A recent debate over the term “settler colonialism” in the English version of Haaretz seeks to raise doubts over the appropriateness of using it to describe Israel. This is exactly how good solid hasbara works.
The New York Times slants its coverage of the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal talks, leaving out the Israeli role.
You can watch the cable news networks for hours without stumbling across a single report about Iran. Which means that if the U.S. and Israel do attack before 12 noon on January 20, or if a tragic accident amid the tightened tensions in the regions triggers an outbreak of violence, the American public will have no idea of what just happened.
“The operation that killed Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was a dazzling piece of covert work,” the Washington Post says, in a grotesque glorification of Israel’s murder of Iranian scientist. While the NYT suggests using unnamed sources that Iran had a secret nuclear weapons program, when US intelligence reported otherwise.
U.S. Jewish support for Biden (70 percent) is similar to Palestinian support for Biden in Israel (78 percent). But Israeli Jews? They love Trump. Dems don’t want you to know these numbers because they show that our close ally is a rightwing ethnically-discriminatory state.
Haaretz covers Israeli army plans to convert “an ancient olive grove in the Galilee” into a shooting range with sympathy for the Israeli residents but no awareness that the once-thriving Palestinian village of A’mka there was uprooted by Zionists to make way for the Jewish-only settlement of A’moka. The Palestinians became refugees.
The New York Times persists in publishing human interest stories about Jewish Israelis fighting COVID-19, and forgets about Palestinians.
“Netanyahu should not be allowed to start a war with Iran to save himself,” Haaretz says. Why isn’t this report in the New York Times? Only friendly coverage of Netanyahu’s primary victory against a Likud challenger.
After a visit to the Ofra settlement in the West Bank, Haaretz culture editor Benny Ziffer wrote on his Facebook page : “En route I looked at the Palestinian villages alongside the Jewish communities, and I thought of how for the Palestinians murder is a type of sport or enjoyment, perhaps a substitute for erotica. From that perspective we will never have anything culturally in common with them.”
Haaretz reveals the existence of a secret department under the Defense Ministry which is tasked with making previously-open archives disappear in vaults. It was ostensibly tasked with protecting nuclear program secrets – but statements by its founder make it clear that it’s about undermining critical Nakba scholarship, such as the document stating that the principal reason Palestinians were fleeing in 1948 was hostilities by Zionist forces.