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Time to End the Israeli Propaganda Lies Justifying
Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinian People
By Ramzy Baroud
Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, May 30, 2016
Time to End the ‘Hasbara’: Palestinian Media and the Search for
a Common Story
Merely being in the company of hundreds of Palestinian journalists and
other media professionals from all over the world has been an uplifting
experience. For many years, Palestinian media
has been on the defensive, unable to articulate a coherent message, torn
between factions and desperately trying to fend
off the Israeli media campaign, along with its falsifications and unending
propaganda or ‘hasbara’. It is still too early to claim any
kind of paradigm shift, but the second
Tawasol Conference in Istanbul, which took place May 18 to 19, served as
an opportunity to consider the vastly changing media landscape, and to
highlight the challenges and the opportunities facing Palestinians in their
uphill battle. Not only are Palestinians expected to demolish many
years of Israeli disinformation, predicated on a make-believe historical
discourse that has been sold to the world as fact, but also to construct
their own lucid narrative that is free from the whims of factions and
personal gains. It will not be easy, of course. My
message in the “Palestine in the Media” Conference, organized by the Palestine
International Forum for Media and Communication is that, if the
Palestinian leadership is failing to achieve political unity, at least
Palestinian intellectuals must insist on the unity of their narrative. Even
the most compromising of Palestinians can acknowledge the centrality of the
Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the destruction of their
towns and villages in 1947-48. They can - and should - also agree
about the hideousness and violence of the Occupation; the dehumanization at
the military checkpoints; the increasingly shrinking spaces in the West Bank
as a result of the illegal settlements and the colonization of whatever
remains of Palestine; the suffocating hold on Occupied Jerusalem (al-Quds);
the injustice of the siege on Gaza, and the one-sided wars on the Strip that
have killed over 4,000 people, mostly civilians, in the course of seven
years, and much more. Professor Nashaat Al-Aqtash from Birzeit
University, perhaps more realistically, downgraded the expectations even
further. “If we could only agree on how we present the narrative regarding
Al-Quds and the illegal settlements, at least that would be a start,” he
said. The obvious fact is that Palestinians have more in common
than they would like to admit. They are all victimized by the same
circumstances, fighting the same Occupation, suffering the same violations
of human rights, and facing the same future outcome resulting from the same
conflict. However, many are strangely incapable of disconnecting
from their tribal-like, factional affiliations. Of course, there is nothing
wrong with having ideological leanings and supporting one political party
over another. It becomes a moral crisis, though, when the party affiliation
becomes stronger than one’s affiliation to the collective, national struggle
for freedom. Sadly, many are still trapped in this thinking. But
things are also changing; they always do. After over two decades of the
failure of the so-called ‘peace process’, and the rapid increase in the
colonization of the Occupied Territories in addition to the extreme violence
used to achieve these ends, many Palestinians are waking up to the painful
facts. There can be no freedom for the Palestinian people without unity and
without resistance. Resistance does not always have to mean a gun
and a knife, but rather the utilization of the energies of a nation at home
and in ‘shatat’ (Diaspora), along with the galvanization of the pro-justice
and peace communities all over the world. There must soon be a movement in
which Palestinians declare a global struggle against apartheid, involving
all Palestinians, their leadership, factions, civil society and communities
everywhere. They must speak in one voice, declare one objective, and state
the same demands, over and over again. It is bewildering to
realize that a nation that has been so wronged for so long being so greatly
misunderstood, while those who have done the harm are largely absolved and
seen as if the victim. Sometime in the late 1950’s, Israeli Prime
Minister, David Ben-Gurion, became aware
of the need to unify the Israeli Zionist narrative regarding the conquering
and ethnic cleansing of Palestine. According
to a revelation by Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, Ben-Gurion worried that
the Palestinian refugee crisis was not going to go away without a consistent
Israeli message that the Palestinians left their land of their own devices,
following instructions to do so by various Arab governments. Of
course, that, too, was a fabrication, but many supposed truths often start
with a sheer lie. He delegated several academics to present the most
falsified, yet coherent, story on the exodus of the Palestinians.
The outcome was Doc
GL-18/17028 of 1961. That document
has, ever since, served as the cornerstone of the Israeli ‘hasbara’
concerning the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The Palestinians ran away and
were not driven out, was the crux of the message. Israel has been repeating
this falsehood for over 55 years and, of course, many have believed it.
Not until recently, thanks to the effort of a burgeoning group of
Palestinian historians - and courageous Israelis - who counter the
propaganda, a Palestinian narrative is taking shape, although much is yet to
be done to offset the damage that has already taken place. In
fact, a real victory for the truth would only happen when the Palestinian
narrative is no longer seen as a ‘counter narrative’ but as a sovereign
story of its own, free from the confines of defensiveness and the burden of
a history laden with lies and half-truths. The only way I see that
happening is when Palestinian intellectuals invest more time and effort in
studying and narrating a ‘people’s history’ of Palestine, which could
finally humanize the Palestinian people, and challenge the polarized
perception of them as terrorists or perpetual victims. When the ordinary
individual becomes the center of history, the outcomes are more relatable,
more effective and poignant. The same logic can be applied to
journalism, as well. Aside from finding their common story, Palestinian
journalists need to reach out to the wider world, not only to their
traditional circle of dedicated friends and supporters, but to mainstream
society. If people truly appreciate the truth, especially from a humanist
perspective, they cannot possibly support genocide and ethnic cleansing.
And by ‘wider world’ I am hardly referring to London, Paris and New
York, but to Africa, South America, Asia and the entire South. Nations from
this hemisphere can fully understand the pain and injustice of military
occupation, colonization, imperialism and apartheid. I fear that the
emphasis on the need to counter Israeli ‘hasbara’ in the West has meant the
allocation of a disproportionate amount of resources and energy in a few
places, while ignoring the rest of the world, whose support has for long
been the backbone of international solidarity. They must not be taken for
granted. The good news, however, is that Palestinians have been
making great strides in the right direction, although with no thanks to the
Palestinian leadership. The key, now, is to be able to unify, streamline and
build on those existing efforts so that such growing solidarity translates
into greater success in raising global awareness
and holding Israel accountable for its Occupation and violations of human
rights. - Dr Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle
East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a
media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of
PalestineChronicle.com. His books include “Searching Jenin”, “The Second
Palestinian Intifada” and his latest “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter:
Gaza’s Untold Story”. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.
***
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