It comes as no surprise that the U.S. (and British) mainstream media are ignoring or distorting the big and growing Palestinian resistance to evictions in the occupied Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. But there is a sign of hope, as the New York Times correspondent did sneak some fairness into his report.
The mainstream media’s favorite word to describe the Palestinian uprising is “clashes.” Whether you consulted the Washington Post, the Guardian or NBC News, “both-sides-ism” was the dominant theme. Even the BBC fell into the misleading “clashes” narrative. The National Public Radio website was even more dishonest: “[Palestinian] worshippers threw rocks and chairs at police, who fired rubber-coated bullets and stun grenades.” The implication, although unstated, is cause and effect; Palestinians actually started it by provoking those Israeli police.
Contrast NPR’s slipperiness with this site’s report by Yumna Patel, which accurately headlined the exact same event: “Hundreds injured as Israeli forces attack Palestinian worshippers.” Her view was corroborated in the Israeli paper Haaretz, in a detailed article that explained how “Israeli police fan the flames at Temple Mount instead of putting them out.”
That Haaretz report also included the kind of graphic details the mainstream mostly ignored. Reporter Nir Hasson described a video circulating on social media:
. . . a young [Israeli] Border Police officer approaches a group of Palestinians; he threatens them with a stun grenade and then casually rolls it, like a bowling ball, between their legs. The grenade explodes between a wheelchair and a young girl, who runs away, panicked.
The mainstream media has also failed to adequately report on the Israeli extreme right and its provocations. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post said that the Jewish supremacist (and new member of Israel’s parliament) Itamar Ben-Gvir was at the demonstrations, but then inexplicably did not quote him. A widely circulated video on Twitter shows Ben-Gvir taunting a Palestinian who had been wounded by a bullet at a previous protest: “I’m only sorry the bullet didn’t go into your head.”
But the mainstream’s media biggest failure is that it mostly stuck to its (distorted) reporting on the rising violence without sufficiently explaining that expanding Israeli apartheid is the prime cause of the crisis. Israeli “settlers” claim they have legal title to the disputed homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood because Jews owned them before the 1948 war for Israeli independence/Nakba. But under Israel’s apartheid system Palestinians are not allowed to appeal in Israeli courts for the homes they or their ancestors owned before they were expelled from pre-1967 Israel, residences to which in many cases Palestinian families still have keys. (One such home, in West Jerusalem, actually houses the New York Times’s bureau chief.) What’s more, seizing the Palestinian homes in Sheikh Jarrah is just the latest step in Israel’s effort to expel Palestinians from the occupied territories, a concerted and planned ethnic cleansing campaign that has marched on for decades.
The New York Times’s Patrick Kingsley’s report was a partial exception to the mainstream’s dismal record on Sheikh Jarrah. He used a couple of tactics to smuggle some truths into his article. Back in the 1970s, journalists at Mexico’s leading paper, Excelsior, knew they couldn’t put anything that would disturb the government high up in their articles. So they placed their important truths lower down, after the obligatory pro-government opening paragraphs. Discerning Mexicans learned to skip straight to the inside pages to find the real news.
Kingsley used the same tactic. If you read his report all the way down to paragraph 39, you will learn that
Israeli law allows Jews to reclaim ownership of land they vacated in 1948, but denies Palestinians the right to reclaim the same properties they fled from in the same war.
Better late than never. Kingsley then used another method that this site has been recommending for years; instead of covering up Israel’s far rightists, interview them to give readers a true picture of what the country is like today. Kingsley uses Aryeh King, a “settler” leader who is the deputy mayor of Jerusalem. The Israeli government has dismissed the Sheikh Jarrah uprising as a mere dispute over real estate. But Kingsley lets King tell the truth:
“Of course,” King says, seizing the Sheikh Jarrah homes is part of the wider colonization strategy, “the way to secure the future of Jerusalem as a Jewish capital for the Jewish people.”
People like Aryeh King are not shy about telling you their real views, as this site has discovered. If Kingsley keeps putting them in his reports, his readers will have a far better idea about where Israel/Palestine are going.
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Israel: They really do shoot children, don’t they. So would you really holiday in a country that repeatedly commits such crimes with impunity? – Redress Information & Analysis (redressonline.com)
“Redress Information & Analysis,” May 9/21 by Stuart Littlewood.
Israel: “They really do shoot children, don’t they. So would you really holiday in a country that repeatedly commits such crimes with impunity?”
“The other evening ITV News included an item promoting Israel’s holiday industry. It was clearly aimed at Britons desperate to resume foreign travel abroad after the long COVID lockdown. ITV surely knew that several authorities, including the UN and Human Rights Watch, now regard Israel as a racist state and an apartheid regime, and that Israeli propagandists were angling for inclusion on the British government’s ‘green light’ list of foreign holiday destinations about to be announced.
“Of course, next day Israel was among the top safe choices declared by the government.
“When did ITV News, that beacon of balanced journalism, last report on the appalling crimes Israel commits daily against the Palestinians whose lands it illegally occupy and whose homes it continue to bulldoze? When did ITV last report on the 805 Palestinian children killed by Israel’s occupation forces since their infamous Operation Cast Lead (carried out over Christmas and New Year 2008/2009) or the 342 Palestinian women they’ve slaughtered in the same period? These figures are supplied by B’Tselem, Israel’s own human rights organization.
“As at the end of September 2020, 157 Palestinian children were cooped up in Israeli jails. ‘The IPS [Israeli Prison Service] considers these minors – both detainees and prisoners – criminal offenders.’ Since October 2020 the IPS has stopped providing figures, a move B’Tselem is trying to get reversed.
“And just as ITV was promoting holidays in Israel on its News programme the racist regime was at it again. Defense for Children International – Palestine issued this bulletin:
@-@Last night around 9 p.m., Israeli forces shot and killed 16-year-old Said Yousef Mohammad Odeh south of Nablus in the northern occupied West Bank.
“Israeli forces reportedly confronted Palestinian youth at the village entrance prior to the shooting. Said was not involved in the confrontations at the time he was shot, according to information collected by our team.” (cont’d)
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“Israeli forces deployed in a nearby olive grove fired live ammunition at Said as he approached the village entrance. He sustained at least two gunshot wounds: in the back near his right shoulder and pelvis. Both bullets exited from the front.
“Israeli forces routinely unlawfully kill Palestinian children with impunity, using intentional lethal force against Palestinian children when they pose no threat.
“Israeli forces reportedly shot another youth in the back with live ammunition as he approached Said to help him. A Palestinian ambulance was prevented from reaching Said for at least 15 minutes, and when paramedics were finally allowed to approach the boy, he had no vital signs. He was transferred to Rafidia hospital in Nablus where he was pronounced dead upon arrival.
“Said is the second Palestinian child killed by Israeli forces in 2021. Systemic impunity has fostered a context where Israeli forces know no bounds, and so we must continue raising our voices to call for accountability.@-@
“Said had a full life ahead of him, and it is reprehensible and unconscionable that Israeli forces stole that from him.”
“Israel attracted 3.6 million tourists in 2017, a record year. But many of the religious attractions, like those in the ancient city of Jerusalem, are not theirs but belong to the Palestinians who are not allowed the tourism benefits. Another cruel swindle.”
I’m no fan of NPR, not since first hearing Terry Gross acting as Israel’s ‘Shomer’ on the station. However, in all fairness, I heard a report on NPR this morning that attributed the disturbances in Jerusalem, at least in part, to the evictions of Palestinians from their homes to make way for settlers. It’s still a long way from what we would like to see, particularly from a public radio station. But it’s better than what quoted here as NPR’s initial report that completely toed the Zionist party line.
Maybe other reports forced NPR to do a better job of adhering to the truth.
And yet the OP makes no attempt to dispute it, the entire response is whataboutisms…