When Jews die in Israel and Palestine, alarms go off in newsrooms in the United States. American media have been seeking out Israeli voices; and are generally portraying the latest wave of violence in Palestine and Israel as an eruption of longtime enmity — a cycle of violence — that Israel is perfectly within its rights to suppress.
Thus last night on NBC Nightly News, Richard Engel repeatedly showed footage of Israeli forces killing a young Palestinian man with a knife at Damascus Gate as if we were seeing a legitimate response to terrorism. The fact that East Jerusalem is occupied, that Palestinians there cannot vote for the government that controls their lives, and these young people are surely unhappy with these conditions: none of these elements was in the report. The fact that Palestinians are routinely killed when merely suspected of plotting violence and Israelis who carry out murderous attacks are free — also unquestioned.
National Public Radio last night also aired a report that cast the violence as a wave that Israel needs to quell. Host Kelly McEvers:
The violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories continued today. This despite the fact that the Israeli government is taking new steps to stop it, including setting up roadblocks and deploying soldiers to back up the police.
The thrust of the piece was expressed by Israeli deputy defense minister Dore Gold to reporter Emily Harris:
Israel will adopt the measures that are necessary to bring quiet. We have to bring this violence to an end quickly.
Harris interviewed two Israeli spokespersons, and one spokesperson for Human Rights Watch. That NPR imbalance continued in the next piece, when host Audie Cornish interviewed a progressive rabbi from Jerusalem, Uri Ayalon. He spoke about the need for co-existence and said that few Palestinians support the violence.
of course that they are supporting the Palestinian issue, but they are not violent.
Whatever that issue is! Cornish, so eloquent on racial issues in the U.S., owes it to her readers to explore these Palestinian conditions. And could it be that many Palestinians actually support the attacks? NPR can’t broach that idea.
Today on MSNBC, the new Israeli ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon, who says that God gave the land to the Jews, fielded softball questions from Joe Scarborough and Richard Haass. Scarborough asked what the headlines would be here if a terrorist had stabbed a 72-year-old woman. No questions about the occupation, lack of freedom, lack of equal rights. That’s journalistic negligence.
I am informed that Yousef Munayyer of the US Campaign to End the Occupation was just on CNN and was questioned repeatedly on his explanation of the Palestinian violence. “They go after him more than Israeli officials because they have no basis for understanding what he’s saying. It’s alien to them or they pretend it is,” reports a friend. “Meanwhile, Israeli officials don’t usually have to answer for discriminatory laws or when asked about occupation and lack of Palestinian freedom are allowed to say weak stuff like, But we offered them peace three times and they refused. No follow up on how these were very partial offers.”
Munayyer notes that USA Today finally mentions the occupation in the lead of a story, by Shira Rubin:
Wow, look at that, Occupation made it into a lede! pic.twitter.com/X1Fy6182SL
— Yousef Munayyer (@YousefMunayyer) October 15, 2015
The New York Times today also reflects the institutional bias. In a piece on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s visit to Israel, and his original plan to visit Ramallah in Palestine, now abandoned in favor of going to a bilingual Jewish Palestinian school outside Jerusalem, the paper of record just quotes Jewish advisers and voices.
Still, allies of the administration were divided about the political wisdom of making a stop in the West Bank, which Jewish leaders said would be unprecedented for a sitting New York City mayor. Inside City Hall, some staff members said privately that it was clear that a visit to the West Bank at a sensitive moment might be received very differently than an event with Jerusalem schoolchildren…
“I think it’s wise that the mayor is skipping a visit to the West Bank while Israel is currently under a campaign of terror,” [influential City Council member David] Greenfield said, adding, “It is certainly appropriate for him to reach out to the Palestinian community by visiting a school in Jerusalem.”
If only the Jim Crow south had had such articulate defenders in the northern press…
Acid.
Remember this” fair and balanced” encounter with Sean ( thug ) Hannity.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/25/sean-hannity-yousef-munayyer-rant_n_5620231.html
“Israeli ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon, who says that God gave the land to the Jews”
A simple solution to Israel’s “demographic problem” is also right there in the Bible. Ancient Israel had slaves, so make the Palestinians slaves. That way they are not citizens, and have no vote. Israel is thus a Jewish state and a democracy with slaves. Problem solved.
I wonder how international news outlets are carrying this. We know, and are fed up, of how the zionist media constantly covers this conflict – Israel (the well armed occupier, is always the victim of unarmed, occupied people. Every stone thrown by young men, becomes a bomb, and the rockets that mostly go astray, are taking a huge toll on the poor Israelis, according to our media. Precision bombs sent into civilian homes in Gaza, are okay and they deserve to have their families wiped out. It is weird.
I was shocked to see Martin Fletcher on MSNBC’s ( Kate Snow program), just now, discuss the illegal settlements and see the shrinking map of Palestine shown on television. Wow!
Someone’s not going to like that. Kate Snow will surely get a phone call from an annoyed boss.
Perhaps the US MSM, other western media, and the deluded Israelis and their supporters should do themselves a favor and read Gideon Levy:
“Israel’s Sleeping Beauties Have Awoken From Their Deathly Silence
…..
What did you think, the Palestinians would sit still indefinitely? Did you really think Israel would continue on its course and they’d just bow their heads in submission?
Do you know many historical examples of that? Is there one example of a brutal occupation that persisted without stoking resistance? Apparently that’s what you thought, otherwise there would have been public pressure long ago to act, because who wants terror?
But Israel slid into a deathly silence, with darkness over the abyss, and now it’s acting surprised. It voted for the right, for ultra-nationalism, racism and messianism, and now it’s feelings are hurt.
After all, what did it ask for but some quiet, to be left alone from the occupation to which it’s not even linked, and from the resistance that has fallen on it like a natural disaster. Sleeping beauty has awoken to the sound of stabbings and car-rammings, and through the cobwebs of sleep it’s asking: How did this happen? How can they be doing this to us again?
You can’t blame Israelis — they were busy doing other things and knew nothing. Bar Refaeli’s wedding weighed heavily on people’s minds, as did events at the Allenby 40 nightclub. Israelis didn’t know exactly what was going on over there, beyond the dark mountains, half an hour’s drive from their homes — for the most part, they didn’t want to know.
The media gladly succumbed to their wishes. They hid the crimes of the occupation from people’s sight — such pictures don’t buoy ratings. The image of a Palestinian as a human being doesn’t sell newspapers. The media never reported what those people go through and what they really desire. It sufficed with diversions, incitement and propaganda. That pays better.
Politicians promised that everything would be fine, rabbis incited, settlers torched, the whole world is against us, just leave us alone. Then out of the blue those knife-wielding youngsters with murder in their eyes descended upon us. The quiet dissolved, security fizzled, businesses collapsed, dreams of jeep tours and quick vacations became uncertain.
The government blames the Islamic State and the left blames the lack of “peace talks.” Experts on Arab affairs — the southern branch of the Shin Bet security service and Military Intelligence — say it’s because of “incitement.” The wise sages of security issues say, as is their wont, that this time the other side must be hit hard. Everyone agrees that the Arabs are to blame because they were born to kill. Through this stupefying haze all connection to reality has been lost.
In the meantime, Jerusalem has become the capital of apartheid. No other city so discriminates and dispossesses or is so violent. Gun-toting Mayor Nir Barkat, who’s largely responsible for the discrimination and dispossession in his city, incites against a third of its population — an unbelievable phenomenon in its own right.
And you thought 300,000 people would acquiesce? That they’d watch settlers invade their homes as city hall denied them minimal services amid maximal property taxes? That they’d look on while the occupier arbitrarily denied them residence status, as if they were migrants in their own city?
That they would put up with Jewish gangs beating them up in full view of policemen and forgive? That a young man growing up in this reality — with his neighborhood a Soweto — would spend his life washing dishes and building homes for Jews with no chance of escaping his ghetto?
Did you really think right-wing provocations on the Temple Mount would pass quietly? That the burning of the Dawabsheh family would pass with no response — and even more so the defense minister’s arrogant claims that Israel knew who the perpetrators were but wouldn’t arrest them?
That their children would be burned helplessly with Israel not punishing anyone and they’d remain silent? That the response to all this would be more of the same: We’ll demolish, detain, dispossess, oppress, torture and kill more than ever — and (Jewish) Zion will be redeemed? Did anyone really believe that?”
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.680443