Blacking out a burning church

I am the beneficiary of a certain amount of legitimate pilferage that takes place in Indian and foreign embassies abroad, foreign news bureaux, radio stations and some spare think tanks. This is in the form of phone calls I receive from friends I have made in the course of a tediously long innings as a roving journalist. The other day I received a call from a friend in Canada.‘‘The Church of Nativity is on fire, have you seen it?’’ he asked, with anger in his voice. Bethlehem, the square opposite the church, the manger in which Jesus was born are all exquisitely evocative of New Testament images. The Christmas before the latest Intefada, my wife and I had attended midnight mass at the church where Yasser Arafat and his Christian wife, Suha, were also present.

I quickly switch on CNN. It is Monday evening. There is no mention of the church. Flip to BBC. Lyse Doucet mentions trouble in Palestinian West Bank cities and glides over the fire in the church in a phrase. The rest of the bulletin is about Jenin, Zinni, Powell and Sharon. When she mentions the Nativity Church fire, a clip of a wall of the church burning stays on the screen for precisely ten seconds. ‘‘Is there a cover-up?’’ my wife asks. I ask the counter question: ‘‘Does a cover-up serve any purpose?’’

Yes, it does, since it was an Israeli fire against the Palestinians who had taken refuge inside the church, the damage done to one of Christianity’s holiest shrines, if carried extensively on BBC and CNN, would lead to considerable agitation in the West. This, in turn, could spark off a wave of anti-Semitism in precisely those countries of Europe which have been implicated in atrocities on that count.

By playing down the story, the networks were helping Israel which at that precise moment was engaged in a vicious street-by-street elimination of ‘‘terrorists’’ in Jenin.

Later, when the dust has settled on the massacres at Jenin (for that is what they will be), mark my word, the networks will do a post-mortem on the burning of the Nativity Church so they are not accused of having ignored the story.

At the end of the day it may be discovered that the damage to the church was minimal, a fact which in retrospect will justify its having been underplayed.

But, from every angle, the Palestinians will have been denied whatever advantages they may have derived from an anti-Israeli wave in Christian Europe on account of the church being damaged.

Why do I fear the Jenin massacres will resemble the massacres in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in Beirut during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, when Ariel Sharon was the defence minister?

Because in my files I have located this brilliant report by one of the finest reporters in the Middle East, Robert Fisk, of the

Independent, London. ‘‘Sharon keeps saying,’’ wrote Fisk, that ‘‘Arafat is a murderer, a super terrorist, the leader of international terror, linked to Osama bin Laden, a man who gives orders for the murders of kids in pizza parlours...And the Israeli public are buying this, their journalists front paging it, their people repeating it over and over. Talking to Israelis in taxis, on aeroplanes, in cafes, I keep hearing the same stuff. Terror, murder, filth. Like a cassette. Where have I heard this before?’’ Gaza, says Fisk, reminds him of Beirut in 1982.

Just before allowing his Phalangist allies into the Sabra and Chatila camps in Beirut, Sharon announced that the ‘‘Palestinian terrorists’’ had murdered the popular leader of the Phalangists, President elect Bashir Gemayel.

Fisk continues: ‘‘Sharon was to say later that he never dreamed the Phalange would massacre the Palestinians.

But how could he say that when he had claimed earlier that the Palestinians killed the leader of the Phalange.’’ Fisk continues,‘‘In reality, no Palestinians were involved.’’ He then gives vent to his suspicion. ‘‘It might seem odd in this new war to be dwelling on that earlier blood letting.’’

To be certain, Fisk asked a journalist in Beirut to fax him in Gaza ‘‘the exact words Sharon used on September 15, 1982, the last hours for the 2,000 Palestinians who were about to be murdered in the Sabra and Chatila camps in Beirut’’.

Ferreted out from the archives, the fax reached Fisk in Gaza. The story is datelined September 15, 1982: ‘‘Sharon in a statement tied the killing of the Phangist leader Gemayel to the PLO saying that it symbolizes the terrorist murderousness of the PLO terrorist organizations and their supporters’’.

Fisk tellingly concludes,‘‘There are Israelis today who feel as much rage towards the Palestinians as the Phalange felt 19 years ago.’’

‘‘And these are the same words I am hearing today, from the same man. About the same people. Why?’’ The answer to Fisk’s query may well be in Jenin.

The unfortunate fact is that the war against global terrorism has provided folks like Sharon and Narendra Modi a totally misplaced justification to implement their agendas in the guise of pursuing a larger purpose.

Little wonder a newspaper published a superb cartoon with Narendra Modi focusing the cameras on himself. The caption says ‘I have support from Jerusalem to Jayalalita’.

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