In the Badger Herald, yesterday, there was an ad published by
campustruth.org that partly brought into question a line a
newspaper should draw between its first amendment right in its
published reports and the decisions it makes about publishing
advertisements.

However, because the same code of integrity does not apply to
verifying advertised statements as reported statements,
organizations with money still have the resources to publish biased
and inaccurate information.

The media’s misrepresentation of issues is perfectly exemplified
in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the American media
practices all too well the golden rule of he who has the gold,
makes the rules.

The advertisement was paid for by an money from a private
organization. Because the opposite side does not have the same
financing, they impress a very biased view on a public that has
foolishly come to trust the mainstream media as an accurate and
dependable source.

This advertisement sold nothing but hate and prejudice by
associating an entire ethnic group with terrorism, blind hatred of
America and Americans, disrespect for human life, and violence.

The Palestinian people have been misrepresented in the media for
too long because of the financial upper hand that their oppressors
have, and unless Americans start to think independently from the
media, and challenge its inaccuracies, they will continue to be
bamboozled into thinking that injustices are just, and that their
best interest lies in the defense of an occupier instead of with
the oppressed occupied people.

There are more ways for the media to violate journalistic
integrity than for them to lie. Misrepresentation through
disproportional coverage of an event is one of the most subtly
effective ways of manipulating public opinion.

I will give you an example; instances of rape are reported more
often in the media when an African American man is the culprit.
This leads me to believe that as a woman I should fear black men
more than white men. In reality, however, the actual statistics
show me that I am more likely to be sexually terrorized and
assaulted by someone from my own demographic group.

This is not only one of the many injustices done to the African
American community through practices that promote prejudice, but
through its inaccurate presentation of the facts, it puts me at a
higher risk. While I am holding my purse and walking quickly past
the African American male walking across the street, I should be
more cautious of the polite white terrorizer who offers to walk me
home from a party with his own agenda in mind.

I consider my rights to be similarly violated by
misrepresentation of the facts by the media with respect to the
Palestine question. Since the second intifadah started in September
2000, over 2100 Palestinians have been killed, over 25,000 have
been wounded, almost all of them innocent civilians, unless you
consider children throwing stones to be legitimate targets of the
illegal Israeli occupation of their homeland.

Crimes have been committed on the opposite side as well.
However, were the media to proportionally present the situation,
whole issues of the New York Times would be devoted to reporting
Palestinian deaths and the Israeli Occupation Forces’ crimes in the
West Bank and Gaza.

As someone aware of the situation, I know that that the
occupation is responsible for the deaths of both Israelis and
Palestinians, and more importantly what this tells me is that until
the occupation ends, and there is a just peace, deaths of innocent
civilians will continue on both sides.

As I am sure some of you were aware, while we are in economic
crisis, while our tuition is being increased 18 per cent, and our
citizens are being denied the fundamental right of health care,
fifteen billion dollars have been promised to Israel this year, in
addition to their annual 4 billion dollar stipend. Fifteen billion
of my money and yours has been promised to a state that is
responsible for the deaths of its own people and of a people that
it is occupying and oppressing.

Recently there was a front page story in the New York Times,
with a color photograph which inaccurately reported the shooting of
Israeli settlers. It turned out that no civilians were shot, and
only military personnel were targeted (in line with the Geneva
convention which legitimizes the right of an occupied people to
resist their military occupiers by force).

The update was put on the 3rd page, no picture, small headline.
The same week Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli Defense
Forces in the occupied territories. This story was in the back
pages, no picture showing a Palestinian mother mourning the death
of her child.

This prioritizing of stories is only one example of the
mainstream media’s misrepresentation of the issue. Based on the
number of Israelis killed versus the number of Palestinians killed,
one would think that we would see 2000 more articles about
Palestinian deaths in the paper.

Photographs are also an effective way of personalizing such
events. Palestinians deaths are not documented in this way because
there is little interest in recognizing their humanity.

There are no photographs showing their mothers weeping over the
deaths of small children caught in the “cross fire” of Israeli
shooting at market (this is Orwellian “Doublespeak” for defenseless
people killed in cold blood by the occupation forces.)

This leads the mainstream public to think that Palestinian
crimes far out number Israeli crimes, and therefore one is
“guiltier” than the other.

This misrepresentation has caused the mainstream to support an
occupying force in its every action, to such an extent that we are
financing the whole state terrorist operation. The amount of money
that we have given to Israel directly implicates us in the crimes
committed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and when the systematic
destruction and exile of the Palestinian people is complete, we
will ask ourselves where they went, and if history proves true, we
will find a scapegoat to blame so that we do not have to recognize
our own guilt.

The advertisement published yesterday misrepresented a people in
such a fundamentally racist way, it is difficult to comprehend that
some people may buy into its lies.

Dehumanization is an age old strategy in the oppression of a
people.

Associating an entire indigenous group as terrorists, because of
their ethnicity through such misrepresentation of images, will lead
people who don’t know the truth to assume it to be the truth
because it has been published in a journal that they respect and
trust.

You can call a people rats, vermin, or terrorists but when you
do this, it is clear that your objective is to isolate them from
humanity so that you can destroy them. One should also note that
historically, indigenous people’s struggles to free themselves from
colonialism and oppression have been labeled “terrorist.” This
facilitates their dehumanization, and thus allows people to explain
away their extermination and the destruction of their traditional
society (for example, native American resistance to colonization
was labeled “terrorist”).

The only benefit to the advertisement, yesterday, was that to
those who can see clearly; such inflammatory claims expose the
agenda of those who published it, and of their cause.

On Sept. 11 the world wept for the loss of innocent American
lives because the loss of any human life is a waste. There are
people who hate America, no doubt, but just as you cannot call
every white person a racist because of the Ku Klux Klan, you cannot
call every Palestinian a terrorist because less than one percent of
them has committed a crime.

The advertisement read “there are always two sides to a story.
But only one truth.” But for anyone who respects human rights and
dignity, it is clear that the truth does not lie in the hands of an
oppressor who seeks an ethnically pure state.

Alexandra Gekas is a junior majoring in english literature
and can be reached at [email protected].