#590 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Wednesday February 22)
Good morning,
EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY
Several people have told me stories about the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, after I recounted in a Musing a lesson I learned on this subject from a journalism teacher back in ninth grade.
It now is well documented that eyewitness testimony is notably unreliable. People remember tiny bits of an event and then fill in the details. Sometimes filling in the details occurs based upon suggestion. A police officer asks leading questions to elicit a desired response, a lineup is presented and the perpetrator “must” be in that group, or the confirmation bias occurs in conversation with another eyewitness. We believe we remember more than we actually do. In the criminal justice system, the stakes are high. Now, with DNA testing, we are learning that people wrongfully have been convicted based upon dubious eyewitness testimony.
The most obvious example of the questionable accuracy of eyewitness testimony is when recounting an event from childhood. Are our memories of events when we were toddlers derive from actual memories, or from the stories repeatedly retold by relatives, or from pictures of that event? Then there are police lineups. Does a witness truly remember a particular person in the lineup or, believing the perpetrator must be among those in the lineup, just pick the person closest to their recollection? By the way, some police departments now add an admonition that “the perpetrator may not be in the lineup,” so as to reduce the impact of this bias.
Here is a personal recollection from Adam Torson:
“My dad had a personal experience like this that unfortunately wasn't simulated. He was at a restaurant in Newhall and actually witnessed a murder. Someone entered the restaurant and shot another patron, apparently the continuation of a domestic dispute of some kind. At the time he gave a statement to police describing the assailant and the car in which he fled. Months later he was interviewed by the police again to confirm the details, only to find that many of the details he confidently recalled were different than the ones he had reported at the time, e.g. the color of the car.”
In the meantime, thousands of people have languished in prison as the result of the “certain” memory of a single eyewitness. With the advent of DNA testing, many people previously convicted of crimes they did not commit have been freed. Can we rely on this most fallible and undependable of sources—the human memory—to relegate our fellow citizens to years behind bars? Of course we should not—yet we do.
THE ADDICTIVE NATURE OF FAUDA
Season 4 of Fauda recently was released on Netflix. A critic recently remarked that he was jealous of those who had not yet tuned in, because they will have the pleasure of experiencing this show for the first time. In 12 tense, often violent, heartbreaking and all-too-human episodes, one is thrust into the morass of Middle Eastern politics. The title of the show translates, in Hebrew and in Arabic, as “chaos.” And that is the core message of the show. The characters, whether combatants in the ongoing strife, terrorists, politicians, or ordinary citizens, are trapped in a perpetual state of chaos. And while there are the occasional “bad guys” who do bad things (coming from all sides and several walks of life), the vast majority of the people in the show are bystanders or people who are thrust by history, duty, or a sense of righteousness into adopting brutal, often retributive, positions against “the other.”
The first three seasons of the show occur in and around Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. The current season extends the “theatre of operations” into Belgium and Lebanon. The intensity in the show does not come from the firefights (which are intense) but from the moments of calm when we see the humanity of the people involved, their home lives, their loves, and their internal struggles with the merry-go-round of tit-for-tat gamesmanship and violence. It is riveting.
THE NUMBER ONE SHOW IN LEBANON
Besides being a hit in the Israel and the Palestinian territories, Fauda is a hit in the United States and other western markets. It also has proven to be a hit in The United Arab Emirates. But what is particularly remarkable is that it was the top show in Lebanon. Lebanon is, as you will recall, in a state of war with Israel much of the time since the State of Israel was founded. Several hot wars have been fought and a portion of southern Lebanon was once occupied by the Israel Defense Forces. Today, it is the base from which Iranian-backed Hezbollah fires missiles into Israel. In Lebanon it not only is a crime to do business with Israelis but it also is a crime to interact with Israelis. Yet, ordinary citizens can’t seem to get enough of this Israeli-produced show.
Obviously, this show is the “forbidden fruit” to many Lebanese (and, for that matter, much of the Arab world). Israel was off-limits in the UAE and other Arab countries that now have established relations with Israel. Things are changing. A fact I had not considered is the number of Lebanese working in and visiting countries that have relations with Israel. As such, they almost by necessity find themselves interacting with Israelis both through business and casual contact, in contradiction of Lebanese law.
There is a great article by a Lebanese Arab in the February 3 issue of Arabian Business regarding Fauda’s popularity in Lebanon. It ends with these words:
“… The show is… a marker of a widespread cultural paradigm shift in which previously isolated populations are more exposed to each other. Fauda may not be groundbreaking in its themes, depictions of violence, or archetypal characters, but it certainly touches upon something collective and unifying. Instead of asking why it has topped the charts in Lebanon, perhaps a better question is: what does the widespread exposure to a show like Fauda mean for the way current and future generations in Lebanon approach Israel?”
I think there likely are similar sentiments on the Israeli side of the border.
The other day, I was sitting in Temple and noted to Andrea that several of the tunes in services sounded like Arab melodies. We are, after all, cousins. Perhaps there may come the day when the first instinct of Arabs and Jews is not to first recall armed conflict when thinking of the other, but the shared foods, music, and history. One can only hope that someday people won’t live the pathos of continued violence, distrust, and pain that is depicted in shows like Fauda.
Have a great day,
Glenn
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