Arab media portray Palestinians as courageous victims
They offer images of carnage and emotional narratives. Israelis, the U.S. and even Arab leaders are pilloried.
Reporting from Cairo and Beirut — Face splotched in blood, eyes closed, mouth aslant, the child seems slumbering, but she is dead. The only part of her you see is her head tilting in ash and rubble above the caption, "A day of massacres in Gaza."
She is nameless, but her face, peeking from a black-and-white photograph spread like a flag of horror across the Saudi-owned Al Hayat newspaper, is unforgettable. In the Gaza Strip, Israel maneuvers with sophisticated tanks, missiles and planes. But the Arab media possess a potent arsenal of pictures, videos and hyperventilating voice-overs that portray Palestinians as courageous victims against a bloodthirsty aggressor.
War is fought on battlefields, but passions are roused by images. Watch the Al Jazeera satellite network or skim through Islamic websites and magazines and the message is singular and clear: Muslims are united in the suffering of Palestinians, and no drop of blood, wailing mother, raised Kalashnikov, smoking ruin or pair of empty sandals beside a lifeless body goes unrecorded.
It is the cinema verite of the underdog, an erratic landscape of martyrs and heroes and boys hurling white rocks at the enemy invader.
Romanticism and rallying cries of defiance and resistance are often summoned. An editorial published Wednesday in the Syrian daily Al Watan speaks to the children of Gaza: "Teach us because we have forgotten. Teach us to be men because men here have turned into dough. Teach us how stones in the hands of children become dear diamonds. . . . Teach us the art of clinging to the land."
Al Jazeera and other Arab media outlets have grown more objective in reporting in recent years, but when it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, balanced coverage is often outweighed by pathos and narratives of funeral corteges proceeding amid the sounds of explosions.
Newspaper caricatures depict Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with a hooked nose and beady eyes and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni as a bulbous Nazi on a pedestal. And often, lurking like a creepy Oz is the visage of Uncle Sam, portrayed as puppet master and protector of the Jewish state.
While airing a recent news conference of Livni discussing with a European delegation Israel's right to defend itself from Hamas rockets, Al Jazeera suddenly split the screen to show Palestinian children lying in hospital beds. The subtext was anything but subtle. The station also frequently uses phrases such as "war crimes" and "holocaust against the Palestinians people."
