Politics and media coverage in the Middle East

It’s been a while since I last dealt with politics. It’s a thorny world, in which truth is a relative concept, if only because the facts deal with people, and people are liable to lie, to forget, and to make mistakes. Something happens, and almost immediately it is disputed. This is a problem also seen in courts, when witness testimony is involved, for witness testimony sucks. Humans did not evolve to remember details, important as they are to determining the truth.

You’d imagine that those whose job it is to uncover the truth will be sensitive to this particular human trait. You’d imagine that the big media outlets will employ self-criticism to eradicate bias and will be vastly more educated than the average person on the topic they cover.

Ha!

My story begins with this innocent link. Some background: in the beginning of the Intifada in 2001, a 12-year-old boy, Mohammad al-Dura, was killed during an intense gunfight between the IDF and Palestinian militants. The IDF was immediately blamed, and the boy became an icon of Israeli violence and atrocities in the territories. There’s just one problem here: it’s not at all obvious who shot the boy. And one of the obstacles to determining the truth is the footage of the incident – France 2 only released parts of it, and would not release the rest for six years now. Now it is ordered to do so by court. We’ll see what happens.

A story which is not in dispute is a famous photo dating to the year 2000 of a Palestinian who was brutally beaten by an enraged Israeli policeman. Err, no wait, that’s actually the other way around – it was actually an Israeli, Tuvia Grossman, beaten almost to death by an enraged Palestinian mob. But it’s such a nice picture, why bother with the details?

In general, the entire Arab-Israeli conflict is marred by the David-and-Goliath view of events, in which Israel is, of course, the Goliath, and everybody else is David. There’s something in the human psyche that credits the weak and denounces the strong, no matter what happened. (Although Jews were denounced even when they were weak. Oh well, it’s their fault for being greedy, conniving bastards.)

Note the comments on this YouTube footage, in which two young boys, apparently Israeli settlers, shout various profanities, including “we killed Jesus and we’re proud”. Very, very ugly. And all the closet anti-semites crawl out of hiding, and you hear words like “Zionazi”. Well, I have to admit it’s a catchy word…

Compare with comments about this footage, which is part of Hamas TV’s propaganda aimed at children. There are comments along the lines of “fuck islam”, and there are comments justifying suicide bombers, and there are comments on the tragedy of the entire situation.

In general, the tone is different. Perhaps a qualitative analysis should be made, some statistics drawn up, but I’ll jump ahead and present a poll of public opinion in the EU. At least in 2003, more than half of the Europeans believed that Israel is the biggest threat to world peace. I wonder if that changed, although I wouldn’t hold my breath. It’s fashionable to be anti-Israel nowadays. (And anti-US, while we’re at it.)

Unfortunately, the Israeli propaganda machine severely lags behind our war and children-murdering machine. Which leaves it to volunteers to fight the good fight. If you care at all about the issue, I suggest you take a look at HonestReporting.com. It’s amazing what sort of things you can find in reputable news networks like CNN and the BBC. And it’s nice to know that sometimes HR succeed in their appeals to correct wrongful reporting. Unfortunately, many folks do not look beyond the primary report, and form their opinions on falsehoods. You don’t want to end up like them, now do you?

Democracy

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6754499.stm

It is now both amusing and sad to recall Hamas’ insistent whining about how the world should recognize them because they are the democratic choice of the Palestinian people. The tragic irony is that they were right.

The ‘Protocols,’ 21st century style

Well, turns out Haaretz eventually translated the article by Prof. Benjamin Neuberger concerning boycott attempts of Israel in Britain, so my own translation is no longer necessary. Their translation is also better (not unexpectedly), so I've withdrawn (=deleted) my own (in which I, shamefully, misspelled the professor's name).

The translated article was published here.