How Images of Death Became Must-See TV

Sil

ence isn't typical of Cairo cafes. Amid the blare of Arab pop music, the dice hitting the backgammon board and the clink of teacups on metal tables, just having an audible conversation can be tough. But these days dead silence from the patrons is not uncommon. In cafes with satellite TV, that hush comes every hour on the hour, when the news bulletin airs on the Qatari channel al-Jazeera, the pre-eminent Arab news network. At Cafe Lialina in the heart of downtown Cairo, the grisly footage of Palestinian corpses in the West Bank town of Jenin--mutilated, burned, rotting in the open air--freezes everyone in angry disbelief.

Uncensored, except for news dealing with Qatar, and available throughout the Middle East via satellite, al-Jazeera is bringing unprecedentedly graphic images of Palestinians bloodied by Israeli violence straight into Arab homes and cafes. The gory feed and the network's reputation for covering the Arab perspective have earned al-Jazeera millions of dedicated viewers in a region seething with anger at the Palestinian plight and what is perceived as American support of unchecked Israeli aggression. In recent weeks, the coverage has helped stoke the region into a fever pitch of outrage and impotent fury. At Cafe Shahine, in the working-class district of Imbaba, the afternoon transmission disrupts the patrons' domino games. "How can we take this--this relentless pounding of the weak by the mighty?" asks Abdel Qader Hassenein, 50.

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At times, al-Jazeera's coverage has resembled that of a national news channel rallying its people to war. Such was the case four weeks ago, when Israel initially began the siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Ramallah compound. Then the visual mix was electrifying: old images of speeches by a younger, more virile Arafat spliced with startling images of bloodied faces of Palestinian victims, Israeli snipers taking aim at children, and a contemporary clip of Arafat declaring that he wanted to be a "martyr, martyr, martyr, martyr." In response, the young men at Cafe Shahine shook their fists and shouted things like, "I'll go! I'll go help fight!"

Today's grim scenes from the West Bank city of Nablus are quieter, accompanied by imprecise reports of "tens of martyrs." The silently rolling footage reveals corpses in every conceivable state: lying in pools of blood, eyes still open in the frozen glance before death, contorted in stairwells, stacked up on shelves, wrapped in floral blankets, awkwardly fit into body bags with limbs poking out, dumped into trucks, lined up in rows of white bags on a dirt road.

Even if the day's news isn't red-stained, the parade of archived, bloody images marches on. They are everywhere, in trailers for upcoming special features, in advertisements for Islamic charities set up to aid the Palestinians, in a special report on young victims featuring footage of a child lying near death while a medic pumps air into her lifeless, thin chest. Spliced into this footage are scenes of Israeli children frolicking in lush green fields.

Critics of al-Jazeera, including American officials, accuse it of bias. They say the channel's gratuitous repetition of the death pageant crudely stokes Arab anger and ignores the losses suffered by the other side. Al-Jazeera covers the Israeli victims of Palestinian attacks with live coverage and news bulletins, but not always with personalizing details. However, those aren't details that viewers necessarily want; they feel al-Jazeera needn't go out of its way to humanize Israeli suffering, when, in their view, Palestinians receive no such treatment on American or Israeli TV and are instead demonized as terrorists akin to Osama bin Laden.

The ceaseless carnage at times is too much even for veteran viewers like Hassenein at Cafe Shahine. "Sometimes I tell them to change the channel," he says. "I figure, we pray at home, what more can we do? But we always change it back."