Hishmeh: Let’s take a positive step in media coverage
It was doubly satisfying to read last Sunday’s prominent American dailies — the New York Times and the Washington Post — for their articles on the raging Palestinian-Israeli conflict that has so far, in the recent past, cost the lives of more than 40 Palestinian youngsters and seven Israelis — some of them being policemen or soldiers. We rarely see such positive coverage reflecting the views of Palestinians and wonder whether the articles constitute even-handed reporting.
Jodi Rudoren’s opening paragraph in the New York Times noted that Arab “[Occupied] East Jerusalem, long the emotional heart of Palestinian life, is now the fiery soul of its discontent”. She interviewed a Palestinian lecturer, Fuad Abu Hamad, at Hebrew University, who runs two clinics in Israel’s health system and lives in a comfortable home among Sur Baher’s tangle of crowded hills. She noted that “the view from his balcony is of sprawling enclaves that he said were ‘built on our lands’ and the ugly barrier Israel erected that splits (his neighbourhood) from the (Israeli) occupied West Bank”.
He continued: “You have a lot of evidence that you are not a human being,” and went on to say, “The problem is the policy, because all the time as a Palestinian here you feel that they want to take you out of the city, you have a lot of problems that do not allow you to feel that you are part of the city. It’s killing from inside all the time.”
Rudoren noted: “Israel captured [East Jerusalem] from Jordan in the 1967 war [and] expanded Jerusalem’s boundaries to 27 square miles [43.45 square km] from just 2.3. Israel’s annexation was rejected by the United Nations and most of the world considers the territory occupied. Today, 200,000 Jews live beyond Israel’s original border, most in new developments — widely considered illegal [colonies] — like those Mr Abu Hamad can see from his balcony, 2,000 scattered among the Palestinian enclaves.”
Her lengthy report concluded: “Yes, Mr Abu Hamad and his neighbours can fly from Israel’s airport, a privilege denied to those in the [Israeli-occupied] West Bank or Gaza. But he said he never makes it through security ‘without crying’, because his Hebrew University ID card ‘means nothing — I am a Palestinian in the end’.”
In the lead column of last Sunday’s Outlook, the opinion section of the Washington Post, Dan Ephron, a former occupied Jerusalem bureau chief for Newsweek and the Daily Beast, chronicled the Israeli mistakes that followed the assassination by a ‘Jewish extremist’ of the then Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, in 1995, in an article titled ‘How Israel squandered its chance for peace’.
He underlined that as Israel prepared to mark the 20th anniversary of Rabin’s assassination, the peace process he championed “could not be in worse shape [since] the fresh wave of violence” that has now engulfed the region. The “signature” deal, known as the Oslo Accords, he wrote, envisioned Israel’s gradual withdrawal from the Occupied Palestinian Territories in exchange for peaceful relations with the Palestinians after nearly a century of conflict.
But, he added: “After two decades of intermittent violence and relentless Israeli [colony] expansion, it is now largely defunct.”
Consequently, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced last month that the Palestinians would no longer be bound by the Oslo Accords.
Ephron wrote that the months that followed the murder were the worst of former president and prime minister of Israel, Shimon Peres’s, 63-year career. He explained: “Thanks to a combination of national security gambles, inept campaign management and plain bad luck, Peres squandered his tailwinds,” and furthermore “a litany of unnecessary mistakes cost him the election — and, with it, Israel’s best hope for peace”.
In a full-page article, Ephron listed Peres’ errors and opined that “Israelis had grown tired of peace conferences”. He concluded that in the next Israeli election, Israeli voters chose Netanyahu over Peres to lead the country “in the slimmest of margins”. In other words, he concluded, “the greatest opportunity for peace had been squandered”.
The Arab governments have failed to engage with the American public in this decades-long conflict, and advertising, as supporters of Israel have demonstrated, often tells their side of the conflict in an exaggerated or erroneous way.
“The fact that two major American newspapers published these essays reveals a growing awareness among editorial boards,” according to Dr Jack G. Shaheen, a media analyst. “The essays reflect awareness that current Israeli policies prevents peace efforts in the region.”
He added that “both writers merit our recognition as they debunk monolithic images of Israelis and American Jews”.
Zeina Azzam, the executive director of the Washington-based Jerusalem Fund, argues that “whether a full-fledged third Intifada or uprising is about to explode remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that Israel’s continued military occupation of Palestinian land, and the denial of rights to the Palestinians living there, cannot remain the status quo and hold profound ramifications for both Palestinians and Israelis”.
It is time for the Arab-American community to be adventurous and learn how they can effectively sell their side of the story to the media.
George S. Hishmeh is a Washington-based columnist. He can be contacted at ghishmeh@gulfnews.com
Source: gulfnews.com