My father, his 11 brothers and sisters, cousins, distant relatives and their friends, I have all met. All of them are Palestinians, and none of them tote guns, nor do they harbor fundamentalist ideals. In fact, most of them have thrived in Yonkers, NY, for two generations, sometimes even rubbing elbows with the politically linked of Westchester County.

In the house, they all speak Arabic and have not lost touch with their roots and make sure of that by constructing second homes in more prosperous areas of Ramallah. I bet some of you don’t even know that there are mansions owned by Palestinians in the West Bank. A Hollywood movie has yet to depict this image, so in order for you to make some sense out of your world, you subsume a miscellany of all things Arabic into a broader category of things that also includes rock-throwing, towel-headed chanters, camels and monkeys with fez hats.

Chances are that due to your minimal knowledge on the Middle East you must rely on sweeping generalizations in order to make any conclusions on the Israeli/Arab conflict. Did you know, for example, that Palestinians watch classical music performed by the Syrian and Egyptian symphonies on TV or that they have their own versions of soap operas and talk shows? In Hebron right now there is a Palestinian woman with red hair dye carrying a faux-Louis Vuitton bag.

To further complicate your black-and-white perspective, I know a couple of Palestinian friends with papers who — gasp — give high-fives to Israeli bouncers as they are slid in through the back door so they can get an early shot at attracting more beautiful Jewish disco princesses in Tel Aviv’s entertainment district.

Now how does this image fit in with CampusTruth.org’s latest advertisement depicting a swarthy Palestinian firing festive shots in the air to celebrate the Sept. 2001 attacks? The caption reads: “On September 11th, Palestinians celebrated in Lebanon” which introduces the powerful and well-selected image of the stocky, bearded, Palestinian gunman in the foreground. However, what makes this image extremely well chosen is its inclusion of the more docile age groups: three youths and an elderly man are visible behind the gunman.

Given an uneducated audience on Palestinian society and this well-picked photo, a dangerous reaction can occur — this particular image will appear contextual, authoritative, and comprehensive enough to provide a fast and ready-made reality to those who just don’t have the time to take a big whiff of what’s going on in this region.

Those who are in the business of creating anti-Palestinian propaganda understand their American target demographic all too well: “Pictures, whether on TV or in a newspaper, carry a far stronger impact than words. Pictures can be used in a number of different ways to create bias. In some instances an article or item can be perfectly balanced, but if the accompanying pictures only represent one perspective then the reader or viewer will feel sympathy for that perspective.” (Hasbara Handbook: Promoting Israel on Campus 28). Given this wisdom that Israeli campus advocates are equipped with, it is no coincidence then they put so much money into blowing up an image into a half-page advertisement in the Badger Herald?

Don’t get me wrong; there is a visible fundamentalist segment in Palestine, it is just not any more proportionally remarkable than the fundamentalist scene here in America (read militias, the state of Montana, Ku Klux Klan, etc.). However, what could end all this nonsense immediately is an organization to compile the statistical breakdown of Palestinian attitudes towards America. The problem is that neither I nor anyone else can prove to you what the percent is exactly.

This lack of information, nevertheless, does not give Israeli advocates the right to conflate attitudes coming from displaced refugees to the attitudes of eccentric millenarian terrorist from Saudi Arabia such as Osama bin Laden. From my personal experiences, I would say that all the Arabs I have met have been able to differentiate between American people and their foreign policy that is, for all practical purposes, not in their control. Palestinians also view America as a vehicle for creating opportunities that, when properly led, can be very beneficial to the needy petitioner. Palestinians already receive vital financial aid from the United States, and any change in leadership or sentiment will have a direct implication for Palestine.

This gives a high incentive for all rational Palestinians (and there are many despite poverty and destitution), to distance themselves from extreme segments of their population. The bottom line is that if given a chance, a Palestinian would not fire a rifle into the air, a Palestinian would vote for Jesse Jackson.

All of these diverse characterizations of Palestinians may seem contradictory since they all live within the same Arabic village. It would certainly take more than America’s most popular news conduits for you to sort it all out. For example, American media never brought up the fact that almost every Palestinian municipality addressed letters of condolences to the American people for the Sept. 11 attacks. Of course, the way the media in America are structured, you would have to do a 20-minute-long Google search to uncover this fact.

Arabic-friendly factoids will not be handed to you on a platter in today’s media culture. Perhaps, after all, you will never have the time to really get into it and that is why Campustruth.org is working hard day and night looking for more images, to spoon-feed you the one and “only” truth.

Look at today’s new advertisement brought to you by Campustruth.org and you will notice that there is a high level of suggestion but no content to balance it out. For example, in Tuesday’s advertisement, it did not specify how many Palestinians celebrated in Lebanon.

By remaining ambiguous in its quantification, it is tempting you to assume or imagine that violence is a way of life for Palestinians, as opposed to, let’s say, agrarianism. They know that you won’t attempt to refute anything through statistics because you either tend to “judge books by their cover” or you are too busy doing your calculus homework. Campustruth.org is aware that current media culture has shifted the momentum away from the plight of the Palestinians, thus leaving a void of information for them to play within.

Fortunately, there are other news sources that offer the credibility, status and popularity that American viewers demand without skimping on necessary details. A utopian vision of media exists in Europe where viewers are given a more symmetrical flow of information. You would also be surprised to find how different the composition of reporting is in mainstream European newspapers where they analyze and discuss more while abstaining from sensational, fast-cutting imagery.

European media look a little more like our public television stations — boring but academic. A few of these news outlets are the BBC, the Frankfurter Zeitung and LeMonde, to name a few. If, for whatever reason, you cannot access a truly diverse array of news sources, consider yourself deprived and a prime target for the machines of “advocacy.”