This week provided further evidence – if any were lacking — that anti-Palestinian bias is simply a rule of American politics, and today maybe the leading rule.
Yesterday Israel killed 274 Palestinians and wounded hundreds more in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp while freeing four Israeli hostages, and the U.S. promptly hailed the “rescue”. It is beyond question that this was an indiscriminate massacre, but Joe Biden saluted the Israeli action, and so did Secretary of State, without a mention of Palestinian lives.
“As if we needed more proof of how little this administration values Palestinian lives,” Khaled Elgindy wrote.
Mainstream reporters are horrified, but politely. After the last outrage earlier this week, when Israel killed dozens of Palestinians in a school, a reporter asked at the State Department: “People might find it very puzzling that you have the leverage of $3.8 billion of defense supplied to the Israelis per year, and you cannot compel this situation to change.”
The State Department said the U.S. has prodded Israel, and there’s been progress. “We have seen them [the Israelis] take improvements over time.”
So the U.S. keeps pouring money and weapons into Israel, and the Democratic base believes overwhelmingly that it’s a genocide, and Biden keeps saying he wants a ceasefire, but won’t apply any pressure to achieve it.
Republicans are at least more honest about their policy. Nikki Haley—a possible running mate for Trump —visited Israel at the end of May and wrote “Finish them” on an Israeli shell. Even as the death count in Gaza crossed 36,000.
This disdain for Palestinian life is consistent throughout the American establishment. Variety reported this week that a Hollywood marketing guru warned her employees that they should hit “pause on working with any celebrity or influencer or tastemaker posting against Israel.”
In an email, Ashlee Margolis said, “Anyone saying Israel is committing a ‘genocide’ is someone we will pause on working with, as that is simply not true…. While Jews are devastated by the loss of innocent lives in Gaza, we are feeling immense fear over the rising Jew Hatred all over the world.”
So again, Palestinian lives just don’t matter, next to Jewish fears.
This special degraded status for Palestinians has become an area of study for Palestinian intellectuals. Rabea Eghbariah, a human rights lawyer and doctoral student at Harvard, wrote a lengthy legal argument for a new term for the Palestinian condition.
“The law does not possess the language that we desperately need to accurately capture the totality of the Palestinian condition. From occupation to apartheid and genocide, the most commonly applied legal concepts rely on abstraction and analogy to reveal particular facets of subordination,” Eghbariah wrote –and offered the idea of “Nakba” as a legal concept to encompass that subordination.
But Eghbariah’s argument was censored, first by the Harvard Law Review, in “an unprecedented” move against a fully-edited essay, as the Intercept reported. Then, in an even more unprecedented fashion, by the Columbia Law Review this week, whose board of directors, which includes alumni with ties to the Biden administration, actually shut down the entire website when Eghbariah’s piece went up. (In the ensuing controversy, they have now restored the site).
In the eyes of the world, Palestinians only count when they are dying. That is what Qassam Muaddi wrote at our site this week, in an essay titled, “Against a world without Palestinians.”
Over the years, learning our Palestinian history, I began to notice that in order to be acknowledged by the rest of the world, we Palestinians always had to die…. It is as if in order to exist without justification, Palestinians had to intimately deal with death — they could master it, put up the best show of it, but they always had to die.
Qassam went on to explain that all that builds Palestinian character, including culture and stories, has no place in the world as it is. It must always be dismissed as terrorism or something less than human.
He actually ends that essay with hope, that the global discourse of Palestine is finally changing.
And the next day, another 274 Palestinians were killed, with full U.S. support. And Democrats wonder why democracy is in crisis.
The Media Skew Public Perception By Manipulating People’s Attention
Caitlin Johnstone
Jun 09, 2024
“Israel Rescues 4 Hostages in Military Operation; Gazan Officials Say Scores Are Killed,” reads a New York Times headline from Saturday.
“It’s a very odd-looking headline even if you don’t know anything about the propagandistic tactics being employed in it. The first half is very clear, while the second half is unintelligible and reads like some weird kind of riddle or word puzzle.
The New York Times is performing these bizarre, cryptic linguistic gymnastics to discuss the latest Israeli massacre in Gaza which as of this writing has a reported death toll of 236.
Right off the bat we can see something weird in this headline with the use of the word “scores” to describe the number of people reported killed in the massacre. The New York Times article itself says it was reported that “more than 200 people were killed in central Gaza,” so the correct quantifier for the headline would be “hundreds”, not “scores”. This would be like a headline saying “dozens” of people were killed on 9/11 instead of “thousands”; it would technically be correct since the number of people killed were mathematically speaking many many dozens, but it would give readers the wrong impression of the lethality of the incident.
Next, notice the sudden switch mid-headline from active, certain voice to passive, doubtful voice.
Four Israeli hostages were definitely rescued by Israel, while Gazan officials are alleging that scores were killed.
Scores of what? Cats? Chickens? Israelis?
Killed by what? Salmonella poisoning? Traffic accidents? Congolese militias?
There’s no way to tell from the headline.”
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-media-skew-public-perception
The New Yorker has an interesting–albeit unsurprising–June 11 interview by Isaac Chotiner with Matt Dust, the executive VP at “The Center for International Policy” and former chief foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders. It is titled “Is Biden’s Israel Policy Cynical or Naive?” There is much discussion of Biden’s feelings and policy toward Israel, nothing about his feelings toward Palestinians. That’s telling. It’s entirely consistent with your thesis that Palestinian lives don’t matter to him and his administration. Actions speak loudly. Genocide Joe has earned his nickname.
Liberation for the people of Palestine will come closer with ideas. If their support system in America advances discourse toward a political solution, hope can build. If Biden is successful facilitating a ceasefire, such discourse will shortly become a paramount need. Understanding and communicating to America what “Free, Free Palestine” entails will become essential.
“It is beyond question that this was an indiscriminate massacre”
No, Phil Weiss’ assertion is certainly questionable:
1. We don’t know how many Palestinians were killed in the rescue operation. I don’t know where the number 274 comes from, but I guess the source is Hamas.
2. Even assuming that the number of casualties is high, they (Hamas) won’t say how many were armed terrorists and how many were civilians.
3. Which leads to the question of how many of the “civilians” were innocent, considering that the kidnapped hostages were being imprisoned in civilian residences, in a civilian neighborhood. Those who functioned as hosts (=jailers) of the hostages, or knew about it -were accomplices, at least.
4. When the terrorists realized that a rescue operation was under way they opened fire wildly, shooting in all directions, at everything and everyone, with automatic fire and RPGs. It’s very likely that they caused casualties among their own people. And it’s another example of Hamas’ strategy of hiding behind and among civilians and civilian facilities, causing so much suffering to their own people.
This was an audacious , risky, but ultimately successful , operation . We were thrilled by the rescue of the four hostages, seeing them reunited with their families and friends. Here in Beersheva , Noa Argamani will receive a big welcome. And we’re saddened by the death of the officer who fell in battle, Arnon Zmora, who was one of the heroes of Oct.7. , and also the innocent Gazans who were killed .
All over the mainstream media the disregard for Palestinian lives is extremely palpable. I believe MSNBC’s Mika Bryzinski, Donnie Deutsch actually along with Joe Scarborough and Willie are some of the worst racist/bigots. Before Oct 7th that outlet has been completely negligent about providing any fact based coverage about Israel’s different massacres of Palestinians over the years. For several decades have completely been silent on ever expanding illegal settlements, violence committed by illegal Israeli land thieves. So tired of the kind of folksy term “settlers” used to describe violent, Israeli home and land thieves.
Today, June 10th, Mika and Donnie were especially inaccurate, brutal, dismissive. Mika will always act like she is shedding tears for hostages (yes we want them all released) and ignore going into any kind of descriptions of the 37, 000 and counting Palestinians who have been massacred.
Today Donnie went into a hasbara (as if he was sent talking points) script about the alleged 270 Palestinians massacred. He referred to the Palestinians killed saying we need to start separating “deep deep, deep sympathizers for Hamas”. …..”Hamas ambassadors” with civilians. He cannot even bring himself to referring to Palestinians killed as “innocent.” Deutsch “we have to start digging more deep He might as well come out and say “those damn Hamas supporting Palestinian babies and children”
Donnie Deutsch is one arrogant ethnocentric supporter of whatever Israel has done or does. Nauseating.
Mika is a cold, arrogant bigoted racist against Palestinians. they have proved this over and over the last 8 months.
Mondo folks should go watch the segment with Mika, Donnie this morning on Morning Joe. Grotesque thinking.
Can’t access the full coverage of Morning Joe I think you have to join something to have access to all of Morning Joe) about the four hostages released. Here is a section of that conversation, missing Mika’s arrogant and dismissive comments earlier. Which is always the case with Mika when it comes to this conflict. She is a die hard Israeli firster like Donnie Deutsch, Willie, Joe Scarborough. Although, Joe has started (never did this for 20 years) is starting to talk about illegal settlements as being a problem. Catch up Joe, catch up. .
““That’s the last question, I’d love to start with an answer,” replied Deutsch. “And, you know, we hear these headlines that, you know, four hostages rescued and 270 Palestinian civilians killed. And we need to start to look at that word civilians — and obviously war is ugly — but when in the case of this instance, when the hostages are being held by a Palestinian journalist, ‘a civilian,’ and a Palestinian doctor, ‘a civilian,’ these are not civilians, these are Hamas ambassadors.”
Listen to this:
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/morning-joe-regular-goes-off-on-media-for-demeaning-coverage-of-israeli-hostage-rescue-th