Misunderstanding the Middle East

Monday, 28th September 2009

Most reporters only have time to deal in sound-bites, and this is a region which is all about history and complexities. No wonder, then, that our view of the Arab-Israeli conflict is often so one-sided. Joris Luyendijk's book - a bestseller in his native Holland - is starting to win attention further afield. Simon Kuper, for one, is glad:

“The common idea about correspondents is that they ‘have the story’,” Luyendijk writes, “but the reality is that the news is a conveyor belt in a bread factory. The correspondents stand at the end of the conveyor belt, pretending we’ve baked that white loaf ourselves, while in fact all we’ve done is put it in its wrapping.” ... TV can convey the horror of a suicide bomb but it is less effective at conveying the humiliation of daily life under occupation. In any case, the Palestinians are no good at producing those images for TV.
Israel excels at baking the bread. It knows just how to package a soundbite or image for TV, whereas Palestinian spokesmen drone on in incomprehensible language. In fact, the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat deliberately kept articulate Palestinians off-air for fear that they would acquire their own power bases.

I'd be curious to know what Luyendijk makes of the role of bloggers such as Juan Cole. Not to mention the Muhammad Al-Durrah controversy, which, if the critics are right, was a significant Palestinian propaganda victory. The book, though, isn't just about one small patch of Gaza or the West Bank:

Luyendijk began work as a 26-year-old newspaper correspondent in Cairo, where he had studied at university. He dutifully covered summits and presidential speeches, and interviewed “talking heads”. He gradually realised this did not convey Egyptian reality, however. Hardly anyone in Egypt who was allowed to speak in public could be believed. The “talking heads” – academics or human rights activists, for instance – were paid by the government or by western NGOs, or were terrified of the secret police.
Whenever Luyendijk did manage to interview the “common man”, he heard weird things. One man answered a question about an Egyptian “referendum” by telling him that Hitler had been subsidised by Jews who charged 38 per cent interest, we learn here. Was this common man typical? In a country without polls or fair elections or freedom of speech, it was impossible to know.

[Photo: A religious Jew whips a fellow-worshipper with a leather strap during a ceremony at a synagogue in Jerusalem just before the start of Yom Kippur / David Silverman/Getty Images]