Martin Fletcher Correspondent • Profile

TEL AVIV, Israel — The phone rang at noon and the message was brief: “Is that NBC? Tell Martin to come to a wedding. Tell him to come now. He can be a witness. Goodbye.”

I didn’t rush out to buy a present. This was no invitation to join a happy couple in holy matrimony. This “wedding” was more like a funeral. The message was code to witness a murder. The al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades in Nablus were going to kill a collaborator and they wanted me and my NBC News team to film it.

Later I would get the details and what a murky tale it was. The Israeli secret services had blackmailed a Palestinian man into becoming an informer. They knew he was having an affair with a married woman. The woman was married to a fighter with the al-Aksa Brigades, who was hiding out in the Balata refugee camp with one of the top Al-Aksa commanders. The Israelis wanted to kill them both.

The woman wanted to marry her lover so she betrayed the hiding place of her husband and the militant leader. Israeli commandoes stormed the safe house and found them crammed behind a false wall in a small room. In a hail of gunfire the militants were killed. Case closed.

But al-Aksa knew there must have been a collaborator, and they quickly found him. And her. They videotaped their confessions against a plain white wall. The “wedding” was payback time.

When I got the call, I was shaken. How many dead people did I need to see? And I was confused. I understood al-Aksa’s rationale: “The collaborators must be killed or they’ll betray more people, and next time we’ll be killed. It’s them or us.”

But I also understood the collaborators: “We have no life under the Israelis. Our lives are ruined whatever we do.”

And I understood the Israelis: “Anything goes to stop the suicide bombers from killing more Jewish children. We’re fighting a war.”

As I put the phone down, I thought, I understand too much. I feel sorry for them all. But it occurred to me: If I sympathize with killers, informers and blackmailers, maybe there’s something wrong with me, too.

It wouldn’t be surprising. After three decades covering war and suffering in every dark corner of the globe, anyone’s brain would be fried.

So what should I do? Film the killing or not? I sat down and stared at the phone, wondering whether to summon the team and hit the road. Ethically, it was a no-brainer. No way am I going to witness a murder. But hey, I thought, it’s going to happen anyway, if I’m there or not. It’s not my fault. And this is my job.

Nobody owns the moral high ground: My role in life is to see and report, and maybe learn a little. So there I sat, looking at the phone, and needing to decide quickly – should we go film the murder?

Courtesy Martin Fletcher Traveling with mujahedeen in Afghanistan in 1980.

No shortage of ethical dilemmas
This is how I begin my new book, “Breaking News.” It’s an extreme example of the kind of dilemmas foreign correspondents face in distant places, among strange cultures, as we strive to report the news while being fair to everyone we meet. We never know what is around the corner, but our responses define who we are, as people as well as reporters.

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