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.
Israel wants to bulldoze this miserable village, but Europe is providing life support https://t.co/K6qkOatyhk
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) August 29, 2016
The usually helpful reporter, William Booth, seeks to be balanced about a hideously-imbalanced situation:
The Palestinian residents insist they are not squatters but heirs to the land they have farmed and grazed since the Ottoman era.
They say Israel wants to depopulate the area of Arabs and replace them with Jews.
“Israeli settlers in the West Bank see an insidious Palestinian encroachment onto lands the Jewish homesteaders believe were given to them by God.”
James Downer, the British deputy consul general in Jerusalem, sipped coffee with the Nawaja clan.
“I am very fond of Susiya,” he said…
He promised the locals, “We will do what we can to oppose demolitions here and elsewhere.”
Whatever it was in the past, these days Susiya has more the feeling of a protest camp than a functioning Palestinian village.
invading someone’s land and filling it with bulldozers and cement is not “miserable” but a natural tiny village is. Sureeeee
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
e
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.
I surprised they didn’t call the Arabs “stinking vermin untermensch”. After all, that’s clearly the intent.
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.
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.
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