Baby shield around the border – migrants, media and manipulation

Is Hungary the new Israel? Even though it is not advised to confuse the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the migrant crisis in Hungary, there still is one similarity that inevitably brings up the parallel. Pallywood - a technique of media manipulation perfected by the Palestinians, typically used against Israel, during military actions. This phenomenon reached Hungary yesterday.

We can talk about how and to what extent we can understand the irrational behaviour of desperate people, which may endanger not only their own safety, but that of their children as well. But, to be honest, when I first saw fathers and mothers marching in the front lines at Röszke with their babies in their arms, I was not really in an understanding mood. As a father of a newborn, I simply couldn’t comprehend what I saw. How insane are those who intentionally join an illegal and clearly unsafe endeavor, trying to break through a country's legally protected border, carrying their babys, while walking straight into the water cannons and tear gas, just so they can parade their crying children in front of the cameras of the world press afterwards?

Because this is what happened at the border of Hungary.

‘Where is the media? Where is the media?’ – you can hear migrants ask each other in a video. It is as if the immigrants were expecting their salvation from the media.

The photo The New York Times used

Another example is a photograph, used by the The New York Times in one of their arcticles, that shows a women wearing a headscarf, brokenly grasping into the grids of a fence, as though she was locked up behind the fence by the cruel Hungarian authorities. The grid, however, was only a small piece of fence separating the railway tracks of Bicske, which could have been crossed by taking a few steps into either direction. It was the migrants who didn’t want to proceed to the refugee camps, that would’ve provided for their basic needs.

Also a memorable scene, in which, according to photos, a group of Hungarian policemen are pushing a Syrian father who is only trying to protect his family. Later, however, the revealed video shows that it was actually the mad father who pushed his own wife and baby onto the rails, being indifferent to the possibility of the baby knocking his head against the rail.

What are those barbarians even thinking when they stick their children through the holes of a barbed wire fence, while there is police waiting with water cannons and tear gas on the other side, or when, as it is shown in this picture, they apparently try swinging their child up in the air, putting his life to danger?

Migrant putting a baby through the fence at the Hungarian border

What else could be the reason for such actions, other than trying to cause serious injury to the children, so they can run and grab the attention of the media? But these insane parents are just one side of the game. The other side is of course a sensationalist media, that is obviously happy to be provided with the content of crying children. In order to create front page stories they are even willing to drop antecedents and be silent about cause and effect relations or broader context.

This is the game many have already learned and are using in the Middle East. This is Pallywood – how we can manipulate and guide the attention of the media that is seeking sensation. Interlarding our own distress with our own inhumanity and the heartless use of our innocent and defenceless children just to squeeze some compassion out of the world.

We, Europeans, Hungarians were only able to see this bizarre phenomenon in world news, right until now. But at the moment, it is knocking at our own borders. Literally.

Via Gellért Rajcsányi, Mandiner