Israeli Rock Quarries as Context of Occupation

Because so much of what we know about the Middle East comes from the print news media, I thought that I would do another post on a mainstream news article. Historically, they've had a complicit role in perpetuating stereotypes of Arabs. Over the course of the semester, we've looked at many examples of how the news media treats the Middle East. Said characterizes its approach as rife with "bafflement" and "decontextualization". But I've been looking for examples of how reporting on the Middle East might be progressing. You couldn't find a better example than the Israel-Palestine conflict. In my efforts to counter the mainstream narrative, I'm going to discuss another news article that breaks from the norm of current reporting.



Oftentimes, the American news media will discuss events in Israel/Palestine without even mentioning Israel's occupation of the West Bank. But this New York Times article is essentially about the occupation. One result of Israel's occupation is the encroachment of Israeli industry into the West Bank, which is made even more questionable because this happens at the expense of the Palestinian people and their natural resources.

It was refreshing for me to see the occupation so explicitly addressed: "The land of the West Bank is, of course, disputed. Israel occupies it, and the Palestinians want it for a future state". By making the focus of the article the illegal transfer of resources from the West Bank to Israel, the article tells part of the conflict's story from the Palestinian perspective.

But one fair piece of reporting can't undo decades of bias. I remember distinctly watching news coverage of the Second Intifada and its impression on my young mind. The instigators blamed for the conflict were the Palestinian terrorists who began using themselves as suicide bombers in Israel. The sensationalist reporting, especially on television, made it hard to frame the issue in a way that testifies to the history of the conflict and the mutual culpability of both sides. As a result, I have lasting images seared into my memory of the terrifying violence perpetrated without reason by Palestinians against helpless Jews. Now I've come to recognize that such reporting is just one perspective of a very complex conflict.

You can find the article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/07/world/middleeast/07westbank.html?scp=3&sq=israel%20rock%20quarry&st=cse

Stay posted for my upcoming review of a recent episode of "Lost" that tackles the issue of torture, with an Iraqi at the center of the storyline. Also, I plan on watching and reviewing "Paradise Now" if I can get my hands on a copy.