How Western Media Bias Allows Israel To Get Away With Murder in Gaza
An Israeli attack on Gaza was imminent, and not
because of any provocations by Palestinian groups in the besieged, impoverished
Gaza Strip. The Israeli military escalation was foreseeable
because it factors neatly in Israel’s contentious political scene. The war was
not a question of “if”, but “when”.
The answer came on November 12, when the Israeli
military launched a major strike against Gaza, killing an Islamic Jihad Commander,
Bahaa
Abu al-Ata, along with his wife Asma.
More strikes followed, targeting what the Israeli
military described as Islamic Jihad installations. However, the identities of
the victims, along with damning social media footage, pictures, and eyewitness
accounts indicate that civilians and civilian infrastructure were bombed and
destroyed as well.
As of November 14, when a truce was announced, 32
Palestinians have been killed and over 80 wounded in the Israeli aggression.
What truly frustrates any meaningful discussion
on the horrific situation in Gaza is the feeble response, whether by international
organizations that exist with the sole purpose of ensuring world peace or by
Western mainstream media, that ceaselessly celebrates its own accuracy and impartiality.
A most disappointing response to the Israeli violence
was offered
by Nickolay Mladenov, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle
East Peace Process.
Mladenov, whose job should have long been deemed
pointless considering that no “peace process” actually exists, expressed his
“concern” about the “ongoing and serious escalation between Palestinian Islamic
Jihad and Israel”.
Not only Mladenov’s statement creates a moral equivalence
between an occupying power, which instigated the war in the first place, and
a small group of a few hundred armed men, it is also dishonest.
“The indiscriminate launching of rockets and mortars
against population centers is absolutely unacceptable and must stop immediately,”
Mladenov elaborated, putting
great emphasis on the fact that, “there can be
no justification for any attacks against civilians”.
Shockingly, Mladenov was referring to Israeli, not
Palestinian civilians. At the time that his statement was released to the media,
there were already dozens of Palestinian civilians that had been killed and
wounded, while Israeli media reports spoke of few Israelis who had been treated
for “anxiety”.
The European Union did not fare any better. The
EU parroted
the same American knee-jerk response by condemning “the barrage of rocket attacks
reaching deep into Israel”.
“The firing of rockets on civilian populations is
totally unacceptable and must immediately stop,” a statement by the European
bloc read.
Is it not possible that Mladenov and top EU foreign
policymakers do not truly comprehend the political context of the latest Israeli
onslaught – that embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is using
military escalation as a way of fortifying his weakening grip on power.
Considering this, what is one to make of the poor
media coverage, the inept analyses and the absence of balanced reports in major
Western news media?
In a report published by the BBC on November 13,
the British broadcaster referred
to “cross-border violence between Israel and militants in Gaza”.
But Gaza is not an independent country and, per
international law, it is still under Israeli occupation. Israel declared
Gaza a “hostile territory” in September 2007, arbitrarily establishing a “border”
between it and the besieged Palestinian territory. For some reason, the BBC
finds this designation acceptable.
CNN, on the other hand, reported
on November 13 that “Israel’s military campaign against Islamic Jihad” is entering
its second day, while emphasizing the UN condemnation of the rocket attacks.
CNN, like most of its American mainstream counterparts,
reports on Israeli military campaigns as a part and parcel of some imagined
“war on terror”. Therefore, analyzing the language of US mainstream media with
the purpose of underlining and emphasizing its failures and biases, is a useless
exercise.
Sadly, US bias regarding Palestine has extended
to mainstream media in European countries that were, to some degree, fairer,
if not somewhat sympathetic, with the Palestinian peoples’ situation.
El Mundo of Spain, for example, spoke
of a number of Palestinians – making sure to emphasize that they were “mostly
militants”, – who “died” as opposed to “were killed” by the Israeli military.
“The escalation followed the death of Gaza’s armed
branch leader,” El Mundo reported, failing once more to pinpoint the culprits
in these seemingly mysterious deaths.
La Repubblica, which is perceived in Italy as a “leftist” outlet, sounded
more like a rightwing Israeli newspaper, in its
description of the events that led to the death and wounding of many Palestinians.
The Italian newspaper used a fabricated timeline that only exists in the mind
of Israeli military and decision-makers.
“Violence continued. Several rockets were thrown
towards Israel by Gaza’s Islamic Jihad (militants), breaking the brief truce,
according to (rightwing Israeli newspaper) The Jerusalem Post and to the Israeli
army”.
It remains unclear what “truce” La Repubblica was referring to.
France’s Le Monde followed suit, reporting
the same deceptive and clichéd Israeli lines and emphasizing statements
by the Israeli military and government. Interestingly, the death and wounding
of many Palestinians in Gaza did not deserve a place on the French newspaper’s
homepage. Instead, it chose to highlight a comparatively irrelevant news item
where Israel denounced
the labeling of illegal settlement products as “discriminatory”.
Maybe, one could have excused these across-the-board
journalistic and moral failings if it were not for the fact that the Gaza story
has been one of the most covered news topics anywhere in the world for over
a decade.
It is obvious that the West’s “newspapers of record”
have maintained their blindspot on fairly reporting on Gaza and intentionally
kept the truth from their readers for many years so as not to offend the sensibilities
of the Israeli government and its powerful allies and lobbies.
While one cannot help but bemoan the death of good
journalism in the West, it is also important to acknowledge with much appreciation
the courage and sacrifices of Gaza’s young journalists and bloggers who, at
times, are targeted and killed by the Israeli army for conveying the truth on
the plight of the besieged but tenacious Strip.
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