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‘David vs Goliath’: Australian Jewish Perceptions of Media Bias in Reporting the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

This article seeks to show how the notion of ‘media bias’ has functioned in much Jewish discomfort and anger with how the second, or Al Aqsa, intifada has been represented by mainstream Australian and global media. My objective is not to demonstrate that this reporting in general favours one side of this conflict over the other, nor that there is an unproblematic position of balance which could be attained. Rather, I utilise the concept of media frames to problematise responses by Jewish and other audiences regarding Palestinians being represented by the media sympathetically as the ‘underdog’, and accusations of media bias against Israel. I examine the work that the metaphor ‘David versus Goliath’ has accomplished over the longer period of the Arab–Israeli conflict and how it has framed the conflict for both media and audiences. Finally, I draw on Judith Butler's writing on ‘explanation and exoneration’ in relation to what could be spoken of, and heard, by Americans in the September 11 attacks, to suggest that a similar discourse exists in relation to how Israeli and Palestinian violence can be spoken of from the perspective of Israel. I argue that the accusations of media bias against Israel circulate around a sense that the Israeli and Jewish narrative has been to some extent decentred by sections of the international media and other bodies.