Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: I lied , here is the LAST LAST one on this -- What you see on CNN is not what you thought -- BBC on CNN
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 00:41:30 -0400
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 23:54:22 -0400 To: farber () cis upenn edu CC: Eric Rosenthal <eric () creative-technology net>, Shawn Liu <zabokoch () jiayo net> On Sep 19, David Farber wrote: > > >Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 13:54:11 -0400 > >From: Eric Rosenthal <eric () creative-technology net> > >> > >>[...] > >>Well, THOSE IMAGES WERE SHOT BACK IN 1991!!! Those are images of > >>Palestinians celebrating the invasion of Kuwait! t's simply > >>unacceptable that a super-power of communications as CNN uses > >>images which do not correspond to the reality in talking about so > >>serious of an issue. > >>[...] > >>It's simply irresponsible to show images such as those. Hello. Quick background -- I'm just a student trying to finish my thesis which is one reason I cannot allow myself to be subscribed on this list. A friend forwarded this message to me, and I just thought I should not keep quiet on this one. So, in this email I try to avoid any *opinions*, and generally stay out of any political discussion. I just want to point out some facts, facts that I know first hand because I was in the army (in Israel) in 1988-1991. The CNN footage I saw included Palestinians in uniform shooting in the air and everyone being generally pretty happy. Maybe these are not the images in question but this is, in my opinion, one case where CNN did not do harm because this is the way things are. Now to the facts I do *know*: 1. First of all, in 1991 there weren't enough weapons in the Palestinian streets, and in fact, there were no (Palestinian) people in military uniform walking around. 2. One thing that the Palestinians did not care much about is the invasion of Kuwait. Back then, the celebrations were a response to Scud missiles hitting Tel-Aviv, and Americans/other forces in Saudi-Arabia. (If anyone's memory has faded, the Palestinians were clearly and publicly supporters of Saddam Husein.) 3. Another point -- the Palestinian people are not too fond of Americans (and again, I'm not getting into any discussion for reasons for this), burning an Israeli flag along an American flag is pretty common. If anyone has any illusions that the USA has become more popular lately, I can only say again that this is not the reality. 4. Finally, I don't know if Eric works at there, but if the BBC does have the exact same footage from 1991, then I'm sure that exposing such fraud done by CNN will be juicy enough that they will most likely do run a story on that. I expect them to have many reasons for exposing such a story and no reason to avoid it, and together with many people looking at CNN's broadcasts, I would expect this to come out by now. I don't think that it really matters whether the specific pictures that you saw on CNN were recent or 10 years old, because I *know* what the reality is. Still, if anyone is interested, I can ask friends in Israel (both Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs) if this is correct, just to be sure of things. Actually, I was surprised to see at least three people (Americans) being surprised about these images -- not only that I didn't think this is unusual, it was pretty obvious that such celebrations would start in the territories. And one last clarification: I do not think that this is any reason to hate Palestinians and Arabs, it is simply irrelevant. I face the plain reality that the feelings on the Palestinian street is one of not being fond of America, that nothing justifies celebrating the death of more than 5000 innocent people but that the Palestinian reaction is a reaction of masses that are not any meaningful indication, certainly not any cause for any reaction against people. -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://www.barzilay.org/ Maze is Life!
For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/
Current thread:
- IP: I lied , here is the LAST LAST one on this -- What you see on CNN is not what you thought -- BBC on CNN David Farber (Sep 19)