October 31, 2012 By Sami Kishawi

Effort can be appreciated. But when the effort is spent on lazy, privileged journalism that belittles a struggle and an entire population, that is when the effort needs to be stopped in its tracks and addressed.

+972 Magazine co-founder and contributor Yuval Ben-Ami recently published a piece recounting an evening he spent watching over Gaza’s skies as Israel shelled the territory from above and as Palestinian fighters returned fire, arguably in response to the four Gazans that had been killed earlier in the day.

He had bravely chosen to leave behind his cappuccino that morning and make his way from Tel Aviv to a kibbutz just beyond Sderot, about as close to Gaza’s border as a civilian could get.

There he joined a group of likeminded photographers hoping for the best shots. In essence, they were banking on human tragedy, a military assault, quite possibly the deaths of innocent civilians, to give them a photograph and a story they could use for their own personal gain.

They waited, “looking down at impoverished, futureless Gaza and at neglected southern Israel, secretly hoping for them to burn for our amusement,” Ben-Ami writes. It is a chilling sentence. 

What is worse, though, is that this problematic language, its self-righteous tone, and its patronizing attitude toward Palestinians is reflected in virtually every letter of every word of every sentence in this piece.

One can easily — word emphasis: easily — make the argument that this privileged and rather offensive reportage is common to +972, because it is. But Ben-Ami has provided us with an excellent example and that is what we will examine for the time being.

Language and the festival of oppression

Ben-Ami’s narration of “life & culture”, as the piece is so inappropriately categorized, is rife with words and phrases downplaying the occupation and seemingly touting Israel’s aggression in Gaza as a festive thing.

It begins in the title: “The beautiful south: An afternoon in the Gazan firing range”. It takes a little over one second to get over the nonsensical juxtaposition before the issue of word choice resurfaces.

What exactly is a firing range? It is a place where people go to fire weapons in a safe and controlled environment, a place designed so that nobody gets hurt and nobody’s life is on the line. People visit firing ranges for practice, for a fun hangout, or even to boast about shooting off a round of slugs.

Gaza’s reality is far from a firing range, aside form the fact that it too is controlled to every possible extent. But this control isn’t meant for safety. There is nothing safe about a shell exploding over Gazan heads, like the one Ben-Ami captured falling over Beit Hanoun. There is nothing fun about a missile landing in a densely populated city already coping with the effects of a crippling siege. People do get hurt and people do die.

And then there are the “fireworks” that Ben-Ami is ready to see: the night shillings and the night shootings that come with aerial flybys and broken sound barriers. But in the clear, away from the carnage that can potentially befall the Gaza Strip every day it remains under Israel’s occupation, are Ben-Ami and his colleagues at +972 who seem more concerned with admiring the lights than condemning the deeds behind them.

Remember, Ben-Ami looks “down” at a Gaza he defines as “impoverished” and “futureless”.

Maybe he is simply trying to crudely emphasize his privileged point of view. In the most physical sense, if a Palestinian were to stand as close to the border as he can, the Palestinian would certainly be sniped or arrested. But his privileged reportage relies heavily on a very skewed and clearly derogatory perception of Gaza.

More here:  http://smpalestine.com/2012/10/31/when-972s-privileged-journalism-b...