photo courtesy of A. Bishara

This summer I’m doing interviews with Palestinian journalists and refugees in which I ask them to interpret and critique U.S. news articles. Why, you might ask, did I choose journalists and refugees as my commentators? Why didn’t I try to obtain a broader cross-section of Palestinian society?

In looking for Palestinian commentary on U.S. news articles, I knew that I couldn’t find one Palestinian voice that would represent all Palestinians. Not all Palestinians would respond to an article in the same way. Instead, I wanted to select types of people whose voices tend to be excluded not only by U.S. media, but also by their own political processes, like those of the less-than-democratic Palestinian Authority.

Refugees certainly fit this bill. Palestinian refugees were forced to leave their home villages and cities in 1948. Since then, Israel has refused to allow them to return to those homes. A United Nations agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), set up temporary houses for them in dozens of camps in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. Though refugees share a common claim to their right to return to their home villages, on a practical level, they have fared differently in each location.

In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, refugees are constrained in the same ways as non-refugees by the Israeli military occupation. However, refugee camps are distinct communities, physically set apart from other neighborhoods. For example, you know you are entering a refugee camp because the streets are narrower. Refugees are also slightly poorer than the rest of the Palestinian population. Moreover, for decades refugee camps have led challenges to Israeli occupation. This has made refugees a significant political group in Palestinian society.

Yet sympathetic U.S. human interest stories about Palestinians often report on middle class or wealthy Palestinians who work in computer technology, run fancy restaurants, or open cinemas. If we do not attend to the voices of other Palestinians, we will exclude an important part of Palestinian society from political dialogues in the news.

My reasons for asking journalists to comment on articles are a bit different. This is a part of a larger project in which I study how Palestinian journalists contribute to the production of U.S. news. Palestinians work as reporters, producers, fixers, and photojournalists for U.S. news organizations. Photojournalists and reporters gather information to be shaped by writers and editors. Fixers and producers guide foreign correspondents to information. Rarely, however, do these Palestinian journalists select a feature story and write it exactly as they would like.

So with this project, I wanted to give them the opportunity to comment on stories that they might have worked on, but may not have seen in their final forms. I also wanted to talk to journalists because I presumed their expertise on the craft of reporting would allow them to make specific critiques, but also be sympathetic to the challenges of this work.

In my interviews, I’ve found a lot of diversity within the refugee and journalist groups themselves. One refugee had the sharp critical eye I expected from journalists due to his frequent attendance at protests. [Just from the descriptions and quotes in an article on a demonstration, he surmised that the journalist made the report while standing with the Israeli commmander repressing the protest, rather than with the protesters]. One journalist was harshly critical of an article by a Palestinian journalist while another embraced it – but neither referred to technical aspects of the reporting, like where the journalist might have been positioned or whether the journalist should have spoken to different sources.

Even when people were critical of an article, they presented different reasonings. For example, an article described a new and expensive restaurant as evidence that the Ramallah economy was picking up. One journalist’s opinion was that such restaurants were not where most Palestinians liked to have fun. Rather, she and her friends liked to go to coffeehouses. Also, they socialized during the day, not at night. One refugee commented that this restaurant in particular was only for the wealthy. If he wanted to write an article about whether or not the Palestinian economy was picking up, he’d talk to vegetable sellers, rather than restauranteurs, since, after all, everybody buys vegetables. This rich variety of responses, I thought, was one reason to continue these kinds of conversations.

photo courtesy of Amahl Bishara

This summer, after two years away, I’m back in my old field site, far from the Massachusetts university where I’ve just completed my first year of teaching.  On the ride from Tel Aviv airport to Jerusalem, I take an informal census of the roadside wildflowers as I try to avoid the inevitable politics of the shared taxicab.  Attempting to delay my entrée into politics proves futile, though.  Soon the driver tells me that he cannot deposit me at the Arab hotel I have chosen for its (relative) centrality & neutrality, due to a few inexplicably blocked roads severing the main route from predominantly Jewish West Jerusalem to predominantly Arab East Jerusalem.

A few taxicabs later, I arrive at the apartment my husband has found for us, and we receive visitors in twos and threes.  I relish seeing how the children have grown and wistfully await longer conversations with these dear friends.  A few days later, I re-connect with an associate who has not only an arrangement with an office store for cheap copying, but also a car to take me to the store.  How much more convenient fieldwork is the second time around!  After a few minutes of clicking-churning copy machine sounds that dare me to dance like Bjork in Dancer in the Dark, my fieldwork is on its way.

The copies are integral to my fieldwork.  This summer, I’m asking Palestinians to read and critique translated U.S. news articles from the second Intifada, a Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that began in 2000.  For example, I might ask a Palestinian to consider whether an article about the separation wall that Israel built in the West Bank represents the topic thoroughly and accurately from the perspective of someone who lives next to that wall.  I’ll also ask what Palestinians think these articles might tell U.S. audiences, correctly or incorrectly, about Palestinian society as a whole.

This project stems from a tradition of using anthropological films and writings to create dialogues with those in the field.  Usually, anthropologists write or make films about a select group of people in a field site and they have the last word on how and what is written or filmed. By conducting interviews with people in the field about these anthropological writings or films, though, an anthropologist can give those people the chance to respond to the anthropologist’s ideas, or to actively help produce those ideas.

The French documentary film Jaguar (1967), by French anthropologist Jean Rouch, is an example of such a dialogue.  It is about African labor migration and features three men who traveled to the coast for work.  Its narration was recorded by the three men while watching a silent, rough cut of the film.  Thus, while Rouch filmed and edited the footage, the film’s subjects gave it its narration.  This gives these labor migrants the chance to comment on their own society and the film itself.  However, although their voiceover is an integral part of the film, Rouch still made the final decisions about the film.  The decision to use such narration, after all, suited his ideas as an anthropologist and filmmaker about “shared anthropology,” or collaboration between anthropologists and their subjects.  In my case, I’m gathering Palestinians’ ideas about U.S. news articles – but in the end, I’ll write up the results of the interviews, and I’ll select the critiques I find most noteworthy.

Bringing U.S. news to Palestinians may not seem like a revolutionary idea in our era of fast, online media. But the world is still not as “flat” as some might presume.  Even though many Palestinians are concerned with representations of them in U.S. media, most do not read U.S. news, partly because of language barriers, and partly because they have their own media to attend to.

The last few years, I have been studying how U.S. journalism and Palestinian politics influence each other.  Generally, U.S. journalists and Palestinians interact at the beginning of writing a news article.  U.S. journalists seek out quotes from officials, activists, parents, farmers.  Then, although these Palestinians’ words are transported all over the world, they tend not to come home to roost.  In gathering Palestinian interpretations of U.S. news – and publishing their interpretations and critiques in the United States – I aim to give Palestinians the chance to reply to what U.S. newspapers say about them.  Is anger the best way to describe how Palestinians felt at Arafat’s funeral? How will Palestinians respond to a lyrical article about kite flying that may not make its politics front and center?  This summer, I’m aiming to find out.

This research was funded by the Tufts University Faculty Research Fund.