Daily Times

A slingshot or catapult does not have an outreach of more than a few metres. But that is not the case of a slingshot in the hands of a Palestinian, pulled back in the face of Israeli soldiers — armed from head to toe — or tanks rumbling through the rubble of the houses they have brought down. The stones slung from this slingshot put into question the many treaties of tyranny the world powers have collared the Palestinians to have with Israel, all billed as aiming to achieve sustainable peace in the world.

These slingshots in the hands of masked men running ahead of Israeli army tanks have been a permanent feature in the media since the year 2000, when the second intifada was launched. I remember international news agencies reported those days gory and macabre details of the bulldozing and bombing of Palestinian residential compounds, targeting of hospitals running short of space to take in the injured and keep the dead and flooding of streets with mourners carrying coffins of mostly babies and women every day. Like an ugly tumour protruding out of the skin, embedded in the news and photos was a qualification that Israelis were doing it all in reaction to a certain act of violence or to hunt down a certain ‘terrorist’ holed up in the residential compounds.

This tumour had always been a painful spot to edit even for copy editors of countries like Pakistan since laws in the countries of origin of these international news agencies do not permit their police to take out an escaping murderer if they can catch him or her without firing a shot. At that time, the internet was not readily available in Pakistan. Therefore, the audience was to count heavily on mainstream international sources of news. As scenes of the streets of the Gaza Strip and settled areas in the West Bank were disturbing for the human conscience, the demand for information skyrocketed. The national media, mostly print, not having the resources to hire correspondents in the conflict zone, in-depth reports of some on-ground writers associated with international media like Robert Fisk were borrowed and sometimes translated into Urdu for a local audience.

Finding room to slither created by this high demand for information and its low supply, religious-political orators flexed their rhetorical muscles, usually after midday prayers on Fridays and pulled large rallies, enough cause for them to collect social capital and sacrificial hides for years. What ought to have been a just cause for protection of human rights degenerated into outright anti-Semitism, narcissism, xenophobia and incitement to violence. Divine verses were invoked to fan hatred against Jews and Christians and, by inference, against Hindus and long persecuted communities.

The photos of slingshots, masked men and tanks, all the same, became typical of a Palestinian street and a permanent feature over years in the international media. Unknowingly, the international media transformed this persistent image from a distant news item into a subtle cultural object. Journalists, by the very nature of their job, tend to see developments in a linear format and seldom think that the sociology of the media defines that it perform many functions simultaneously.

One of the many functions that the media performs simultaneously is the creation of symbols, which, in the eyes of anthropologist Kamran Khosa, are larger than life. Unlike in the year 2000, we now have a very vibrant electronic media. Plus the internet has unlocked streams of information for a Pakistani audience. Now they can see how the Israeli police killed an unarmed Palestinian teenage girl while she held up her arms in the air to show that she was bearing no knife. When the international media is telling us that in a few days Israel has shot down over 40 Palestinians in response to knife attacks that killed eight Israelis, social networking sites show us a female Israeli analyst saying, “Israel protects its children with its missiles while Palestinians protect their missiles with their children.” Nothing short of a confession to baby killing, this statement does not and will not go away from the memories of the cyber generation easily.

Symbols go beyond religions and regions. It is not about anti-Semitism or narcissism anymore. Equally vibrant on social media is the move against the planned beheading and crucifixion of Ali Mohammad Al-Nimr by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Or for that matter the detention of Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian in Iran on highly dubious espionage charges.

Symbols that the media create go down deep into the culture of a society where they live long. The striped scarves that the carriers of slingshots wear have become part of fashion for men and women here. In his acclaimed novel The Kite Runner, Khalid Hosseini gives a slingshot in the hands of a Hazara boy that he uses to escape the Taliban. Politicians from mainstream parties referred to the slingshots as symbols of courage in their speeches to motivate their workers for change.

It is only a matter of time before these resistance symbols will be used in Pakistani dramas and movies. Israel may have been occupying more and more Palestinian land, but it is losing ground in the collective human conscience. It may have international media players on its side churning out movie upon movie on the horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust, but ignoring the genocide of the Palestinians, it has opted for high walls, barbed wire, tanks and guns as a symbol of its existence. Palestinians may not have money to make movies or buy any arms to defend themselves against these high walls, barbed wires, tanks and guns, but their slingshots have become a symbol of resilience and resistance the world over.

The writer is a PhD candidate in media studies and can be contacted at hassan.shehzad@iiu.edu.pk