In a previous article on journalism published in The Jakarta Post about a month ago, I discussed the unavoidable situation for journalists to feel attached to whatever they were covering. It is called journalism of attachment. A show of emotion is acceptable in certain cases of coverage, such as tragedy, disaster, human right violations and the like.

Now, faced by the atrocity in the Gaza Strip, I dare to proclaim that concerning journalism practice it is also okay to take sides. Covering both sides - balanced reporting - has become too luxurious and impractical in covering Palestine.

You simply cannot wait for the Israel military spokesperson to give a statement (of whatever kind) to print or broadcast the painful reality in the region. In addition to that: The statement may be merely deceitful propaganda.

For instance, despite the sickening images of destroyed homes, schools, hospitals, mosques and even UN shelters - or the latest, a baby's body being eaten by dogs - Israeli foreign minis-ter Tzipi Livni still insists that "there is no humanitarian crisis" in Gaza. And that is as much as you get from "balanced reporting": A propaganda that undermines human logic.

How could journalists restrain themselves from reporting devastating facts? In the words of Uri Avnery (Israeli writer and human rights activist), the situation is like this: "Every baby metamorphosed, in the act of dying, into a Hamas *terrorist'. Every bombed mosque instantly became a Hamas base, every apartment building an arms cache, every school a terror com-mand post, every civilian government building a *symbol of Hamas rule'."

It is not a fiction. Journalists bear a lot of burden if we expect them to cover both sides, waiting till they get the other side to publish your reports.

In my opinion, no one will blame journalists for being one-sided and for breaking the reporting standard when they report the facts in Gaza as they are. No one will complain about why reporters do not seek the other side's version of the story. Is it prejudice? Is it judgemental? Is it libel? Every one of us, deep in our hearts, knows the answer.

Surprisingly enough, what I believe about the acceptability of being one-sided is supported by several prominent entities throughout the world.

First of all, of course, the number of journalists following the steps of Robert Fisk is increasing. More and more journalists are aware of their power: That they can influence the world opinion about what happened, by what and how they report. In the long run, they can influence the ending of aggression.

The news reports produced during the last three weeks from the war zone have successfully degraded the image of the Israeli as uncivilized, even inhuman, kind of men.

The end of attacks by the Israel military at the moment may be resulted from the boycotts of Israel around the world, which is endorsed by the one-sided reports from the Gaza Strip. Journalists have the power to change the course of conflict.

At present, academicians, scientists and artists in the United Kingdom do not want to be left behind by their fellow journalists. Their petition clearly agrees on the importance to take a side: "If we believe in the principle of democratic self-determination, if we affirm the right to resist military aggression and colonial occupation, then we are obliged to take sides... against Israel, and with the people of Gaza and the West Bank."

They add, "We must do what we can to stop Israel from winning its war. Israel must accept that its security depends on justice and peaceful coexistence with its neighbours, and not upon the criminal use of force."

Those intellectual people, many of them are Jewish, would prefer to see Israel loose than win. It reminds me of a book I read in 2004, How Israel Lost, by journalist Richard Ben Cramer, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Middle East Reporting in 1979 (he reported from the area since the 60s until recently). I was attracted by the title, which decisively implied that Israel had lost the war against the Palestinians.

The book explains how it lost it. In fact, the book tells human stories on both sides of the green line, the Arabs and the Jews, and it implicitly notifies that the Israeli has lost its cause be-cause of their own strategy and conduct.

The Palestinians might loose physically, indeed, with everything destroyed in their area, but the Israeli has lost its respect and dignity throughout the world.

The media have a very important role in this situation. Probably there are still many media institutions owned and moved by the Zionists, which still spread out myths that "Hamas at-tacked us first" and "We have the right to defend ourselves", and the like.

But the number of reporters, photographers and media institutions taking side with the victims is increasing. In fact, the non-traditional media, the cyber media, have become effective in the course of the Palestinian struggle. Blogs, websites, mailing lists throughout the world are producing and spreading horrible images of what the Israeli say are "pre-emptive actions".

In the words of IDF spokeswoman, Major Avital Leibovich, "The blogosphere and new media are another war zone."

Anticipating the impact of cyber reporting, the Israeli government, particularly military officials, are busy defending their savage attacks through media propaganda, while banning in-ternational news networks from covering the zone.

It may be more acceptable for bloggers to be one-sided, because a blog is a personal medium. Other traditional media like print and broadcast media are considered public, unpersonal.

They work for the goal of serving a diverse mass. For more than a century (since Joseph Pulitzer started his news business in New York), journalism has been portrayed as a journal of objectivity, an expression of neutrality.

Perhaps the change of the world today shall also change the paradigm of journalism. It is not like partisan media, which is a voice of a certain party or community, but more of a journal of conscience, which idealism is for all humankinds to achieve freedom and peace. I have faith in journalists covering Palestine, that the new world is formed by what and how they report to the world.

The writer is a lecturer on journalism.

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