First of all, let me apologise for this post being sooooo way too long. The next one will be MUCH shorter, I promise.
I wanted to talk about the way the media (mainly the Internet, which is becoming extremely important nowadays) is portraying protests against the violence in Gaza, that have been happening in January.
I went on www.flikr.com and typed in "Gaza" to see what will pop up. And as I was browsing through the countless images, one in particular intrigued me. It was a photo of a pro-Palestinian rally in Amsterdam (http://flickr.com/photos/viory/3165131324/) and it made me think, what the world would have held from this photo before the attack on Gaza, if there had been a pro-Palestinian rally. My initial reflex was to think that some media, being very sensationalist, would label it to be a "pro-terrorist" or anti-American, or anti-Israeli rally - essentially "ANTI" being the crucial word. From what I've experienced from the media before the latest attacks on Gaza, was that the Palestinians were pro-terrorist, so the Israelis have a right to interfere, for it is for the best of all of us.
That photo made me want to compare how different media looked at rallies, so I did that. On one of the many blogs online, I found a very interesting interpretation of a pro-Palestinian rally happening in Chicago, on January 19th. The photo below is one of the two photos that were on the blog.
The blog is on the following link: http://amerisrael.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/01/for-those-curious-as-to-who-constitutes-the-radical-religious-left-in-america-visit-this-link-and-scroll-down-to-see-the-va.html .
If you read the text in the blog, it states that that was a "pro-terrorist" rally and that it was made by the religious left in the U.S., which I found very interesting and amusing (amusing, in a sarcastic way).
The blog re-creates the images that have been put forward by the media for so many years now - that all Muslims are terrorists, that any pro-Palestinian rally would automatically mean that it is pro-terrorist and anti-Israeli (which it does not have to be, even if it is a pro-Palestinian rally!), etc. And this blog just contributed to these arguments. It went even further, it claimed tha the "religious left" had "allied itself with Islamofascism".
My intuition tells me that the author of this blog does not even speak Arabic, in order to understand what those flags are saying. The image of the "terrorist" has become anyone who has a scarf around their face. That is the typical, uninformed, narrow-minded approach that has kept peace away from reaching Palestine/Israel. I think that, to a large extent, the unwillingness of foreign powers, and their lack of knowledge about the problems, has lead to the problems lasting since 1948. It is one of the world's longest-standing political issues, and if the UN had implemented its resolutions in the 40's and 60's the situation would probably look different now.
Anyhow... I am going on another tangent here (sorry for that).
The way that other media described the even is completely different. I will cite only two sites that I read, which talked about the same protest in Chicago:
http://chicagoist.com/2009/01/10/photo_gallery_another_pro-palestine.php?gallery0Pic=2#gallery
http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/01/pro-palestinian-march-to-close-loop-streets.html
Both sites describe the rally as a "pro-Palestinian" rally and they state that there was another, pro-Israeli, rally that had happened a few days earlier.
What my point with this post is is that the media is very influential in the world with any issue, and so is with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For the first time, I was able to experience almost unanimous support for the people of Gaza/Palestine (well, with some rare exceptions, like the one mentioned above) that was not the case before. The perceptions of the Palestinians and Israelis are changing in the minds of people. Even in the U.S., which has been Israel's strongest ally, there are more and more voices raised against what Israel is doing. So, what I am trying to do is to comment on the positive change in the media. That is that here is, finally, both sides of the story presented. There were news about pro-Israeli rallies; they may not have gotten as much publicity as the pro-Palestinian ones, but they were still talked about. Finally, one can say that both rallies were "PRO" something, and not "ANTI" something, which used to be the case before. I, for one, was pleasantly surprised with the fact that the media is presenting both sides. Of course, it is taking sides as always, but the situation today is much better than it used to be.
Oh, and another thing - I found a really interesting video from the two rallies that left me thinking: What is the point of it? It was done by freedomfolks.com, whose motto is "fighting illegal immigration... one post at a time". It made me thing - what kind of authority do they have to post videos about pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian rallies? And if you watch the video on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSWaVgB579U) it seems as if the Israelis are the calm, nice people while the Palestinians are the wild, loud ones. The fact that they spoke to Israeli supporters and with no one from the pro-Palestinian rally, just gives more subtle indication that the makers of the video are pro-Israeli. I jus thought about the legitimacy of who is posting "news" online... the same thing is with that blog. Who made it? Why? Who would read it? I personally hope not many people, but well...
That's all from me. Sorry it turned out to be so long - wasn't supposed to be. Didn't structure the whole thing very well! :S
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