[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin July 11 2014 Yousef Munayyer and Lee Fang @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin071114.mp3″]
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Israeli airstrikes on Gaza have claimed dozens of Palestinian lives, including those of more than a dozen children. There are no Israeli casualties so far. The fact that US corporate media fail to note the unequal power and disproportionate suffering of Palestinians is just one of the ways middle east coverage is distorted. We’ll talk with Yousef Munayyer of the Jerusalem Fund, about that.
Also on the show: For the first time, Gallup reports a majority of Americans support the legalization of marijuana. Of course many things can stand between popular opinion and legislation, and in this case one of those things is a powerful industry, though you don’t hear much about it in debates around pot. Lee Fang of the Nation institute will join us to talk about his piece, “The Real Reason Pot Is Still Illegal.”
LINKS:
—Permission to Narrate blog (Jerusalem Fund)
–“The Real Reason Pot Is Still Illegal,” by Lee Fang (The Nation, 7/21/14)
Re: Commentary by Yousef Munayyer of the Jerusalem Fund.
Yes, the body counts are lop-sided, but actually the numbers cited by mainstream media does reflect this, as does reporting on Israel’s first world ‘quality’ military and weapons.
But what is lacking from both mainstream and progressive coverage is a clear analysis of why Hamas wanted to start, or wishes to continue this cycle of warfare when the consequences for Gazan civilians was and is so predictably dire.
Nor does Counterspin or Yousef Munayyer offer any documentation or evidence that Hamas does or does not site its weapons or command centers in civilian areas, homes, mosques, hospitals, schools etc. nor whether or not it is Hamas policy to encourage civilians to stand on roof tops as human shields or not to flee zones when Israel sends warnings.
Are there not any independent journalists who have reported on Hamas’s seemingly wartime strategy which seems so suicidal for civilians, or reported on actual Hamas tactics regarding the emplacement or not of weaponry and weapon systems among civilian populations?
If Counterspin refrains from such hard questions, it raises serious doubts about who is spinning what.
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