine and Israel; editorials on Palestine; ‘news features’; Special Correspondent in Palestine; Staff Correspondent in Palestine 1960s portrayal, 234 2000– 2 portrayal, 5– 6, 230, 234, 235 –6, 238 connection with earlier reporting, 234 –6, 239, 240 as ‘the Other’, 7 refugee crisis, 79, 136 – 7, 138–9, 192 –4, 198, 231, 232 Palmach, 125, 126, 185, 201, 203, 206, 208 – 9, 213, 214, 216 Palumbo, Michael, 196 Pappe, Ilan, 14, 74, 76, 195, 196, 202, 206– 7, 207, 211, 233, 236 – 7 Peled (Palamach unit commander), 216 – 17 Percival, Jack, 132 Plan Dalet, 74, 76, 96, 195, 210 positioning prominence of articles 9, 89, 91, 92 of protagonists in stories, 12, 112, 113 –28, 131, 135– 48, 157 Poynting, Scott, 2 –3 Priest, Tim, 1 Putnis, Peter, 83 Rabin, Yitzhak, 210 Racial Discrimination Act 1975, 1

racism, 12, 105, 125, 137 Radai, Itamar, 196, 200 – 1, 205, 206, 218 Rafael, Gideon, 189 al-Ramli, Khry al-din, 18 refugees Jewish, 63, 72, 152 Palestinian, 79, 136 – 7, 138 –9, 192 – 4, 198, 231, 232 Reich, Chanan, 57, 58, 64, 65, 238 religious discrimination, 12 Reuters news agency use of Jerusalem cables, 119, 120, 130, 205 use of London cables, 119, 201, 204, 209, 212, 215, 217, 218, 222 SMH links up with, 81, 83 –4, 85, 87, 89, 107, 162– 3 Rida, Rashid, 17 Rommel, General, 56 Rose, Tania, 21 –2 Rothman, A.D.‘Abe’, 69, 99, 181, 188 –90 Rothschild, Lionel Walter, 2nd Baron, 18, 35, 42, 54 Ruddock, Phillip, 4 Ryan, Peter, 2 Said, Edward, 5, 11, 229, 232 Sakakini, Hala, 204 Samaranch, Juan Antonio, 1 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 106 Saussare, Ferdinand de, 106 Scotsman, 13, 196, 199 Segev, Tom, 14, 74, 195 Shand, Alec, 67 Sharett (previously Shartok/Shertok), Moshe, 76, 183, 188, 189 Sharon, Ariel, 248 Sharon, ‘Arik’ (probably Ariel), 200 Shlaim, Avi, 14, 62, 74, 193 –4, 195 Slessor, Kenneth, 59, 77 Small, Clive, 1 SMH by-line policy, 107 –8, 110 circulation wars, 82– 3 developments between World War I and 1947 –8, 80 –5

INDEX distinction between fact and opinion in, 105 –6, 165, see also SMH editorial on Palestine 1947– 8; SMH ‘news features’ on Palestine 1947– 8 dominance of Angus McLachlan 1947– 8, 84– 5 importance of religion in, 164 – 5 journalistic standards, 103 – 4, 105–6, 128 as paper of record, 10, 134, 162 redesign, 80, 81 –2 reporting Palestine and Israel 1947– 8, 86– 102 concern with British interests and policy, 77– 8 days with Palestine news story, 86 decision to send own reporter to Palestine, 96, see also Flower, Jack editorials, 77 –8, 98 genre of stories carried, 87 –9, 87, 89 importance of April –May 1948 period, 88, 94 –6 Jews associated with violence/ terrorism, 77 –8, 94, 101, 231 keyword analysis, 80, 90, 92– 4 land predominantly named Palestine, 93 news story count, 87 Palestinian residents called Arabs, 78, 93, 97– 101 Palestinian residents called Palestinans, 98 placement of material, 89, 91– 2 religion largely avoided as major factor, 94 sample selected for analysis, 79– 80 use of cable and agency reports, 80, 83– 4, 84, 87 –9, 101 role of lower management, 164, 165 role of upper management, 164, 165 social and political conservativism, 163 –4

273

SMH correspondents, 181 distinction between Staff Correspondent and Special Correspondent, 108 – 9 Ian Bevan, Staff Correspondent recently in Palestine, 182 Special Correspondent (location not given), 183– 4 Special Correspondent in London, 186 – 7 Special Correspondent in the Middle East, 186 Special Correspondent in New York, 184 Special Correspondent in Palestine see SMH Special Correspondent in Palestine Staff Correspondent formerly in the Middle East, 185 Staff Correspondent in London, 109, 119, 120 Staff Correspondent in New York (Rothman), 69, 99, 109, 181, 182 – 3, 186, 187– 90 Staff Correspondent in Palestine see SMH Staff Correspondent in Palestine SMH editorials on Palestine 1947 – 8, 167 –81, 190 analysis of support for either side, 179 – 80, 180 authorship, 166 – 7 chronological themes British decision to hand back Mandate, 168 – 9 acceptance of Jewish defeat of Arab forces, 176 – 8 Palestinian –Jewish civil war, 170 – 6 UN partition decision, 169 – 70 continued references to land as Palestine rather than Israel, 177, 178 little mention of Palestinians as a people, 178 –9 number, 167

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REPRESENTING PALESTINE

subjects Australian policy, 172, 174, 175, 177 –8 British policy, 169, 174, 176, 178, 179 concern for ‘Holy Places’ in Jerusalem, 173, 175 –6, 178, 179 Jewish terrorism and unwillingness to compromise, 178, 179, 181, 190 opposition to partition, 171 –2, 174, 178, 179, 190, 231 recognition of Israel, 177 –8 UN failure to enforce resolutions, 174 –5, 177, 178 US policy, 171 –2, 173, 175, 178, 179 Zionism, 170 SMH ‘news features’ on Palestine 1947– 8, 181 – 90, 187 bias, 187 neutral, 184, 185, 186 pro-British, 184 pro-Jewish/anti-Palestinan, 182 –5, 187, 190 by-lines, 181 – 2 SMH Special Correspondent in Palestine, 10, 14, 103 – 31, 197 described as ‘with the Jews’, 110, 124 –6, 131, 231, 232 journalistic standards, 112, 129 – 31 linguistic techniques used, 112, 113 –18, 130 – 1 see also agency; emotion; individualisation; interviews; positioning pro-Jewish bias, 129 reporting from Amman, 127 – 8 reporting from Jerusalem, 112 – 24 reporting from Tel-Aviv, 124–6 reporting from Tiberias, 126 – 7 and role of Staff Correspondent in Palestine, 110, 159 –61 themes and subjects Arab violence against the British, 120 –1 Deir Yassin massacre, 117 – 19, 130

Jewish recovery in northern Palestine, 126 – 7 Jewish self-confidence in Tel Aviv, 124 – 6 religious significance of Jerusalem, 113, 123, 131 siege of Jerusalem, 112 – 17, 121–3, 125 – 6, 127 – 8 SMH Staff Correspondent in Palestine 1948 (Jack Flower), 10, 96, 99, 109, 114, 120, 132– 61, 181, 190, 197, 200, 222, 231, 232, 235, 237 appointment, 132 –4, 133 described as ‘with the Arabs’ 110 – 11, 134, 139, 141, 144– 54, 160, 185 – 6 journalistic standards, 134, 155 –6, 158 linguistic techniques used, 156– 8, see also agency; emotion; individualisation; interviews; positioning reporting from Amman, 137 –9, 144 – 5 reporting from Cairo, 134 –7 reporting from Jerusalem, 146 –55 reporting from Nablus, 139 – 40 reporting from near Jerusalem, 141 – 2 and role of Special Correspondent in Palestine, 110, 159 – 61 themes and subjects air war, 144 – 5 Arab League forces, 134 – 5, 137 – 41 Palestinian refugee crisis, 136 – 7, 138 – 9 religious nature of conflict, 141, 151, 161 siege of Jerusalem, 141 – 55, 156 SMH and World War I, 7– 8, 16– 55, 228 –30 Charles Bean as Official War Correspondent, 19– 21 concentration on myths, 55 date and page classification, 26 does not report burning of Surafend, 44– 8

INDEX genre distribution of articles, 26 –7, 27 Henry Gullett as correspondent see Gullett, Henry keyword analysis, 26, 27– 9, 28 ‘Arab’ category, 27, 34, 35 –8, 48 ‘Hejaz Arabs’ category, 29, 35– 6 Jews and Zionism, 42– 4, 49, 231 ‘natives’ category, 38– 9, 48, 54 ‘Other’ category, 27, 29 ‘Palestine’ used as description of land, 29, 34 (Palestinian) ‘Arabs’ category, 36– 7 ‘Palestinian’ not used as description of inhabitants, 29, 34, 53 use of biblical place names, 40– 1 reports battles involving Australian forces, 25–6 supports British Empire and British race, 29 –33 supports Zionism, 43– 4 Souter, Gavin, 22, 80– 1, 82, 85, 106, 108, 164, 165, 166–7 SS Exodus Jewish refugees incident, 63, 72, 152 Stanley, Peter, 45, 47– 8 Stern Gang, 138, 182, 199, 202, 205 – 6, 208, 211–12, 231, 236 study implications, 12 –13 study methodology, 7– 12 Sunday Telegraph (Sydney), 4 Surafend, burning of, 44– 8 Sydney Cronulla riot 2005, 4 media reporting about Arabs and Muslims 2000 –2, 2 – 3, 4 – 6 Olympics 2000, 1 Vietnamese immigrants, 1– 2 Sydney Morning Herald see SMH Sykes-Picot Agreement, May 1916, 19 Syria, perceptions of 2013 war in, 236, 239

275

Tel-Aviv, 58, 110, 124 –6, 131, 137, 144, 153, 201, 218 terrorism 9/11, 4 – 5, 238 Jewish, 77– 8, 94, 101, 178, 179, 181, 190, 231 Palestinian 2000 – 2, 5 – 6 textual analysis see keyword analysis Thirkell, Irene, 163 Tiberias, 110, 126– 7, 195, 196, 197, 207, 213–14 Times (London), 10, 13, 78, 166, 196, 199 ‘transfer’ of Palestinians, 14, 73, 195, 226 Truman, Harry S., 78, 95, 169, 174, 179, 182, 238 Turkish nationalism, 18, 35 United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), 64, 65, 66, 69, 72, 169, 172 Uris, Leon, 63 van Dijk, Teun, 11 voice, 11, 12, 107, 127 Voice of Israel radio broadcasts, 100 Walker, Robin, 81 Weber, Max, 18 Weizmann, Chaim, 43 Welles, Sumner, 66 White Australia policy, 1, 21, 23, 29– 30, 78, 229 Whitlam, Gough, 1 Williams, Harry, 164 Williams, Raymond, 11, 39 Wyatt, Doug, 46– 7 Zaydan, Fahim (Fatimeh Zedian /Zeidan), 119, 211, 213 Zionism, 42– 3 Christian Zionism, 35, 230, 235 immigration to Palestine 1880s –1914, 18, 42– 3 Zionist Federation of Australia, 57