This afternoon, I met for the second time with Christeen and Anthon to discuss the Israel-Palestinian conflict at the Starbucks Coffee on President Kennedy.
The first meeting, which took place two weeks ago, was an introduction to the work I went through these last two weeks. Christeen would tell me about the concrete history her grandparents went through during Israel's War of Independence, and how they lost their land to become Jordan refugees. These testimonies lead me to the idea of understanding the roots of the conflict, which I tried to answer through the first papers: Why a land for the Jews (Zionism)? Why such a people as the "Palestinian"?
Today, we spoke about the media influence over the conflict. I believe that a great part of the unsolved issues are induced by the popular non-complete ideas people have about the conflict. Therefore, I wanted to conduct an analysis with Christeen and Anthon on this topic, and contrast how a same event could be explained through many different partial perspectives in a French newspaper, an American newspaper, and an Israeli newspaper. The flotilla episode happened at the right time (one week ago), and we all studied the following articles:
Article from NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/world/middleeast/01flotilla.html
Article from Le Monde (French newspaper): http://www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient/article/2010/05/31/assaut-israelien-contre-la-flottille-en-route-vers-gaza_1365247_3218.html
First article from Haaretz (Israeli newspaper):http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/gaza-flotilla-drives-israel-into-a-sea-of-stupidity-1.292959
Second article from Haaretz (Israeli newspaper): http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/analysis-israel-needs-national-inquiry-into-deadly-gaza-flotilla-clashes-1.293347
The outcomes of our dialogue were not that conclusive. We understood that the phenomenon taking place, the shaping of popular judgment, is real but, more subtle and could not be grasped through the contrasting analysis of a single paper. We left ourselves homework for the following time, understanding the media interests in taking position in favour or against the Israeli or Palestinian cause. Christeen told me Arabs believe the media are controlled by Jews, and the information release worldwide is largely in favour of Israel. However, I told her that Jews people believe that worldwide news does not hesitate to lynch Israel, and we will try to objectivise the issue. Moreover, Anthon came with the bright idea to classify the issues faced by Israel, and the Palestinian. It is the first step to think about a solution. I am sure we will be surprised by the diversity of issues we will learn to understand. In addition, I borrowed three books from the library, one is Let us divorce from Amos Oz, which I will analyse in a future entry, another is a book on Zionism in the Arab world before WWI I lent to Christeen, and the last one is a book about peace negotiating (management approach!), which Anthon will read.
I will meet again tomorrow with Christeen to discuss the roots of Palestinian nationalism, a work undertaken earlier.
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