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Occupied Palestinian village coveted by Jewish settlers is dubbed ‘miserable’ in Washington Post

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Washington Post calls Susya a miserable village

Yesterday the Washington Post published a report from Susiya, a hamlet in the occupied Hebron Hills that Israel is trying to demolish, that called Susiya a “miserable village” in the headline (and the accompanying tweet) and allowed Israeli settler advocates to suggest that Israel is trying to remove the Palestinians from “squalid tents” for their own good. “Pitiful” also made an appearance.

The Post has since changed the headline to “ramshackle” village, but “miserable” lives on in the url.

As for the word “occupied,” it appears once, deep in the story, all but erasing the most crucial fact here: this is not Israeli land under international law.

 “A conspiracy to commit land fraud is what it amounted to,” writes my tipster.

https://mobile.twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/770101988226953219

A retired California educator:

zionist propaganda calling village of humans “miserable” to condone the zionist inhumane behaviour of home demolishing

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About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.

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Posted In:
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Media
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10 Responses

  1. John O
    August 29, 2016, 1:42 pm

    This story gets a major article on the Guardian’s website today:

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/29/palestine-evictions-human-rights-susiya-bedouin-un-security-council

    I hope it makes it into tomorrow’s print edition. Read the article, but look at the BTL comments at your own risk of apoplexy.

    • Boomer
      August 31, 2016, 7:16 am

      Thanks for the link. The article says the villagers’ fate rests with the UN Security Council. Given the fact that Israel has a veto in the Security Council, we can assume that the villagers’ fate won’t be any more pleasant than their past.

  2. jsinton
    August 29, 2016, 6:54 pm

    I surprised they didn’t call the Arabs “stinking vermin untermensch”. After all, that’s clearly the intent.

  3. JWalters
    August 29, 2016, 7:52 pm

    Lawrence O’Donnell had an EXCELLENT take-down of the white supremacist treatment of Native Americans on his show of Thursday 8/25/16. For example

    “When we finally stopped actively killing Native Americans for the crime of living here before us, we … piled crime upon crime upon crime against the people whose offense against us was simply that they lived where we wanted to live.”

    Any reasonably informed person could easily see that every single point O’Donnell made applied EQUALLY to the Jewish supremacists in Palestine.

    So how is it that an experienced, progressive reporter like O’Donnell can be so incensed about America’s white supremacists and not even mention Israel’s Jewish supremacists?

    It may reflect requirements of O’Donnell’s employer. O’Donnell works for MSNBC, which is owned by Comcast. Comcast is a “family-owned” business, run by CEO Brian Roberts. Brian is the son of founder Bob Roberts. Bob Roberts was a Jewish immigrant who teamed up with two Jewish colleagues to found Comcast. One of these provided connections to investors, whose money enabled them to buy a large collection of media businesses. Since the three founders were Jewish, it’s possible that the investors were also predominantly Jewish.

    Thus the Comcast ownership may be primarily people who are like Hillary Clinton’s major investor, Haim Saban, who describes himself as a “one issue guy” with unquestioning support for Israel his only “issue”. Saban also helps fund Israel’s supremacist occuption and profits from it.

    This industrial-strength lying to American voters destroys democracy at its very foundation. It enables industrial-strength, manufactured wars with their windfall profits, which in turn can be used to buy more media outlets. O’Donnell’s noble words become a garish cartoon in the context of the full picture, a picture he unfortunatly cannot afford to show his viewers.

    A SLIGHTLY more positive possibility is that O’Donnell is hoping if he describes these abominations vividly enough, viewers will start to see on their own that his descriptions apply equally to the Israelis and Palestinians. He may be privately praying, “Please, somebody bring up the obvious parallels with the Israelis and Palestinians. Please, give me a hook so I can discuss this without being fired. At least if it’s me in this seat I can try to nudge the discussion in that direction.”

    Either way, America is obviously in dire straits.

  4. inbound39
    August 29, 2016, 10:12 pm

    America IS in dire straits…..it can no longer legitimately defend Israel. It is complicit in Israeli unlawful actions due to the weaponry and aid it gives Israel that Israel uses to compact and maintain the Illegal Occupation and Settlement Enterprise that clearly involves ethnic cleansing and genocide. How do the American people feel and its government officials feel that the first mission the brand spanking new F-35 JETS gifted to Israel flew, was a bombing and missile attack on the already demolished Gaza Strip….Fifty flights attacking Gaza with these brand spanking new state of the art weapons platforms used to attack defenceless,trapped Palestinians for one unguided homemade rocket that entered Israel and hit nothing. What was so threatening about the people of Gaza that required these space age weapons. A biplane with hand dropped munitions could have done the job safely. What absolute hero’s the IDF are as are the American Government officials who signed the deal and keep signing deals for aid to Israel. Their actions cannot be justified or defended in any way shape or form. And Hilary plans on letting the Israeli leader into the Whitehouse….makes me feel damned nauseous.

    • Annie Robbins
      August 30, 2016, 12:16 am

      hearhear

    • Boomer
      August 31, 2016, 7:13 am

      re: “How do the American people feel and its government officials feel that the first mission the brand spanking new F-35 JETS gifted to Israel flew, was a bombing and missile attack on the already demolished Gaza Strip…”

      As for the American people, most of them don’t know about this. After all, most of them get their news from the U.S. mainstream media. In any event, their feelings don’t matter.

  5. Boomer
    August 30, 2016, 3:38 pm

    On the other hand, Isabel Kershner has a surprisingly candid article in NYT, under the title “Israel Quietly Legalizes Pirate Outposts in the West Bank.” Of course, I don’t believe that Israel can “legalize” them, and I don’t believe that any of the settlements are “legal.” But within the context of NYT’s reporting, it is a good piece. It includes a recognition of reality, as well as the standard Zionist-Swiftboat-Vererans-for-Truth-style complaint about their victims doing what Israel is doing.

    Excerpt:

    “Asked about the legalization of outposts — and the international criticism — Mr. Netanyahu’s spokesman, David Keyes, did not respond directly, but instead turned the question to the Palestinian leaders’ stance that no settlements could remain in the West Bank under a future deal. “The frequently echoed Palestinian demand to ethnically cleanse their future state of Jews,” Mr. Keyes said via email, “is outrageous, immoral and antithetical to peace.”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/31/world/middleeast/israel-west-bank-outposts-mitzpe-danny.html?_r=1

  6. Henry Norr
    August 30, 2016, 5:42 pm

    There’s another major problem with the WaPo story, beyond those Phil mentions: Booth manages to omit the key fact in the modern history of Susya, which is that the hamlet he describes was created only after the Israelis expelled the Palestinian population from the original village of Susya. In 1986 the so-called Civil Administration, which is actually part of the Israeli military, declared the village an archaeological site, because they supposedly found ruins of an ancient temple there (as well as an ancient mosque) and kicked out the inhabitants, who apparently lived in regular houses there even though they were Beduin, who are often nomadic. There’s now an “unauthorized” Jewish settler outpost at this site – so much for the idea that it had to be cleared for archaeological work! – in addition to the nearby “authorized” Jewish settlement that’s also called Susya.

    So if the current Palestinian Susya has the “feeling of a protest camp,” as Booth puts it, that’s largely because that’s how it began. Since then (as he does note toward the end of his piece) the Israelis have repeatedly bulldozed the place, and they consider anything Palestinians build there illegal and subject to demolition. Meanwhile, they’ve stolen more and more of the surrounding land to be incorporated into the Jewish Susya.

    Could this history have anything to do with why the place looks “ramshackle”?

    By the way, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Occupied Palestinian Territory (OCHA-OPT) put out a useful factsheet and map about Susya last year:

    https://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_susiya_factsheet_may_2015_english.pdf

    • Boomer
      August 31, 2016, 7:04 am

      re “There’s another major problem with the WaPo story,”

      Thanks, Henry Norr, for this relevant information. This is another good example of the deep knowledge provided by some of the commenters. Such knowledge is a reason to wade through the propaganda. “Bad money drives out good,” but so far the bad posts haven’t overwhelmed the valuable, due in part, no doubt, to the moderators. Mooser helps too.

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