Is Reality TV the Solution to Terrorism?

Every media outlet in the world…

On October 4, 2003, Hanadi Jaradat, a 29-year old female lawyer, strapped explosives onto herself, walked into Maxim Restaurant in Haifa, Israel and blew herself up.

Jaradat was not out to attack the Maxim restaurant. Now was she making a stand against the quality of Israeli food.

She was blowing herself up in an attempt to turn the attention of the world to the plight of the Palestinians, if only for a moment.

And, for a brief moment, she got her wish.

Her act did indeed dominate the headlines in Israel for a day or so.

Big price to pay for publicity.

Now, with all the media attention paid to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and his lame attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Detroit, the cycle gets expanded exponentially.

If it is the intention of terrorists to garner the media spotlight and turn the attention of the world on themselves, then they have succeeded spectacularly once again.

In The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright gives a fascinating history of both Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.  Bin Laden was a loser, a loner, a failure. He was also the son of a rich man, and so could indulge in his fantasies of jihad.  He went off to Afghanistan, supported by the old man, to play at fighting the Russians. In Afghanistan he was a joke.  He created al Qaeda, a rag-tag knot of a few other losers, and then, with spectacular good luck, pulled off 9/11.

From that moment on, it was as though he had won the Powerball Lottery of Media.  Suddenly al-Qaeda, which had been pretty much nowhere, was everywhere, and still is.

No doubt, all this massive media attention did wonders for driving the recruiting drive. You can’t beat free advertising, and we in the media gave it to Osama by the boatload.

In the end, we, more than anyone else, really created al-Qaeda. We, the media.

They say that generals always fight the last war, and I think Americans are no exception.

Following 9/11, we engaged in a series of military actions against ‘the enemy’. We are still there 9 years later, and things don’t look any better. In fact, they look a lot worse.

Maybe that is because our tactics are all wrong.

Maybe what we are really fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan now apparently in Yemen is not a shooting war, but rather a media war.

Now, you might say, ‘it would be great to banish any mention of terrorists and terrorism from newspapers and TV and the web, but that is just not possible’.  You would be right.

But I think maybe the opposite approach is our best weapon.

If women like Hanadi Jaradat will go to the lengths of blowing themselves up to get media attention, then give it to them, before they blow themselves up.

Give them a platform and an outlet.

If they want to draw the world’s attention to how crap their lives are, how they have been disenfranchised, cheated, robbed, killed… whatever. Give it to them.  Bandwidth is a whole lot less expensive than human lives.

If Islamic fundamentalists want to tell the world how America is destroying Dar-al-Islam, let them at it.  Who cares?

Let’s give Hamas their own TV show.  Daily. On Israeli TV.  And on cable and satellite.  Their own reality show.  Give them cameras and training and edits and a guaranteed platform to tell the Israelis and the world how they feel and how crap their lives are and anything else they want to say.  Anything.

Let them star in their own reality show all the time.  Same for al-Qaeda.  Give them a cable channel.

But one terrorist action… one person killed or injured by them, and we’re yanking the show.

It’s over.

Now, it might not work.

This might be a really naive idea.

But in a strange way… I don’t think it is.