These are not just numbers; these are human lives, and these are not fleeting news items; these are facts that make history. Therefore, the responsibility of the media begins here. It is not enough to broadcast the King's speech; we must make the world hear it again through images, documents, testimonies, maps, and figures.
It is not enough to say that there are attacks; we must document where they occurred, when they occurred, who was harmed by them, and what international institutions say about them. It is not enough to respond to the Israeli narrative; we must build the narrative of the truth. Here, every screen, every newspaper, every radio station, every news website, every camera, every mobile phone, and every social media platform becomes a media front.
We need a media that does not wait for the event, a media that pursues the event and does not wait for the narrative, a media that creates the presence of truth and does not settle for anger, a media that documents. The strongest response to misinformation is not counter-misinformation; the strongest response is evidence. A documented image is stronger than dozens of statements, a map explaining settlement expansion is stronger than dozens of slogans, and a verifiable international document is stronger than a thousand posts. This is the point of strength upon which we must build.
We do not want a media that is only angry; we want a media whose credibility no one can undermine, an Arab media that speaks to the world in its own languages, a media that translates documents, explains the law, displays images, puts figures before the public, and utilizes investigative journalism, digital maps, artificial intelligence, and tools for verifying images and videos—a media that does not leave a vacuum for the other narrative to fill.
The truth we must realize is that a media vacuum is not neutrality. When you are absent from the story, someone else will write it; when you do not show your image, someone else's image will be shown; and when you do not document the truth, another narrative will come to tell the world: nothing happened. This is precisely what must not happen.
The United Nations has stated that the pace of settler violence in the West Bank has reached the highest sustained levels recorded by the organization, and that settlement, demolition, eviction, displacement, and land confiscation are increasingly undermining the possibility of a contiguous and viable Palestinian state. Is it permissible, then, to treat the West Bank as a secondary news item? The answer is no.
His Majesty King Abdullah II has put forward an important message that the world and its media must pay attention to. Is it permissible to let the world get preoccupied with one crisis, then forget another, then get used to a crisis, until the tragedy becomes part of the daily scene? The answer is no.
Because a crime does not become less dangerous when the world stops looking at it, silence does not erase the crime, negligence does not absolve responsibility, and habituation does not make injustice normal. Therefore, His Majesty's speech must not be the conclusion, but rather the beginning—the beginning of a broad Arab media campaign, the beginning of daily documentation, the beginning of multilingual content, the beginning of a media that places the West Bank before global public opinion, not once, but every day.
The beginning of a media that tells the world: this is land, these are its people, these are its facts, these are its testimonies, these are its documents, and this is what happens when the world is silent. The battle over the narrative is not a battle of words; it is a battle of memory, and whoever loses the narrative may one day find themselves facing a reality about which everything was written except the truth.
Therefore: Do not leave the West Bank alone, and do not leave the truth to them.
Mamoounmassad0@gmail.com
