Image from New York Times video of mourners at the Place de la Republique in Paris.
At the time of the attacks in Paris, FAIR’s website led with a piece by Ben Norton (11/13/15) about US reporting on the ISIS bombing in Beirut—noting references to the civilian neighborhood targeted by the bombing as a Hezbollah “stronghold” (MSNBC, 11/13/15), “bastion” (Reuters, 11/12/15) or “area” (NPR, 11/12/15). Given this framing—and the generally limited amount of coverage granted to the Lebanese victims—it’s unsurprising that the Beirut terror failed to provoke the same sorrow, horror and identification among US audiences that the Paris massacres did.
It feels callous to question the allocation of outrage; empathy is in such short supply in this world that one hesitates to question it when it emerges. But as a long-time citizen of New York City, I’m all too aware of the weaponization of grief. The outpouring of no-context, ahistorical sympathy after 9/11 helped pave the way for a violent reaction that killed in Iraq alone roughly 150 times as many people as died in Lower Manhattan that day—an opportunistic catastrophe that did more to mock than avenge those deaths.
Just as the question of Al-Qaeda’s motives in 2001 provoked more self-congratulation than serious inquiry (Extra! Update, 10/01), coverage of Paris in 2015 tends to skirt over political realities. Thus the New York Times (11/13/15) could report: “A stunned and confused French capital was again left to wonder: Why us? Once again?” The obvious answer was alluded to obliquely by a soccer stadium spectator: “With all the strikes in Syria, we’re not safe anymore.”
Readers were presumed to know this referred to the French bombing campaign against ISIS in Syria, which began in September, following aerial attacks against ISIS’s positions in Iraq that started last year (CNN, 9/27/15). Just last week, France joined in intensified strikes against ISIS-controlled oil fields in Syria (New York Times, 11/12/15). By last summer, Western airstrikes against ISIS in both Iraq and Syria had reportedly killed at least 459 civilians, including more than 100 children (Guardian, 8/3/15).
Nor does the piece asking “why us?” mention that France has been “the most prominent backer of Syria’s armed opposition” (Guardian, 12/7/12), giving funds to rebels trying to overthrow the Damascus government as early as 2012. When ISIS took advantage of the Syrian civil war to occupy large portions of the country, France doubled down by sending weapons directly to insurgents, with President François Hollande saying that “we should not stop the support that we have given to these rebels who are the only ones to take part in the democratic process” just because such support had helped the apocalyptic ISIS movement to thrive (AFP, 8/21/14).
Photo accompanying New York Times article about French President François Hollande describing the Paris attacks as an “act of war.”
None of this background was explained when the New York Times (11/14/15) reported Hollande’s assertion that the attacks in Paris were “an act of war,” as though France hadn’t long been making war on ISIS, and repeated without context his claim (using an Arabic acronym for ISIS) that “France, because it was foully, disgracefully and violently attacked, will be unforgiving with the barbarians from Daesh.”
Noting that France’s enthusiasm for military intervention in the Middle East long predated the Paris attacks puts one at risk of being mistaken for an apologist for ISIS war crimes. Indeed, one suspects that fear of such misidentification leads journalists to downplay or omit French violence in describing the context of the attacks. Such willful avoidance of history helps perpetuate the illusion that Western violence is the solution to ISIS’s terror—rather than one of its main causes.
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org.
Those who promise security at home are those who guarantee the opposite by creating chaos abroad.
Blowback doesn’t occur in a vacuum, but an inferno of one’s own making.
The dead of Paris are no less and no more to be mourned than those murdered in the charade of “The War on Terror”.
That terror breeds this terror, and will do so until it is neutered by an ascendant sense of humanity.
A measure of safety can be obtained by those who have the means to procure it, but invulnerability can never be achieved.
You might add to your statement the history of French colonialism, the Algerian war, the large population of Muslims in France who are marginalized and who provide a contingent of the disaffected that ISIS can draw on. The victims are always folks who do not make the decisions and who pay the price for what their elites do.
In FAIR’s November 2015 newsletter (EXTRA), Adam Johnson provided the following critique of media coverage of ISIS: “…an American public, once again, is presented with a cartoonish, wildly inflated threat profile that’s increasingly divorced from reality.”
Paris will no doubt be reassured by Johnson’s perceptive analysis.
“… willful avoidance of history helps perpetuate the illusion that Western violence is the solution to ISIS’s terror—rather than one of its main causes.” AND Editor Jim Naureckas’ solution is ???
The “War on Terror” is a magical incantation that can be used by any government official, at any level, in any country. Once spoken or written, it inoculates the speaker, who s/he represents and any actions taken under the shibboleth, from any criticism, and from any of the normal legal and moral restraints of its culture. We’ve let it happen and we keep electing people who perpetuate the illusions.
@whiteathame State violence has not worked. Talk couldn’t hurt.
If someone of Irish extraction should set off a bomb in a cafe in the East Village (NY City), would you expect the bombing of Dublin the following day? I hope not.
ISIS will never match the barbaric colonial occupations of the white European. Human beings were kidnapped raped and put into slavery, natural resources were stolen, millions were killed. The wealth from slave labor and the plunder of natural resources enriched the bankers in London, Paris and elsewhere. This allowed the creation of obscene wealth that is now used to control the media and the entire world.
One of the largest problems we face is all the countries that are responsible for invading Middle Eastern Countries are all in denial that they are responsible for ISIS and the straightening of Al Qaeda. Iraq and Afghanistan were invaded because of their Oil and other Wealth and because they did not have the military power to defend themselves.
I can understand why the United States, Great Britain, and the rest of the Coalition are trying to keep their involvement in the terrorist attacks secret. Unfortunately it is the attacks on Arab countries that are giving these psychotic sociopaths a reason to strike using terror, not just on those in the Coalition, but even against their own people.
Over 500,000 Iraqi’s died and over 0ne million were wounded in the attack on their country, the destruction of the livelihoods, their farm animals and pets were killed, so that the oil companies could take their oil, there are hundred of thousands of Afghanistan’s people and even more wounded and their countries are still occupied.
The sick and very disturbing fact is people are in total denial of the facts, they will not allow themselves to see the truth, that it is the United States, Great Briton, and other countries that have created ISIS and cause Al Qaeda to go to war with the west. It was the same way when the Europeans that came to America, and started a war of genocide against the native peoples, the Europeans slaughtered the Native peoples because they had inferior weapons and lived on land rich in gold, water, game. The Europeans even used chemical war fare on the native people, by giving them small pox infected blankets, the Native People had no way to fight Small Pox and it wiped out entire villages and tribes.
Then when the native people fought back, the Europeans said, look, the Native Peoples are attacking us, and started calling them murderous savages, and used that as an excuse to complete the near genocide and putting the Native People on reservations, on land so bad that the Europeans felt no White person would want the land they put Native Peoples on. The mind set is the same, the Europeans blocked out the fact they started killing the Native peoples for their land, and then acted as if they did not wrong and the Native People were attacking them for no reason. The United States and the other countries responsible for invading Middle Eastern Countries are doing the same thing, acting as if they had not part in the terrorists attacks and history is repeating its self.
As I write this message, Wall Street and the rich are trying to ramp up more wars in the Middle East so that the Pentagon, Military Contractors, and the Military Industrial Machine can get much richer. There is propaganda all over the radio and TV news blaming Islamic people for what is going on in this country, post 911 99% of terrorists attacks in this country are from White rightwing so called Christians, even the KKK call themselves Christians. Are we just going to keep living in denial and keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again for hundred of more years?