The Guardian made a welcome mention on its pages on July 1 that Israel is “an undeclared nuclear power”. But you would struggle to learn from the British media that Israel has a huge nuclear arsenal. In the prolific discussion of Iran and Syria’s nuclear programme in our media the past 2 months, this fact has gone almost unnoticed. Instead we are encouraged to believe that Iran and Syria are the real cause for nuclear concern in the Middle East.
Take the Guardian, for instance. Since Hilary Clinton’s remark on April 22 about “obliterating Iran”, the paper and its website have published over 100 items mentioning Israel in the context of the spread of nuclear power or weapons in the Middle East – about one every day. Yet only 8 of these mention Israel’s nuclear capacity, and only 4 appeared in the newspaper – the rest were online comment pieces, which carry far less import.
Of the newspaper articles, only one specified the size of Israel’s nuclear arsenal. The other two brief mentions in news items are here and here. The final mention came in a comment piece by Jonathan Freedland which was overwhelmingly an argument against Tehran.
In the same period, the paper published two editorials on Iranian nukes with no mention whatsoever of Israel’s nuclear weapons. One merely repeated Freedland’s handwringing of the day before, the other talked about “declaration of nuclear assets” – but without mentioning Israel’s undeclared weapons.
Notably, former US president Jimmy Carter talked at length about Israel’s nukes at a press conference at the Hay literary festival in May. The Guardian reported Carter’s press conference, but ignored that aspect of it.
As the US and Israel prepare for war on Iran, non-reporting of the balance of nuclear power in the Middle East adds to the sense that “something must be done” about Iran, strengthening the assumption that Iran is in the wrong and action of some sort is justified.
We saw this over Iraq. The US media specialist Ed Herman calls it “normalising the unthinkable“. MWAW will be writing to the Guardian on this score.
