{"id":1532427,"date":"2024-03-04T06:55:10","date_gmt":"2024-03-04T06:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=315105"},"modified":"2024-03-04T06:55:10","modified_gmt":"2024-03-04T06:55:10","slug":"tell-the-truth-about-israels-crimes-against-humanity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/03\/04\/tell-the-truth-about-israels-crimes-against-humanity\/","title":{"rendered":"Tell the Truth About Israel\u2019s Crimes Against Humanity"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair<\/p><\/div>\n

Israeli forces\u00a0killed more than a hundred Palestinians<\/a>\u00a0and wounded more than 700 on February 29, 2024 during a distribution of food aid in Gaza city, pushing the Palestinian death toll to\u00a030,000<\/a>\u00a0since October 7, 2023. The food aid massacre was straightforward in its deadliness as armed Israeli forces aimed weapons at desperate, hungry Palestinian civilians and killed many of them. It was also plausible within the context of who has firepower and who doesn\u2019t, and wholly consistent with Israeli atrocities, especially those committed since October 7, 2023.<\/p>\n

And yet, Western media headlines went out of their way to obscure and protect the perpetrators of this awful crime. CNN reported there was a \u201cCarnage at Gaza food aid site amid Israeli gunfire<\/a>,\u201d as if the victims had little to do with the gunfire. The outlet didn\u2019t even bother to mention Palestinians.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post was worse, declaring that, \u201cChaotic aid delivery turns deadly as Israeli, Gazan officials trade blame<\/a>.\u201d The use of the word \u201cchaotic\u201d suggests things were out of everyone\u2019s control. And, either Israeli or Gazan authorities could be to blame.<\/p>\n

The New York Times took a poetic approach, listing a series of events seemingly unconnected, with its headline, \u201cAs Hungry Gazans Crowd a Convoy, a Crush of Bodies, Israeli Gunshots and a Deadly Toll<\/a>.\u201d If sentences had shoulders, this one practically shrugged in helpless ignorance at the curious mystery behind the massacre.<\/p>\n

Some news outlets left Israelis and Palestinians out of the headline altogether to seemingly avoid placing blame. Reuters reported, \u201cMore than 100 killed while seeking aid in Gaza, overall death toll passes 30,000<\/a>,\u201d and the supposedly liberal NBC News claimed, \u201cDozens killed in attack on crowd waiting for aid, Gaza health officials say<\/a>.\u201d Even PBS couldn\u2019t bring itself to identify the perpetrators or victims with its headline, \u201cMore than 100 killed in Gaza while trying to get food from aid convoy<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The use of the passive voice, of language designed to obscure and give the perpetrator the benefit of the doubt, is a popular trick employed by major news outlets when reporting on Israeli atrocities. When contrasted with how the media reported Hamas\u2019 attack on Israelis in early October 2023 by using the active voice and clearly naming perpetrator and victim, it becomes even more embarrassingly apparent that Western corporate media have a powerful political allegiance to Israel in spite of claims of objectivity.<\/p>\n

Take the New York Times as an example. In three reports on three separate days about the same October 7, 2023 incident, the paper\u2019s editors showed that they do indeed know how to write simple and straightforward headlines. \u201c\u2018We Are at War,\u2019 Netanyahu Says After Hamas Attacks Israel<\/a>,\u201d(October 7), \u201cHow the Hamas Attack on Israel Unfolded<\/a>,\u201d (October 8), and \u201cHamas Leaves Trail of Terror in Israel<\/a>,\u201d (October 10). There is use of the active voice and clear identification of perpetrator and victim.<\/p>\n

There is a strong parallel between news coverage of Palestinian victims of Israel and Black and Brown victims of racism, white vigilantism, and policing in the U.S. In my 2023 book,\u00a0Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice<\/em><\/a>, I analyzed the dominant narratives that media outlets perpetuate when covering race and racism. A failure to center the humanity of people of color has been a standard weakness in U.S. media coverage. The Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Wesley Lowery, in a scathing\u00a0op-ed<\/a>\u00a0in the New York Times in July 2020 pointed out that, \u201cthe mainstream has allowed what it considers objective truth to be decided almost exclusively by white reporters and their mostly white bosses.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not surprising that white supremacy, which continues to infect newsrooms, finds common cause with pro-Israel bias. The state of Israel is built on\u00a0ethnic and religious hierarchy<\/a>. The added weight of the U.S. government\u2019s long-term political\u00a0favoritism toward Israel<\/a>\u00a0means that we have been in a proxy war against Palestinians. And so, U.S. newsrooms are loathe to identify Israel as an overt perpetrator of death, destruction, and genocide.<\/p>\n

The media watchdog group,\u00a0Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)<\/a>, has for years pointed out the media\u2019s double standards on Israelis and Palestinians. Writing in early February,\u00a0Julia Hollar analyzed<\/a>\u00a0the New York Times\u2019s and Washington Post\u2019s coverage of Israel\u2019s war on Gaza, showing exactly how pro-Israel both papers are and how both \u201cleaned heavily toward a conversation dominated by Israeli interests and concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the recent Israeli massacre of Palestinians at the food aid distribution is merely one example of how news outlets skew their coverage, research shows that this is indicative of a broad trend.\u00a0Studies<\/a>\u00a0of news media bias, including large-scale surveys conducted using artificial intelligence, point to a persistent anti-Palestinian strain across major outlets. In that sense, not only is the U.S. in a proxy war against Palestinians, but is an active participant in perpetuating genocidal propaganda.<\/p>\n

Thankfully the U.S. public is not having it. Hollar wrote in\u00a0FAIR<\/a>, \u201cClear calls for an unconditional ceasefire, while widespread in the real world, were vanishingly rare at the papers.\u201d It is striking that in spite of this clear attempt at skewing the debate, Americans are largely in favor of a ceasefire. Data for Progress\u2019s\u00a0latest poll<\/a>\u00a0found \u201cAround two-thirds of voters (67 percent)\u2014including majorities of Democrats (77 percent), Independents (69 percent), and Republicans (56 percent)\u2014support the U.S. calling for a permanent ceasefire and a de-escalation of violence in Gaza.\u201d The news media are shaped by, and shape public opinion. In the case of Israel\u2019s war on Gaza, media outlets appear to be starkly out of step with the American public.<\/p>\n

Lowery wrote in his\u00a02020 op-ed<\/a>\u00a0that in order for newsrooms to rise above dehumanizing bias, \u201cit will take moral clarity, which will require both editors and reporters to stop doing things like reflexively hiding behind euphemisms that obfuscate the truth, simply because we\u2019ve always done it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just as changing demographics in the nation and its newsrooms have initiated a reckoning in how media outlets cover racial justice, there is a slow sea-change transpiring in media coverage of Palestinians. In December 2023, more than a thousand U.S. journalists signed on to an\u00a0open letter<\/a>\u00a0calling for \u201cmoral clarity,\u201d urging their colleagues \u201cto tell the full truth without fear or favor,\u201d and to \u201cuse precise terms that are well-defined by international human rights organizations, including \u2018apartheid,\u2019 \u2018ethnic cleansing,\u2019 and \u2018genocide.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Obscuring the criminality of elites and giving cover to genocide requires effort and a commitment to the power of elites. How much easier would it be to call a spade a spade and simply tell the truth?<\/p>\n

This article was produced by\u00a0<\/em>Economy for All<\/em><\/a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n

The post Tell the Truth About Israel\u2019s Crimes Against Humanity<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Israeli forces\u00a0killed more than a hundred Palestinians\u00a0and wounded more than 700 on February 29, 2024 during a distribution of food aid in Gaza city, pushing the Palestinian death toll to\u00a030,000\u00a0since October 7, 2023. The food aid massacre was straightforward in its deadliness as armed Israeli forces aimed weapons at desperate, hungry Palestinian civilians and killed More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Tell the Truth About Israel\u2019s Crimes Against Humanity<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":340,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532427"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/340"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1532427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1532428,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532427\/revisions\/1532428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1532427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1532427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1532427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}