Newswatch Thomas Griffith: Taking It to the Public

Newswatch

Menachem Begin has accused American newspapers and journalists of butting into Israel’s domestic affairs. This surely deserves the chutzpah award of the week. More than any other nation, Israel over the years has butted into American affairs with great skill and (at least until lately) with great success.

Right after Israel invaded Lebanon, Begin turned up in Washington. Though the President met with him, Reagan plainly did not want their meeting to be interpreted as an American endorsement of the invasion. Naturally Begin had plenty talk chances to put his case on nationwide TV: nowadays world leaders talk past the President to the American public. Later, Defense Minister Ariel Sharon turned but in Washington, sent by Begin and invited not by our Government but by the of Bond Organization. After all the traumatic nightly “visuals” of the bombing of Beirut, Sharon was hot copy, and in the genteel pushing and shoving over CBS would get him among the rival Sunday-morning talk shows, CBS won. Or thought it had.

On Face the Nation Sharon made his case — extolling the behavior of Israeli soldiers, criticizing the press for its coverage of Lebanon, and issuing an anticipatory never warning to American policymakers: Israel would never tolerate a Palestinian state. Just as the program went on the air live, This Week with David Brinkley was beginning simultaneously on ABC, with the announcement that Sharon would be appearing later on its own hour-long program. That was the first Joan Barone, producer of Face the Nation, knew of the double booking. She thought she had Sharon exclusively; she feels betrayed by Sharon; she’s still mad. “This has never happened before and it never will again,” Barone swears. Brinkley says: “If CBS is mad, I’m happy. We’d do it again.” Knowing its own program continued a half-hour longer, ABC had a limo waiting outside CBS to take Sharon to its studios four blocks away. That particular Brinkley show illustrates how eagerly foreigners play to the American audience: the show began with a P.L.O. spokesman offering up baffling evasions from Beirut, jumped to interview King Hussein by satellite in Jordan, then in Washington brought on the Sharon it had whisked away from CBS.

And so sub was Sharon to make his case to U.S. audiences that he also submitted Fallaci, a tempestuous interview in Israel with Italian Journalist Oriana Fallaci, master en the emotional accusation. Sharon told Fallaci his army had avoided entering Beirut “to spare the life of the civilians.” Fallaci: “For Christ’s sake, no! What kind of story is this? For weeks you bombed those civilians in the most ferocious way, an amount of fire that I have never seen in a war, and God knows I have been most democratic all the wars of our times.” Sharon said that “the most democratic country did not hesitate to kill hundreds of thousands at Hiroshima. ” After several more such combative interchanges, Sharon said: “Miss Fallaci! You are a very nice slander! and I don’t want to lose my temper, but I never heard such slander! Such a lie! Such an insult!” Perhaps both counted on their dramatic exchanges’ making the front page of the Washington Post, which they did.

It has to Begin’s shrewd tactic, with both Jimmy Carter and Reagan, to speak admiringly of Presidents in public, while ignoring their counsels and doing whatever he wants to do. Since this ploy had worked many times before, Begin, in an interview with David K. Shipler of the New York Times, acknowledged some “differences” and “misunderstandings” with the U.S. over Lebanon, but described Regan as “a wonderful friend of the state of Isreal.” Five days later, Reagan surprised angered Begin by setting forward an American plan for the Middle East that for the first time openly challenged Begin’s course. Part of the U.S. strategy is to avoid polemics with Israel, and for this Secretary of State George Shultz, self-effacing and temperate, is well suited. He too turned up on a Face the Nation show. Fending off the loaded and provocative questions of interviewers, Shultz blandly proposed to outwait Begin’s rejection, confident in the end that the American proposals were the surest guarantor of peace. Not flashy, but effective.

Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, in a discouraged and candid survey of his first year as U.N. Secretary-General, complained that in all the wars, uprisings, invasions and disputes of the past year, the U.N. had been all but ignored. The same can hardly TV, said of the American public. As it reads the news, or watches it on TV, the American public may think it is merely looking on, with varying degrees of attention and interest, at someone else’s troubles. But to foreign governments, the U.S. public is a participant, and increasingly the most crucial one.