COMMENTARY: By Jason Brooke
1news tonight featured a report on the War in Ukraine. The reporter, a foreign war correspondent, explained to viewers how Ukrainian soldiers were increasingly using long-range high-tech drones to target Russian infrastructure.
Now while not explicitly stated, the narrative being delivered through our particularly “Western-centric” media lens is that Ukrainians are legitimately resisting and defending their homeland from an evil invader.
While for some this narrative may be contentious, what’s interesting is when you apply this same narrative to the people of Palestine, Lebanon and Iran. Because when we apply these same values of “legitimate resistance” and self-defence of homeland in the context of Palestine or Lebanon or Iran, we see the contradiction of Western exceptionalism.
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For Palestinians, Lebanese and Iranian people, the rules around what constitutes legitimate resistance — whether militarily or otherwise — do not apply. At least they do not apply within the framework of the Western narrative, the narrative that’s seemingly ever-present in our mainstream media institutions like 1news.
There is another narrative of course, one whose legitimacy is not tied to the notion of Western exceptionalism. This narrative points out the hypocrisy of a Western exceptionalism which assumes itself as the sole determinant in defining what is or isn’t “legitimate” resistance.
Many journalists from the Middle East such as the Palestinian author Mohammed El-Kurd in his recent book Perfect Victims: And The Politics Of Appeal describe this “contradiction” in great detail.
Yet his and the many other voices which could help our comprehension of what is happening in places like Palestine, Gaza, Tehran and Southern Lebanon are consistently — and some might argue deliberately — overlooked.
Jason Brooke is a New Zealand hospital worker and activist on environmental social justice issues.
