Media Coverage of Israel/Palestine Presents False Equivalency Between Occupied and Occupier
Friends,
Of course, there is media bias against the Palestinians. But unfortunately macho Hamas is committing war crimes as is Israel. Sadly though, Israel is a major military force and Hamas rocket attacks simply give the IDF an opening to slaughter Palestinians. Imagine it is 1965, and members of the civil rights movement blow up a Klan headquarters. You can be sure the white supremacists would have terrorized all African Americans not just the bombers.
I have been following media reports since the assault on the Al-Aqsa Mosque took place. And I have been waiting for a Palestinian to condemn Hamas. I understand that someone living in the Gaza Strip would be very hesitant. Finally, today on NPR Hussein Ibish, born in Lebanon but a commentator on Palestine, condemned the macho violence of Hamas. Violence is not going to convince Israel to negotiate. Kagiso, Max
Wednesday, May 19, 2021
Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)
Media Coverage of Israel/Palestine Presents False
Equivalency Between Occupied and Occupier
The fatal flaw in
the "both sides" narrative is that only the Israeli side has
ethnically cleansed and turned millions on the Palestinians' side into refugees
by preventing them from exercising their right to return to their homes.
A Palestinian child carries his cat after he
and his family members survived the violent Israeli bombing of their homes in
Gaza City, on May 16, 2021. (Photo: Momen Faiz/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Media coverage of heightened violence in
Israel/Palestine has misrepresented events in the Israeli government’s favor by
suggesting that Israel is acting defensively, presenting a false equivalency
between occupier and occupied, and burying information necessary to understand the
scale of Israeli brutality.
Corporate media have presented Israel’s
killing spree as defensive, as a reaction to supposed Palestinian aggression.
A Financial Times headline (5/10/21) read,
"Hamas Rocket Attacks Provoke Israeli Retaliation in Gaza." The New
York Times’ description (5/12/21) was,
"Hamas launched long-range rockets at Jerusalem on Monday evening,
prompting Israel to respond with airstrikes." An article in Newsweek (5/12/21) had it
that "Hamas rained down rockets on Israeli civilian targets, and the
Israeli military responded with surgical air strikes against Hamas and
Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza." A CNN headline
(5/12/21) said,
"At Least 35 Killed in Gaza as Israel Ramps Up Airstrikes in Response to
Rocket Attacks."
The Wall Street Journal (5/12/21) ran the
headline, "Hamas Attack on Israel Aims to Capitalize on Palestinian
Frustration," which makes it sound as if Israel were simply minding its
own business and Hamas lashed out for no reason. The Journal reinforced
this impression by describing Israel’s bombing of Gaza as merely a
"response" to and a "counterstrike" against the rockets
from Palestinian resistance factions.
Imagine for a moment that the entire history
of Israel/Palestine began on May 10. Even then, Hamas’ rocket fire was a follow
through on its promise (Ynet, 5/10/21) to fire rockets in "response" to
and "retaliation" against Israel if the latter didn’t remove its
forces from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheik Jarrah, where Israel has been
attempting to force Palestinians from their homes and repressing the resultant
protests, and from the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which Israel had just raided
during Ramadan, Islam’s holiest month (Jacobin, 5/14/21).
More to the point is that Israel, and its
forerunners in the Zionist movement, have been carrying out a war against
Palestinians for over 100 years, so Israeli self-defense against
Palestinians is a logical impossibility (Electronic Intifada, 7/26/18). As an
occupying power, Israel does not have a legal right to claim self-defense
against the people it occupies (Truthout, 5/14/21). Israel
has been subjecting Gaza to a military siege for 12–14 years, depending on the
metric one uses to determine the starting point, which has left the territory
effectively unlivable (Jacobin, 3/31/20); a
siege is an act of war, so the party enforcing it cannot claim to be acting
defensively in response to anything that happened subsequent to the start of
the blockade.
‘Both sides’
narrative
Similarly, media have had a long-running tendency
to amplify the view that violence across historic Palestine should be
understood as roughly equivalent fighting on "both sides." This
remains a commonplace feature of the coverage, exemplified by NBC headline
(5/12/21),
"Over 70 Killed as Israel, Palestinians Exchange Worst Violence in
Years."
A Washington Post editorial
(5/11/21) was
headlined "New Israeli/Palestinian Fighting Serves Political Agendas on
Both Sides." It said that "the worst conflict in years has erupted
between the two peoples, with Palestinian missiles raining down on Israeli
cities and airstrikes rocking the Gaza Strip."
A David Ignatius article in the Post (5/13/21) was
headlined, "The Vicious Cycle Gets Worse for the Israelis and
Palestinians." The author wrote that Israelis and Palestinians
"both" are "swept up yet again by the cycle of violence."
The word "clash" is
frequently employed to avoid acknowledging that violence is overwhelmingly
inflicted by one side on the other, as in headlines like Reuters‘
"Israeli Police, Palestinians Clash at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa, Scores
Injured" (5/8/21). The
headline gives no clue that 97% of the injuries were
being suffered by Palestinians.
The fatal flaw in the "both sides"
narrative is that only the Israeli side has ethnically cleansed and
turned millions on the
Palestinians’ side into refugees by preventing them from exercising their right to
return to their homes. Israel is the only side subjecting anyone to apartheid and military occupation. It is
only the Palestinian side—including those living inside of what is presently
called Israel—that has been made to live as second-class citizens in
their own land. That’s to say nothing of the lopsided
scale of the death, injury and damage to
infrastructure that Palestinians have experienced as compared to Israelis, both
during the present offensive and in the longer term.
The "both sides" approach, however,
permeates the coverage. The New York Times (5/12/21) relied
on a bogus symmetry between oppressor and oppressed, with Jerusalem bureau
chief Patrick Kingsley writing:
For
weeks, ethnic tensions had been rising in Jerusalem, the center of the
conflict. In April, far-right Jews marched through the city center, chanting
"Death to Arabs," and mobs of both Jews and Arabs attacked each
other.
In contrast, Amnesty International (5/10/21)
documented:
"Evidence
gathered by Amnesty International reveals a chilling pattern of Israeli forces
using abusive and wanton force against largely peaceful Palestinian protesters
in recent days. Some of those injured in the violence in East Jerusalem include
bystanders or worshipers making Ramadan prayers," said Saleh Higazi,
deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.
"The
latest violence brings into sharp focus Israel’s sustained campaign to expand
illegal Israeli settlements and step up forced evictions of Palestinian
residents—such as those in Sheikh Jarrah—to make way for Israeli settlers.
These forced evictions are part of a continuing pattern in Sheikh Jarrah, they
flagrantly violate international law and would amount to war crimes."
Eyewitness
testimonies—as well as videos and photographs taken by Amnesty International’s
researchers on the ground in East Jerusalem—show how Israeli forces have
repeatedly deployed disproportionate and unlawful force to disperse protesters
during violent raids on Al-Aqsa mosque and carried out unprovoked attacks on
peaceful demonstrators in Sheikh Jarrah.
The Wall Street Journal (5/12/21)
presented the Israeli police as neutral peace keepers, obscuring power
differentials between Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel:
Israel is
also facing an internal conflict, as pro-Palestinian Arab residents clashed
with their Jewish neighbors in mixed towns, prompting the government to bring
in border police troops to quell riots.
The reality is that Israeli police have violently assailed Palestinian demonstrators across
Israel. That the Palestinians arrestees have been denied legal rights and necessary medical treatment is
also omitted.
Another Journal (5/12/21) article
referred to "Palestinian anger over what they see as years of efforts to
push them out of Jerusalem and limit their access to land they claim, as well
as infringing on their basic rights." Yet these views are not simply a matter
of "what [Palestinians] see as" discrimination. As Human Rights Watch
(5/11/21) noted:
Nearly
all Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem hold a conditional, revocable
residency status, while Jewish Israelis in the same area are citizens with
secure status. Palestinians live in densely populated enclaves that receive a
fraction of the resources given to settlements and effectively cannot obtain building
permits, while neighboring Israeli settlements built on expropriated
Palestinian land flourish.
Israeli
officials have intentionally created this discriminatory system under which
Jewish Israelis thrive at the expense of Palestinians. The government’s plan
for the Jerusalem municipality, including both the west and occupied east parts
of the city, sets the goal of "maintaining a solid Jewish majority in the
city" and even specifies the demographic ratios it hopes to maintain. This
intent to dominate underlies Israel’s crimes against humanity of apartheid and
persecution.
Presenting as debatable the indisputable fact
that Palestinians in Jerusalem are denied "their basic rights" is a
form of "both sides-ism," taking incontrovertible factual information
about the status of Palestinians in Jerusalem and reducing it to merely one of
multiple possible narratives.
Important
facts left out
I looked at Gaza coverage during the first
four days of Israeli airstrikes and Palestinian rocket fire, focusing on the
databases of the five US newspapers with the highest circulation: The
Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times, The
Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. Crucial aspects of what
is happening in Gaza have been severely underreported.
For instance, Israel closed Kerem Shalom
Crossing on May 10, "blocking the entrance of humanitarian aid and fuel
destined for Gaza’s power plant" (Gisha, 5/12/21). Kerem
Shalom is also Gaza’s main commercial crossing, which means that the closure
will further devastate Gaza’s economy, already in ruin thanks to the Israeli siege. Between
May 10 and May 13, the five newspapers published a combined 114 articles that
refer to Gaza. Only two pointed out that Israel has tightened the siege during
the bombing campaign. The New York Times (5/10/21) ran an
article that noted that Israel "shut a key crossing between Gaza and
Israel," but said nothing about the consequences of doing so.
A Washington Post report (5/13/21) quoted
Sasha Muench, Palestinian territories director for the US-based humanitarian
group Mercy Corps:
At the
moment, no goods or people can enter Gaza because the border crossings are
closed. This means no medical supplies, including vaccines, can enter…. In
addition, no fuel to run the generators can enter, and Gaza authorities are
warning of increased blackouts, including at hospitals, and potentially having
no electricity in Gaza at all within a few days.
The latter is the only one of the 114
articles that mentioned that Israel has been blocking the entrance of
humanitarian aid even more so than before it began this round of violence
against Gaza.
On May 12, the Israeli human rights group
Gisha noted that
Israel is "banning all access to Gaza’s sea space, a cynical and punitive
measure that harms fishermen’s livelihoods and food supply," and that this
move is a form of collective punishment that is illegal under international
law. Restricting Palestinians’ food access is particularly egregious, given
that 68.5% of
Gaza residents are already food insecure.
Collectively, the five newspapers ran 88
articles that mentioned Gaza between May 12 and 13. Just one mentioned anything
about Israel barring access to the sea, a New York Times piece
(5/10/21) that
said Israel "barred fishermen from [Gaza] from going to sea," but did
not point out that there is already a major problem with food access in the
Strip that Israel’s move is sure to worsen. In fact, zero of the 88 articles
mention that there is widespread food insecurity in the territory that Israel
is incinerating.
Thus, the enthusiastic cheers for attacks on
Palestinians, coming from, say, the New York Times’
Bret Stephens (5/13/21), are
not the only form of media misdeeds against Palestinians. It’s the inversion of
attacker and attacked, or the flattening of distinctions between the two. It’s
the burying of information that clarifies the scope of Israeli criminality.
Such approaches can confuse the public about the differences between those who
fight for liberation and those who fight to snuff it out.
Gregory Shupak teaches
media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto. His book, "The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the
Media," is
published by OR Books.
© 2021 Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting
(FAIR)
Donations can be sent to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore
Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206, Baltimore, MD 21212.
Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the
subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to
gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and
everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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