How does the media have an impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Answer 1

The media has quite a significant impact on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. This impact has been felt in several major ways.

1) Knowledge of the Conflict: It is on account of media reporting that many more people are aware of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict than any of the other major Middle Eastern Conflicts, even though many have been more significantly bloody such as the Kurdish Wars for Independence and subsequent massacres, the Lebanese Civil War, the Libyan-Egyptian War of the 1980s, the current fleeing of the Assyrians in Iraq, and the current Yemeni and Bahraini Civilian Repressions.

Media reporting seems very interested in this particular Middle Eastern Conflict and as result, people have heard of it.

2) Reinforcing Biased Views: The Media in recent years has become more and more one-sided, where each network caters to a pre-existing opinion and attempts to buttress that opinion. This further entrenches individuals' biased and uncompromising position helping to facilitate further conflict and negotiations failure.

3) Exaggeration of Conflict: While the suffering of Israelis and Palestinians is very real, the media chooses to focus on the death and destruction far more often than it does on the much more commonplace peaceful relations between average Israelis and Palestinians. The bottom line is that no news-watcher wants to see a cover-story of "Young Palestinian Girl goes to Israeli Mall and buys a beautiful headscarf on sale!"