As a former Israeli, with family in the conflict zone but zero approval for the actions of "my" government, I found this to be the only productive message in this whole discussion. People are going on about who is right, who is wrong, what is aggression and what is terrorism and what you would do in THIS specific situation, but this specific situation has a hundred years of complex history in time and sees world-wide outside interests playing out in space. I am extremely tired of seeing the discussion of these issues always go down the same spiral of such claims as that Zionism is just another form of colonialism (there is more than ample evidence of the area as the former Jewish homeland, though I personally wouldn't let that fact decide national policy!) or alternatively that Israel never targets civilians (perhaps not as policy, but it does turn a completely blind eye to civilian deaths at individual soldiers' hands, with obvious results). If we as media academics truly care to change anything about this ongoing situation, our duty is to educate people about where and how they get their information and how to process it.
For my part, because I know that my information and my context are woefully limited, I'll end my contribution here.
Leora Hadas
PhD candidate, Culture, Film & Media
University of Nottingham
________________________________________
From: Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA) [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Fin McMorran [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2014 4:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: israel-palestine-hamas
The media coverage of this conflict has everyone arguing about who is more wrong. (As though none of us had had parents who quoted "2 wrongs don't make a right" and "I don't care who started it...")While we are doing this we are not addressing the underlying question of what is to be done about two peoples wanting to occupy the same space, and what responsibilities those other nations who helped engineer this situation may now bear in trying to resolve it. As usual, the media's main interest is in what is happening NOW, and in the newsworthiness, including the shock value of that. How to get the media and the consumers of media to look at the back story - the important context and history - and consider solutions without that becoming a dry or overly complex narrative? without the media constantly repeating itself?
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