Nothing new: Medical staff treating patients at the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza after a series of Israeli strikes killed and injured hundreds in the area. — Courtesy of MER-C
WE have been here before. We Americans who specialise in the Middle East are feeling a depressing sense of déjà vu.
In the last few weeks, we’ve been hearing the same questions from our fellow Americans, seeing the same confusion and anger, as so many times before.
I arrived in Beirut as a journalist in 1980. I’ve written many hundreds of television and newspaper stories and six books on the region. Some days I think I would have been better off specialising in Renaissance literature for all the impact it has had.
Every few years, when things in the region get so bad that they briefly capture the attention of the American public, we “experts” are asked the same questions: “Have the Israelis and Palestinians always been fighting?” “Who was there first?” “Is Gaza the same as the West Bank?” “Wasn’t there a peace deal a while ago?” “Why aren’t the Palestinians ever satisfied?” “What’s wrong with these people?”
When it comes to Palestinian anger, many of the answers can be found in what happens between major outbreaks of war – largely untold in the American media.
One grim example: Even before the current crisis, 2023 was the deadliest year on record for Palestinian children, who were being killed at a rate of more than one a week, according to Save the Children.
Adults didn’t fare any better. In total, by Oct 6, the day before the Israel-Hamas war started, at least 188 Palestinians had been killed on the West Bank, the most in at least 15 years, according to the United Nations. At least six Israeli children and 24 adult Israelis across the country also lost their lives in that period.
How many Americans were aware of that? And how many news organisations reported on the deaths? When stories did appear, the public had to work hard to find them.
Case in point: A February 2023 Israeli military operation in Nablus described as “the deadliest such raid in years” that left 11 Palestinians dead and more than 100 wounded, including a 72-year-old man and a young boy. The New York Times buried the story on page nine. Meanwhile, Israeli politics get more coverage in the United States media than news from most US state capitals.
Unlike audiences in the Middle East or South and South-East Asia, most Americans pay little attention to the monthly body count among Palestinians, in part because the killings receive so little coverage in the media.
Ditto Iraq or Afghanistan before the US withdrawal. Compassion fatigue, other crises, etc, etc.
As a result, when they looked at the news on Oct 7, countless Americans were asking “Why?” and news organisations scrambled to produce basic explainers to make up for years of journalistic neglect. Hatred produces hatred. Generations’ worth. That is one constant of the Palestine-Israel story. When I was recently interviewed on an Arab TV channel, the host railed about American policy. He thundered at me: “Americans love Israel and hate Arabs, don’t you agree?”
I respectfully disagreed. Yes, I told him, the bonds between the United States and Israel are close. But I pointed to the rallies across America in recent weeks demanding a ceasefire, as well as rising criticism of Israeli policies among many American Jews.
He scoffed. I wasn’t surprised. I am painfully aware that from his perspective, and that of millions of people around the world, Palestinians are dying in horrifying numbers and the weapons that are killing them are made in America. But most Americans do not fully understand the degree to which this horror resonates as far away from Gaza as Jakarta, where Indonesians are watching as the death toll at Gaza’s Indonesia Hospital nears 1,000.
The anger is only hardened when they hear US President Joe Biden questioning the death toll of Palestinians in Gaza or listen to American television networks report on the death toll of “terrorists” in Gaza.
So, if Americans – or their favourite media outlets – weren’t paying attention before, it’s time to start. Once again, rage is building. We are seeing the first signs of anti-American violence. After the next – inevitable – outrage, there will be no excuse to ask, “Why?” – The Jakarta Post/Asia News Network
Lawrence Pintak Pullman is an award-winning journalist who was based in Indonesia during the Reformasi period and the author of America & Islam.
