{"id":246036,"date":"2016-05-26T09:35:45","date_gmt":"2016-05-26T09:35:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/time-to-end-the-hasbara-palestinian-media-and-the-search-for-a-common-story-2\/"},"modified":"2016-05-26T14:49:27","modified_gmt":"2016-05-26T14:49:27","slug":"time-to-end-the-hasbara-palestinian-media-and-the-search-for-a-common-story-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/time-to-end-the-hasbara-palestinian-media-and-the-search-for-a-common-story-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Time to End the \u2018Hasbara\u2019: Palestinian Media and the Search for a Common Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Merely being in the company of hundreds of Palestinian journalists and other
\n media professionals from all over the world has been an uplifting experience.
\n For many years, Palestinian media has been on the defensive, unable to articulate
\n a coherent message, torn between factions and desperately trying to fend off
\n the Israeli media campaign, along with its falsifications and unending propaganda
\n or \u201chasbara\u201d.<\/p>\n

It is still too early to claim any kind of paradigm shift, but the second
\n Tawasol Conference<\/a> in Istanbul, which took place 18 to 19 May, served as
\n an opportunity to consider the vastly changing media landscape, and to highlight
\n the challenges and the opportunities facing Palestinians in their uphill battle.<\/p>\n

Not only are Palestinians expected to demolish many years of Israeli disinformation,
\n predicated on a make-believe historical discourse that has been sold to the
\n world as fact, but also to construct their own lucid narrative that is free
\n from the whims of factions and personal gains.<\/p>\n

It will not be easy, of course.<\/p>\n

My message in the \u201cPalestine in the Media\u201d conference, organized by the Palestine
\n International Forum for Media and Communication<\/a> is that, if the Palestinian
\n leadership is failing to achieve political unity, at least Palestinian intellectuals
\n must insist on the unity of their narrative. Even the most compromising of Palestinians
\n can acknowledge the centrality of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians
\n and the destruction of their towns and villages in 1947-48.<\/p>\n

They can \u2013 and should \u2013 also agree about the hideousness and violence of the
\n occupation; the dehumanization at the military checkpoints; the increasingly
\n shrinking spaces in the West Bank as a result of the illegal settlements and
\n the colonization of whatever remains of Palestine; the suffocating hold on Occupied
\n Jerusalem (al-Quds); the injustice of the siege on Gaza, and the one-sided wars
\n on the Gaza Strip that have killed over 4,000 people, mostly civilians, in the
\n course of seven years, and much more.<\/p>\n

Professor Nashaat Al-Aqtash from Birzeit University, perhaps more realistically,
\n downgraded the expectations even further. \u201cIf we could only agree on how we
\n present the narrative regarding Al-Quds and the illegal settlements, at least
\n that would be a start,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The obvious fact is that Palestinians have more in common than they would like
\n to admit. They are all victimized by the same circumstances, fighting the same
\n occupation, suffering the same violations of human rights, and facing the same
\n future outcome resulting from the same conflict.<\/p>\n

However, many are strangely incapable of disconnecting from their tribal-like,
\n factional affiliations. Of course, there is nothing wrong with having ideological
\n leanings and supporting one political party over another. It becomes a moral
\n crisis, though,…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Merely being in the company of hundreds of Palestinian journalists and other media professionals from all over the world has been an uplifting experience. For many years, Palestinian media has been on the defensive, unable to articulate a coherent message, torn between factions and desperately trying to fend off the Israeli […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-246036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire","7":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}