By Iqbal Tamimi • Feb 2nd, 2009 at 20:31 • Category: Analysis, Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Israel, Newswire, Opinions and Letters, Palestine, Resistance, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance, War, Zionism
The latest of Alarabiya TV series of betrayals to the ethics of journalism and another move of manipulations of the media came today with a report it has published on its news website.
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/02/02/65521.html
Alarabiya claims that Palestinian Mothers are requesting NOT to broadcast images of children killed in Gaza because it causes fear and panic amongst the children in Gaza.
What A heap of Bull media Sh-t.
Before going to disintegrate Alarabiya’s method of handling the coverage of current Affairs, I would like to mention that the Foreign Ministry of Israel hailed on its website by Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni a number of Arab journalists and recommend reading their articles regularly, and have their list of names available on the official website of the Ministry as a reference because she considers them as Israel’s ambassadors in the Arab world, for they follow exactly the Israeli line and defend its point of view exactly. She recommended not only publishing their present articles during the last war, but all their old ones especially the ones they wrote against Hamas, and guess what? Abdul Rahman al-Rashed, General Manager, Al Arabiya Channel and the former editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat who happens to hold a US post-graduate degree in mass communications from USA is on this so-called Honour list.
Regarding Alarabiya’s report claiming that Mothers of Gaza complained that what their children see on TV screens of bodies of Gaza children became a worrying concern and that it should be stopped.
I would like to borrow an old saying of my Palestinian culture book of sarcastic quotes that can be applied in this case, we were told since we were young “if you want to find if a certain claim is a lie look how big it is” and sure enough this claim is an extra large lie, for everybody around the world knows that Gaza up till this minute suffers electricity blackouts and does not have a means to connect TV sets to, and almost the majority of the homes in no longer Gaza have a living room or TV sets left to watch for that matter, let alone the fact that most of the children are left with no mothers to complain to, and the mothers who were lucky to escape death are preoccupied by other concerns like finding some clean water to drink, or finding a way to visit half burned children at hospitals, and what piece of furniture to burn next to boil some roots to eat after 19 months of siege and after Israel forces have blown up all the UN buildings that used to have some stored food. All the pictures we received are still excellent evidence that all the dishes that used to capture the signals from TV stations are on the ground half buried under the rubble with the dead bodies. What kind of false media message is Alarabiya trying to send the world?
This is clearly a desperate attempt to dilute the pain and misery of the people of Gaza for they have committed the sin of choosing Hamas as their political representative which is considered as anti-USA. The mothers and children of Gaza are claimed to complain of airing their needs and despair and the injustice fallen upon them, but it seems that no Palestinian mother is complaining about the collaboration of the Arab states against them and siding with the Israel and USA.
Since when has Alarabiya worried about the emotions of women in Gaza or concerned that the children can’t sleep? How else would the people around the world would know the scale of cruelty and destruction caused by the Israeli state, and how ugly the war was? Is Alarabiya advising us to create an entertainment program backed with animation and soft music when we scream about such a huge scale of massacres? 60 years of occupation and massacres had no effect on the international conscience because of the media manipulations Alarabiya and other media adopting Western agenda means of reporting, by considering the dead are no more important, and only worrying about the preferences of the fragile sensitive emotions of the living, I bet Alarabiya would prefer a little entertainment instead to wash away the blood of hundreds of children killed without having any committed crime but being born Palestinians. Alarabiya has been reporting about the handmade rockets that fell on Sderot, killing nobody but injuring a worktop of a kitchen, but not once it has mentioned that Sderot was the original home for those who were desperately firing homemade rockets more like fireworks because they were desperate after 19 months of siege and being forced to live packed and pickled in their own sweat together in the most populated area in the world, like sardines.
Alarabiya claimed that Palestinian women (generalising as usual) do not want any pictures of the massacred, let’s see who they have claimed they were representing the Palestinian mothers in Gaza and how did they came up with such report, and who were their references….?
They mention two persons, this was not the Gaza mothers’ point of view, but one person (a male) not a mother as claimed by the article, and one journalist.
So… how can Alarabiya lie and claim something the mothers of Gaza never said? The manipulations of the media seem to underestimate the intelligence of the viewer and insult Palestinian women who are still mourning their lost ones in the shadows of their wrecked homes, holding tight to bits and pieces of their lost ones, sniffing the scent of their children’s bodies mixed with the smell of white phosphorus.
Iqbal Tamimi is a Palestinian journalist and poet from Hebron. She is the creator of a vibrant and important activists' network Palestinian Mothers, open to all who share the vision of peace and justice, men and women alike. She is working now in UK.
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