The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is so complex and convoluted that the facts are difficult to distinguish. It began with the Jews returning to Canaan. However, the media in the United States has never explained the different reasons as to how the conflict started and developed. By contrast, during the 2014 summer conflict, comedian and then host of the Daily Show Jon Stewart stated that "The United States diplomats are talking to Israel while they are resupplying them with ammunition. We cannot be Israel's rehab sponsor and its drugs dealer" (The Daily Show). This illustrates how Jon Stewart portrayed the narrative of the conflict by criticizing the Jewish government´s petition for military help to NATO in order to keep both their independence and national defense intact. In fact, he neglects to mention that the terrorist organization Hamas had been attacking the Israeli Air Forces (IAF) and civilians locations. How exactly this conflict is portrayed by the U.S. mass media, what events caused this conflict to ignite, and what is the opinion of the U.S. general public in regards to this conflict?
The endless social and religious conflict
On November 15, 2012, the cover of the New York Times showed Israeli forces invading Gaza to regain control of its territory and to kill Palestinian civilians. The New York Times opposed this military operation and openly called for the Palestinians to resist. Later in 2014, Fares Akram, a journalism professor at the Lebanese University and journalist for the Associated Press, agreed with the New York Times when he argued that the Arab league and Hezbollah should attack Israel with rockets (Associated Press: Middle East ). However, Akram and the New York Times failed to mention that Hamas started the conflict by igniting car bombs in southern Israel, which ultimately provoked the Israeli government to retaliate against Hamas targets.
Zionism in the Middle East and diaspora
Israel is a small country located in the Near East that was founded in 1948 after the Nazi´s holocaust. Shortly after, believing it to be their homeland, Jews from around the world returned to Palestinian Territories, which at the time were under British authority. However, as a result of the previous persecutions these Jews and their families suffered, the Jewish population in this region towards the end of the 1940s was low. Muslims have predominantly resided in this region since its invasion. In the interest of creating their own Arab state in Palestine, they continuously fight against the Jewish people. Today, Arabs predominantly inhabit two sides of the Palestinian Territories: the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Both are controlled by two different political factions and are geographically divided by Israel (Gelvin). This has led to constant military actions by Israeli forces against the terrorist and paramilitary groups in the West Bank and Gaza, sometimes with excessive and ruthless attacks. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter says that the Arab-Israeli conflict is an endless issue that impacts the lives of people on both sides. He also says that it has created an apartheid system within the Palestinian population (Palestine: Peaceful, not apartheid 23). According to the Tanaj, the first Abrahamic book, and the Qur'an, the Jews were the first to live in this region.
The drop that filled the glass
Unfortunately, Israel has experienced enough Arab aggressions and acts of social pain to require action against Palestinian terrorist organizations. The New York Times Editorial Group reports that three Israeli teenagers, Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrah, were abducted in the West Bank. Two members of Hamas within the West Bank were accused of abducting them. This was one of the contributing factors as to why Israel attacked the Gaza Strip by land, sea, and air (Kershner). Just a month before, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had killed two young Palestinians in the West Bank, an action that enraged the Palestinian people. After the abductions of the three Israeli teens and the killing of these two Palestinians, each side organized marches and protests in an effort to obtain justice and action from their governments. All this social pressure ultimately pushed Hamas and Israel into a military conflict.
American journalists, analysts and politicians views of the conflict
After these events, liberal journalists in the United States, led by New York Times journalist Alison Weir, argued that Israel was a "holocaust system of human denigration". Even more, they accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being the root cause of these conflicts because of his anti-Arab rhetoric (If Americans Knew). Even Reverend Al Sharpton, a 1960s Civil Rights leader and a former Democratic Presidential Candidate, said that "these military actions against the Palestinians in Gaza is just another move of Netanyahu to look like Ronald Reagan on his immoral rhetoric against Arabs" (The Jerusalem Post). However, President Obama has expressed his support for Israel's right to defend itself, and he has backed Israeli operations in Gaza with machine equipment (BBC News).
These different positions demonstrate how people view this conflict, from a journalist to an active religious commentator to the U.S President. Weir, an advocate for a Palestinian State, and Sharpton, a democrat who dislikes conservative leaders, both attacked Israeli Prime Minister. All the while, President Obama, the most valuable ally of Israel, has continually defended Israeli policies despite the fact that he is a liberal. Because of bias in the mass media, some journalists only portray Israeli-Palestinian events from their points of view, neglecting a wider array of contrasting viewpoints. Such biases cause people to consume misguided and unbalanced information about the brutalities and cruelties involved with these conflicts.
In fact, this conflict is not often seen through the perspective of what's really happening there but more so through the political and philosophic views of religious individuals. Musa Al-Gharbi, a senior fellow with the Southwest Initiative for the Study of Middle East Conflicts, says that "The Israeli incursion, which human rights groups have called a war crime, has destroyed hospitals, schools, places of worship, residential areas and critical infrastructure, which explains why most of the Palestinian casualties have been civilians" (Al-Jazeera America).
His perspective aligns with the other positions Al-Jazeera has taken during the conflict, which often criticize Israel as immoral for attacking schools. Israel condoned the presence of Palestinian youth and the illegal tunnels connecting Israel and the Strip. Al-Jazeera claims that through these tunnels people carried food and water to Gaza (Shlaim). According to Meghan O'Toole, a senior journalist and producer for Al-Jazeera in Qatar, Hamas is just simply a popular organization trying to create a state. She even supports Hamas’ position that these tunnels are a defensive tool against Israelis attacks (Al-Jazeera). These narratives are derived from the perspective of Western journalists (working in Arab media) who publish their opinions in the United States, making the liberal audience for which they write even stronger. While presenting only a single side of this conflict, there is no news about the chemical factories that Hamas hit with rockets, killing people in Ashkelon, Israel. The media’s lack of coverage on events such the attack in Ashkelon is detrimental because it fails to show the efforts and challenges Israel faces on a daily basis to preserve its land.
Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of a leading Hamas founder, reveals, “Don’t think for a second please that Hamas cares for the children’s blood. They want the children of Gaza to die. This is what gives them Arab and Islamic world sympathy, and this is what will condemn Israel internationally. This is their game and they’re happy about it” (Fox News). This confession from the son of a Hamas leader reinforces non-liberals’ assessments of the conflict, which are inadequately covered by liberal journalists reporting on the conflict.
Hassan continues, labeling Hamas "as liars that just want to kill people to restore a terrorist empire as the Ottoman" (Fox News). During "Operation Protective Edge”, CNN was careful to avoid bias towards any side in its coverage. During this operation, CNN showed the poor conditions in which Palestinians were living. They displayed images of their destroyed houses, and many of their analysts took a neutral position on the issue. They even showed videos of the tunnels that reached from Gaza to Israel and some of the methods by which Palestinians in Gaza preserved their belongings during the war. CNN also reported on all the condemnations Israel received from different NGOs and the United Nations for the military operation (Levs). CNN´s position carefully avoided the biases that conservative political leaders such as Ron Paul, Ben Carson, etc. view as excessively pro-Palestinian.
Interestingly, on August 5, 2014, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said in a CNN interview that Israel must recognize Hamas as a political and military organization that has vast support from the people in the Gaza strip (Michael). This statement was extensively covered by CNN Newsroom and Cooper 360, two of the most popular shows on CNN. American journalists had switched their opinions on the conflict so many times that viewers confused the details of the conflict. Sometimes, American journalists, in general, downplay the fact that Hamas is a terrorist organization that wants to kill Jews and Christians living in Israel. By downplaying this, mass media coverage on the conflict lacks overall accuracy. This observation is supported by a CBS News Poll that shows lessening support in the United States for Israel.
After four weeks of conflict, more Americans blame Hamas than Israel for the recent fighting that has erupted, according to a new CBS News poll. Thirty-four percent think Hamas is mostly to blame, while just six percent lay the blame on Israel. However, nearly half - 47 percent - think both sides are equally to blame (Dutton). The 1,344 people who participated in this poll (Dutton) believed that since Hamas was the one to initiate the peace talks, it appeared to be in a more favorable position; that it only want to liberate Gaza and create a Palestinian State. It is pitiful that people like CNN founder Ted Turner, a prominent donor to the Democratic Party, and Arthur Ochs Zulzberger, Jr., CEO of The New York Times, have criticized the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, almost as if they view Israel as wrong for invading Palestinian territory. However, they neglect the fact that God promised that land to Abraham and his descendants, and that the Jewish people, after suffering expulsions from many other countries, are returning to this area in an attempt to reclaim their own country.
The reality of the war environment
Nevertheless, and most importantly of all, some American journalists have put pressure on the U.S. government to not recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. James Gelvin, an authority in Middle Eastern Affairs and professor at UCLA, writes that Jerusalem is Hamas’ main reason for fighting and existing, and they should take it back to create a free and unified Palestine (The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict 154). However, liberal journalists such as Weir never disclose in their articles that the Qur'an never mentions Jerusalem as a holy place for Muslims.
Whereas as the Tanaj mentions “Jerusalem” more than seven hundred and seventy times, not including the symbolic names that exist for Jerusalem in the Tanaj and the Bible such as Eriel, Ariel, etc. Nonetheless, the reality is that Israel’s existence is a leading cause for many Middle Eastern problems, from the development of Jihadist movements to changes in the geopolitical areas to the culture of the Nearest East. But it is intriguing that the American journalists present only the humanitarian crisis that Palestinians are under, such as their homes are destroyed by the conflicts and IDFs repealing over them, while not mentioning that Israel is the only reliable and sure ally in the region. It is not Israel's fault if these terrorist organizations use their own citizens as targets.
CNN’s Cooper 360 has shown images of the Gaza Strip burning after terrorist targets were attacked. It was painful to watch women and children slain in the streets, while the elderly were bleeding and pleading in Arabic for help. But all these horrific scenes could have been avoided if Hamas would not have initiated attacks against Israel and their people. They also would have been prevented if Hamas had participated in peaceful discussions with Israel, Fatah and the international community. It is important that in the interest of peace, they discuss how to end the volatile Jihadist movements within the region and how the three different sides could forge an agreement to end this shameful conflict. Unfortunately, blaming Israel for the conflict is not a good start.
For the American journalists of CNN, Al-Jazeera, Association Press and Fox News, it is difficult to refrain from being bias because they are influenced by their own political, cultural and religious beliefs, which influence their perspectives of this political-military conflict. It is also important to mention that in regards to American journalists, regardless of whether or not they are pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, each side of the ideological spectrum wants to disprove their opposition, those that disagree with them. The military actions in Gaza were necessary to confront the unavoidable danger Israelis were living in. During the summer of 2014 Hamas sent rockets into Jewish lands and tunnels, which were created to place bombs throughout Israel. The demand for unbiased reporting on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is long overdue. It requires journalists who are knowledgeable and inclusive of the diverse opinions surrounding the conflict. This is only possible if more pro-Israeli analysts join the conversation to validate Israel´s existence and to support its military actions against terrorism. It is time for new writers, journalists and analysts that are fairer in their coverage of Israel and the constant threats under which they live. Some individuals like writer Amos Oz understand that Israeli or Palestinian civilian casualties are better for Hamas (Gourevitch); it increases the doctrinarian of the Palestinian people. These are the facts that the national media needs to see and recognize regarding the circumstances of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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