Unethical new media and programming the polls: switching Palestine’s name to Israel / Iqbal Tamimi

[OIPWHR-M.T.]

Looking at every website where one has to choose the category of naming a country for any reason whatsoever to be redirected to the next stage of service, one finds Israel is enlisted but no mention of Palestine. This deprives us Palestinians from our freedom of choice and expression when we are forced to choose the box that is nearest to the geographical area, thus forcing us to tick the box that says we are from Israel instead of Palestine since there is no box for Palestine, this has serious implications and outcomes on research especially when participating in online polls, which reflects a hugely distorted views that hardly makes sense.Knowing the fact that Palestine has been called with its name for at least a couple of thousands of years, and the same geographical area turned to be called Israel only for the last 60 years or so, shows how the new media joins the conspiracy army that is distorting the facts and rewriting the history and misleading the coming generations while riding the academic horse.Even those who accepted the decision imposed by the west on the Arab leaders to accept the decision of calling part of Palestine as Israel, ignore the fact that the so called ‘Israel’ has refused to define its borders, and there is no definite area one can name ‘Israel’, and that the elasticised borders of this malignant cancer entity has been expanding since it was implanted in the heart of Palestine in 1948, hence when any resolution, decision, debate, article, or website says ‘ Israel’ no one can claim he knows where Israel’s borders exactly end, it is an ever inflating greedy state. Menahem Begin, an ex prime Minister of Israel once said “our boundaries are where our soldiers reached”, so I dare any of the so called media egg heads to show me a definite map of Israel that the so called state of ‘Israel’ would approve of.

This point is of extreme importance since such defined borders would lead to declaring the borders of what is left of Palestine, thus it can be called the West Bank, or declare the validity of the equation that says (Palestine – the stolen land = X), consequently X would be declared a constant and would be introduced to the choice lists of new media thus stopping the acts of history hijacking and information forgery.When I am asked to tick an online box to go to the next stage, I am FORCED to name my homeland as Israel otherwise I am not transferred to the next stage of service because this is the way online services are programmed. I will never call my home country Israhell, this might mean that I am breaking the rules if I do not fill the forms accordingly, or I might end up deprived of the service regardless of its nature being an application for a job or a simple request of a song. This is what I call manipulating the sleep walking people in the new media public sphere to give in to some group’s decision that there is no more a country called Palestine, and to give in to calling it Israel even though there is an unresolved dispute still going on for 60 years.Some would say that Arab leaders themselves accepted calling a certain area of Palestine as Israel as a small step on the way of taming us and as a compromise on the Arab leaders’ part to be granted the honour of joining the table of the grownups in UN or other international players’ committee. I would say sorry, you are talking about the same area that none of the 4.5 million Palestinian refugees in the Diaspora would accept calling Israel; and still call it the Palestinian occupied areas of 1948 because they dream of going back to their homes and properties or at least accept a compensation settlement.An important point to make here, that no Palestinian has chosen any Arab leader to represent him/ her, not even choosing the late leader Yasser Arafat through democratic procedures. No one has been granted guardianship over our votes or voices, and we never appointed any leader to speak on our behalf, but still the same hypocrite Western media which keeps howling about the dictatorships of Arab leaders rule and their lack of democracy tells the world that those same disrespected Arab leaders by the West are accepted to represent us at some conference and agreed on our behalf to downgrade the name of our homeland to be called Israel. Since when the Western media respects Arab leaders’ decisions or take what they say into consideration.Since we Palestinians never accepted calling our stolen home land as Israel, and since we have no democratic representation, and since there are two points of view to be taken into consideration; the Palestinian side of the story, and the Zionist side, and since this debate is not resolved yet, how on earth respected ethical media colleagues and journalistic bodies have chosen to call the same plot of land disputed upon as Israel. Doesn’t this reflect that media professionals are a heard led by the Zionists by the collar, or such trend shows lack of knowledge, professionalism, ethics or good judgement, or even worse that new media hooliganism is going on and not much can be done about such bullying methods because they are in control.As far as I know when two parties have a dispute over naming something, the media is supposed to be impartial until the point in dispute is resolved by looking in its tool box for a reasonable temporary solution this is what I call ethical journalism and making conscientious choices.