At the end of June I wrote a letter about what it’s like to drive in Palestine, and how too often it turns into situations of life or death. A couple weeks later, we released a video I recorded of the same incident I described in the letter, where my friends and I were almost shot by Israeli soldiers while driving home from an assignment.
As is the case with most of the videos we post on social media, we’re used to the “trolls” in the comments: people who like to spam us with emojis of Israeli flags, or engage in outright racism and vitriol towards Palestinians and their supporters. One of the most common sights in our comment sections is usually Israelis and Zionists claiming that we are promoting “fake news.”
In our line of business, it’s expected. When much of the world, along with the mainstream media, do not believe Palestinians have a right to exist, let alone a right to tell their own stories, spreading the news and stories about Israeli apartheid and occupation isn’t always received well.
So, with years of experience of having my own reporting and the work of our organization being called into question, I should have been prepared for the onslaught of comments saying that my story of coming close to being shot by Israeli soldiers while driving, was fake. I should have been prepared, but unfortunately, I was not.
I was surprised, shocked actually, by the number of comments calling me a liar, saying the video was staged, and that it wasn’t proof that anything happened since I didn’t actually film the exact moment that the soldiers held their guns up at us. One person called it “convenient” that I just “happened” to drop my phone down at the moment we slammed on the brakes. Another said they had a hard time believing us, given how “Palestinian media like to either hide certain details or straight up lie.”
In my video, I mentioned the dozens of Palestinians who have been killed while driving over the years. One commenter wrote: “Meanwhile no details on why those people got killed. I’m guessing most were up to no good.”
After years of being on social media and sharing my work on Palestine, I’ve mostly learned to avoid reading the comments in order to preserve my own peace of mind. But this time around, the comments didn’t bother me because they were calling me a liar or denying the reality of what had happened to me.
It was upsetting because it was another reminder of how easily Palestinian stories are disregarded as fake news, or immediately brushed off as another attempt by “Pallywood” to defame Israel. No matter how many times the same exact thing happens to different people across different parts of Palestine, it’s brushed off as a one-off or as a lie by the Palestinians rather than being looked at as a worrying trend, or moreso, a policy on an entire government and army’s part.
It was a reminder that every day Palestinians are killed and injured, their land and homes are being stolen from them, and they are being forced out of their own homeland. And that despite decades of those stories being told and documented in all different formats and languages, some people are still making the conscious choice not only not to listen but to deny reality.
We are living in a reality where, while public opinion towards Israel is surely shifting more and more in favor of Palestinians and their struggle, Palestinians’ lived reality is still very much being denied. A Palestinian could probably film themselves being attacked or shot at, and people would still call into question whether the Palestinian was really at fault. It is upsetting and disheartening but also a reminder of all the work that still needs to be done.
There are close similarities with social and corporate media responses to repeated police violence against working-class people in the USA and here in the UK. Disbelief in the face of clear evidence; blaming the victims (“I’m guessing most were up to no good” is a typical assertion); upholding the rights of the police to attack anyone they deem suspicious… This shows the need for international working class solidarity to defend ourselves against state violence and repression, whether it is through the IDF in Palestine or the police in the USA and UK.
It is not surprising at all, people are blinded by their bias.
People may need to see some of the cellphone footage that is shared in the Telegram groups – outright, blatant murder – in order to believe it is genuine…but you know what, they’d just pivot to their next flaccid defense and say it was somehow justified.