While talking heads on satellite TV have been demonizing Palestinians around the clock, social media have been filled with rumors including that Palestinians want to occupy the Sinai peninsula. Many are as familiar as they are absurd: that the nearly 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza are causing shortages for Egypt’s population of 83 million by siphoning off food, fuel and medicines. The rumors were undoubtedly fed when, on 17 June, weeks before the ouster of Morsi, ONtv broadcast unsubstantiated press reports that Hamas had sent 3,000 troops into Egypt to support President Morsi. Such wild claims have been used to justify Egypt’s efforts to destroy the tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, a lifeline for Palestinians in Gaza amid the intense Israeli siege. False reports planted in the press travel quickly, as when, for example, The Times of Israel picked up a report from the London-based, Saudi-funded Arabic daily Al-Hayat citing an Egyptian “security official” who claimed that the Egyptian army had killed some 200 gunmen in Sinai, including 32 from Hamas. In that, case, at least, there was a firm denial from Israeli, Egyptian and Palestinian officials (“Officials on all sides deny report that Egypt killed 32 Hamas fighters in Sinai,” 11 July). More often, however, such claims have gone unchallenged, as when Major General Osama Askar, commander of the Egyptian military’s Third Army, claimed on 18 July that his forces had captured 19 Grad rockets belonging to the military wing of Hamas on the Cairo-Suez highway. They were, he said, destined for Cairo “to help the Muslim Brotherhood.” The “captured rockets,” Askar asserted, “are capable of destroying an entire neighborhood which indicates that they were on their way to be used in terrorist attacks against the Egyptian people” (“Third Army Commander: Hamas rockets captured in Suez capable of destroying entire neighborhood,” al-Dustour (Cairo), 17 July [Arabic]). Such lurid tales about Hamas are given credence because, although organizationally separate, Hamas grew ideologically out of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is therefore presented as natural that Hamas would come to the rescue of its mother organization. The propagandists also draw parallels with Hamas’ rise to political power. Although Hamas won the majority of seats in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, it was by force of arms in 2007 that it secured its position in Gaza against the rival Fatah forces which would not cede power. Egyptian media are telling audiences that this is the model the Muslim Brotherhood “terrorists” plan to follow. These same propagandists consistently forget to mention that Morsi’s policies towards Hamas and the Palestinians in Gaza did not differ in substance from Hosni Mubarak’s. electronicintifada.net/content/why-are-egyptian-media-demonizing-palestinians/12632
Posted on: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 00:41:39 +0000
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