The assertion that Israel is trying to provoke a wider regional conflict appeared nowhere in the mainstream media coverage of Iran’s retaliatory strike.
Despite near unanimity of support for Israel in the US political establishment these days, some voices are making it into the mainstream media to explain the causes of violence and state that while they condemn the Hamas attacks on civilians, they were not “unprovoked.”
The 75th anniversary of the Nakba brought unprecedented coverage in American media of the Palestinian experience.
A week ago the Biden administration said it was “heartbroken” by the killing of U.S. journalist Shireen Abu Akleh– by an Israeli sniper, according to witnesses– and called for a “thorough” investigation. But now Israel refuses to investigate and top Biden aides welcome Israel’s defense minister to Washington and say nothing about the killing or the whitewash.
Offering the new Israeli government as a model for fixing American democracy, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman leaves out the fact that its policies are as rightwing as Netanyahu’s, that numerous human rights organizations say it practices apartheid, and that it exalts a Jewish nation state law that gives Jews exclusive rights that Palestinians don’t enjoy. All in a day’s work for the man who pushed the Iraq war in his “personal crusade” for democracy in the Arab world and refuses to apologize for doing so.