Media hyperopia or regional blindness

Many years ago, New York Magazine published its famous map of the world as seen by New Yorkers, with New York and California occupying 3/4 of the map.  This visual distortion may have been caused by cultural prejudices and airplane connections.  In any case, the residents of the east coast knew and still know much more about Los Angeles than Portland, Maine or Raleigh, North Carolina despite the latter’s closer proximity. Recently, I started following the posts of a professional colleague that lives in Lebanon. Keep in mind that I live in Karmiel, some 17 kilometers (10 miles) from the Lebanese border and 48 kilometers (30 miles) from the Syrian border. Reading his posts, I realized that I knew close to nothing about what is going on either country, not mention Jordan, also not far away, about which no I have no idea what is happening.  Yet, I easily follow events in Washington, London, Paris and even Ankara, which are much farther away, through daily reports in Israeli media.

One cause of this news blackout is simply lack of air time.  We in Israel have more than enough to talk about with our multiple elections, clashes with the Palestinians and tension with the Syrians, not to mention Bibi’s legal troubles. Trump, Putin, Nasrallah, and Erdogan. There is no problem filling any empty moment in the news. As a result, there is no media oxygen for Lebanon’s financial problems and Syria’s rebuilding as well as anything about Jordan. Egypt is in another continent for that matter. Yet, events in these countries have a direct influence on stability in the area. The only way to find out is to access the foreign media in Arabic, which most Jews in Israel cannot do even when they speak some Arabic. In terms of media, our neighbors are invisible.

To be fair, part of the problem is the lack of available information.  Israel is the only country in the Middle East with freedom of the press. In other words, official announcements from these countries are less than reliable.  Objective reporting comes from underground sources, who do not have a complete picture. For example, it is impossible to know how many Syrians have been killed in the last year or what the state of the health system is. Any objective fact that does come to light from an official news source may be accurate but partial as these governments tend to censure negative news. So, sometimes the media reports nothing because there is nothing to report.

Still, some would say that the Israeli media has an unspoken policy of neglecting the region.  I strongly doubt it as freedom of the press is still strong enough to prevent government-inspired news blackout over the long term. I don’t buy this conspiracy theory.

To be fair, many countries tend to ignore their closest neighbors. The American press has extremely little to say about Canada and Mexico.  The French hear more about Israel than Belgium, with whom they share a common language, mostly. I wonder how much news Londoners receive on Wales and Scotland, not to mention Northern Ireland. The BBC even ignores the weather in the Republic of Ireland, as a policy in my opinion, even it reports it in Northern Ireland. I don’t know if this regional blindness applies to Asia or South or central America but would be interested in finding out.

So, t New Yorkers are not alone in having their vision affected by culture and media. Physical distance and economic impact have less influence on our media than one would think.  The media worldwide is farsighted, i.e., hyperopic.

National Illusion

The average citizen of the Western world, especially the political leaders, is quite disappointed with the Middle East these days.  The locals are not acting like (Western) civilized people!  True, the Israelis and Palestinians are talking to each other, sort of.  On the other hand, Israel insists on issuing building permits in the “Occupied Territories”; the Egyptian military successfully conducted a putsch and are openly repressing those democratic Muslim brothers; Assad in Syria is routinely bombing, torturing, and starving civilians, not to mention using forbidden chemical weapons; Lebanon is starting to join the fun of ethnic killing.  This is not to mention the [usual ]SNAFU  (situation normal – all fucked up] in Iraq and Afghanistan, but who wants to think of that?

This lack of respect for human rights must be quite frustrating and disappointing for right-minded Scandinavians and other Europeans, who so strongly believe in the universality of human rights.  Maybe part of the communication gap is the overuse of the word “country”  A nation  is a place where 95% of the population identifies themselves as residents of that country despite differences in religion, politics, and socio-economic status.  Lebanon is a collection of religious tribes thrown together by the French.  Syria has a history of a separate cultural identity, but politically exists as a reaction to French rule.  Egypt indeed has been an independent country for many centuries.  However, it suffers from a similar dysfunction as Turkey– a large cultural and ideological gap between the urban rich and rural poor, so wide in fact that the country is split into two, if not more, parts.  The urban, relatively liberal population views the Muslim Brotherhood as the enemy.  Therefore, it supports the Army’s oppression of the latter.  Assad knows that what will be his fate and that of his allies if he loses the civil war.  No holds are barred.  Even Israel has around 15% of the population, Israeli-Arabs and ultra-orthodox Jews, who don’t consider themselves Israeli.  Still, Israel is the probably the most deserving of the title “nation”.

So, if you wonder why Middle Eastern countries are so unstable, keep in mind that most, if not all, of them are countries in name only.

P.S. Having survived moving to a new flat, I'll be away on a family visit until mid September. I will then go back to writing once a week.

Victory, Defeat and the Middle East

The Middle East is truly difficult for the Western World to understand.  It seems familiar and similar,  but peculiar and annoying differences keep on popping up.  For example, there are two words existing in all languages (to the best of my knowledge) with clear meanings: victory and defeat.   In regards to war, if your armed forces can or do take over the enemy’s territory, you win.  If you have to ask for mercy, you lose.  Every kid who ever had a fight in the schoolyard understands that.

However, in the Middle East, the words have become confused.  In 1948, 1956, and 1967, both Israelis and Arabs agree that the former won and the latter lost. Since then, Lewis Caroll has taken over, i.e. a word means what I intend it to mean.  In 1973, Egypt and Syria had to run to Russia and the UN and ask for a ceasefire because Israel had wide open roads to Cairo and Damascus.   Curiously enough, Israelis view the Yom Kippur War as a great defeat while the Egyptians regularly celebrate the anniversary of the great victory.  In the first and second Lebanese wars (the former officially known as Peace in the Galilee Campaign), the Palestinians and Hezbollah were forced to retreat, to the sea in the former case, granted while causing quite a few casualties for the Israelis.   Again, the sides seem to view the matter inversely, with the Israelis very uncomfortable with the memory of the conflict and the former two groups proud of their resistance. 

The latest of chapter of  this Go reversal game is the most recent tit-for-tat exchange in Gaza, otherwise known as the Pillar of Cloud operation, which ended some two weeks ago.  The Palestinians objectively were extremely unsuccessful in their goal of killing civilians while the Israeli air force destroyed most of their planned targets with minimum collateral damage, as civilian casualties are euphemistically called.  Predictably, Israelis are uneasy with the result while the Palestinians are celebrating their phantom victory, i.e. the vague promise to talk about opening borders.

Clausewitz wrote that war is another means of diplomacy.  I suppose that the claimed victories and defeats are actual if you taken into account the political goals of the parties.  Still, as Orwell suggested, the complete misuse of words eventually strips them of all of their meaning, especially in the Middle East.