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this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
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Why are Hamas suddenly the good guys? Cause you Americans need a black and white situation? Cause your media told you they're not terrorists after decades of telling you they are?
A) No one is saying Hamas are the good guys. B) Both major parties support Israel, and the American media is highly deferential towards government officials/pundits who present a pro-Israeli narrative. The idea that our media is presenting a pro-Hamas narrative is laughably out of touch with reality.
I mean, one could argue that multi billion dollar American social media companies are also American media. And I definitely think 90%+ of people in North America with a newly found strong opinion about Israel/Palestine got this new position from Instagram posts and similar.
It's actually pretty interesting for anyone who has been following Israel/Palestine for the last few decades to watch as people move through the stages of discovering new bits of the history...and then posting about it the entire time as if they are experts with super valuable information to share. Even when they are contradicting their own post from like 2 days before.
Well, I think that if he meant social media, he would have said, "social media," not, "your media." I don't want to speak for other North American countries, but I think there has been a pretty seismic shift in how Americans look at the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Our schools do not educate people on the history of the region properly; I made it through a college level course on Middle East history that didn't mention the Nakba. On top of that, Israel's shift to the far right under Netanyahu happened around the same time as the War on Terror, so America was reaching peak Islamophobia at anti-Arab sentiment as the conditions for Palestinians was getting progressively worse.
What's changed is that we've seen the War in Terror turn into an unmitigated disaster. So now, when Americans see an unprecedented level of destruction in Gaza, and here our media talking about how Israel is waging a war on terrorists, we're far less sympathetic to that kind of rhetoric. I think a lot of people are getting information regarding Israel/Palestine for the first time through social media, but I think that a lot of Americans' newfound opinions reflect a deeper cultural shift than just seeing Instagram posts.