The Neverending Conflict.

Many years ago in one of my political science classes at UW we were asked to pick a country and examine the country’s media representation. I chose Palestine, and the things that I found were rather frightening. Palestine was rarely discussed in the American media and when it was the view of Palestine was so very negative. This negative image was portrayed through adjectives, pictures, violence, etc.  I also realized that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was so very one sided and the media focused its efforts on Israel and making Israel look like the good guy! I just think this is so very unfair and the story is so slanted, jaded and heavily filtered.

So a few weeks ago I watched this movie called Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land that I got from the library. And it focused on the lack of Palestine media coverage in America - and mentioned how institutions filter the media and these institutions are the owners of media firms, political elites, and the Israel government PR campaign that employs American PR firms. Israel has set up an institutionalized PR system to ensure Americans would see the situation favorably, and the stories are tilted in Israeli favor even before they leave Israel.  Wish I would have watched this movie BEFORE doing that big paper on Palestinian news coverage in the United States because it would have explained it all TEN times better!  But better late than never right??

I mean take a look at the map above...isn't it astonishing to actually SEE how much land Palestinians have lost over the years.  So this movie brought me back to what I had studied and just got me thinking…in America we live in a democratic society. However, our media freedom is not being enforced due to so many filters and there is such a strong bias towards Israel and the people are never given the full story.


This makes me so angry because the Palestinian people are prisoners in their own land, however, if Americans stick to relying on American media sources we will never have the full story. How are we supposed to learn about the issue or the situation if the reporters/journalists don’t report justly? We are forced to turn to other media sources, more accurate and respected media sources in order to get the full story, in order to hear the truth or to simply hear both sides.


Americans need to wake up and become aware of the situation. The system of Democracy is slowly eroding right before our very eyes. How much of a voice do the people really have and how much freedom do journalists have? People want to trust the media sources, the newspapers, the New York Times, but if 2 different sources in 2 different countries are reporting the same story in 2 different ways than one is left to question WHY? And which story is the truth…


I just get so frustrated with this ignorance and lack of knowledge, but we rely on the media sources to give us stories and when the stories are so B.S. and biased then whom do we trust? If we can’t trust our own source then whom can we trust?  ALSO, I just finished reading this book called God’s Politics by Jim Wallis…at first I was having a difficult time getting into the book, but it was so good!  ANYHOW, in the book Jim Wallis quotes an American Rabbi and the quote is as follows…


“The situation (Israel-Palestine) is as if somebody took your house away and then says they’ll give you parts of your house back. But they still control the hallways and the bathrooms. Palestinians can’t get from one bedroom to another without going through a hallway controlled by the Israelis”


I just wonder…how angry would you be if someone came in and took your home and land right out from under you? How angry would you be if you had to live according to the rule of another? How angry would you be if you felt your situation wasn’t being represented fairly in the international sphere? How frustrated would you be if you actually LIVED there?


Here I am frustrated with the whole system and the ways of the world and I am not even living in it…How am I as a Christian left to reconcile this situation? Where do I go from here?  Click HERE to learn more about the conflict itself.  My apologies for not posting more about it, but this post was merely intended to bring attention to our need to search out sources elsewhere in order to hear the whole story simply because the American media is jaded.