SOAS Research Online

Abstract

It has frequently been said that works on the Arab-Israeli conflict are biased to a large degree, but so far there has never been a serious study carried out analyzing the issue of bias and objectivity. This is the purpose of this thesis. To assist in this task, a methodology is introduced to work as a tool for examining bias. The methodology is focused on themes (e.g. events or interpretations) present in the analyzed sources and aims at categorizing the sources used as being pro-Israeli or pro-Arab in relation to the individual themes. The time frame looked upon is the time from 1967 to roughly 1974, and the works analyzed are all written in English with a presumably Western audience in mind. The main results of this thesis are that bias occurs in the majority of sources in the majority of instances. A number of various classifications for bias have been established and are discussed in the concluding section of the thesis. In most cases, the established bias is more to be construed as being differences of opinion rather than instances of propaganda. The last major result of this thesis is that although the majority of sources analyzed are biased in the majority of cases, there are not as many clearly pro-Arab or pro-Israeli sources as could be assumed. What this means is that there is a large gray area between the clearly discernibly pro-Israeli and pro-Arab sources, and that there is a great variety in how the various authors present the subject area at hand. Due to the at least perceived ideological and emotional lines drawn in the sand regarding the writing on the history of the conflict, this is perhaps a surprising result.