Let an image speak for itself
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by Najwa Kassem
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 "We are going to speak to Samar Sbeih's husband, Rasmi, a detainee at An-Naqab prison," the producer told me. Samar is the pregnant Palestinian prisoner who had her baby while in detention and had to undergo a Caesarian with her hands and legs in shackles.
I tried to remember everything I knew about the Arab prisoners in Israeli jails. It was a story I had worked on a lot and I wanted to ask Rasmi the right questions, not just the conventional ones. During the few minutes I would have with him on the phone, I wanted to delve into the human aspect of this new father’s detention, and not just talk about the larger national issues. My experience told me that I serve the prisoners’ cause best by going beyond the headlines, behind which the Arab media often hide to evade the core issues.
I was surprised to find myself struggling to remember the details of the case. I tried to understand why and the only logical explanation was that there have been so many painful events in the Arab World over recent years, so much so that we have failed to cover them all adequately – not just the political and security angles, but also the social, human or legal dimensions.
Telling the prisoners’ story is not just about rhetoric. It may be a political issue with nationalistic and pan- Arab elements but it also has a human face.
The role of television should be to transform the news into a three dimensional image. With the prisoners, that image should be the detainees themselves, their suffering, their families, their homes; everything they can think of but cannot express to the rest of the world from the confinement of their cells.
A brave cameraman standing in the midst of occupation troops brought us the image of a pregnant Samar as she walked slowly and awkwardly, not knowing quite how to maneuver her shackled arms and legs. Then there was the image of her baby—destined it seemed to share the agony of its parents.
Samar’s image made me realize how the onslaught of so many news events has desensitized us from the humanity behind the stories.
We report on the casualties in Iraq as if they were just numbers. But those numbers, of dead and injured, are human beings, who had a life, a family, a story to tell. The same is true of those in Palestine, the killed and the maimed, or those in jail like Rasmi and Samar. The millions of victims and refugees in Darfur, too, are not just numbers in a faraway place. They are human beings. The real objective of television reporters should be to tell their stories.
We know the story and the family of every foreigner kidnapped in Iraq; we have pictures of the families of the victims of September 11, or of those of the Madrid or London bombings. Their stories are always on our television sets. Why? Because the media in the West report on both the human and patriotic dimensions.
By humanizing the victims, the media remind us that they are people like us, and that the way they feel about their families is exactly the way we feel about ours. Their cause as such becomes that of every household and of the whole nation.
We need to learn to treat our own victims in the same way. We need to tell the world that they too are human beings. It is not the speeches and pictures of Zarqawi and Bin Laden and George Bush and Condoleezza Rice that should be our real concern. Let’s focus less on them and more on our people who suffer the consequences of their politics.
Let the imagery of television inform us of the suffering through faces similar to our own, like that of Samar Sbeih. I am absolutely certain that every pregnant woman surrounded by her mother and family, preparing for the birth of a child, wept when she saw Samar on television and imagined herself in the same situation, even if just for a moment. This is the true role of television. Let’s break the barriers that prevent us from delivering the right message, and give humanity back to those who are suffering.
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