Representations of Palestinians in Media

I remember once reading an article on an incident that occurred on the West Bank, what I remember is how they had given a number of the Israeli’s killed in that event, on the other hand the number of Palestinians killed was at an approximate. I remember this so well because I recall thinking that this statement “about x Palestinians killed” was dehumanizing, as the rough estimate is failing to recognize the possible life that was lost. I watched a good video titled “Media Bias in Coverage of the Genocide in Gaza” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0jSKX2YagQ&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLE336D129566BA635). Basically the summary of this video is about Israel fighting two wars, one is its military occupation secondly is its public relations campaign that ensures support for the occupation. In the video, an example is made on how an Israeli soldier’s death on the West Bank is treated, the story would normally show the aspirations and dreams of that person killed, the camera would go into his funeral and personal information would be given. On the other hand, a death of a Palestinian would be brief; their death becoming little more than a statistic and usually in American mainstream media the death is justified. Obviously, such strategies are employed to support the occupation but could this also be because of emotional segregation? Emotional segregation is an institutionalised process whereby Euro-American’s are unable to see people of colour as emotional equals or incapable of having the same human emotions and experiences.

I searched images of the Israel-Palestine conflict, some of the images I came across included either brutal images of dead bodies and people holding dead bodies, other images were of men in large groups waving their fists in the air. The image of Palestinian man waving their fists up in the air parallels the image that Edward Said describes “In newsreels or newsphotos, the Arab is always shown in large numbers. No individuality, no personal characteristics or experiences. Most of the pictures represent mass rage and misery, or irrational (hence hopelessly eccentric) gestures. Lurking behind all of these images is the menace of the jihad” (page 71, Fergusson). I expected to find more images of “mass rage” in fact more were showing the humanity of the Palestinian people and their suffering, yet the power of these images are limited as these pictures don’t always make it on newspaper covers for the world to see.

Reference
Fergusson, Robert. “Representing Race: Ideology, Identity and the Media”. London: Arnold 1998. Print.