Note: This blog draws in part on my experiences and observations interviewing political figures, writers, and analysts for "The Campbell Conversations" on WRVO. To hear past interviews I refer to in these posts, please go to the show's website. The views expressed here are solely my own, and do not represent Syracuse University, the Campbell Institute, or the WRVO Stations.


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Monday, November 15, 2010

The Future of Israel-Palestine and the Future of Barack Obama

Check out the upcoming Campbell Conversation interview with Middle East and Islamic Affairs analyst Roger Hardy.  I was struck by the central importance Hardy placed on progress in the Israel-Palestine conflict for President Obama's standing and success in the Muslim world, even in nations like Indonesia.  I think we have tended to lose sight of this factor in the focus on Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention Pakistan and Iran.  Hardy also makes some provocative observations about the depth of Obama's challenges in these areas, and the sources of the administration's own ambivalence.

My conversation with Hardy also brought me back to one of the most vivid "Ah-ha" moments from my first summer working in London.  The difference between the way Europe views the Israel-Palestine conflict and the way it's viewed in the U.S. is so stark as to be disorienting to an American living abroad for the first time, and can't be fully appreciated until you actually live in a different country.  It quickly becomes clear just how much of an outlier we are among our Western peer nations on this issue.  I also happened to be in London this past spring when the Israeli raid on the Gaza flotilla occurred, and the experience repeated itself.  The reported facts were largely the same on both sides of the Atlantic, but the framing and the feeling of the media treatment were completely different.  This is not to suggest that we have it wrong, but it's an instance of "American exceptionalism" we may be less aware of than, say, our comparatively stronger endorsement of market capitalism.

3 comments:

LisaMJ said...

I look forward to listening to that conversation. I've also seen the phenomena you describe about the new coverage to some degree by watching BBC News (both on PBS and on the BBC America channel) and more recently by watching Al Jazera English. The POV is definitely different from what you get by watching/reading mainstream US outlets and I personally felt more outrage after the Gaza incident you mentioned after seeing it covered by the BBC than I think I would have if I was just relying on NPR and the Washington Post and a few other sources like I used to.

Based on what I've seen, it seems to me that most Europeans are much more pro-Palestinian and we are much more pro-Israeli.

Ellen said...

The way that the American media frames Israel-Palestine is not necessarily what Americans really feel (as I'm sure you're aware). I felt that the Gaza flotilla raid even got a slightly different treatment in the U.S. media than usual, so things seem to be changing. For the first time, I got the whiff from mainstream U.S. media coverage that Israel sort of unambiguously blew it that time. That was new.

Grant Reeher said...

Interesting Ellen, thanks. In Britain, the tone was more of "here they go again."