Rallies Cheering Osama bin Laden in Pakistan?

It boggles my mind that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict happening a thousand miles away from Pakistan has brought Pakistanis onto the street to cheer the very man who has inspired (if not directly orchestrated) around one hundred and fifty suicide attacks on Pakistanis in the past six years. That just doesn't make sense to me.

Reporting Biases

News in Dawn, the New York Times and the Guardian on the latest chapter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict really shows how subjective and partisan reporting can be.

All three papers give the number of Palestinian casualties in the first paragraph, putting it around 350, but the New York Times, in the very same breath clarifies that according to the UN only some 60 of those Palestinians were civilians. The Guardian mentions that in the third para while Dawn much later both emphasizing that these numbers are thought to be very conservative.

All three list the places Israelis attacked (the Islamic University, the Interior Ministry and the presidential guesthouse). The NYTimes is quick to explain that Israel considers these places Hamas' civic institutions. A strange assertion. I would say that the Interior Ministry in Gaza is Gazan's civi institution not just the Hamas'. The Guardian calls the Islamic University "the territory's main university and one with links to Hamas". It also lists the damage to laboratories in the university. Dawn just notes that the university is a "significant cultural symbol in Gaza".

Then NYTimes spends over a 100 words describing the Hamas rocketfire and each of the four killed Israelis. It also paints a vivid picture of "thousands of Israelis huddled in shelters". Dawn spends 25 words to say that two Israelis have been killed by rocketfire since Israeli attacks starts. It mentions that "Israel has said" that it has launched its attack because of intensifying rocketfiring but undercuts that assertion with a note in the same sentence about Israeli national elections approaching.

After describing the Israeli's plight, the NYTimes spends around 40 words describing the Palestinian's situation, but in that same paragraph, in the very next line starts to talk about how Hamas has been shooting Palestinians too on the charge that they were collaborators. It then spends a huge chunk of the article describing these executions by Hamas and only then describes civilian casualties of Israeli bombings. Dawn and the Guardian do not report any such killings by Hamas.

The NYTimes does not note Ban Ki-Moon's opposition to the Israeli attack at all while the Guardian quotes him extensively, including his condemnation of Israel's "excessive use of force".

There are  at least a dozen more smaller differences between the three articles but these in themselves make the NYTimes' pro-Israeli and Dawn and the Guardian's pro-Palestinian biases clear. I am sure there has been no falsification of information but the choices of inclusion, omission and organization make all the difference in giving these reports their slants.

Sitting in Karachi, I cannot really determine where the reality of things lies — between the poles of these three news reports or beyond them. And without wanting to spark off an epistemological controversy, I wonder whether the reality is entirely knowable at all. Perhaps, all that is needed of us news readers is the awareness that news outlets report not the reality of things but their version of reality, seen consciously or subconsciously, through the filter of their biases.

Palestine and Israel

Once again, Israel and Palestine's uneasy truce has fallen apart and innocent civilians on both sides are paying with their lives. Four Israelis, 3 of whom were civilians, and 365 Palestinians, 60 of whom were civilians, lost their lives in the violence. It is a gruesome reminder that one of the gravest conflicts of our times is still very much alive and destroying the lives of many, many innocent people on both sides.

Both the Jewish and Islamic traditions subscribe to an eye for an eye justice. But Israeli response to Hamas rocket-firing has been disproportionate. 365 lives for 4. According to their own traditions, that leaves them with a debit of 361.

But violence cannot be stopped by more violence. It is the hard truth that people and governments of our times are yet to learn. But even in today's extremely grim situation, I find myself sincerely hoping – against all hope – for a swift resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and for lasting peace in the Middle East.

Admission is the First Step

Zardari was very impressive in his address at the UN Interfaith Conference. Despite spending half the speech effusively praising the Saudi King, he did admit – though very briefly – that Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are both serious problems that need to be dealt with. His exact words were:

"Bigotry manifested in Islamophobia and anti-Semitism must be combatted."

Yes, he mentioned anti-Semitism only once, but implicit in the lumping together of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism was the idea that they are two sides of the same coin. The West's Islamophobia and the Muslim world's anti-Semitism are both a result of grievously mishandled geopolitics in the absence of meaningful people to people interaction.

Muslim anti-Semitism is based solely on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Muslims never had anything against the Jewish faith. In fact, while anti-Semitism raged in Europe and America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Muslim world gave protection to Jews. Now, however, Jew is a dirty word in places like Pakistan. Synagogues have been burnt down in Karachi, the old Jewish cemetery desecrated and Jews – South Asian Jews mind you – have been run out of the country. Pakistani hatred of Jews is blind and overwhelming and rests on the false premise that Israel and individual Jews are the same.

The West's Islamophobia rests on the same misconception: the Muslim terrorists and the rest of the Muslim world are the same. Hate crimes against Muslims in America and Europe have been on the increase. In the US presidential elections, the label of Muslim was used almost as a slur on Obama, and the most revealing thing about it was that his Muslim middle name, Hussein, was a big concern for Americans.

Yet Americans acknowledge their problem and many in the liberal media try to fight Islamophobia. But in Pakistan, anti-Semitism has never been challenged by the media, intellectuals or politicians. Zardari's admission of the problem is a first step. His proposed solution, which followed the admission also seems to be in the right direction:

"Dialogue, and not discord, between civilizations and faiths must be encouraged... Let us not isolate people, let us engage people."

It is vague but it is something. Of course it would have been infinitely better if Zardari had said this to the Pakistani people and not a bunch of diplomats and world leaders and talked a little more specifically and extensively about anti-Semitism. There is a rumor that he might meet Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres at one of the dinners. I for one hope he does. I hope that Pakistanis are allowed to go to Israel and Israelis allowed to come to Pakistan. Getting to know each other as human beings as opposed to demonic caricatures will only further the mission for tolerance for which all these distinguished persons have gathered at the UN this week.