INTRODUCTION TO MEDIA: REFLECTIONS

The pages included in this section have been generated by the effort to understand the larger implications of Pallywood and how it could come about – MEDIA: THE PROBLEM. These pages attempt to define and clarify background issues that have contributed to the kind of profound misunderstanding that Pallywood’s success illustrates. Some of these issues apply across the boards to any major topic that the Second Draft might tackle: Civil Society, Cognitive Egocentrism, Game Theory, Moral Equivalence, Self Criticism. Others concern specifically the issues surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict: Demopaths and their Dupes, Eurabia, Islamophobia, Judeophobia, Palestinian Suffering, and Paradigms.

The broader issue concerns the cultural encounter between media from civil societies and media from societies that still play be pre-modern rules, or what we are calling prime divider societies. Here we suggest that without understanding some basic attitudinal and emotional orientations of these two kinds of culture, one cannot navigate the culture clash in the midst of which, whether we like it or not, we now find ourselves. Some of these entries introduce significantly different definitions from current usage (civil society, anti-Semitism, game theory), some new terminology (demopath, prime divider), some merely lay out the issues (Islamophobia, moral equivalence, self-criticism). In all cases we invite further comment, further links to valuable and/or illustrative articles, criticism as well as concord.

In every case we have tried not to step on too many of the toes of political correctness. There is a real decency to some political correctness that should be honored. Just because we allow people to say anything, hardly means that we have to approve it. But we have found that we cannot escape setting off some politically correct land-mines, partly because it has been a rigid and misguided application of some politically correct principles that has created our current dilemma. We count on your reading to be fair and impartial, not prejudiced by “politically correct” radar.

We invite you to visit these various pages in whatever order and speed you’d like. We think that they will help inform the conversation we hope takes place at the pages of MEDIA: REFORM