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Editorial note:
This article was published during a transitional phase for the Qantara editorial team in July 2024. The text does not align with our values or editorial standards. We are particularly concerned that it may reinforce assumptions about Muslim communities, especially Palestinian society, which we strive to deconstruct through evidence-based journalism. However, in the interest of transparency, we have chosen to keep the article accessible on our website.
The Qantara Editorial Team / September 2, 2024
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Since the end of the Second World War, the so-called Middle East conflict has taken up more and more space in the global media and social sphere with each passing decade. What used to be the preserve of a small section of the population as media recipients is now a global constant. Thanks to mobile devices in the form of smartphones, hardly anyone can escape the news, pictures and videos.
In times of war, objective reporting is a mammoth task. The working conditions for thoroughly researched journalism are not only dangerous, but also surrounded by the propaganda interests of various war actors. In the case of the Gaza war, these include not only Israel and Hamas, but also the Emirate of Qatar and the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is known to support Hamas in various areas. This was followed by the massacre of 7 October, in which mainly Jewish, but also Muslim Israelis, as well as other victim groups such as Thai residents, were killed.
Disturbing images
The images that have been sent around the world since the war began are disturbing, cruel and often unbearable. And it is not uncommon for these reports to consist of a mixture of pictures of injured people and corpses used to spread disinformation. Only selected media can report from Gaza. In general, Western media are dependent on Gazans to provide them with images and sound. These include legitimate journalists as well as Hamas members disguised as journalists who do not work as journalists.
Above all, the tragic images from Gaza, whether staged or not, are widely disseminated throughout the world. The suffering is great, and it is widely disseminated by the international media, and especially by all those recipients who see the victims primarily on the Palestinian side and ignore the Israeli victims.
"The suffering is great, and it is widely disseminated by the international media, and especially by all those recipients who see the victims primarily on the Palestinian side and ignore the Israeli victims."
It is no exaggeration to say that the international community sees itself on the side of the Palestinians, rather than recognising the suffering of both sides and showing equal solidarity with civilians on both sides. This is particularly evident in the foreign press. Especially those in the Middle East who, for sectarian and regional reasons, feel connected to the Palestinians.
Decades-old narrative
In addition, there is a decades-old narrative in all Muslim-majority countries that is anti-Israel and simply does not accept Israel's right to exist. On this basis, factual reporting is not accepted, only propaganda, because it repeats the same hateful prejudices and victim narratives. Only the conspiracy narrative is accepted, which provides more material to support one's image of the enemy. This also makes global reporting more difficult. Because factual reporting that informs and does not reflect the prefabricated conspiracy belief is considered corrupt and disinformation.
This thinking is based on a basic attitude that stems not only from a lack of knowledge of history and the course of the war, but also from a black-and-white attitude. In short: Israel = aggressor, stateless Palestinians = victims. The fact that the conflict is highly complex tends to fuel partisanship and makes objective discussion almost impossible. This is simply because there is no interest in taking a prudent approach to the facts.
"In short: Israel = aggressor, stateless Palestinians = victims. The fact that the conflict is highly complex tends to fuel partisanship and makes objective discussion almost impossible."
And at a time when it is increasingly difficult to recognise facts, and the flood of texts, videos and images makes them harder to verify, emotions alone win. In war, not only does the truth die first, but it awakens a whole range of emotions. Anger, fear and dismay combine to cloud rational thought. But it are precisely these emotions that are part of psychological warfare, deliberately triggered and fed. According to geopolitical interests.
"Anger, fear and dismay combine to cloud rational thought. But it are precisely these emotions that are part of psychological warfare, deliberately triggered and fed. According to geopolitical interests."
Furthermore in the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there are more than two parties, but many other states that can have a destabilising effect on the West with the emotions aroused. In this way, mobilisation against Western democracies is child's play. Without the use of weapons in the West. In universities, on the streets, in parliaments and also in schools, those places where free thought, education and freedom of expression are taught and cultivated. In addition, the constant police operations are overstretching the security forces.
All of this is being done mainly through disinformation campaigns from abroad, which on the one hand have broadcasting licences as foreign broadcasters, but above all reach and incite countless people emotionally via social media. And that's nothing new. A little-noticed aspect of the Middle East conflict is that the Palestinian cause is being instrumentalised to destabilise Western democracies.
Training in disinformation
The accusation that the West does not stand up for the Palestinians is not a new one, and it has already been cleverly used by the GDR to its own advantage, supplying the PLO with weapons, training it in disinformation and ennobling it with diplomatic upgrading despite terrorist attacks in the West, and since then it has further complicated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. None of this helped them get their own state.
"A little-noticed aspect of the Middle East conflict is that the Palestinian cause is being instrumentalised to destabilise Western democracies."
The propagandists are not interested in the suffering of the Palestinian people. The strategy of instrumentalization was already used by Nazi Germany. Although the Nazis despised the Arabs in the British Mandate of Palestine, they were useful enough to instrumentalise them against the British in the Middle East.
Islamic anti-Semitism was used as a basis, mixed with European anti-Semitism, and local Muslims were incited against the Jewish population and Zionist immigrants. Even then they used the media. First and foremost, the radio. The world radio station Zeesen broadcast in Arabic to the region, infecting people with anti-Semitic and anti-British reports. This propaganda was passed off as anti-colonialist. The consequences of this propaganda are still felt today and are passed on from generation to generation. Unlike Germany, the Middle East itself has never come to terms with its Nazi past. The German media must also face up to this task if they want to understand and report on the growing anti-Semitism from Muslim circles in this country.
These problematic attitudes meet social media. After all, everyone with access to the Internet and a smartphone is a potential sender and not, as has been the case for centuries, primarily a receiver. The privilege of having one's thoughts, analyses and observations published, read and listened to has long been reserved for the few.
A single click – a millionfold effect
Today, when activists and influencers pose as journalists, propaganda is more common. And since the advent of social media, everyone participates in propaganda by liking and sharing disinformation.
As a result, they themselves become part of the disinformation. You become part of the war while lying on the sofa or taking the train to work. The images, videos and texts that no one can or even wants to check are circulated millions of times with a simple click.
The content of Nazi Germany still has an impact today. In the Middle East as well as in Germany. In the course of the discussion about refugees from Islamic countries, who are very receptive to this propaganda, one must speak of re-imported anti-Semitism. Because the channels of the Islamist Hamas or Hezbollah always serve the same anti-Semitic narratives of the past. While the children's programme on the Hezbollah-affiliated channel Al-Manar TV tells young children that Jews are like pigs and monkeys, the Hamas channel Al Aksa TV reports that the Holocaust was an invention of the Jews themselves and was blamed on the Nazis in order to found Israel. The military operation in Rafah, in which the Hamas cadres responsible for 7 October were killed alongside civilian victims, showed how social media can influence the news media. The AI-generated image of Rafah, which went viral under the hashtag ‘All Eyes on Rafah’, showed snow-covered mountains, which do not exist in the Gaza Strip, and suggested the targeted bombing of a refugee camp. As German public broadcaster ZDF extensively researched, the attack took place outside the protection zone. Even religious TV preachers praise Hitler in Arabic programmes that can also be seen in the West.
"The channels of the Islamist Hamas or Hezbollah always serve the same anti-Semitic narratives of the past. Even religious TV preachers praise Hitler in Arabic programmes that can also be seen in the West."
Like Yusuf al Qaradawi, who for decades has reached not only Arabic-speaking audiences in the Middle East but also in Western countries with his own programme, “Sharia and Life”, on the comparatively independent TV channel Al Jazeera. In an interview with the channel in 2009, he praised Hitler for his extermination of the Jews and announced that "God willing, next time it will be done by the hand of the believers". Especially in the context of post-colonial debates, German responsibility for this part of history is completely neglected in this part of the region. Even in the media. This is fatal, because to this day this Nazi propaganda is taking revenge in the Middle East and in this country, and to this day the Palestinian population is denied a peaceful and safe life without hatred.
This makes it even more important to take responsibility for this dark chapter of history and to inform and raise awareness about it in the media. Anyone who is serious about factual reporting and post-colonialism cannot ignore this propagandistic legacy. The fact that foreign broadcasters perpetuate the Nazi propaganda legacy should not prevent the German media from reporting objectively and competently on the conflict. As in the case of the reporting on a supposed famine in the Gaza Strip, which, according to the recently published Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Report, did not and does not exist. Outdated images of terminally ill children in clinics were mixed with pictures from the Syrian war in 2015, while current images of full market stalls and barbecue stations in the Gaza Strip, which were spread by Palestinian young people themselves on social media, were nowhere to be found in German news programmes.
Public broadcasters, in particular, are not subject to economic pressures, due to licence fees, as other media and must not base their reporting on these conspiracy theorists. Factual reporting is not a service, but a fundamental right for all recipients in this country. The fundamental right to freedom of expression does not exempt media professionals from their duty to seek the truth.
© Qantara.de 2024
Sineb El Masrar is an author, presenter, journalist and playwright. In 2018, her book "Muslim Men: Who they are, what they want" was published in 2018, in which she critically examines prejudice against Muslim men. In 2021, her play "Dark Powers" premiered at the Westfälisches Landestheater Castrop Rauxel. It deals with anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories in a post-migrant society.