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July 1996, pg. 20 Special Report
Remembering Both Qana and Oklahoma City Massacres
by Jack G. ShaheenThis spring, Israeli artillery strikes killed more than 100 Lebanese civilians at the United Nations camp in Qana. The noted American journalist Edward R. Murrow was fond of saying that what people do not see or hear is often as important, if not more important, than what they do hear or see. Murrow’s words are especially important given the fact that not only are most Americans unaware that in Qana, Jesus performed his first miracle, but that media coverage of this massacre was insubstantial. Two days ago I received a copy of a Reuters story related to the tragedy. To my knowledge, the information from Reuters was not published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, or telecast on any of the major TV networks. According to Reuters’ May 11 report, some Israeli officers and soldiers were indifferent to the Qana massacre. Two Israeli gunners, for example, said they had no regrets over the shelling. Said one: They were “just a bunch of Arabs.” Said his colleague: “The [Arab] shits, you know there are millions of them.” Coincidentally, the Reuters story was filed the same day a CNN Headline News blurb was telecast, revealing that Israel’s box office registers were ringing at movie theaters. Why? Because the number one hit, “Executive Decision,” was packing ’em in! This Warner Bros. film echoes the sentiments of the Israeli gunners, as American military personnel have no regrets about shooting down “just a bunch of Arabs.” There is a commanding link between movie images showing “a bunch of Arabs” being killed and the reality of Qana’s victims. Sadly, the death of an innocent Arab continues to be less consequential, especially as it relates to media coverage and policy-making, compared to the death of an Israeli, European or American. In his superb essay documenting the differences of media coverage regarding the Oklahoma City and Qana tragedies, Los Angeles Times critic Howard Rosenberg writes that initially CNN filled the screen with “vivid footage of twisted, bloodied remains of the dead [in Qana], some of whom were displayed for the camera by wailing Lebanese.” But, he says, the Qana coverage was dramatically different from that of “Oklahoma City, where reports personalized the grief” of those Americans who lost loved ones resulting from the 1995 bombing of a federal building that took 168 lives. Explains Rosenberg, “This was Lebanon…Thus, the victims of this horror, as great as it was,” were presented to us as “anonymous masses, dehumanized in death, not [as] individuals with whom we could empathize.”
What people do not see or hear is often more important than what they do.Empathy is not feasible when the personalizing of grief is not made visible. Following the Qana bloodbath, no Lebanese fathers and mothers were interviewed to articulate the loss of sons and daughters. No journalist asked Lebanese children how it felt to lose parents, brothers and sisters. Rosenberg hammers home this double standard, writing that CNN called its coverage “Oklahoma City Remembered.” “But a year from now,” he asks, “who will remember Qana, Lebanon?” Glossing over the Qana tragedy, plus the continuing demonization of the Arab people in the cinema, proves that the opposition of everything Arab and Muslim has intensified to the point that today scholars can accuse the media of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry. Although bigotry is a serious charge, what other explanation makes sense given the evidence? I certainly do not suggest all journalists and image-makers are individually culpable—few are. But the refusal of media decision-makers to explain, in depth, the deaths of Arab innocents is an indictment of the institution as a whole. Those doubting my thesis need only ask:How would journalists have presented this tragedy had the aggressors been Arabs, the victims Israelis? Virtually every segment of American society recognizes the importance of media, and its influence on people. Yet, this fact somehow continues to escape Muslims and Arabs here as well as those Muslims and Arabs over there. They need only refer to any history text or watch any anti-Arab film to understand that perceptions influence policies.
Perceptions Influence PoliciesBack in 1922, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a resolution favoring the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine. Chairman Henry Cabot Lodge’s speech to his colleagues reveals the foundation of his anti-Muslim attitudes. Stated Lodge: “As a boy of nine, I read with the most passionate interest Sir Walter Scott’s stories The Talisman and Ivanhoe. I had, of course, intense sympathy for the Crusades, and it seemed to me a great wrong that Jerusalem should be beneath the Moslem rule.” Lodge continued his remarks by saying that after reading Scott, “the dominant impression of the boyish mind was hostility to the Mohammadan and an intense admiration for Richard the Lion-Hearted.” Now is the time for Muslims and Arabs to stand up and be counted—to recognize that our mosques and churches, as well as ourselves, our children and our heritage, are under attack. Until such time as we expose and denounce the bigotry aimed against us through and by the national media, the saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same” will prevail. Let us hope, however, that next year, and 2, 10, and 20 years from now, other writers will remember, as did Howard Rosenberg, both Oklahoma City and Qana. SIDEBAR President Bill Clinton |