The media misrepresents Palestinians in the Middle East conflict over Israel, according to a University of Chicago professor who spoke last night at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The lecture was given by Ali Abunimah, the vice president of the Chicago chapter of the Arab-American Action Network. He said the “pro-Palestine voices were almost excluded” in the media.
From Sept. 29, 2000 to Feb. 28, 2001, Ali examined the opinion and editorial articles concerning the issue of Israel in The Boston Globe. Of the 33 articles on the topic, 17 were Pro-Israeli, 10 were neutral and only six were Pro-Palestine, he said.
Similar research done on The Washington Post and The New York Times from Sept. 29, 2000 to the end of January of 2001 concluded similar results. Of the 40 articles in The Washington Post, 32 were pro-Israeli, three were neutral and five were pro-Palestinian. Of the 49 articles in The New York Times, 40 were pro-Israeli, three were neutral and only six were pro-Palestinian.
The statistics don’t show everything, he said. He noted one pro-Palestinian article in the Post entitled, “What we want”, with a cartoon of Palestinian’s holding automatic weapons next to it. The Post had effectively undermined the author’s point and credibility, Abunimah said.
He called the way the Palestinians are depicted striking and misleading.
“Around the world, it’s taken for granted that the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem are under military occupation … although this is omitted from U.S. media,” he said.
He cited that since September, only 4 percent of the stories concerning the Middle East on the major TV news networks mentioned that the Palestinian land is under military occupation.
Abunimah said in most cases, the media referred to Israeli deaths as the result of Palestinian violence and Palestinian deaths as the result of Israeli retribution rather than Israeli violence. He cited the media’s reference to the Israeli’s use of helicopter raids as a symbolic gesture of reprisal, while Palestinian attacks are never referred to as reprisal.
According to Abunimah, the Israelis have said their police officers exercise much restraint and only use force when they are in danger.
Various human rights organizations such as Amnesty International have studied the Israeli use of force in the occupied territories. Abunimah stated every one of them “investigated the Israeli use of force and none of them found support for the Israeli claim of restraint.”
Abunimah’s research will culminate in a book later this year.
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