This is why I’m rather disturbed, for instance, by Arab popular support for certain resistance tactics that clearly do not benefit the population of those countries at large, like suicide bombings. At the same time, I think that might be the case with a lot of international opposition to the Iraq war, where it is motivated more by a theoretical opposition to invasion and occupation rather than actual concern for the people under occupation.

I think the way the media works is largely at fault here, because it tends to lose sight of the bigger picture: the big deal in Israel/Palestine is not suicide bombings or Israeli military operations, but that the occupation has to come to an end. Similarly, the big deal in Iraq is not Fallujah or even the murder of Margaret Hassan, but that a war that should not have been waged has led to a situation where civil war and chaos are just on the horizon. In the first case, there is a clear solution but unwilling belligerents, in the second, we’re in a deep, probably inextricable mess. But we tend to get lost in the day-to-day details.

I’ve noticed the same thing about Palestine - and I’ve also noticed that the iconization of Palestinians in the Arab (and some Western) media can be as dehumanizing as the demonization of them in the American media. Either way, they’re reduced to symbols rather than actual people.