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- 19 days ago on Ted Rall
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19 days ago
on Ted Rall
Our media always minimize or hide Israel’s role in the deaths of Palestinian civilians and present news from an Israeli perspective. If any other country, especially one deemed an official enemy, was doing what Israel is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza, would it be reported in the same way?
This phenomenon has been measured over a 20 year period. See tinyurl dot com opendem1.
In case the above link is excised from my post, here’s a brief extract:
Another key finding from these studies was that Israeli casualties were given proportionally more coverage than Palestinian ones, and the language used to describe Israeli deaths was markedly different. Words such as “atrocity”, “murder”, “lynch-mob” and “barbarically killed” were used by journalists to describe the deaths of Israeli soldiers, but not those of Palestinians.
Such patterns are also evident in current reporting. We examined four weeks (7 October to 4 November) of BBC One daytime coverage of the 2023 Gaza war using the database TV Eyes to identify which terms were used by journalists themselves (not in direct or reported statements) to describe Israeli and Palestinian deaths.
We found that “murder”, “murderous”, “mass murder”, “brutal murder” and “merciless murder” were used a total of 52 times by journalists to refer to Israelis’ deaths but never in relation to Palestinian deaths. The same pattern could been seen in relation to “massacre”, “brutal massacre” and “horrific massacre” (35 times for Israeli deaths, not once for Palestinian deaths); “atrocity”, “horrific atrocity” and “appalling atrocity” (22 times for Israeli deaths, once for Palestinian deaths); and “slaughter” (five times for Israeli deaths, not once for Palestinian deaths).
But the issue goes beyond these differences. The Palestinian perspective is effectively absent from the coverage, in how they understand the reasons for the conflict and the nature of the occupation under which they are living.
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19 days ago
on Ted Rall
The mainstream media is not telling us that Israel is doing the killing. Media Lens has a good article about it. For example:
‘An entire Economist article on famine in Gaza doesn’t say the word “Israel” once. Not even when describing damage to farmland and water facilities or severely restricted aid deliveries.
‘Saying who is destroying the farmland and restricting aid seems like basic info to include.’ -
20 days ago
on Ted Rall
The media won’t tell you that Israel killed them. “Famine killed them” or just “they died”. Even if our governments won’t stop supporting Israel, we can effect change by not buying products and services from Israeli companies, or from any company that actively supports the Israeli military. BDSmovement dot net.
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about 2 months ago
on Ted Rall
Those are powerful and horrific photographs Màiri, the sort of thing our media will never show us. The “most moral army in the world” at work.
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about 2 months ago
on Ted Rall
Yep, I got the reference too. America’s “ally” has no problem killing Americans.
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about 2 months ago
on Ted Rall
I’ll repeat what I posted some days ago:
“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.”
- Noam Chomsky
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about 2 months ago
on Ted Rall
Oh, I don’t think any resolution will stop them. I think freezing of US “aid” and weaponry to Israel, plus international trade and cultural sanctions will have more effect.
But the US draft resolution in the UN is fatally flawed and would not have saved a single Palestinian life if ratified.
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about 2 months ago
on Ted Rall
While the Palestinians do not have the option of voting Hamas out, Israelis could vote to install politicians who want peace with their neighbours. But they don’t, do they?
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about 2 months ago
on Ted Rall
There’s a saying by the Sufi writer Idries Shah that “things which are seemingly opposed may in fact be working together.” It applies to the two-party system in the US, which is not too dissimilar to one-party systems elsewhere. If they were so radically opposed to one another the focus would be on policies, not personalities.
And more recently….
[Israeli Rabbi] Eliyahu Mali, who was talking to an audience at the Shirat Moshe religious school in Jaffa, which he heads, said the killing of all civilians in Gaza was in line with Jewish law teachings, known as Halakha.
He was addressing students who serve in the Israeli military.
A video of his speech went viral on social media.
“Do not spare any soul,” which Mali says is the basic rule when fighting a holy war, in this case Gaza, according to Jewish doctrine.
“And the logic of this is very clear. If you don’t kill them, they’ll attempt to kill you,” he claims.
He goes on to say that the women are the one who create “terrorists,” justifying the killing of these women and their infants.
“Whoever comes to kill you with this concept does not only include the young man…who is now pointing a weapon at you, but also the future generation, and those who produce the future generation, because there is really no difference,” the rabbi continues.
Elderly people are also legitimate targets, according to Mali, when asked about whether seniors should also be killed.
“There is no such thing called innocent creature. By the way, the elderly man is capable of carrying a rifle and shooting. Therefore, the Torah is very clear in the ruling.”
“The children too should be killed?” one person asked the rabbi.
“It’s the same thing, the same thing. When the Torah says do not spare any soul, then you must not spare any soul.”
“Today he is a child…tomorrow he is a fighter,” Mali says.
He claims, according to numbers by the Israeli army, a vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza want to annihilate “us” – without clarifying if he meant Jews specifically or Israelis.