Talking Point: Palestinians cop unfair media treatment as nameless, faceless as Arabs

GREG BARNS: Israel dominates the mainstream narrative in the West.

THE great Palestinian intellectual Edward Said understood what it was to be “the other”. He could write about the idea that the Europeans see all people in the Middle East as simply Arabs. They had no identity in the way that we differentiate Germans, Italians and the English. Only Israelis are given an identity, living among the savage “others” in an inhospitable land.

This is why we in Australia, with the rest of the West, get such a distorted view of the conflict between Palestine and Israel. The latter is a rich nation with a large diaspora that knows how to influence politicians — they are master lobbyists — and use the media.

Propaganda is a tool of Israeli politicians and military figures. The Western media in the main falls for it, afraid of bucking the trend because of the incessant badgering of the Israel lobby and its allies.

How else do we explain the extraordinary and decidedly stupid response of the Australian Government to President Donald Trump’s so called Middle East peace plan, which does nothing more than entrench apartheid where Palestinians are as cruelly treated as black and coloured South Africans were until the early 1990s? That the Australian Government would endorse something that was immediately dismissed by most Western nations and get away with it says much about the bias in our media against Palestinians.

Or put it this way. If an Australian politician overtly supports the rights of Palestinians, he or she is subjected to the harassing shrieks of anti-Semitism and being a supporter of terrorism.

Look at what the Israel lobby and its media friends did to former foreign minister Bob Carr when he rightly repositioned Australia away from its slavish endorsement of every outrage committed by Israel against Palestinians. It is OK, it seems, to allow the ripping out of ancient olive groves, the demolition of houses, the building of illegal settlements, the murder of children and the defence and security apparatus that keeps Palestinians poor.

Why do we not demand Israel be accountable and change its ways? It is in part because we do not see Palestinians as humans. They are just Arabs.

Peter Manning, adjunct professor of journalism at UTS in Sydney, has researched the depressing facts that explain why Palestinians and their cause are not resonating more urgently with Australians.

His 2018 book Representing Palestine: Media and Journalism in Australia since World War 1 examines how the Sydney Morning Herald has dealt with Palestinians in critical periods over the past century, from 1918 up to the early 2000s. The Palestinians are a footnote. The ethnic cleansing they endured at the hands of the Jews in 1948 was not newsworthy apparently, and the legitimacy of Israel land grabs never seriously questioned. The SMH is not an isolated case. All Australian media outlets generally report the Palestinians in a negative light. A few rocket launchers from Gaza that hit Israel makes the news but not the daily physical violence by Israeli soldiers on Palestinians children and women.

The excuse for this appalling unprofessionalism by the Australian media is that they have to be balanced. It is of course not balance, but spinelessness or laziness.

There are notable exceptions to Australian media bias against Palestinians and the lazy labelling them simply as a dishevelled rabble.

John Lyons and Tony Walker have both written about the reality of life for Palestinians.

When one speaks to commentators about Israeli oppression of Palestinians, there is too often a response like “it’s all too hard” or “you have to see both sides”. It’s a cop-out. As one Australian who lived in Jerusalem for a few years a decade or more ago told this columnist, “You cannot live there and not be sympathetic to the Palestinians.”

Manning’s findings about systemic media bias in the Australian context is replicated by findings in a study in the US by Canadian research group 416 Labs. Its survey of 50 years of US media coverage from 1967 shows “that the US mainstream media’s coverage of the issue favours Israel by providing greater access to Israeli officials, focusing on Israeli narratives both in terms of the quantity of coverage as well as the overall sentiment, as conveyed by headlines.”

It found a “key factor in prolonging the conflict has been the United States’ unconditional support for successive Israeli governments; which has helped entrench Israel’s illegal presence in the Palestinian territories. Augmenting this has been the US mainstream media, which critics argue has maintained a slanted view of the occupation, one that favours the Israeli narrative over those of Palestinians.”

The situation is no different in Australia and it must change.

Peter Manning is speaking this Thursday at 6pm at the University of Tasmania Law School in Sandy Bay.

Greg Barns is a Hobart barrister and social commentator.