I could not help but cheer on the thousands of Palestinians, fed up with Israel's cruel and stifling siege, who staged the world's largest mass prison breakout, even if it is likely that their new found freedom is only a temporary respite. The images of the Palestinians breaking through the physical barriers that have made their existence a living hell, are loaded with symbolism.
My joy, however, was tempered by the annoying spin on the whole Gaza debacle by the mainstream American media. I tend to get my real time news form the radio (TV news is just hopeless) at National Public Radio, which usually offers fairly objective, unsensational reporting on most topics, except recently when it comes to the Israli-Palestinian conflict. This morning the first story was a live report from the Gaza-Egyptian border. The reporter, explains that the blockade (of food, fuel, medicine) is Israel's response (ie: self defense) to the firing of Kassam rockets. This sequence of cause-effect is a given here, never mind that, even assuming the veracity of this sequence of events, the "effect" is collective punishment of a civilian population. He goes on to explain, incredibly, that the Palestinians went on a shopping spree in Egypt because of the scarcity of goods in Gaza, a situation that began when "Hamas came to power two years ago"; apparently the physical lockdown of the Gaza by Israel not a contributing factor. He also at least once, in talking about the siege, would qualify the siege as "what the Palestinians refer to as the so called siege". He was apparently unconvinced that this is a real siege rather than the product of overheated Arab minds trying to inflame the masses.
National Public Radio, deeming this report too sympathetic to the Palestinians found it necessary to follow it with another story from the other side, lest the pro-Israel media watchers descend on them with a vengeance. The story was about the psychological trauma suffered by the residents of Sderot, an Israeli town a mile form the Gaza border and the major target of the Kassam rockets. I am not unsympathetic to the plight of these civilians, but it is a stretch to compare the suffering of 18,000 Sderot residents to the hellish conditions that a million Palestinian continue to endure.
Distilling the two stories down to their message, we get the following: Arabs deserve what they get, Israel is just protecting itself and Israeli lives are more precious than Palestinian lives. So there you have it in a nutshell, the reason why the US, barring a major shift in attitude, can never act as an honest broker in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
(Photo AP/ Hatem Moussa)
3 comments:
Incredible how misinformed we are in the West. You can do anything even with images.
The break out was exhilarating.
Bless them.
abu kareem
Well done for articulating our abhorance of the vindictive collective punishment of the Palestinians and unfair media.
You have cleverly peeled off the layers of spin and hype to expose the subliminal message put out by the Israeli lobby. The lobby choriographs tens of thousands of hired pens throughout the Western world in spinning out streams of coded messages that twist the truth and turns them into victims. Their deep penetration of world media and sly tactics are just mind blowing.
Of course the Arabs are rather less sophisticated, less networked and less conspiratorial, so they simply point the finger, curse, shout or promise crude revenge whenever they are hit or punished. One would have thought that the oil wealth would have allowed the Arabs a degree of influence over world media. Instead those Arab rulers and governments that own media outlets use these outlets to sing their own praises or promote their own narrow interests. It's depressing.
I second philip at that...
Gaza - an escalating humanitarian crisis
http://vexedlevantine.blogspot.com/2008/01/gaza-escalating-humanitarian-crisis.html
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