In the trailer/debut episode of Arabs in Media, Hazem Jamal explores the view of Arabs in news, entertainment, social media, and life in the West.
In the wake of The New York Times' contentious editorial decisions surrounding Israel-Palestine coverage and the persistent stereotyping in Hollywood, we dissect how these portrayals shape public perception and the real-world consequences that follow.
Through a tapestry of personal accounts, including the heartache Hazem's family endured during the Iraq wars, we bring to light the struggle for an authentic representation of Arabs in Western media. And we'll have some good news stories of Arabs you might know, or not know who represent great achievements in our world.
Host Hazem Jamal gives us a peek at the topics ahead in this debut episode, also available on the Substack community @arabsinmedia
Hazem Jamal is a first-generation Iraqi-American who worked in as a programming executive in American radio for many years. After years of shrinking consumption and influence of old-media blowhards, Arabs in Media offers a platform for fresh stories, information, and entertainment.
To join the Arabs in Media community, sign up at the free Arabs in Media Substack for more multi-media content, and email notifications for new episodes dropping.
In the trailer/debut episode of Arabs in Media, Hazem Jamal explores the view of Arabs in news, entertainment, social media, and life in the West.
In the wake of The New York Times' contentious editorial decisions surrounding Israel-Palestine coverage and the persistent stereotyping in Hollywood, we dissect how these portrayals shape public perception and the real-world consequences that follow.
Through a tapestry of personal accounts, including the heartache Hazem's family endured during the Iraq wars, we bring to light the struggle for an authentic representation of Arabs in Western media. And we'll have some good news stories of Arabs you might know, or not know who represent great achievements in our world.
Host Hazem Jamal gives us a peek at the topics ahead in this debut episode, also available on the Substack community @arabsinmedia
Hazem Jamal is a first-generation Iraqi-American who worked in as a programming executive in American radio for many years. After years of shrinking consumption and influence of old-media blowhards, Arabs in Media offers a platform for fresh stories, information, and entertainment.
To join the Arabs in Media community, sign up at the free Arabs in Media Substack for more multi-media content, and email notifications for new episodes dropping.
The New York Times have faced internal upheaval since October 7th over their coverage of Israel's war in Gaza, but now it has emerged that the paper has instructed journalists to restrict the use of the terms genocide and ethnic cleansing and to avoid the phrase occupied territory when describing Palestinian land. Not only that, they have told journalists not to use the word Palestine except in very rare cases.
Speaker 2:
Arabs are the most maligned group in the history of Hollywood. They're portrayed basically as subhumans, untermenschen a term used by Nazis to vilify gypsies and Jews. These images have been with us for more than a century.
Speaker 3:
The Michigan Democratic primary sent alarm bells ringing within the Democratic Party, after a large contingent voted uncommitted against Joe Biden.
Speaker 4:
What if Palestinian girlhood was taken as seriously as Taylor Swift's girlhood?
Speaker 5:
Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
Speaker 6:
And, yeah, I wish it was sometimes as simple as that. Maybe we are taking crazy pills. Hey, welcome to the new podcast and Substack Arabs in Media. I wish it was sometimes as simple as that. Maybe we are taking crazy pills. Hey, welcome to the new podcast and Substack Arabs in Media. My name is Hazem Jamal.
Speaker 6:
I'm an Iraqi American, born to two cultures, born and raised here in the States, and that often could be frustrating as an Arab American. Representation in media was not complicated. My family and I witnessed two wars on the country from where my parents emigrated on Iraq, but from a distance from here, not just once, but twice, and before the start of each of those wars we would get the phone calls. My parents would hear from their siblings, my aunts and uncles, my cousins. My parents would hear from their siblings, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, and, if you can imagine this, they were offering their goodbyes, not knowing what to anticipate in the pending wars. And just in case they didn't make it, they wanted to take advantage of that last chance to talk. Communication centers in both of those wars were usually the first target. So in both of those wars, as the communications went dark, it was usually a few months before we heard from anybody and to see if they were dead or alive. Even after the wars, our stories were rarely told hollywood has a very narrow view of arabs.
Speaker 7:
I mean, just think of every Arab character you've ever seen on screen. Think of how those characters are usually inherently connected to violence and US national security, and then ask yourself this question.
Speaker 9:
When have you seen a Hollywood film?
Speaker 3:
tell the story of an Iraqi during the Iraq war.
Speaker 6:
That's Dr Maitha Al-Hassan, a writer, producer, journalist, professor and collaborative senior fellow at the Pop Culture Collaborative, in a Scripps news piece on the influence of Hollywood and damaging portrayals of Arabs and Muslims from 2019. The first Gulf War was a media breakthrough. We went from horrific images of Vietnam 15 years earlier to watching grainy images from fighter jets and chalkboard drawings like it was John Madden mapping out an NFL replay. By the start of the second war, it was official. Arabs were not only stereotypes in entertainment, but once again, we were targets in war. We finally had a starring role. We were targets in war. We finally had a starring role, but just not in Hollywood.
Speaker 2:
It was a real-life, sterilized video game that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Let me know when you gather. Watch out, fight them all up.
Speaker 10:
Two traffic, two sixes Come on fire.
Speaker 2:
My guy dude pick up a weapon. It's Bushmaster 7,. Go ahead, roger. We have a black Bongo truck, bushmaster 7, roger. This is Bushmaster 7, roger, engage 1-8, clear Come on 3-1-1.
Speaker 6:
2-0. It's their fault for bringing their kids to a battle. That's right. Well, we didn't have smartphones in the Iraq War, so we're good now right. I mean we see what's going on in social media. We can move from this place where we've been stuck and you know the news media can now ask more insightful questions with a respect and a gravitas for the people that are affected and invited on the airwaves.
Speaker 10:
Do you support the protests, the violent protests that have erupted in solidarity with you and other families in your position right now?
Speaker 12:
Do you support the violent dispossession of me and my family?
Speaker 10:
I'm just asking if you support the protests that are taking place in support of your family.
Speaker 6:
Okay, my bad. So we have video from the ground, we proof. We have exhibit a, b, c, d and e, but I guess, uh, arabs in the west still have to condemn everything except for the violence and language used against them. All right, but but still, we, we have made some progress, like here's an interview with a respected doctor and a politician from the west Bank who was invited on a British news channel to offer context and commentary. Well, at least when he was allowed to speak. I don't know what you have time for. Oh my God, for the love of.
Speaker 5:
God, let me finish a sentence, man. Maybe you're not used to women talking, I don't know, but I'd like to finish a sentence, sir.
Speaker 8:
Anyway, so no, you are misleading the public now. Really, I've got 20 seconds left. I'm not even going to bother trying to answer.
Speaker 13:
If you don't think Israel's reaction is acceptable.
Speaker 5:
What would have been an acceptable reaction to you? You've got 10 seconds left.
Speaker 8:
To end occupation and allow peace to prevail for both people.
Speaker 5:
That's very brilliant. Sorry to have been a woman speaking to you.
Speaker 6:
I love the smell of a fresh trope in the morning, especially the ones that push that narrative that Arab men won't tolerate a woman speaking so floral. If only we could get through a single interview to vouch for what's happening, let's say, at the hospitals in Gaza. Maybe we'd be more humanized if someone from Doctors Without Borders can get to the reality on the ground without pulling the story back to fit some sort of narrative.
Speaker 3:
You'll know that the Israeli military say that they have killed and detained hundreds of Hamas militants within the al-Shifa complex. Do you know if Hamas were there and were fighting with the Israelis?
Speaker 13:
I am just shocked that we're still having this conversation. They executed tens of people point blank, including one of our colleagues, dr Ahmed Khalilati, who's a very experienced plastic surgeon him and his mother, who's also a physician. They executed people point blank and including many of our colleagues who've been detained. Now we haven't heard back from them. Previous students of mine detained, young doctors detained. We don't know if they're dead or alive. They have been gone for over 100 days. So to say that this is a strategic targeting of Hamas is an insult to our intellect and our humanity. This is a destruction of people who heal. This is a direct targeting of health care workers.
Speaker 6:
It seems like there's less of a willingness in the West at this point to accept the status quo. Protests in the United States have not let up, and social media has persistently tried to work around content suppression and bans, to always sneak back in, usually with some sort of a news story that is breaking. But the extension of this war and these delays based on our debates, at a massive cost to humanity. Over 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the last seven months, since October, and at least 13,000 of them are children. We can all agree that killing children is wrong, right.
Speaker 12:
Every single child, regardless of faith, deserves equality. If anyone in this room supports the killing of a child because you think it makes you safer, you are a monster and you need help. Please, everybody, use your voices to stop the slaughter. It must end. No other child should die after today. Please, I'm begging you. I'm burning my career to the ground anyway, so I might as well go at it.
Speaker 6:
That is Maysoon Zayed, a Palestinian-American comic who cracks a joke about her career being over. But it's not over. But her joke is no joke. In what world would we otherwise not be able to all agree that a ceasefire to stop killing kids is a good common goal to have when you unpack this war on Palestinians? It has gotten people canceled, though, in all walks of life, from entertainment to government to students and beyond.
Speaker 6:
In the country of free speech, the limitations are not about yelling fire in a movie theater. It's about our discomfort. And yes, I know that freedom of speech is about the government censoring you, not a private entity. But the spirit of freedom of speech has just been one of those last American ideals that we've been able to hold on to, even if we disagree with each other. In theory at least. It seems like we've lost the ability or maybe we never had the ability to hear each other through those disagreements, and arresting people at college campus demonstrations doesn't help either.
Speaker 6:
A popular phrase you'll hear in workplaces or in the national lexicon these days is let's have a conversation. It's disarming when you hear it. It makes you think that what's coming next is someone who's going to listen to you and understand, You'll be able to contribute as well, but the conversations nowadays get canceled before they get off the ground. From valedictorians to actors and in all walks of life, we have witnessed high-profile cancellations and backlash to the cancellations as well. But what we may not have known about are quiet cancellations and backlash to the cancellations as well. But what we may not have known about are quiet cancellations.
Speaker 9:
There is both a lot of fear among you know big names that we know from speaking out, but I think what's also true, that's happening more under the radar is so many young artists, particularly young artists of color, are just quietly being let go by their, by their agencies.
Speaker 5:
Yes.
Speaker 9:
And yeah, it's really terrible and that's really happening. We all know about Susan Sarandon, but I think this is really happening under the radar.
Speaker 6:
That's activist and Sex and the City actor, cynthia Nixon, talking to Mahdi Hassan on his new content channel, zateo. If this next story had been based almost anywhere else in the world, you almost certainly would have heard about it, but there's a good chance that you haven't, because it was based in Gaza.
Speaker 11:
Speaking of the people, the faces, the voices. One of the people you've talked about, you've posted about, you've written about, is Wael Ahdardouh, him being hospitalized. He's a Palestinian journalist and the bureau chief of Al Jazeera in Gaza City. What can you tell me about this man?
Speaker 3:
If Wael al-Dahdouh wasn't Palestinian, he'd be on the cover of Time magazine right now. He would be the most celebrated journalist in the world. Wael al-Dahdouh is from Gaza. He has been in Israeli prisons, he has been under Israeli airstrikes, he has seen the worst of the occupation before. He's seen the worst of the genocide while on TV.
Speaker 3:
I mean and this is insane when you think about it we have over a hundred journalists now right, that's more than any conflict in history that have been killed, and there is sufficient evidence by international watchdogs that this is intentional, that journalists have been killed intentionally. But then their families. While it was reporting on TV when an airstrike hits his wife, two kids and a grandchild, he goes to the scene and he said this you know you never expect, as a journalist, to be the subject of the story. Suddenly the camera's on him mourning over his dead wife and kids and grandkid and he's saying he even says in Arabic he says they're taking it out on our children. They're taking it out on our children. You know I've heard this from multiple people that have had relatives targeted that I wish it was me instead.
Speaker 6:
That's the Lex Friedman podcast and Lex's interview with Palestinian, american and Muslim scholar Omar Suleiman. Look, if your social media feed has not shown you the horrors of babies still being blown to bits in Gaza for over 200 days, then what you see on the old news platforms, on a network newscast, isn't going to show you that either. Or if you have been watching and sharing and commenting, you may have suffered from real mental health issues seeing the cruelty and destruction playing over and over. I know I have. But that suffering pales in comparison to what dehumanization has happened over generations to Arabs and the guilt when you see people who look like you eating grass to stay alive, from the Irish Embassy who came to the border and first thing they did was they gave us water and food.
Speaker 8:
My son, I gave him to drink water. He drank of it and he told me I'm allowed to drink more because there was rules in the house. He was not allowed. He was not allowed to drink more than a small bit. And then he asked me can I drink more? I said, of course, drink as much as you want.
Speaker 6:
Noora Erekat, a human rights lawyer, shared this observation recently on Mark Lamont Hill's show Upfront.
Speaker 4:
I think let's take what's evidence in the pattern over many, many decades, not just in the past six months, almost seven months now which is that there is both a deference to Israel and what Israel says without an adequate amount of scrutiny, and there is also a lack of even acknowledgment and respect for what Palestinians are saying. I think one of the things that's happening here, when we talk about the dehumanization of Palestinians, is the racialization that even makes their testimony less credible, so that folks who hear them, perhaps in the State Department, just aren't taking them as seriously unless somebody else is speaking for them. So I think that's first and foremost.
Speaker 6:
Here's the Crystal and Kyle podcast interviewing Motaz Salim from Code Pink on how the language evolves and the codes change.
Speaker 2:
I'll also mention that their new favorite term is militaryaged men, which is despicable.
Speaker 9:
Let's decode that for people, military-aged men means there's zero evidence that these people are combatants in any way, shape or form. But since they're military-aged men, if we kill them? They had it coming. Yes.
Speaker 6:
We have come a long way since this viral moment from an Egyptian protester at the border with Gaza. She was expressing her outrage for CNN and the West's biased media coverage.
Speaker 4:
Where are our voices? Our voices need to be heard as well.
Speaker 12:
We've been watching your channels and, instead of mourning our dead, instead of mourning these Palestinian children, we've been having to deal with more dehumanization of Arabs.
Speaker 6:
Okay. So here we are. We're at the point in humanity where genocide is only in place, still because it's being funded. And if you're like me, with your own stories of being Arab in the West, with your stories of struggle and triumph, with your stories of living at the intersections of culture, identity and expression, then you may already be intimately aware between the connection of dehumanizing language and violence and killing a population. Arabs are famously big into political satire and irony. I'm like we're ironic as fuck, and I bet you didn't expect me to say that. But for fuck's sake, if you just stop killing us, then we'll probably make you laugh. Stop killing us, then we'll probably make you laugh.
Speaker 6:
If all of this concept is foreign to you and you want to open up a window to a new world and some new perspectives, either way, please subscribe. Find Arabs in Media wherever you listen to podcasts or subscribe for free to our sub stack at Arabs in Media. That will give you additional content and you'll get an email notification when a new episode or content gets released, which will be about weekly or more. Habibi, thanks for listening. I'm Hasim Jamal. This has been the debut episode of Arabs in Media.
