Communications and Media

It is as the Chinese Barbaric to the Palestinians as to the Great Wall to the Israeli West Bank Barrier. All along, this has been covered and followed by the international media. Different views were born and this has started another mileage for these Middle East countries to cope on the image media has pictured about them.  This is nevertheless about the building of the Israeli West Bank Barrier and how its what about developed across different media.

It was actually on June 16, 2002 when the State of Israel started the construction of the said dividing wall in pursuit of security against the neighboring Palestine nation. One of the reasons why this wall has being erected is the reducing of the possibilities of attacking its citizens, the Israelis.

Following its construction by 2002, it was only in 2003 that the discourse about it has surf the US media. Pioneer news networks and newspapers patrolled happenings within Israel 247. Peace talks have been in demand but as usual collapsed as the two countries never retreated from each other. It has been recorded as worlds biggest humanitarian problem that even the USA could not do anything about it, except trying to stop them like in this case, the building of the said divisive wall.

Through then when the news of Israel building this wall has bombarded the whole world, different views have risen and media has the most credit for it. News as defined to be current, concrete and precise information transmitted to the people is news because it affects us and the way we perceive things.

In the article written by M. Coker Christians ask Israel to call halt to barrier The wall is bad for all of us, leaders of 13 churches say of Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the words apartheid wall and security fence became rhetorically considered. The issue about Palestinians priesthood was also raised thus stated in this piece

Surrounded by hundreds singing Lord Have Mercy, leaders of the Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican and other churches called for an end to what they brand a destructive project that threatens to divide Bethlehem and separate the West Bank from Israel.

Israel then reiterated that the building of the wall was purely for protective purposes while the Palestinians see it as a long term like what the Berlin Wall is. Another article said that the wall cuts off Jewish settlements from Palestinian areas and is essentially a patchwork of concrete wall, electric fencing and barbed wire provoked sentiments of negativity towards its readers.

This has intensified the Palestinian arms and has added to the violence as what was perceived from the news.

Although the wall per se was not presented as a direct cause of suicide bombings (Ismael, 2009), we learn that its negative perception by and impact on Palestinians help fuel intifada violence The protesters threw paint on a 25-foot-high wall that runs along the western side of Qalqilya, and spray-painted slogans . . . We are living in a big prison, said Mahmoud Farahmeh, 46, a Qalqilya resident.

Besides of the various definition that have risen from the wall, the portrayal of media using the television became more sympathetic especially when it comes to the innocent life perished due to the uprising violence caused by the wall.

On August 19, 2003 when a Jerusalem bus was bombed, there was reported a large number of children fatality.  It was said to be one of the most unsettling cases of bombing since it involved a mass of childrens death.

For an Israeli public that has endured the random, frightening toll of suicide bombings through 35 months of a violent Palestinian uprising, the attack Tuesday that killed 20 people and the bomber was one of the most unsettling, because an unusually large number of babies, toddlers and children lost their lives or were maimed.

Isamael has written that these reportage enhanced the symbolism of childhood within the conflict. Moore of Washington Post has written several articles protruding child victimization on this, quoted in here

I saw the dead bodies and I moved on . . . I saw a small child, about
2 years oldher head was badly hurt, her eye was torn (Moore, 2003a, p. A01). Grieving over children lost in the attack was also described At the first glimpse this afternoon of 11-month-old Shmuel Zargaris tiny corpse, swaddled in a cream-colored prayer shawl, an entire funeral home broke down (Moore, 2003b, p. A01).

Consequently, shown from the TV were pictures of scattered baby strollers, blood covered bodies and grief all around the bus. There has been a commotion of hate and lost as the messages from the reported transmits to its audience.

Various conflicts from just the definition of the wall and how children are being portrayed sympathetically through news could be the first two, another thing to consider is how media considered this issue as means of violence and revenge as cyclical phenomena.

As Chazzan writes in an article from Wall Street,
Hamas claimed responsibility for a blast at a bus stop in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Ariel, which killed an 18-year-old man and wounded several others and marked the organizations first open breach of the cease-fire. Hamas said the bombing was in revenge for Israels killing of two of its operatives in a raid on the West Bank town of Nablus last week.

Through how the media interpreted the news, it simply made the opposing sides more agitated against each other. The news also raised points in blaming who should be blame in this occasion.

Ismael quoted that while Sharon described Sidr as a serial killer who was caught red-handed planning the next terror attack, Islamic Jihads leader in the West Bank called Sidrs killing a grave crime that the occupation army, its soldiers and settlers will pay a heavy price for.

There has been consistent graphic news portrayal of suicide bombings. An Israeli cashier in a supermarket who has seen the bombing in the 12th of August, 2003 said that as quoted in the New York Times article

I hope well have peace . . . But I dont believe in it anymore The windows of the supermarket were blasted out by a bomb packed with steel ball bearings, shredding the metal blinds, blackening boxes of cereal and toppling towers of paper towels.


Until media intervention has reached the level of directing the people about what side to take when the boiling point touched the primordialism foregrounds issue. It has been about nationalism, national identity and mobilization. The following is one of the most descriptive pages of the New York Times describing the conflict, thus

Two and a half years ago, a 10-month-old Israeli girl, Shalhevet Pas, was shot to death in her stroller by a Palestinian sniper here in Hebron a West Bank town, a city where the competing claims of Jews and Palestinians to the land, holy places and the past grind together with particular pain. (Fisher, 2003b)

And also in this page from the Washington Post where Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon talked about being a Jew

We have to remember that I am speaking as a Jew. For me, to be a Jew is the most important thing. The Jews have a tiny country with many talents. This is the only place in the world where the Jews have the right and the capability to defend themselves by themselves. That is my historic responsibility to the Jewish peopleto keep it, to preserve it. That is what I am going to do.

This has given readers and televiewers the perspective that this war between has been now questioning their identity, their culture. Sharon talking could be given a sense of becoming vividly in primordial fashion, very rhetoric as what could be read from the said page.

After all, how religion became one of the major causalities of the fight between these countries were severely emphasized in the television and pages of news making.

Though it was firstly emphasized in the above pages (the thing religion as Israel center of Christianism), Israelis who have survived the August 19, 2003 bus bombing were described as if carrying religious significance. Thus

In reporting on the aforementioned Jerusalem bus bombing (August 19, 2003), primordialism surfaced within the perpetrator and victim spheres of the attack. Several news reports emphasized that the bus carried several Jews returning from the Western Wall, Judaisms holiest site (e.g., Bennet, 2003a Moore  Anderson, 2003). Many of the passengers on the bus were devout Jewish families, one report asserted (Coker  Nelson, 2003a, p. 1A). The attacks location was portrayed as itself carrying religious significance, as it occurred across from the Synagogue of the Jews of the Caucus on Shmuel Hanavi Street in the Beit Israel neighborhood, just north of Jerusalems Old City (Moore  Anderson, 2003, p. A01). One bombing survivor explained his escape through a bus window in spiritual terms It was a miracle, he said of his survival. I prayed at the Western Wall today (Bennet, 2003a, p. 1). In a separate religion-laden reference, one report recounted.

Through then, we have seen the never-ending conflict of these countries like a long and creative rhetoric of television superb manuscripts. Since 2003 when the West Bank Barrier, Wall, the Thing controversy, whatever, has surfaced onto our daily papers and television, number of news agency sent choppers, bulk of writers, production assistants and prime reporters to the Middle East just to cover the said issue. This has been one of the most viewed segments of news television and as well as the most earning one.

Through this, delivery of news became a vicious cycle.  Nevertheless, every time you see a TV and the news is all about Israelis and Palestinians conflict, the notion- unending media sympathy resulting to pure and legit yellow journalism.