Palestinian child screams because of the sound of the rockets being intercepted in the sky, Jabaliya, Gaza, November 16, 2012. (Photo: Anne Paq/Activestills)
For all of Activestills amazing photography from Israel/Palestine see here.
I don’t see the word “intercepted” mentioned in the original caption. Unless Mondoweiss editors are experts on the subject they might want to refrain from making such commentary.
Also, it seems that Mondoweiss in its misguided effort of being evenhanded and balanced has been giving the rockets more photo space on the website than it has Israel’s heavy bombardments. There is enough one sided pro-Israel information in the mainstream media.
“… Mondoweiss in its misguided effort of being evenhanded and balanced has been giving the rockets more photo space on the website than it has Israel’s heavy bombardments.” (Avi)
What I’m not getting is why Mondo with 2 journalists currently in Israel is not reporting on the situation on the ground because of the rockets flying over or hitting Israel. I’ve been watching news clips of screaming Israelis in panic, to use Raphael Eitan’s 1983 words, “scurrying around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle” and throwing themselves on the ground in fear of incoming rockets. Nobody outside of Israel is saying anything about Netanyahu being rushed to a bunker yesterday or how TA’s streets were like a ghost town most of yesterday. Israel’s channel 2 seems to be not hiding much of what’s going on. Arab pro-Palestinian TV channels are showing clips of the hysteria in Israel from channels 2 and 10; the other ones are not disrupting their regular programming to discuss Gaza. Phil and Allison could say which of this is true or untrue.
Max Fisher at Washington Post has an article titled “The Israeli-Palestinian politics of a bloodied child’s photo” link to washingtonpost.com — which reduces questions of justice & violence to a “bickering” over the politics of photos of dead children — which I think ends up making a false equivalency — as if the conflict is a tit for tat problem — where (he says) each side is trying to prove to the world “how badly “we” suffered, and how much “they” are faking it.” Something about Fisher’s framing bothers me. It’s a sort of marriage counseling frame, as if what’s going on are two parties who need to learn to empathize, to feel each others pain. It psychologizes war — pre-balances everything, so the two parties seem to be sitting on a playground seesaw, equally balanced. It seems to me to be an attempt to defuse the incendiary power of new media that are bringing direct experience of things in Gaza — by containing any new insights into Gazan suffering in a discourse where people have to immediately ‘balance’ it w/ Israeli suffering…(altho’ I guess this is progress for MSM in that it’s including something like a Gazan perspective, however, pre-framed…unlike the total ‘disappearance’ of Palestinian voice & perspectives in much).
Plus, these sentences are jarring to me — (emphasis added)
those dumb A-rabs — can’t blame them for staging this — they’re too dumb (seems to be what he’s saying). To me, this sounds racist, or at least, ethnocentric, or at least, inappropriate for a journalist reporting on this terrible tragedy.
I had the same reaction, Betsy. Another fact-free and lazy false-equivalency piece of modern ‘journalism,’ and that last bit was indeed cutely snarky.
This part got me:
Masterful use of the “blood libel” eternal get-out-of-jail-card, by Max Fisher. Well-played, sir!
Or this:
Oh tsk, tsk, Max! Such strident criticism of the King of the Jews cannot be allowed to stand. Krauthammer will have you drummed out of the WaPo Gestapo, if you’re not more careful!
Ugh.
RE: “Photo: The scream”
● A GREAT “SCREAM” PHOTO FROM OUR “SHOCK AND AWE” IN IRAQ – link to facebook.com
P.S. I am feeling so darn good about having voted for Jill Stein of the Green Party rather than “O’bomber” who obviously authorized Israel’s current “Pillar of Cloud” assault on Gaza. I guess I should thank my lucky stars that I don’t live in a “swing state” where I might have been tempted to vote for Obama/O’bomber as the (not very) “lesser evil”!
Israel is the “little sadist”, but the United States is the “Big (Global) Sadist” ! ! !
● Jill Stein - link to jillstein.org
● The Green Party of the United States (GPUS) - link to gp.org
Of course there’s no effort to name the child. That would be our media taking sides.