The wave of solidarity with Gaza that has swept throughout western Europe over the previous months stops on the borders of the Czech Republic, the place most individuals appear unconcerned by the plight of the Palestinians. That is an angle it shares with the Slovakia, Poland and Hungary.
The Czech journal A2 explores the explanations for the staunch assist for Israel on the a part of the Czech authorities, public and media, with the intention to perceive why, as A2 editor Lukáš Rychetský places it, ‘we seem to feel the need to escape from the complexity and ambiguity of conflicts such as the Israeli–Palestinian one, into a narrative about a clash between Good and Evil.’
The Czech–Israeli relationship
Political scientist Marek Čejka, a specialist in Israel’s fashionable historical past, explains that to grasp Czech attitudes to the Israel–Palestine battle one should return to the antisemitic Hilsner trial on the flip of 20 century. Czechoslovakia’s future president Tomáš Masaryk, then a legislation professor, defended Leopold Hilsner, a Jew accused of blood libel (Hilsner was sentenced anyway). As head of state, Masaryk turned a vocal supporter of Zionist aspirations, which he considered an emancipation motion akin to the Czech and Slovak striving for independence.
Apart from a quick interlude after World Warfare II, Czechoslovakia adopted the Soviet coverage of supporting the Arab international locations all through the communist period. Throughout Václav Havel’s presidency, Czechoslovak (and later Czech) coverage reversed, though as Čejka factors out, Havel supported the peace course of and made a degree of assembly Palestinians at any time when he visited Israel. After Havel, nonetheless, the Czech proper cast shut hyperlinks with Likud, strengthening Israeli–Czech ties.
Čejka finds it startling that the present Czech cupboard ‘has shown no reflection of the mass protests against Netanyahu’s authorities at a time when it has clearly shifted in direction of authoritarianism and tried to push by undemocratic adjustments within the Israeli political system’. He notes that, extra just lately, the Czech Republic and Hungary went so far as to dam EU sanctions in opposition to radical Israeli–Jewish settlers.
Censorship and media bias
Regardless of the nuanced portrayal of the Israel–Palestine battle in half a dozen works by Israeli writers which were revealed in Czech translation, writes Lukáš Rychetský, it will seem that Czech perceptions are nonetheless formed by Leon Uris’s 1958 pro-Zionist bestseller Exodus (revealed in Czech in 1991). Far fewer works by Palestinian authors have been translated into Czech, writes Monika Šramová, who notes the centrality of the themes of displacement and exile in Palestinian literature.
The bias is much more evident within the Czech media, writes media theorist Jan Motal. Palestinians, and people defending their rights, are demonised or depersonalised, and in contrast to Israeli victims, are not often profiled. Motal cites the instance of the Czech-based Palestinian artist Yara Abu Aataya, whose story was first featured by mainstream TV stations and newspapers, solely to be shortly withdrawn, with the journalists who interviewed her shedding their jobs.
The truth that many Palestinian journalists have been killed, injured or pushed into exile appears to have left their Czech colleagues unmoved. At any price, they’ve been unwilling to answer calls from the Worldwide Federation of Journalists to assist them.
‘Czech journalism has for a long time suffered from being isolated from the global debate on journalist ethics and standards’, feedback Motal. ‘Although attempts to remedy this failure have been made, particularly by smaller, independent media, the mainstream has remained doggedly resistant. The dehumanisation or ignoring of the Palestinian victims of the war in Gaza is just one fragment of the unflattering image of Czech journalism that is still incapable of standing up for human dignity.’
