Thursday, August 08, 2013

8-Aug-13: This video clip might just upturn the way people think about the conflict

The Al Durah scene: Testament to the
power of lethal journalism and
dishonest video recording
We hope the imagery below has gone viral by the time you see it here.

The caption on the LiveLeaks site where we first saw it says very little about who is behind it or their goals. But that's less significant than might appear to be the case at first. Though they participants are speaking Arabic, you don't really need to get into the meaning of their words to fully comprehend the message on show here.

What the people in front of the cameras and behind them have discovered, and which far too few in Western countries understand, is that if you take yourself seriously enough while inventing an entire narrative and looking injured and/or offended, practically no one is going to object or reveal the truth. In other words, Pallywood ("a bustling industry of alfresco cinema", according to the man who coined the term).

It has been a standard part of news coverage here in the Arab vs Israel conflict for at least a decade. It's in evidence every single day. Faked photos (sometimes call fauxtography), faked clashes, faked injuries, faked deaths, faked dramatic poses, faked arguments and faked responses.

Take a look at the whole two minute clip:


Now, while it's still freshly planted in your mind, would be a good time to take a look at the aldurah.com website, and the ground-breaking, 18-minute video "Pallywood: According to Palestinian Sources" (2008), the work of Prof. Richard Landes.

1 comment:

Shira said...

Sadly, in my experience, this video will do nothing much; the people I know who are massively anti-Israel would say things like "just because this was staged doesn't mean Israel isn't committing human rights abuses" "just because this was fake doesn't mean anything else is" "this was in Egypt, the Palestinians don't do this" and other such nonsense. To those of us who already know the truth, this is confirmation, not that we needed it, and to those who don't want to know it, it's just more "twisted Zionist propaganda" (as I was accused of "spouting" when I tried to cite plain facts to an anti-Israel ex-friend on Twitter).