The western mass media’s coverage of the so-called “conflict” in Israel-Palestine is so flawed as to turn upside-down the public’s understanding of what is happening. Following are five specific points that are particularly relevant to the current violence.
1. East Jerusalem is not in Israel.
News analyses of Israeli actions at Sheikh Jarrah and the Al-Aqsa Mosque are invariably premised as though they are taking place in Israel (and thus implicitly subject to Israeli law). No. Israel seized East Jerusalem by force in 1967 and has defied UN demands to leave ever since. Indeed, the UN Security Council, alarmed by Israeli intransigence, made explicit that no amount of Israeli “facts on the ground” can then be used by Tel Aviv to claim a fait accompli in its theft of the land. Israel has no right to be in East Jerusalem in the first place.1
2. Citizenship in East Jerusalem is by ethnicity: Jews, yes; Non-Jews, no.
Israel, of course, claims to have annexed East Jerusalem; yet under Israeli apartheid law, only Jewish settlers, not non-Jewish natives (such as those of Sheikh Jarrah), are citizens. Israel categorizes non-Jewish natives of East Jerusalem as transient “residents”, allowing it to ethnically cleanse them at will. They can apply for citizenship (rarely granted), but it is barely even a Faustian deal: they forfeit any national claim in exchange for a “citizenship” that, as non-Jews, still does not prevent their ethnic cleansing.2
3. Jews can reclaim property allegedly owned pre-1948. Only Jews.
Israel claims that land in Sheikh Jarrah had belonged to Jews before 1948, and that they therefore have the right to repossess it. But under Israeli law, only Jews have this right; the non-Jews whose homes Israeli settlers commandeer, are denied the same right. Thus, even if non-Jewish natives of East Jerusalem had applied for and been granted Israeli citizenship, Jewish settlers would still commandeer their homes, while they, as non-Jews, would have no parallel right to reclaim their own rightful homes stolen by Israel in 1948 or later.3
4. The Israeli siege of Gaza began in 1948, not after the election of Hamas in 2006 .
The news invariably invokes “Hamas” and “rockets” to explain the Israeli siege and massacres. No: Although Israel heightened its blockade after the rise of Hamas, the siege began in 1948 and has continued unabated since. Many of the people Israel ethnically cleansed in 1948 ended up in Gaza, facing starvation, cold, and disease in the suddenly overpopulated land. Since they are not Jewish, those who tried to go home were often shot dead on sight, and nothing has changed since: people in Gaza are now shot dead for a merely symbolic attempt to approach the perimeter “fence” enclosing the ghetto. But the media falsely link the siege to the election of Hamas, providing Israel a pseudo “explanation”. To be sure, one may argue that the rockets are stupid, as they are precisely what Israel wants and provokes; but if the ethnicities were reversed — if “Arab” militias had ethnically cleansed Jews and kept them semi-starved in a sealed ghetto which it used as a sadistic weapons-testing toy with no means of self defence — instead of blaming the victims, our militaries would have liberated them seventy-three years ago.4
5. The Palestinian Authority is not an autonomous Palestinian “government”.
The media — correctly — criticise the Palestinian Authority for its impotence and corruption, but falsely suggest that it is the freely-elected representative of the Palestinians. The PA was put in place by Israeli military force against the results of the 2006 election, and it has no power whatsoever except as “allowed” by Israel. It serves Israel by outsourcing the day-to-day affairs — and the repression — of the Palestinians; and Israel needs the facade of a Palestinian “government” to explain why non-Jews in the West Bank cannot vote in Israeli elections. Nor did the Palestinians even have any true say in the candidates for the 2006 election: Israel imprisoned or assassinated promising leaders not to its liking, and then began a war to keep the democratically-elected winner, Hamas, from taking office in the West Bank.5
Notes:
- 1. Numerous UN Resolutions from 1967 and on have made clear that
• East Jerusalem is not Israeli territory;
• Israel must not change the nature of East Jerusalem, whether people, land, or buildings;
• defiance of this cannot then be used to claim a fait accompli;
• Israel must remove its forces from the city.
These include UNSC Resolutions 242 (1967), 250 (1968), 251 (1968), 252 (1968), 267 (1969), 271 (1969), 298 (1969), 465 (1980), 476 (1980), 478 (1980), 672 (1990), 1073 (1996), 1322 (2000), 2334 (2016); and UNGA 2253 (1967), 36/15 (1981), 55/130 (2001), 10/14 (2003), 60/104 (2006), 70/89 (2015), 71/96 (2016). - 2. See for example, The Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
- 3. See the excellent 2017 report prepared for the UN by Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley that was withdrawn under Israeli pressure, archived here.
4. For Gaza in the aftermath of 1948, see, e.g., Ilan Pappe’s Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, or the present author’s State of Terror.
5. The common wisdom has it that Hamas won the 2006 election for three reasons: it had been active helping local communities; it was at the time seen as less corrupt than Fateh; and because it was seen, unlike Fateh, as an actual opposition to Israel. It is often forgotten that Hamas won the election for all of Palestine, not just Gaza; but Israel, with US backing, used military force to abrogate the election results, leaving Hamas confined to the Gaza strip, and Fateh, Israel’s choice, in the West Bank.
This post first appeared on Counter Currents.
Comment on East Jerusalem, from Eyal Weizman’s “Hollow Land – Israel’s Architecture of Occupation” (2017), page 49:
While issuing an average of 1,500 building permits to Jewish Israelis and constructing 90,000 housing units for Jews in all parts of East Jerusalem since 1967, the municipality has issued an annual average of only 100 building permits to Palestinians in the city, thus creating a Palestinian housing crisis with a shortfall of more than 25,000 housing units. Without the possibility of obtaining planning permissions, many Palestinian families have bought homes ‘illegally’ and exposed themselves to the random actions of municipal demolition squads. These demolitions are undertaken mainly in the more disadvantaged Palestinian neighborhoods, where residents cannot afford legal defense.
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ABSOLUTE MUST READ!!!!
Chris Hedges: Israel, the Big Lie – scheerpost.com
Scheer Post, May 14/21
“Chris Hedges: Israel, the Big Lie”
BRIEF EXCERPT:
“Israel is not exercising ‘the right to defend itself’ in the occupied Palestinian territories. It is carrying out mass murder, aided & abetted by the U.S.”
“Nearly all the words & phrases used by the Democrats, Republicans & the talking heads on the media to describe the unrest inside Israel & the heaviest Israeli assault against the Palestinians since the 2014 attacks on Gaza, which lasted 51 days & killed more than 2,200 Palestinians, including 551 children, are a lie. Israel, by employing its military machine against an occupied population that does not have mechanized units, an air force, navy, missiles, heavy artillery & command-and-control, not to mention a U.S. commitment to provide a $38 billion defense & package for Israel over the next decade, is not exercising ‘the right to defend itself.’ It is carrying out mass murder. It is a war crime.
“Israel has made it clear it is ready to destroy & kill as wantonly now as it was in 2014. Israel’s defense minister Benny Gantz, who was the chief of staff during the murderous assault on Gaza in 2014, has vowed that if Hamas ‘does not stop the violence, the strike of 2021 will be harder & more painful than that of 2014.’ The current attacks have already targeted several residential & rises including buildings that housed over a dozen local & international press agencies, government buildings, roads, public facilities, agricultural lands, two schools & a mosque.
“I spent seven years in the Middle East as a correspondent, four of them as The New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief. I am an Arabic speaker. I lived for weeks at a time in Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison where over two million Palestinians exist on the edge of starvation, struggle to find clean water & endure constant Israeli terror. I have been in Gaza when it was pounded with Israeli artillery & air strikes…(cont’d)
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“I have watched mothers and fathers, wailing in grief, cradling the bloodied bodies of their sons and daughters. I know the crimes of the occupation—the food shortages caused by the Israeli blockade, the stifling overcrowding, the contaminated water, the lack of health services, the near constant electrical outages due to the Israeli targeting of power plants, the crippling poverty, the endemic unemployment, the fear and the despair. I have witnessed the carnage.
“I also have listened from Gaza to the lies emanating from Jerusalem and Washington. Israel’s indiscriminate use of modern, industrial weapons to kill thousands of innocents, wound thousands more and make tens of thousands of families homeless is not a war: It is state-sponsored terror. And, while I oppose the indiscriminate firing of rockets by Palestinians into Israel, as I oppose suicide bombings, seeing them also as war crimes, I am acutely aware of a huge disparity between the industrial violence carried out by Israel against innocent Palestinians and the minimal acts of violence capable of being waged by groups such as Hamas.”
THANK YOU CHRIS HEDGES FOR TELLING THE UGLY TRUTH!!! DOUBTLESS, YOU HAVE INSPIRED MANY OTHERS TO DO THE SAME!
I recognise that every time the criminal borderless state of so called israel decided to “Mow the Lawn” and murdered thousands of men , women and children we were all sure that each time they had gone too far and change must come.It didn,t and even got worse when trump got into power.I wonder how large the check was to buy his support.
But this time things are different.I can feel it on the media .
I have just watched Hala Gorani interview Mark (let me be clear) regev the invader from Australia .She really put it up to this ghoul and in particular on the matter of Israel providing evidence of Hamas operating out of the building that AP were using.
she told him , we journalists want to see the proof and he said the evidence has been given to the US intelligence people but he could not speak about the contents except to say it is beyond doubt.It is notable that just an hour before regevs interview Blinkin had denied receiving proof from Israel .Who is lying.
regev started another spiel about KHAMAS wanting to destroy israel and they Hamas do not want peace and the usual zionist claptrap. It became clear from her facial expressions that she had heard enough and sent him packing.
Then she interviewd a Palestinian rapper who was reporting that he had called the police recently that armed squatters were coming through his neighbourhood escorted by police and was told that it was none of their business and they hung up.
It was very frank and she asked the right questions.At one point I had to check if I was still watching the CNN.
Yesterday Fareed zacharia interviewed Martin Indyk and Rashid Khalidi and the interview was also frank with both interviewees given ample time to state their points.No attempt to cut them short as is often the case.
There is a definite change in the way Israel is being viewed.As we all know , changes come when least expected and happen fast.
Just saw on AJ that a palestinian had posted an update about the situtation in Gaza on FB and it was removed.I bet zionist pro Israel hasbara will not be taken down.
But I must becareful that I do not suggest that Jews control the media.