December 17, 2003	Wednesday	Shawwal 22, 1424

BEIRUT: Derogatory and pejorative stereotyping of the Arabs has been and continues to be a pervasive phenomenon in the Western mass media, particularly in the United States.

The Arabs have been portrayed by the Western media in many ways. They have been thought of in terms of camels, dancing girls, pyramids and assassins.

Following the start of the Arab-Israeli conflict most Americans and Europeans, whose views have been coloured by the media, began to view the Arabs as “backward, fanatic, dishonest and fatalistic”. After the Arab Israeli wars and Palestinian Intifada another dimension was added and the word “terrorist” became common.

One wonders why stereotyping of Arabs has come about and is so pervasive in the most informed, highly educated nations in the world, possessing the most advanced channels of communication in the world.

The source of distortion of the Arabs image in the Western media is not merely ignorance, but rather a specific kind of knowledge rooted in religious and racial antagonism towards them.

Better information about the Arabs is insufficient to solve the problem. Altering the basic perspective of the West about the Arabs would take more than making the facts available.

For example, an average fair-minded American or Englishman who loves children and hates cruelty and ugliness does not get moved by the Palestinians’ plight even when the basic facts are made known to him. One is referring to how Palestinians are killed by Israeli soldiers, their homes are destroyed and how members of the Intifada get shot and detained.

This is not merely because the Palestinian problem does not directly touch his life, but because of the way he perceives the problem, that is, they are an alien people whose suffering, seeing them on Western TV screens, does not quite touch him the way the suffering of Americans, Europeans or Israelis would.

In trying to understand the roots of distortion one has to deal with Zionism and its role in distorting facts and manipulating truth.

In this regard, four sources could be attributed to the distortion of the Arab image in the Western media.

The anti-Muslim ideology which dates back to the middle ages; the racism of the age of imperialism; the anti-Arab Zionist propaganda; and the behaviour of the Arabs themselves.

Zionism, deriving from anti-Jewish experiences in Europe, is basically a Western colonialist movement both in its aggressive ideological structure and its violent and ruthless methods. Its war against the Arabs is waged not only in Palestine but also in Europe and America, the centre of its financial and military support.