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The news from Al-Khalil (Hebron to Israel and the Western world) is a dose of confusion, misery, and fear. A city in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, it is home to some 170,000 Palestinians and 500 Israelis. The latter began settling in the area in contravention of international law since the 1967 war when Israel annexed the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and substantial areas of land from Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. It is difficult to capture the nature of the dynamics between the Palestinian residents and the Israeli settlers, so I will avoid lengthy elaboration here. Suffice it to say that not unlike other areas in the West Bank, Israeli authorities have carved the city, blocked streets, cordoned homes and taken every measure necessary to ensure the 500 Israeli settlers command a military, economic, moral, cultural, religious, spatial, and psychological superiority over the majority.

The dire conditions under which the Palestinians live are narrated in several short films including: a) Journeyman Pictures' Hebron: Once City, Two Nations; b) Quiet transfer in Hebron, a retrospective video illustrating what Ilan Pappe less euphemistically calls (and meticulously documents) the "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians from the land; c) Hebron: City Without Mercy (Part 1 & Part 2) documents shows the plight of a Palestinian widow who suffers from the unrelenting harassment of her settler neighbors and the racist complicity of the Israeli soldiers who are stationed on the roof of her house (and make a habit of urinate on it!).

Other short clips are compiled by Palestinian residents to document the daily violations they are subjected to by the settlers, the IDF and the Police. One film shows an Israeli soldier standing idly by as settler kids attack a human rights worker, and another shows Palestinian boys playing football in the street being forced at gunpoint by IDF soldiers to observe a curfew. Israeli Human Rights organization for the occupied territories B'Tslem gave video cameras to Palestinian families in Hebron to document their lives. The result are many damning and demoralizing short clips, enough to inundate any municipal civil rights court system in the US! One of these is Life in Hebron which shows attacks on Palestinian farmers by a group of masked, stick-wielding Jewish settlers. Many others are focused on settler aggression in all its forms, from harrassment and destruction of Palestinian property and land, to active interruptions and attacks on Human Rights organizations, and to assaulting foreigners and Israelis indiscriminately. This British film crew is threatened by a group of settler teens and lambasted with some of the most rabid profanities, explicit racism, and malevolence.

The media rarely take notice of or document these conditions due to the level of security in the city, the inaccessibility of some of the communities, and the frequency of attacks against camera-carrying Palestinians and foreigners tourists or media (as is apparent in the clips). However, the world press noticed in the past few days, as the city erupted in an unusually public display of anger, hate, and xenophobia. It came following the eviction of Israeli settlers from a Palestinian home they had occupied. An Israeli court ruled that the house had to be evacuated by force until ownership was determined. The removal of the settlers set off resistance and backlash from the Hebron Israelis which saw them rampaging, destroying Palestinian homes, burning their property and physically attacking innocent bystanders. The violence left many injured and three Palestinians dead. The London Guardian and B'Tslem distributed this video of Palestinians being shot by Israeli settlers as a continuation of their work in documenting human rights violations in the occupied territories.

The media coverage and exposure of these actions on the part of the settlers now poses the greatest threat to the once-unquestionable moral high ground that the Israelis claim and possess in the ongoing conflict. Even the Israeli press expressed shock, outrage and condemnation at the repugnant behavior of the Hebron settlers. Zvi Bar'el's courageous editorial, Longing for the settlers of yore, paints a damning historical picture of the incident, tracing its lineage and showcasing the Israeli state's loss of authority to the settlers and condemning their actions. In fact, Israel's media crisis may be so great, that as a consolation and plea to the dons of Arab media and the gods of cyberspace, outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (in a Cabinet meeting on December 8th), used the loaded term "pogrom" to describe the Israeli settler attacks against the Palestinians.

With the cat out of the bag, it became a free for all in the international media, as settler violence reared its ugly head and refused to back down. Al-Jazeera English, in addition to several full reports, hosted two guests, an indefatigably-irritating Rabbi-turned-radioshow-host Yishai Fleisher (a Hebron settler) and Rabee' Abu-latefa, a soft-spoken dovish media and communications director of Palestinian Human Rights organization Al-Haq. The debate looked more like a vampire ravaging a care bear as Abu-latefa was out-performed, and out-maneuvered--his secular, humanist, and sane voice drowned by the deafening chorus of ignorant racism espoused by Rabbi Fleisher. For those masochists who have the patience to tolerate 20 minutes of pain, you are welcome to indulge in both segments of the show, Part I & Part II.

The more interesting media questions here are: Why would Al-Jazeera design such an incompatible and heavily tilted debate? Given their political line and frequent criticism of Israel, why did Al-Jazeera resort to a push-over guest to confront Fleisher? Why did the show hostess allow Fleisher so much time and why did she avoid interrupting or confining him to the questions posed? Why did she smirk from time to time during Fleisher's diatribes? Of course, the Rabbi is a true spectacle in every sense of the word. From his absurd facial expressions, condescendingly impatient smirk, flailing arms, and erratic eye contact, to his uninterrupted verbosity, disrespect for basic debate decorum, irrational argumentation, and overall incomprehensibility to anyone who isn't to the right of the Shaas party and hasn't watched the remake of the Matrix for diasporic Jews designed to compel young American Jews to perform aliyah (produced by Fleisher's organization Kumah).

Finally, it dawned on me! It makes perfect sense! Al-Jazeera put Fleisher on to showcase the lunacy of the settler movement, to give him the uninterrupted venue to put on display his ideology of intolerance, and ultimately to ridicule his worldview. This was media discourse crafting par excellence. The sad and dejected Al-Haq staff member fit the description of a rational victim before an illogical barbarian--the reversal of the David and Goliath motif often used as a descriptor of the actors in the media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This kind of program is precisely what the Israeli public diplomacy apparatus generally, and Olmert specifically, will do anything to avoid, especially when it is broadcast in English to a potential worldwide audience of 100 million viewers!

But one must not mistake the frequency or volume of media coverage with the existence and absence of an ideology or phenomenon in reality. Just because voices akin to Fleisher's have been invisible in the US and global media for two decades doesn't mean they haven't been active "on the ground." The events in Hebron this week are an illustration that the ethnocentric settler ideology, which the Israeli state has fostered, both overtly and covertly, is alive and well. But for years, it remained subterranean.

It's been at least 20 years since anyone with a committment to such exclusive views appeared on US television. In this classic video of ABC News' Nightline, Ted Coppell hosts then-hawkish Knesset member Olmert who tries to make a case against right-wing Rabbi Meir Kahane's view on what to do with the so-called "demographic bomb" (Arab minority within Israel). Kahane's solution is that the Arabs/Muslims had 22 Arab countries to pick from and that they should leave Israel to the Jews. Modern-day aliyah messiah and the Morpheus of Hebron settlers, Fleisher, used Kahane's arguments almost verbatim on Al-Jazeera's show! What was ordinary televised debate then sounds like insanity today!

Olmert (sounding moderate only because he was debating Kahane) even went as far as accuse Kahane of "trying to challenge the fundamental principles and morals of our [Jewish and Israeli] existence." Evidently, back then it was acceptable to discuss in the media various approaches to co-habitation between Palestinians and Israelis. It was appropriate to question Zionism, its philosophy, ideology, application and results. It was acceptable to witness a Kahane on air.

Today, the right wing voices from Israel are concealed, camouflaged, protected and preserved from the purview of the international media for fear of being "misunderstood," of tainting the sanctity of Israel's global image, and of possibly associating Zionism with Jewish exclusivity or worse! For this reason, Olmert (whether out of conviction or convenience) has drawn the ire of some Israelis who disagree with his increasingly-frequent public statements challenging a "Biblical Israel" which he described a few months ago as follows: "The idea of a 'Greater Israel' is over. There is no such thing. Whoever says so is just misleading himself!" Most Israeli right-wing groups hope this is mere lip-service, but if not, they will take the fight to Olmert's Kadima Party.

The discourse in Kadima may very well be driving extreme-right candidates towards a rejuvenated Netanyahu Likud which now features Moshe Feiglin who advocates: a) Israel's complete annexation of the West Bank and paying each Palestinian family $250,000 US to leave; b) The Israeli defense budget be cut by withdrawing rubber bullets and tear gas and use live ammunition against Palestinian protesters; c) Israel cut off all water, electricity and telephone links to Gaza and the West Bank; and d) Withdraw Palestinian representation from the United Nations. So maybe there is a battle for the heart of Israel, its ideology, and the pursuit of a "final solution!"

But back to the media again, where the media savvy Olmert must play two-step for damage control, scathingly criticizing the settlers to save face in the world. His condemnation of the violence of settlers as a "pogrom" made headlines across the Arab world and the Arabic language media struggled to translate the term "pogrom." The most common translated term used to capture the meaning was mathba'ha monathama (organized massacre). The SG of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, condemned the actions and Arab heads of state issued strongly-worded statements pledging solidarity with the Palestinians of Hebron.

It would be an understatement to say that the Arab press and media were and are captivated by these recent events in Al-Khalil. To avoid listing all of the content, here's a sample from Al-Quds. Another statement that spread through the Arab press came courtesy of an Israeli security source who told Al-Quds newspaper that Israel was "lucky" to have escaped media documentation of the settler attacks on Palestinians in Al-Khalil. The source was referring particularly to the Arab media which if had broadcast the attacks would have led to major protests among Arabs and Muslims.

The two weeks prior saw an increase in settler assaults including defacing mosques and cemeteries with racist epithets in Hebron, Ramallah and Qalqilia. The Israeli source confirmed that some of the defamatory anti-Muslim graffiti sprayed on the walls of mosques and graves was removed by Israeli authorities before it can be documented by the Arab media, which would've led to a public relations crisis for Israel. International Jewish organization's rushed to band-aid the situation and joined the chorus of critics, launching a press release campaign to condemn settler violence in Hebron. Yet as recently two days ago, settlers near the Palestinian town of Nablus in the northern West Bank threatened to demolish a mosque.

At a time when the Universal Declaration for Human Rights is celebrating it's 60th anniversary, (itself as old as the state of Israel)--an ambitious document composed in the aftermath of WWII to prevent the recurrence of genocide--it will be challenging to overlook, bypass, ignore, or avoid addressing human rights violations in Gaza, Israel, and the West Bank given the new media milieu! Coupled with the soon-to-be high-profile Israeli (and perhaps US, Canadian, Australian etc) boycott of the Durban II UN World Conference on Racism as a preemptive move against any association between Zionism and racism (see UN General Assembly Resolution 3379), Israeli officials will have to hide more than racist graffiti from the prying lens of cameras to table these issues in South Africa.