Last Friday night after my soccer game I went out to eat with my brother and some friends. One of my friends had just gotten back from the BYU Jerusalem Center and my brother having lived in Palestine and Iraq: naturally a discussion of the middle east was sparked. We discussed Israeli and Palestinian views of Americans and westerners and about how we as Americans view Israelis, Palestinians and other countries in the Middle East.
We agreed that most Muslims or middle easterners have a positive view of Americans and treat them with respect, yet they are able to distinguish good American citizens from the defects and vices of the American Government. U.S. citizens; however, have a harder time distiguishing between citizens and governements of Middle Eastern countries.
My brother reasoned that one of the reasons why is due to western media. He gave the example of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's President, and how we portrayed him as someone who wishes to "destroy" the nation of Israel and the U.S. and who denies the event of the Holocaust.
I decided to do some research. Tons of hits came up in newspapers and videos under "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad destroy Israel speech". Many of the articles focused primarily on Ahmadinejad talking about destroying Israel and video showed his speeches with subtitles reading "death to Israel" and "death to America".
Next I searched some news sources that weren't so pro-western media like Al Jazeera. As i searched their database for the same thing, "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad destroy israel speech", not a single item came up. My next source was actually text of Ahmadinejad. I read through some of his speeches and found nothing that directly of the destrucion of israel through fighting or bloodshed.
This was exactly my brother's point. Ahmadinejad used frases like "wipe Israel and the Zionist regime from the pages of time" or "remove Israel from the world map." Ahmadinejad uses the past Iranian dictatorship regime of the Ayatollah as an example. Just as the old Iranian regime was replace or removed by another governement, so should the Zionist regime in Israel be replaced by another governement.
In recent class discussions of Comms 239 we have talked about the loss of credibility of the Media in the U.S. I realize that this is only one case, but now i understand little better why the media is viewed as less credible.
Links to Ahmadinejad's speeches:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/weekinreview/30iran.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6107339
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2009/04/21/full-text-of-president-ahmadinejads-remarks-at-un-conference-on-racism/
Should the United States be the watchdog of the world? I don't believe its necessarily the duty of America to regulate the affairs of all other countries.
ReplyDeleteNeedless to say, we act like it. We dictate news how we would like to perceive it, so we can rationalize invention if and when it happens.
I'm all for America, but sometimes revolutions must occur for progression. Good post man.