Conflict Narrative Quotes

There is no such thing as a Palestinian.

What's always got me is the fact that when people talked on the telly about Iraq, before Afghanistan kicked off, you'd get only these public-school-type army officers talking about what was going on out there. I kept thinking, 'Why don't we get the true voice of the squaddie? Why don't we hear from the lads on the battlefield?'

The debate analysis in the media is rampant with contest analogies of war, baseball, boxing, football; you name it. Any testosterone contest imaginable is fair game.

I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and who were historically part of the Arab community.

The Israelis haven't done anything to the Palestinians. They treated them with flowers and roses.

For better or worse, I've been involved in the description of political conflict.

Hamas is a humanitarian organization.

There are surely many ways that [media select and contextualise events determine the boundaries of public thinking] happens, but we can note at the most obvious level the way in which forms of resistance or violence get cast as "conflicts" that assume two sides that are fighting only against one another.

The media is not at all homogeneous in the way it tells us about war.

I think the brutality is important to convey as part of the story, to see how brutal it is to have these kids in battle with one another.

In my opinion, Hollywood doesn't know the context. Hollywood sees a David and Goliath story with Israel being cast in the role of Goliath, as the evil aggressor. The Palestinians are simply innocent reactors to whatever Israelis are throwing at them. And everything - like their economic situation - excuses the savagery.

What I don't like about the way the media portrays religion is that they seem to weaponize it and use it as a tool to divide people.

A history of perceived humiliation, after all, lurks behind many acts of terror. And competing narratives of victimhood and insults sustain conflicts in the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East and many other regions.

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel. ...Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist.

As a major political weapon, however, complex fabrication has developed organically among the Arabs in the two generations of the struggle for Palestine …. it is a well-known part of the character of Arab fantasy that the inventor of a story comes to believe it himself.

Israel does not exist.

It is easier to tell a story of how people wound one another than of what binds them together.

I hate how I've had the mantle set on my shoulders as being against the record label. We've had some issues, but that is the nature of business.

You know, you find that these stories ... will turn one of us into the good guy and one of us into the bad guy. If you look at it closely or even not that closely ... it's ridiculous.

What's now shocking is I can't say anything publicly without it having a life. Not because I have extraordinary views but because people are keen on conflict, so they'll make that the story.

If you're in part of rebel-controlled Syria, and suddenly your house blows up or a building next to you blows up, it would be convenient for rebels to say, 'It was the Americans.'

When things did go wrong for the IRA, when civilians were killed, I tried to put it in context, not defend it.

The press seems to love pitting women against each other.

As one Israeli said, "It's a big mistake for Israel to say it 'won' the war, when there was no war. There were no battles...no military enemy in the field."

All the people who live in the West Bank are Israelis, they're not Palestinians. There is no 'Palestinian.' This is Israeli land.