>Leo - While every single one of the siutations you cite has been
>reported on the mainstream press over the years, the plight of the
>Palestinians has not only been systematically ignored, but Arab peoples
>remain the one group and Arab culture the one culture that it is ok to
>grossly (mis)caricature in the entertainment industry.
While I agree that Arab culture suffers immense bias in characterization in the media, to argue that the Palestinians have been ignored in the media is bizarre given the fact that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is probably the most covered foreign policy story in the media. At least since the first Intifada, coverage of the Palestinians has been markedly more favorable than it once was, with severe condemnation of the treatment of the Palestinians, if not full support for their political demands.
Scenes of Israelis shooting young Palestinian kids with stones is probably the iconic image of the conflict, with the deaths of Israelis in the wake of a suicide bomber the major counter image.
The irony is that the attempted revival of the "Zionism equals racism" resolution at Durban now threatens to effectively sink the conference and give Europeans and the US the high ground to walk away from the tough criticism they would have faced on other parts of the World Conference Against Racism. So anti-Zionism does in this case help undermine anti-racism efforts in the world.
-- Nathan Newman