As MAD with ANGER suggested in this comment, the following documentary video is worth the time to watch, so I'm sharing it here:
Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle ... all � East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This pivotal documentary exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites--oil, and a need to have a secure military base in the region, among others--work in combination with Israeli public relations strategies to exercise a powerful influence over how news from the region is reported. Through the voices of scholars, media critics, peace activists, religious figures, and Middle East experts, Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land carefully analyzes and explains how--through the use of language, framing and context--the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media, and Israeli colonization of the occupied terrorities appears to be a defensive move rather than an offensive one. The documentary also explores the ways that U.S. journalists, for reasons ranging from intimidation to a lack of thorough investigation, have become complicit in carrying out Israel's PR campaign. At its core, the documentary raises questions about the ethics and role of journalism, and the relationship between media and politics.
{ 17 comments }
I’m a american who really doesn’t really know the history of the palestinian/israeli conflict. because of all the things happening now, I thought it would be good to find out what’s going on. towards that goal, I surfed the internet for sources of information pertaining to the history of the conflict. I found the following website. my question to you is – could you review the information on the website to see if it is true? thanks.
http://www.———historical.html
sorry for not being more upfront with my identity, I don’t have courage that you have. but I do want to know what is the truth.
hi,
I’ve been a silent reader of your blog since last year…
with the middle East crisis, i’ve been struggling to understand the y of so much violence…
Thank-you for your blog for it has been a useful prism through which the many info that has been assailing me can be further interpreted!
I like what you have been doing and I’ll be recommending your blog for 3108 (http://www.blogday.org/)
nobody,
You want the history of the conflict; here is a link for you:
http://www.palestinehistory.com/history.htm
nobody,
Enter the world of the other side!
Enter the world of assasinations, the world of killing children, the world of occupation.
I am a Canadian who has followed this confict for some time.
Israel is doing something that is not right. Bush is supporting them!
Hamas and Hezbollah was formed by Israeli occupation of territories.
Now they are upset because these organisations are a source of power.
Did you notice that I did not say “terrorists”?
Are they terrorists, most likely. But so is Israel.
The problem is that the US is giving the Israelis the free use of their terrorism to a people who only want to live in peace.
Stop and think about the people of Gaza. They have been occupied for 40 years. What do they have to lose?
Israel gets all the new equipment, “thank you US, free of charge.”
Hezbollah is using old equipment.
Bush condemns Syria and Iran for supplying old equipment to attack Israel.
But there is no mention about the fact that the US supplies Israel with the most modern equipment.
Sorry, but all I see here is a racist US against the Muslim faith.
to haitham:
the website you presented me was very informative, and I thank you for that. as someone outside the conflict who is new to the history behind it, the website is helpful to me in figuring out what happened.
basically, it seems to me that somehow when the british were negotiating the post-ww1 border lines, there were “too many chiefs amongst the indians” so to speak. the british realized this too late. so they tried to compromise the promises they made to all parties involved.
what I am still confused about is – your website doesn’t seem to recognize the existence of jewish people in the region of palestine during the ww1 era thereabouts.
..didn’t they exist there then?
from other information that I found on the internet, it seems the consensus is that the ratio of jewish people to arab people in the region during the ww1 period was about 1 to 10 thereabouts.
if this is the case, my question to everybody is – the state of israel encompasses only about 15% of the total region of palestine as defined in the british mandate. why can’t the arabs allow them this small space to live on?
since the jewish people history goes back as far as the arabs in the area, why can’t you guys share the space?
if you guys can’t compromise on sharing the space, you will bring this whole world to war. most of us outside the conflict just want to have peace.
the hatred displayed in that region is so thick, you can slice it with a knife.
the way things are going, ww3 is just around the corner.
this is not fair to the people who want peace.
A good book to read is BEYOND CHUTZPAH by Norman G. Finkelstein
that will illuminate both the history and the current lies told by leading American Zionists.
Also to understood both the mode of American and European thinking and how we still perceive “the other” the essential book both all of us especially anyone from North or South America is AMERICAN HOLOCAUST: The Conquest of The New World by David E Stannard.
Please share the knowledge.
Also check out the archives on DEMOCRACY NOW.
all the best
Howard
I have been following this with interest, and somehow think something is being missed entirely. I wonder that you never consider the water shortage in Israel and Jordan as primary purposes of the war. No one in his right mind believes one solitary soldier’s kidnapping would have a whole country go to war and “Shock & Awe” his neighbor. Consider this found on another website…. “Dov Litvinoff, the Mayor of Tamar regional council, which is responsible for the Dead Sea, has little hope that governments will change the policies of decades which have left the Dead Sea 25 metres below its historic level, and shrinking by 1-1.2 metres a year.”
Think about it… Israel captures south Lebanon and gets to keep all the water from the Latani River, thereby increasing the water of all of Israel by 50%. Secondly, EVEN IF they return the captured land, after destroying all the roads, bridges and water systems, there will be much much less use of water in Lebanon, and therefore Lebanon may consider selling water rights in order to get cash to rebuild.
I don’t for one second believe this is all about Hezbollah and one or two lowly soldiers. Even the Oil companies need much more water to pump oil.
The video is excellent. I saw it a couple of years ago on the Arabic Hour on American TV. It is excellent. It documents all the things we have all been saying for the longest time about American media and the portrayal of Palestinians. Sickening, to say the least.
Oh, and here is a site about the conflict that I had put together at the beginning of the Iraqi war which is also informative about the history of the conflict: http://mideastchristians.virtualactivism.net
nobody,
Think about your government taking your land to make government offices but they won’t compensate you.
This is what the Palestinians have suffered through for 40+ years.
Think about having family that you can’t visit for 40+ years and you will realise what the Palestinians have gone through.
The Israelis are the “persecuted race” but they are “persecuting” the palestinians.
This is the persecution “genocide?” of a people who are losing their land and their identity.
Hamas was formed to protect this Identity.
Are they right or are they wrong?
Hamas is a terrorist organisation.
Israeli tactics now make them terrorists.
Who is right and who is wrong?
Make up your own mind!
Lilwater,
You bring out a very interesting point there – one that I would never have thought of myself.
Thanks
You are a me-too web site, Sabbah! I found this google vid a long time ago and posted it on my blog, yet everyone comes Sabbah’s blog. This injustice cannot stand. I discovered it, therefore I have an exclusive rights in perpetuity. Further, I will invade Sabbah’s blog and destroy the infrastructure which sustains it, until Sabbah recognizes my blog’s exclusive right to link to this valuable resource. Submit now, and spare yourself my terrible retribution.
And by the way – the most important thing to be learned from this Media Education Foundation program is not the relationship between the owners of U.S. media outlets and and Israel advocacy groups. That fact is significant and well documented by the MED video but it is not the most important thing to be learned.
You have to listen very carefully, because compared to the analysis of the behavior of the media, the real thesis is underspoken.
Even more significant is the consensus among the analysts that Israel’s goal in all of this is to make conditions in the occupied territories so unbearable that eventually the Palestinians and the world will not tolerate it any more.
Israel intends to annex the occupied territories.
Israel has no interest in participating in the peace process and actively sabatoges the efforts of other nations and the Palestinians to make progress on the road map.
So the media analysis is interesting, but that is nothing next to the major indictment of the program.
It is important for peace activists everywhere to understand that the “who started it” rhetoric plays into Israel’s plans to annex as much adjacent territory as possible. “Who started it” is a canard, because you have to go back to the ethnic cleansing that begain in 1948, and the attention span of the media consuming public is only a week long.
“Who is a terrorist” also runs lumber through Israel’s PR buzzsaw.
Don’t fall for it.
Dear Servant,
“You are a me-too web site, Sabbah! I found this google vid a long time ago and posted it on my blog, yet everyone comes Sabbah?s blog.”
If this movie was exclusively yours, it wouldnt have been posted on the internet for everybody to see. unless you made the movie, this would be another story, but i dont think the news agency who made this movie gave anybody an exclusive right to post it on their blog, on their website or anything. so if it is there, then it is there for everybody to see and use. unless there is a BLOG constitution, rules, and regulations to abide by :P
anyway, SERVANT, if everybody COMES to sabbah’s blog, it’s probably because yours …. hmmmm….sucks :P
sorry for being cynical, it has been my today’s mood (yeah i do have mood swings these days). i feel like a donkey that doesnt feel its master’s whip anymore. to those who know arabic “tamsa7 jelde” (ie i have a crocodile’s skin)
i know, im blabbering now, ok im leaving, later :)
MAD with ANGER, I think that “servant” was being somewhat ironic there!-)
Dear “Nobody”,
With regard to your question about Jews in Palestine during the First World war, they constituted around 7.5% of the population in 1914.
With regard to your statement “since the jewish people history goes back as far as the arabs in the area, why can’t you guys share the space?” … here’s why.
Around 800,000 Palestinian refugees were scattered to refugee camps in the wake of the 1948 war (with no help or compensation whatsoever) to make room for a greater Israel. Due to further expansion and other factors (including the 1967 war), many more have been created since that time, and the current figure stands at some 3.7 million. Most of them still live in dreadful conditions and those who live in Palestine find it impossible to escape from this enforced poverty due to Israeli restrictions on all aspects of their lives. Despite this atrocity, the Palestinian authorities have repeatedly stated that they would accept peace on the condition that Israel would return to their 1967 borders (even Hamas have said this recently), combined with some kind of settlement to the ongoing refugee catastrophe. These borders encompass some 22% of the original “Palestine Mandate”, or over 70% of the current Israel / Palestine, and gives the Israelis a much better deal in terms of space than the Palestinian people, who live in one of the most tightly packed spaces in the world. However, Israel’s response has been to steal more of the West Bank, attempt to steal more of Gaza (until Ariel Sharon decided to make a tactical retreat to concentrate on stealing more of the West Bank), brutally occupy the small remainder of Palestinian territory, impose constant curfews, demolish houses, farms and olive trees (a vital source of income), steal water supplies, withhold money owed and shoot men, women and children, often for little or no reason. In short, the current Palestinian territories are little more than a huge concentration camp, and inexcusable though it is, it is frankly unsurprising that a tiny minority of Palestinians get so mad with rage that they decide to immolate themselves in some kind of suicide attack.
In it’s actions since 1948, Israel has been in contravention of numerous United Nations resolutions (Israel has ignored more UN resolutions than ANY other country by a long, long way), and as if that weren’t enough, Israel still occupies the She’ba farms of Lebanon and the Golan Heights of Syria. There are currently NO Jewish refugees from Israel, and there is a constant campaign (with huge incentives) to persuade Jews to emigrate to Israel to create what Israelis refer to as “facts on the ground”. In other words to push the remaining Palestinians into the sea. This is what Israelis mean by “sharing”.
BTW, if by “us outside the conflict” you mean the US, it isn’t. On the contrary, it is right in the middle of it. It was President Truman who added fuel to the flames of this catastrophe by pushing for more Jewish immigration during this time, overriding British calls for a more restricted flow. US support for Zionists has been constant since then, and nowadays the US provides Israel with billions in military aid every year, and is currently supplying bunker busting bombs and cluster bombs which are currently being used on civilian targets in Lebanon. It also enables Israel’s constant flouting of UN resolutions through it’s power of veto. In rather straightforward terms, it is America’s “attack dog” in the middle east, however it is so vicious and uncontrolled that it creates constant problems, and solves none.
ohh, i did not sense any irony there. if so, i deeply apologize servant :D
a joke for all larabic speaking people:
The israeli defense minister wants Fayruz’s phone number because he wants to know where is jisr el lawziyye :D :D :D
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/index.html
{ 11 trackbacks }