AH SWEET IRONY….ARABS IN A SNIT ABOUT AN ANTI-ISRAEL TV SERIES

Posted By on April 8th, 2010

A tale of Israeli “rapists” that has enraged the Palestinians but won’t make the BBCRobin Shepherd

http://www.robinshepherdonline.com/a-tale-of-israeli-rapists-that-has-enraged-the-palestinians-but-wont-make-the-bbc/#more-2474

Well there’s a headline that will have regular readers scratching their heads. So let me explain, and as I do consider why this particularly evocative story has been ignored by mainstream media across Europe.

The Jerusalem Post is reporting today that Palestinians are up in arms (not literally, I hasten to add) over a Turkish television series being broadcast across the Arab world which portrays IDF soldiers raping a Palestinian female prisoner in an Israeli jail.

Confused? Palestinians actively opposed to gross and defamatory lies about Israel? Well, consider this extract from a protest letter to the Turkish dramatists from a group of female Palestinian prisoners:

“This film defames the female prisoners and their struggles in occupation prisons,” the Jerusalem Post quoted the letter as saying. “We call on the producer of this Turkish drama to apologize to the Palestinian people for the scene which shows Israeli soldiers raping a Palestinian female prisoner called Miriam.”

Part of the problem, the Palestinian women say, is that upon her release the victim is killed by her family due to the dishonour she has brought on them by having had the temerity to have been raped. Calling this a “public insult to the Palestinian people” they add that in any case, “Those who think that a Palestinian female prisoner is raped when she’s arrested are living in an illusion and are mistaken… There has never been such a case.”

The Jerusalem Post adds that the series is being broadcast across the Middle East by the Saudi-owned MBC network. The Palestinian authority has echoed the prisoners’ sentiments describing the programme as “offensive”.

So, what’s this all about? What does this story tell us that provides so much inisght about the workings of the Middle Eastern environment in which Israel operates?

The first thing it tells us is this: The region is awash in incitement and lies about Israel and the Jews. The image of the IDF soldier as a rapist is merely one among dozens of defamatory images — Jews as bloodsuckers and vampires, Jews as the sons of apes and pigs, Israelis as Nazis and so on — which are staples of the daily diet from media, politicians and religious authorities across the Muslim world.

The BBC and others in the European media operate a de facto policy of censorship on such matters since full disclosure would fundamentally change perceptions about Israel’s predicament and the nature of the nations and cultures which it confronts.

But because Palestinians are themselves complaining about this programme one might think that the story could yet be covered since, paradoxically enough, it has now become a cause of grievance among the Palestinians. But not so fast. For here is the second thing it tells us.

It tells us that women in the region are the subject of the most abominable discriminatory attitudes. For the makers of the Turkish series and the Saudi broadcasters the notion that a woman could be killed for the shame of having been raped is considered quite normal. Both dramatist and broadcaster know their audience.

The Palestinian protest, of course, is most assuredly not directed against the despicable and racist portrayal of Israelis as rapists. The protest arises because they are concerned about their own reception back in Palestinian and Arab society if this particular calumny is widely believed.

Now, I know that some editors in the BBC read this website from time to time. So here is a challenge to them: Cover this story in the manner I have described. Place the Israelis-as-rapists allegations in the context of a wider culture in the region whose anti-Semitic rantings have no historic parallel outside Germany in the 1930s. Continue by using the story as an illustration of the region’s appallingly sexist attitudes to women. And then show the hypocrisy of Palestinians who participate in this racist incitement and then find themselves hoist with their own petard due to the backwardness of important aspects of their very own culture.

I suspect it is already clear why the challenge I have issued will not be met….

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