Israel & Palestine – The Economist got it wrong again

    Anyone who closely follows the conflicts in the Middle East in more than one medium, realizes that is that too often when covered by the mainstream Western media, a wrong  “Western filter” is applied. Unfortunately The Economist is guilty of making that presumption yet again, as well as slightly misrepresenting a few points to give a notion different from reality.

    When reading this Economist article (http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21582562-will-palestinian-rulers-gaza-strip-join-talks-their-enemies-not), one would think that the US got the timing for pushing the peace negotiations just right and this is a genuine opportunity for a reform in the Hamas and achieve a long-lasting peace, however the facts on the ground are showing a much different story.

    The first misrepresentation is the sentence “The group said more recently that it would abide by a referendum on a peace deal suggested by Mr Abbas”. As someone that researches and reads every article about Hamas in multiple languages on an almost daily basis, this has come as news to me. I am sure that a reputable publication such as The Economist wouldn’t simply make up this fact, but perhaps it has taken a quote said for a certain audience at a certain time and chose to give it more weight than it should, while ignoring regular contradicting messages. It is not unusual for Hamas or other groups to have one set of response in English for one crowd and another internally, even if this quote has been genuinely said as reported, the overall messages from Hamas have certainly not been those of accepting any deal and looking to change within, rather quite the opposite, blaming Abbas for committing a crime by collaborating with the Israelis by entering into talks.

    The second fact that has been glossed over by The Economist has been Hamas’ charter, which still calls to take over the entire land of Israel (from the River to the Sea, i.e. Tel Aviv and all other Israeli cities included) and to kill all the Jews. Of course this could be changed at any point in time, however the fact is that it has not been changed and it sits quite comfortably with the only agreement Hamas has ever been willing to genuinely accept, which is  a 10 year cease-fire, as opposed to any permanent agreement. Therefore, to ignore these facts and extract from messages coming out of Hamas a sense of a change and a willingness to move forward towards peace is extremely far-fetched and misleading.

    The Western filter which is applied, and in this case skews reality, is the notion that logic and self-preservation would prevail. This filter is what caused the world to think that the Oslo Accords would finally resolve the conflict. After all, it makes a lot more sense to accept a deal that would better your economic situation tenfold and would still allow you access to the holy sites for the price of lands, which you don’t currently inhabit anyway, rather than continuing to sink even deeper into economic dire and have your movement restricted as well as be under foreign rule. Another example would be the surprise around the election of the extremist Hamas by the people of Gaza in 2006, knowing that electing a party that calls for an uncompromizing confrontation with Israel would severely damage their quality of living and future (a fact that should have trumped the concern of the corruption of Fatah party).

    The “Western filter” could be observed regularly by both politicians and journalists when covering other cultures. For example, the inexplicable behavior of North Korea or Iran to the sanctions, which in N. Korea’s case has apparently already caused the death of millions and in the latter case, is bringing a country, which is sitting on a treasure in the form of oil down rapidly, causing some of its civilians t literally starve.

    The media’s rule is to bring the truth and apply balanced and credible interpretations to the events taking place. Unfortunately, these days in the US for example Fox and NBC have clear agendas, which clearly depicts a case of cherry picking quotes and information to support the already existing narrative.

    It is not until every claim for a change of policy would be backed up by multiple quotes to multiple audiences or facts from the ground that show a real change in policy. It is not until every interpretation of actions wouldn’t be done by the “local reporter”, rather than by an academia Subject Matter Expert. It is not until the Media regains its credibility by reporting facts in a balanced way, that we could go back to believing what we see and read. until then we would still be manipulated to think what the editors of the network think or are paid to push and it would be up to us to do the necessary research.