Palestine’s struggle for narrative: From orientalist misconceptions to social media resistance

By Isabella De Sinno | Issue 25

The Palestinian issue has been ongoing for more than 70 years. Despite this, numerous Western media have been framing the “War in Gaza” as one that started on 7 October 2023, after the Hamas attack in southern Israel. Although the latter is an objective fact, initiating discussions on the situation in Gaza from 7 October implicitly underlines that the start of Israeli attacks in the strip are caused solely by Hamas. This ignores 57 years of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, when Israeli forces captured the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank during the 1967 Six Days War. The ongoing emphasis on 7 October, without taking into account the context, paints Hamas, and implicitly Palestinian people, as the primary perpetrators and highlights their propensity for violence, supporting an Orientalist view first put forth by postcolonial scholar Edward Said in 1978.

According to Orientalist theory, Arab populations have historically been misrepresented by  Western ones. Colonial powers, on both a political and cultural level, have ensured that the East has always been conceived as an inferior entity, as one that must be represented and cannot represent itself. As the English historian Danys Hay wrote, a ‘European idea’ emerges, a conception that differentiates between a European ‘us’ opposed to a non-European ‘them’. The East has always been described and represented as irrational and naturally prone to violence, generating a ‘generalised consensus’ within European societies. This orientalist vision was taken as true and for granted also due to the knowledge spread across Europe in the academic and university systems. La Description de l'Égypte (The Description of Egypt) of 1809, written by the Commission des Sciences et des Arts (Science and Arts Commission), the Royal Asiatic Society, the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (German Oriental Society), as well as the French neoclassical oriental paintings by Ingres, Delacroix, or Landelle were all organs for the diffusion of Orientalist knowledge which strengthened the vision of the vigour of the West and the weakness and ignorance of the East. Throughout time, Orientalism has meant that the Palestinian situation has been perceived in a distorted way. 

With the advent of social media, younger Palestinians have a platform to construct their own narratives, thereby countering the mainstream narrative coming from Western governments and media. Some examples of the Palestinian counter-narratives are those from the photo-journalists Motaz Azaiza, who documented the conditions in Gaza for months, and Bisan Owda who also won the 2024 Peabody Award for her videos, which are known for their title and opening line,  “It's Bisan from Gaza and I'm Still Alive”. On social media, we also witness the lives of common people such as Mohammed and Omar, two young boys who share their activities through Instagram videos that show their “daily routine in warzone”. The Palestinian cause is receiving immense support from civil society, and many users worry everyday about Bisan, Mohammed, and Omar, and the many content creators like them, who document the horrors of the occupation and the Israeli attacks in the strip. They worry about Motaz, who has since been evacuated and continues to advocate for Palestinians while being a target of smear campaigns by those in favour of the Israeli occupation. 

Despite the power of Zionist propaganda in the mainstream Western media outlets, on social media, the narrative war has been won by Palestine, especially among youth. Instagram users have the opportunity to see videos recorded by Palestinians firsthand. “Everyone’s getting a chance to tell their own stories. People can tell for themselves [...] And it’s very hard to look away when you’re seeing somebody sitting in a pile of rubble, or if you’re seeing a five-year-old girl crying next to her father’s dead body,” said Zaina Arafat, a Palestinian American author in Brooklyn who has written about witnessing the assault on Gaza through Instagram. By sharing their daily lives on social media, young Palestinians are communicating to their users not only the horrors of the Israeli occupation, but also their identity: Palestinian dishes, music, and stories of their family members, demonstrating a great sense of cultural identity, essential to maintaining and rebuilding their identity under the occupation.

The difficulty of the Palestinians in fighting for their identity lies in the fact that Zionism has incorporated aspects of Orientalism in its ideology, whether it is religious, nationalist, or labour Zionism. The continuous Western focus on the preservation of Zionist interests to the detriment of all others, underpinned by the belief that the Jewish people have an inalienable and sole right to the creation of an ethnostate in the lands of Israel, hinders the peace process and the creation of a Palestinian state. Despite the absence of a state, and the high number of refugees, Palestinians are notably proud of their heritage and always find ways to resist and find their identity again. “I keep the keys of my destroyed house because this key represents the hope that we will return to our homes and it is a memory that shapes our identity,” says Omar Fayad, a displaced man in Gaza who now lives in a refugee camp. The Palestinian poet Mahmood Darwish spoke about Palestinian identity at length, introducing the concept of ‘exile identity’, a condition that depicts various stages of exile, identity crises, nostalgia, and the ramifications of family generations’ attempts to return to Palestine. Darwish’s poems are very melancholic and he delves into historical ramifications from well before the Nakba - which demonstrated his historical connection to the land. 

Nowadays, with social media, Palestinian content creators are able to tell their own stories. We are witnessing more immediate content in real time that can reach the eyes of people who bear witness to what is happening in Gaza and across Palestinian lands. Despite the power of the Israeli army, many sympathise with the Palestinians, who through their testimonies and their resistance have become storytellers of themselves, without the constraint of external Oriental narratives.

Isabella De Sinno 

I was born in 2002 in Rome. In May 2024, I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and Global Politics from the American University of Rome, with a minor in Mediterranean Politics, Society and Culture. My main fields of interest are the Global South, Regional Studies and Postcolonialism and my final thesis concerned the possibility of decolonising the international system. In October, I am starting a Master of Philosophy in Latin American studies at Cambridge University, a Master which is part of a broader programme called ‘Consortium for the Global South’.