The Fourth Estate

In France under the reign of the monarchy, the States-General or Estates-General was an assembly of the different classes of French citizenry. They always included representatives of the First Estate(clergy), Second Estate (lay nobility) and Third Estate (commoners). There was however, that wretched but necessary evil, more powerful by inferrence and referred to as the Fourth Estate.

Wikipedia describes the Fourth Estate as "the media, both in its explicit capacity of advocacy and in its implicit ability to frame political issues". How apt the translation - the ability to frame political issues. More so today, the sphere of influence that the Fourth Estate wields continues to manifest in its various forms of distortions. An uneasy bedfellow for some, a faithful enemy for others. They wield in their hands, the quilt that defines the truth they want to potray.

Take for instance the recent UN censure of Israel over accidental spilling of innocent blood in Rafah. In a repeat of Ramallah, press misinformation intinially placed the number killed at 23. This was subsequently reduced to 8. What was not reported was that a local Palestinian newspaper called for "women, children, and the elderly" to stand in front of Israeli bulldozers and tanks, despite the dangerous fact that Rafah was had been the site for armed battles between the IDF and Palestinian militants. Imagine what Mahatma Gandhi would have achieved if his doctrine of "Satyagraha" or passive resistance called for the same. Would he have won the hearts of the masses or be branded a cowardly nationalist?

What triggered Rafah? Again, unreported by the western media, 13 young Israeli soldiers were attacked and killed in Rafah the previous week by Palestinians who then paraded the body parts of their victims through the streets of Gaza. Four days later, the IDF enegaged militants in Rafah, killing some 40 armed men. Houses known to have harbored these men were bulldozed, as part of Israel's existing deterrence plan.

The Israeli leadership hastened to declare the incident regretful (and to be sure, I thought it was regrettable), which is more than can be said for Arab outrage over the killing of Tali Hatuel and her four daughters...

Just as Chairman Arafat is able to sign the Oslo accord and thereafter citing, during an interview on Egyptian television, cite Hudaybiyah (which basically invoked the principle in Islam known as Takiya i.e. the right to fake peace when you are weak for the purposes of defeating your enemy when you are stronger), and not incite a editorial response; the truth is more than just the absence of lies, in many ways, it is also the absence of some truths.