Representing Palestinian and Israeli Identities in the CNN, New York Times, Al-Ahram Weekly, and Al Jazeera Websites: A Critical Discourse Approach

Abstract

As Israel started its ground offensive against Gaza by the end of December 2008, the CNN was showing an Israeli family mourning the death of its son, during a suicide attack by a Palestinian, highlighting the grief and sorrow of the Israeli family, while seeming to overlook the concurrent Palestinian deaths resulting from heavy attacks by the Israeli forces. These scenes, as well as, many other news reports of the Gaza War of 2008-2009, pose a debatable question regarding this extended conflict between Israel and Palestinians: Who is the victim and who is the aggressor? According to Butters (2009), during this round of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "the press has once again found itself caught in a different kind of cross fire: the propaganda battle, across all media platforms, between Israel and Hamas (and the supporters of each) for international sympathy." While Israel and Hamas have been fighting on the ground, there was a "media war" heating up on various media channels. The advocates of each party have tried to report the incidents of this offensive in a way to justify the actions of each and provoke readers to build up a certain point of view. Butters (2009) explains that as soon as the offensive has started pro-Israeli media clarified to its audience that Israel is merely defending itself against the threatening Hamas missile attacks and that Israel is exerting tremendous effort to avoid hurting civilians. "Meanwhile, Israeli politicians and pundits are constantly on the air painting Hamas as an implacable, genocidal foe" (Butters, 2009). On the other hand, Hamas supporters, mostly from the Arab media, have been trying to show how atrociously Israel has attacked Palestinian civilians and devastated Gaza's infrastructure. Butters (2009) believes that they "rely on the civilian casualties inflicted by Israelis to win international sympathy." This clarifies that the media plays an important role in portraying each party and creating its identity.