Israeli and Palestinian Subjectivity

It has always been clear that in the U.S. media, only the Israelis are shown to have true human feelings, to be subjects, to be portrayed sympathetically. The Palestinians are always shown as Others, as objects, as animals.

Here is one of the few syndicated columnists to point this out, Charley Reese:

As I watched the extensive, plainly sympathetic coverage of Jewish settlers being evicted from their Gaza homes, I couldn't help but take note once again of the striking double standard applied by American news media as well as the U.S. government.

I cannot recall any sympathetic coverage of Palestinians being evicted from their homes. No interviews with weeping mothers or fathers. No discussions of whether the evictions were right or wrong. This is obviously a deliberate policy on the part of America's television networks, for after all, they had 4,170 opportunities to report on Palestinian evictions since September 2000. That's how many homes were destroyed, and, of course, doesn't count the orchards and olive trees bulldozed by the Israeli army or Israeli settlers.

Of course, Palestinians were not evicted by sympathetic soldiers or promised huge amounts of money to relocate. No, they were brutally told to get out of their houses, which were then blown up or bulldozed into rubble by decidedly unsympathetic Israeli soldiers. What little they had was destroyed, and they were offered nothing except verbal abuse by the Israelis and invisibility by the American media.

One idealistic American girl who tried to stop an Israeli bulldozer from destroying a Palestinian home was crushed to death by the bulldozer. Naturally, the United States government did nothing, and the American media obediently either ignored her death or accepted the Israeli excuse that the driver couldn't see her, which is bull. She was killed in broad, sunny daylight while wearing a blaze-orange jacket and standing atop a pile of dirt.

As an American consumer of commercial news, you should protest. You are being denied the balanced coverage of this conflict that would allow you to form an intelligent opinion. You are, in effect, being fed Israeli propaganda, and if all you know is what you read in most newspapers and see on television, then you would surely think the Palestinians are a faceless mob of howling savages. Actually, they are among the most highly educated and industrious people in the Middle East. A considerable number of them are Christians...

Of course, anyone who points this out will get accused of anti-semitism, but remember, the Palestinians are semites, too, and probably have more in common genetically with biblical Hebrews than the Jewish settlers do.