The U.S. media has missed one key part of the anti-Netanyahu protest story: the shockingly different ways Israeli police and military treat Jewish and Palestinian protests.
Ronen Bergman’s profile of Mossad agent Sylvia Rafael is breathtaking in its immorality and dishonesty.
The media hypes threats by industry to leave Israel over Netanyahu’s “judicial coup.” But Palestinians have demanded divestment for years without press. The double standard shows anti-Palestinianism.
The New York Times barely mentions that the latest settler rampage in Huwwara was a state-sponsored pogrom, presided over by the Israeli army. They don’t want to destroy the two-state illusion.
As violence rises in the occupied West Bank, the New York Times struggles to frame the news.
Patrick Kingsley’s irresponsible reporting from Jerusalem signals how the New York Times will frame the rising violence in occupied Palestine.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently said that the two-state solution in Israel/Palestine is, if not already dead, “in hospice.” Now it’s time for news reporters at his paper and other mainstream U.S. media, to look squarely at how and why two states is no longer possible. Instead, the two-state solution is supposedly still the ideal — for the U.S. government, among others. The headline after the U.S. Secretary of State’s arrival in Israel yesterday was, predictably: “Blinken reaffirms need for two-state solution after talks with Netanyahu.”
“The New York Times” realized it had to report the year-end casualty statistics for Palestinians in the West Bank, the highest toll since 2005.
So it looked for a way to shift attention away from the major perpetrators — the Israeli military and Jewish settler/colonists — and put it on the Palestinians.
Israel’s steady lurch to the right is a predictable outcome for a country founded on Jewish supremacy and discrimination against Palestinians.
This election could also be viewed as the outcome of longstanding antidemocratic forces, an inheritance from fascistic leaders like Vladimir “Ze’ev” Jabotinsky, rabbis like Meir Kahane, the unwillingness of sequential Israeli governments (left to right) to control a violent and rabid settler movement, and even the consequences of the Zionist movement itself which preached not only Jewish nationalism, but Jewish supremacy.
The New York Times appears to be tired of cheerleading for Israel, witness two opinion pieces this weekend: a long report by Thomas Friedman in which the columnist admitted at the start that “the prospect for a two-state solution has all but vanished;” then, a full page offering by the entire Editorial Board headlined that says that Benjamin Netanyahu’s likely next coalition government “is a significant threat to the future of Israel.” Neither article mentions apartheid.