Radio Rwanda and the Media Complicity in Genocide: Three Interviews with Noura Erakat

Abstract

This piece highlights the role of the media in priming audiences for genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza. While the themes illuminated here regarding mainstream media coverage of the Middle East have long been endemic, the Gaza genocide brought them into acute view. The piece also presents three television interviews with the author, Noura Erakat, a human rights attorney, Professor at the Rutgers University, New Brunswick in the Department of Africana Studies and the Program in Criminal Justice, and Co-Founding Editor of Jadaliyya , an electronic magazine on the Middle East that combines scholarly expertise and local knowledge. The select interviews, which are part of a significant archive of such interviews featuring Palestinian interlocutors and mainstream Western media outlets, are dated to November 13, 2023, February 10, 2024, and January 17, 2025. The introductory remarks reflect the significance of Palestinian interlocutors being able to speak for themselves, the hostilities they face as they serve as both experts and media correctives, the endemic bias of media outlets, as well as the double standards at play in comparison to other guests often saying similar things. This introduction emphasizes how the media’s construction of narratives that enabled the genocide is as significant as the political and legal orders also at play.