American Media Biased Coverage of the Crisis in Gaza

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

As a Palestinian living in the United States, I must say that the reporting of Fox News and CNN has no connection to the reality that Palestinians know only too well. Their coverage is unfair and fails to convey the whole truth of what is transpiring there. I have intensively followed the news since the abduction of the three Israeli teens on June 12, and it has become abundantly clear to me, and to many others, that the mainstream media in America are biased toward Israel.

CNN and Fox target an older, white demographic. But the latest Gallup poll indicates that 18- to 29-year-olds are the most likely age group to view the Israeli attack on Gaza as unjustified (with social media and Internet fluency perhaps better informing their views), while those whom Gallup calls "nonwhites" view the Israeli onslaught as unjustified by a 2-to-1 margin. America is rapidly changing, demographically, but the cable news networks are are failing to deliver the more accurate information being conveyed outside mainstream media sources.

American media seem to present the situation in Gaza as if there is an equal battle between Hamas and Israel. There needs to be an acknowledgment of the power imbalance in this conflict. Israel's right to defend itself is repeatedly stressed, but what of the right for Palestinians to defend themselves nonviolently -- or even violently -- from their own homes against forces that expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948 and are still denying Palestinian freedom today?

The Palestinian death toll has surpassed 1,300 since the escalation erupted on July 8. Most of these casualties are civilians, with over 300 children killed. People in Gaza, especially children, have already survived three wars since 2008. This trauma may take generations to overcome.

The current violence in Gaza revives embedded memories of the violence that I experienced in Palestine growing up. Nonetheless, I am hopeful for positive steps toward peace on both sides, and for a transformation of the relationships, attitudes, and interactions between Palestinians and Israelis. The interconnectedness of our world allows us to see that conflicts are multidimensional, and that the dynamics that allow a conflict to continue for decades include more than just two actors and two opposing stories. Therefore, in order to respond to the challenges, needs, and realities in Gaza, we must address both the obvious issues and their underlying causes.

Specifically, Gaza is an enormous open-air prison. It is among the most densely populated places in the world, with a population of around 1.8 million inhabitants living in 146 square miles. The Israeli blockade of Gaza limits the crossing of people and goods, including food and medicine. With no functioning seaport and movement via Israel and Egypt highly restricted, export prospects are almost entirely crushed. The situation in Gaza is a catch-22, where the people of Gaza depend on basic goods for survival from the very people who are shelling their homes, hospitals, and social infrastructure. It is a ghetto made dependent on Israel.

It is social media that is highlighting these realities far more than self-censored mainstream media. The increased access to Internet and use of social media, like Twitter and Facebook, has provided a means to raise awareness and mobilize support for Palestinians by supplying images and accounts of civilian deaths and the destruction of housing and civilian infrastructure, as well as short videos of Israeli brutality.

For example, the footage of 15-year-old Palestinian American Tariq Abu Khdeir being brutally beaten by Israeli police on July 3 was recorded on his neighbor's smartphone. The recorded material, which was released on Facebook, reached millions of people and eventually was covered by mainstream media, though the ongoing harassment of the Abu Khdeir family has been largely ignored.

Nelson Mandela wrote that "to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others." Rather than castigate -- or, even worse, ignore -- Palestinian freedom aspirations, Americans should speak up for the rights of Palestinians to live as free people out from under Israeli siege and occupation.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anton-murra/american-media-biased-cov_b_5642052.html

Edited August 4, 2014 by Hail Ming!

[OriZ 3,157]

Still crying about 1948. Grow up people.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I would say he's 'crying about' the coverage of the current crisis in the US news media. Unless you're reading something different to what I am.

[rlogan 2,036]

Still crying about 1948. Grow up people.

Just imagine if this was said about the holocaust.

Instead of reporting the post it is much better for everyone to see what you are all about.

[eieio 1,594]

It is among the most densely populated places in the world, with a population of around 1.8 million inhabitants living in 146 square miles.

The way I see it, Gaza is unable to control their population. Are they to stupid to use birth control?

Gaza residents should be thanking Israel for helping control the population problem.

Why doesn't the media report on how stupid the Palestinians are? They think they will win a war with Israel?

[Hei Guizi 21]

Looks like they are done mowing the lawn for now.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

That's just great. Nazi propaganda only now in support of Israel. Perfect. Picture perfect.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Having your military bomb a civilian area from planes and shell it with tanks equates to "mowing the lawn". Nazi propaganda indeed.

Some of these guys need to make up their minds about what is going on in Gaza. Is Israel at war with Hamas or the Palestinian population at large. Certainly a few people here don't seem to see any difference...

[Hei Guizi 21]

Angry Palestinians Attack Hamas Official Over Gaza Destruction

Hamas spokesman beaten by Gaza residents, who blame Hamas for the killing and destruction they suffered.

Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on email Share on print More Sharing Services 373

By Dalit Halevy

First Publish: 8/5/2014, 11:44 AM

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri

Reuters

Palestinian Arab sources said Tuesday that Gaza residents attacked Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri Saturday evening, near the Shifa Hospital.

Abu Zuhri had arrived at the hospital for an interview with a news outlet.

The residents blamed Hamas for the death of family members and for destruction of their homes. Armed Hamas terrorists from the Izzedine al-Kassam Brigades extricated Abu Zuri and arrested the angry residents.

Arabic website vetogate.com said that reporters in Gaza are well aware of the incident but are afraid to report it, because Hamas's security agency could go after them if they do.

A week ago, Palestinian sources reported that over 30 Palestinians were executed by Hamas, most of them in the Shejaiya neighborhood. Hamas claimed that they were collaborators with Israel.

Channel 10 said that Hamas executed 20 residents of Shejaiya who had dared demonstrate against Hamas.

Rockets were fired at Israel from next to Shifa Hospital during the fighting in Gaza, and Hamas's leadership hid under it.

[Hei Guizi 21]

Also not mentioned are the 30 or so Palestinians that were murdered by Hamas last week. Is Israel to take credit for that too ?

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

They need to accept their share of the blame in having created the situation and exacerbating the violence. They won't because it's not in the government's agenda to do anything except pound the entire area into submission whatever the cost.

[Hei Guizi 21]

They need to accept their share of the blame in having created the situation and exacerbating the violence. They won't because it's not in the government's agenda to do anything except pound the entire area into submission whatever the cost.

They don't need to accept blame for anything and they won't.

Will the Turks accept blame for the Arminian genocide?

Will ISIS stop killing non-Muslims and accept responsibility for the ethnic cleansing ?

It aint going to happen.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Amid all the horrors unfolding in the latest Israeli offensive in Gaza, Israel's goal is simple: quiet-for-quiet, a return to the norm.

For the West Bank, the norm is that Israel continues its illegal construction of settlements and infrastructure so that it can integrate into Israel whatever might be of value, meanwhile consigning Palestinians to unviable cantons and subjecting them to repression and violence.

For Gaza, the norm is a miserable existence under a cruel and destructive siege that Israel administers to permit bare survival but nothing more.

The latest Israeli rampage was set off by the brutal murder of three Israeli boys from a settler community in the occupied West Bank. A month before, two Palestinian boys were shot dead in the West Bank city of Ramallah. That elicited little attention, which is understandable, since it is routine.

"The institutionalized disregard for Palestinian life in the West helps explain not only why Palestinians resort to violence," Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani reports, "but also Israel's latest assault on the Gaza Strip."

In an interview, human rights lawyer Raji Sourani, who has remained in Gaza through years of Israeli brutality and terror, said, "The most common sentence I heard when people began to talk about cease-fire: Everybody says it's better for all of us to die and not go back to the situation we used to have before this war. We don't want that again. We have no dignity, no pride; we are just soft targets, and we are very cheap. Either this situation really improves or it is better to just die. I am talking about intellectuals, academics, ordinary people: Everybody is saying that."

In January 2006, Palestinians committed a major crime: They voted the wrong way in a carefully monitored free election, handing control of Parliament to Hamas.

The media constantly intone that Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. In reality, Hamas leaders have repeatedly made it clear that Hamas would accept a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus that has been blocked by the U.S. and Israel for 40 years.

In contrast, Israel is dedicated to the destruction of Palestine, apart from some occasional meaningless words, and is implementing that commitment.

The crime of the Palestinians in January 2006 was punished at once. The U.S. and Israel, with Europe shamefully trailing behind, imposed harsh sanctions on the errant population and Israel stepped up its violence.

The U.S. and Israel quickly initiated plans for a military coup to overthrow the elected government. When Hamas had the effrontery to foil the plans, the Israeli assaults and the siege became far more severe.

There should be no need to review again the dismal record since. The relentless siege and savage attacks are punctuated by episodes of "mowing the lawn," to borrow Israel's cheery expression for its periodic exercises in shooting fish in a pond as part of what it calls a "war of defense."

Once the lawn is mowed and the desperate population seeks to rebuild somehow from the devastation and the murders, there is a cease-fire agreement. The most recent cease-fire was established after Israel's October 2012 assault, called Operation Pillar of Defense.

Though Israel maintained its siege, Hamas observed the cease-fire, as Israel concedes. Matters changed in April of this year when Fatah and Hamas forged a unity agreement that established a new government of technocrats unaffiliated with either party.

Israel was naturally furious, all the more so when even the Obama administration joined the West in signaling approval. The unity agreement not only undercuts Israel's claim that it cannot negotiate with a divided Palestine but also threatens the long-term goal of dividing Gaza from the West Bank and pursuing its destructive policies in both regions.

Something had to be done, and an occasion arose on June 12, when the three Israeli boys were murdered in the West Bank. Early on, the Netanyahu government knew that they were dead, but pretended otherwise, which provided the opportunity to launch a rampage in the West Bank, targeting Hamas.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed to have certain knowledge that Hamas was responsible. That too was a lie.

One of Israel's leading authorities on Hamas, Shlomi Eldar, reported almost at once that the killers very likely came from a dissident clan in Hebron that has long been a thorn in the side of Hamas. Eldar added that "I'm sure they didn't get any green light from the leadership of Hamas, they just thought it was the right time to act."

The 18-day rampage after the kidnapping, however, succeeded in undermining the feared unity government, and sharply increasing Israeli repression. Israel also conducted dozens of attacks in Gaza, killing five Hamas members on July 7.

Hamas finally reacted with its first rockets in 19 months, providing Israel with the pretext for Operation Protective Edge on July 8.

By July 31, around 1,400 Palestinians had been killed, mostly civilians, including hundreds of women and children. And three Israeli civilians. Large areas of Gaza had been turned into rubble. Four hospitals had been attacked, each another war crime.

Israeli officials laud the humanity of what it calls "the most moral army in the world," which informs residents that their homes will be bombed. The practice is "sadism, sanctimoniously disguising itself as mercy," in the words of Israeli journalist Amira Hass: "A recorded message demanding hundreds of thousands of people leave their already targeted homes, for another place, equally dangerous, 10 kilometers away."

In fact, there is no place in the prison of Gaza safe from Israeli sadism, which may even exceed the terrible crimes of Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009.

The hideous revelations elicited the usual reaction from the most moral president in the world, Barack Obama: great sympathy for Israelis, bitter condemnation of Hamas and calls for moderation on both sides.

When the current attacks are called off, Israel hopes to be free to pursue its criminal policies in the occupied territories without interference, and with the U.S. support it has enjoyed in the past.

Gazans will be free to return to the norm in their Israeli-run prison, while in the West Bank, Palestinians can watch in peace as Israel dismantles what remains of their possessions.

That is the likely outcome if the U.S. maintains its decisive and virtually unilateral support for Israeli crimes and its rejection of the long-standing international consensus on diplomatic settlement. But the future will be quite different if the U.S. withdraws that support.

In that case it would be possible to move toward the "enduring solution" in Gaza that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called for, eliciting hysterical condemnation in Israel because the phrase could be interpreted as calling for an end to Israel's siege and regular attacks. And - horror of horrors - the phrase might even be interpreted as calling for implementation of international law in the rest of the occupied territories.

Forty years ago Israel made the fateful decision to choose expansion over security, rejecting a full peace treaty offered by Egypt in return for evacuation from the occupied Egyptian Sinai, where Israel was initiating extensive settlement and development projects. Israel has adhered to that policy ever since.

If the U.S. decided to join the world, the impact would be great. Over and over, Israel has abandoned cherished plans when Washington has so demanded.

Such are the relations of power between them.

Furthermore, Israel by now has little recourse, after having adopted policies that turned it from a country that was greatly admired to one that is feared and despised, policies it is pursuing with blind determination today in its march toward moral deterioration and possible ultimate destruction.

Could U.S. policy change? It's not impossible. Public opinion has shifted considerably in recent years, particularly among the young, and it cannot be completely ignored.

For some years there has been a good basis for public demands that Washington observe its own laws and cut off military aid to Israel. U.S. law requires that "no security assistance may be provided to any country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights."

Israel most certainly is guilty of this consistent pattern, and has been for many years.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, author of this provision of the law, has brought up its potential applicability to Israel in specific cases, and with a well-conducted educational, organizational and activist effort such initiatives could be pursued successively.

That could have a very significant impact in itself, while also providing a springboard for further actions to compel Washington to become part of "the international community" and to observe international law and norms.

Nothing could be more significant for the tragic Palestinian victims of many years of violence and repression.

© 2014 Noam Chomsky

Indeed - because noone involved has a grasp on the morality of that situation.

On the other hand, you (an outside observer) don't seem to have a grasp on the morality of ANY of the situations you just mentioned.

[OriZ 3,157]

The London Times refused to run an ad featuring Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel speaking out against Hamas’ use of children as human shields.

The ad sponsored by The Values Network, which was founded by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, has run in The New York Times, Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, among other U.S. newspapers. The refusal was first reported by the New York Observer.

The London Times refused the ad because “the opinion being expressed is too strong and too forcefully made and will cause concern amongst a significant number of Times readers,” according to a statement from a representative of the newspaper, the Observer reported.

Headlined “Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now it’s Hamas turn,” the ad began running last week. It reads, in part: “In my own lifetime, I have seen Jewish children thrown into the fire. And now I have seen Muslim children used as human shields, in both cases, by worshippers of death cults indistinguishable from that of the Molochites.

“What we are suffering through today is not a battle of Jew versus Arab or Israeli versus Palestinian. Rather, it is a battle between those who celebrate life and those who champion death. It is a battle of civilization versus barbarism.”

Countering the London Times statement, Boteach said in his own, “Elie Wiesel is one of the most respected human beings alive, a Nobel Peace Laureate, and is the living face of the Holocaust. No greater expert on genocide exists in the whole world. His call for the end of child sacrifice by Hamas, who use children as human shields, and a stop to their genocidal charter, which calls for the murder of Jews everywhere, could only offend the sensibilities of the most die-hard anti-Israel haters and anti-Semites.”

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/203581/london-times-rejects-elie-wiesel-anti-hamas-child/#ixzz39fCEi7uz

http://forward.com/articles/203581/london-times-rejects-elie-wiesel-anti-hamas-child/

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Posting more articles about hamas does not take away from the fact that Israel "mowing the lawn" makes it complicit in the deaths of Palestinian civilians. Can we please stop trying to gloss over that?