Flotilla or no Flotilla
Two
I have been constantly asked why I choose to write this blog in English and for a while I was at loss to answer this question, mainly because I knew many people around would prefer to read Arabic. But of course it is a matter of realising one’s audience – as media and marketing freak specialists would constantly remind their brands at every chance possible.
I also wonder to a similar extent, why most of the news that concern issues such as that related to the Lebanese Flotilla are mostly reported either by Israeli media or citing Israeli media.
As pointed out in the previous article, 7 out of 10 search results on Google for “Lebanese Flotilla” were against the convoy. 6 out of those were Israeli sources (and here I am only citing the English search results) and one is sourced to YaLibnan.com, a website that apparently supports the 14th of March movement in Lebanon, whose skepticism of the Hizobllah arms (to put it in a mild way) has been used by many to fuel claims of Hizbollah terrorist ties – but that is another episode of the Lebanese history that is long to relate in this article.
Anyhow, the value of this source is that it is in English, as are a couple more that represent the same movement. Meanwhile, other local sources remain limited to Arabic and are therefore of no use to international media as well as to readers, perhaps even including the Turkish activists who were on Mavi Marmara.
But English is not its only advantage. It is written in a neutral way that is seldom found in pro-Palestine sources from the region, which mostly employ an emotional, nationlalistic and, most importantly, a religious tone (this is something I will revisit in my next article in this sequence).
Not to forget, another and extremely important factor for the success of those sources is the fact that they are online. Definitely, it is not very clear to many Lebanese why being online and in English could be of any use. Afterall, the population, similar to populations in Egypt or Saudi Arabia but unlike citizens of the United Arab Emirates, for example, strongly prefer to read in Arabic whether it were offline or online. In addition, the online penetration in Lebanon is considerably low compared to other countries in the region, where DSL has only been introduced in recent years, and where telecommunications infrastructure is weak and costs of consumption still comparatively high. What use is English online content, then? Well, that is the content that forms the source of information for audiences outside the region, and those are primarily the ones who do not understand the dynamics of the internal conflicts in Lebanon which definitely affect a much bigger issue – that of the identity of Hizbollah and its link to resistance against Israeli occupation before the year 2000. And here to cite an example, I recall the incident when in July 2006, a German colleague of mine exclaimed that she had always thought that Palestinians were the ones who occupied Israel. No! Never underestimate those people and say these are the uneducated lot! People are not stupid, but they just happen to read whatever information lies before their eyes, and someone needs to put it there.
On a separate note, I hope that no one under-estimates the genre of the news that is reported – in Arabic – on websites such as MBC.net. Although very scandalous in style, this website attracts a considerable audience, who is mainly youth. Now this website has reported yesterday that Haifa Wehbe, the famous Lebanese singer/sex idol, was denied permission to board the Lebanese Flitilla Miriam by Hizbollah authorities.
(to be continued)
