The Wall Street Journal headline (5/10/21) presents the Gaza violence as a clear-cut case of aggression and retaliation.
Media coverage of heightened violence in Israel/Palestine has misrepresented events in the Israeli government’s favor by suggesting that Israel is acting defensively, presenting a false equivalency between occupier and occupied, and burying information necessary to understand the scale of Israeli brutality.
Corporate media have presented Israel’s killing spree as defensive, as a reaction to supposed Palestinian aggression. A Financial Times headline (5/10/21) read, “Hamas Rocket Attacks Provoke Israeli Retaliation in Gaza.” The New York Times’ description (5/12/21) was, “Hamas launched long-range rockets at Jerusalem on Monday evening, prompting Israel to respond with airstrikes.” An article in Newsweek (5/12/21) had it that “Hamas rained down rockets on Israeli civilian targets, and the Israeli military responded with surgical air strikes against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza.” A CNN headline (5/12/21) said, “At Least 35 Killed in Gaza as Israel Ramps Up Airstrikes in Response to Rocket Attacks.”
The Wall Street Journal (5/12/21) ran the headline, “Hamas Attack on Israel Aims to Capitalize on Palestinian Frustration,” which makes it sound as if Israel were simply minding its own business and Hamas lashed out for no reason. The Journal reinforced this impression by describing Israel’s bombing of Gaza as merely a “response” to and a “counterstrike” against the rockets from Palestinian resistance factions.
Imagine for a moment that the entire history of Israel/Palestine began on May 10. Even then, Hamas’ rocket fire was a follow through on its promise (Ynet, 5/10/21) to fire rockets in “response” to and “retaliation” against Israel if the latter didn’t remove its forces from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheik Jarrah, where Israel has been attempting to force Palestinians from their homes and repressing the resultant protests, and from the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which Israel had just raided during Ramadan, Islam’s holiest month (Jacobin, 5/14/21).
More to the point is that Israel, and its forerunners in the Zionist movement, have been carrying out a war against Palestinians for over 100 years, so Israeli self-defense against Palestinians is a logical impossibility (Electronic Intifada, 7/26/18). As an occupying power, Israel does not have a legal right to claim self-defense against the people it occupies (Truthout, 5/14/21). Israel has been subjecting Gaza to a military siege for 12–14 years, depending on the metric one uses to determine the starting point, which has left the territory effectively unlivable (Jacobin, 3/31/20); a siege is an act of war, so the party enforcing it cannot claim to be acting defensively in response to anything that happened subsequent to the start of the blockade.
‘Both sides’ narrative
NBC News (5/12/21): “Both sides appear to be preparing for more violence.”
Similarly, media have had a long-running tendency to amplify the view that violence across historic Palestine should be understood as roughly equivalent fighting on “both sides.” This remains a commonplace feature of the coverage, exemplified by NBC headline (5/12/21), “Over 70 Killed as Israel, Palestinians Exchange Worst Violence in Years.”
A Washington Post editorial (5/11/21) was headlined “New Israeli/Palestinian Fighting Serves Political Agendas on Both Sides.” It said that “the worst conflict in years has erupted between the two peoples, with Palestinian missiles raining down on Israeli cities and airstrikes rocking the Gaza Strip.”
A David Ignatius article in the Post (5/13/21) was headlined, “The Vicious Cycle Gets Worse for the Israelis and Palestinians.” The author wrote that Israelis and Palestinians “both” are “swept up yet again by the cycle of violence.”
The word “clash” is frequently employed to avoid acknowledging that violence is overwhelmingly inflicted by one side on the other, as in headlines like Reuters‘ “Israeli Police, Palestinians Clash at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa, Scores Injured” (5/8/21). The headline gives no clue that 97% of the injuries were being suffered by Palestinians.
The fatal flaw in the “both sides” narrative is that only the Israeli side has ethnically cleansed and turned millions on the Palestinians’ side into refugees by preventing them from exercising their right to return to their homes. Israel is the only side subjecting anyone to apartheid and military occupation. It is only the Palestinian side—including those living inside of what is presently called Israel—that has been made to live as second-class citizens in their own land. That’s to say nothing of the lopsided scale of the death, injury and damage to infrastructure that Palestinians have experienced as compared to Israelis, both during the present offensive and in the longer term.
Amnesty International (5/10/21) declared unequivocally that “Israeli security forces have used repeated, unwarranted and excessive force against Palestinian protesters in occupied East Jerusalem.”
The “both sides” approach, however, permeates the coverage. The New York Times (5/12/21) relied on a bogus symmetry between oppressor and oppressed, with Jerusalem bureau chief Patrick Kingsley writing:
For weeks, ethnic tensions had been rising in Jerusalem, the center of the conflict. In April, far-right Jews marched through the city center, chanting “Death to Arabs,” and mobs of both Jews and Arabs attacked each other.
In contrast, Amnesty International (5/10/21) documented:
“Evidence gathered by Amnesty International reveals a chilling pattern of Israeli forces using abusive and wanton force against largely peaceful Palestinian protesters in recent days. Some of those injured in the violence in East Jerusalem include bystanders or worshipers making Ramadan prayers,” said Saleh Higazi, deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.
“The latest violence brings into sharp focus Israel’s sustained campaign to expand illegal Israeli settlements and step up forced evictions of Palestinian residents—such as those in Sheikh Jarrah—to make way for Israeli settlers. These forced evictions are part of a continuing pattern in Sheikh Jarrah, they flagrantly violate international law and would amount to war crimes.”
Eyewitness testimonies—as well as videos and photographs taken by Amnesty International’s researchers on the ground in East Jerusalem—show how Israeli forces have repeatedly deployed disproportionate and unlawful force to disperse protesters during violent raids on Al-Aqsa mosque and carried out unprovoked attacks on peaceful demonstrators in Sheikh Jarrah.
The Wall Street Journal (5/12/21) presented the Israeli police as neutral peace keepers, obscuring power differentials between Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel:
Israel is also facing an internal conflict, as pro-Palestinian Arab residents clashed with their Jewish neighbors in mixed towns, prompting the government to bring in border police troops to quell riots.
The reality is that Israeli police have violently assailed Palestinian demonstrators across Israel. That the Palestinians arrestees have been denied legal rights and necessary medical treatment is also omitted.
Another Journal (5/12/21) article referred to “Palestinian anger over what they see as years of efforts to push them out of Jerusalem and limit their access to land they claim, as well as infringing on their basic rights.” Yet these views are not simply a matter of “what [Palestinians] see as” discrimination. As Human Rights Watch (5/11/21) noted:
Nearly all Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem hold a conditional, revocable residency status, while Jewish Israelis in the same area are citizens with secure status. Palestinians live in densely populated enclaves that receive a fraction of the resources given to settlements and effectively cannot obtain building permits, while neighboring Israeli settlements built on expropriated Palestinian land flourish.
Israeli officials have intentionally created this discriminatory system under which Jewish Israelis thrive at the expense of Palestinians. The government’s plan for the Jerusalem municipality, including both the west and occupied east parts of the city, sets the goal of “maintaining a solid Jewish majority in the city” and even specifies the demographic ratios it hopes to maintain. This intent to dominate underlies Israel’s crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.
Presenting as debatable the indisputable fact that Palestinians in Jerusalem are denied “their basic rights” is a form of “both sides-ism,” taking incontrovertible factual information about the status of Palestinians in Jerusalem and reducing it to merely one of multiple possible narratives.
Important facts left out
I looked at Gaza coverage during the first four days of Israeli airstrikes and Palestinian rocket fire, focusing on the databases of the five US newspapers with the highest circulation: The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. Crucial aspects of what is happening in Gaza have been severely underreported.
For instance, Israel closed Kerem Shalom Crossing on May 10, “blocking the entrance of humanitarian aid and fuel destined for Gaza’s power plant” (Gisha, 5/12/21). Kerem Shalom is also Gaza’s main commercial crossing, which means that the closure will further devastate Gaza’s economy, already in ruin thanks to the Israeli siege. Between May 10 and May 13, the five newspapers published a combined 114 articles that refer to Gaza. Only two pointed out that Israel has tightened the siege during the bombing campaign. The New York Times (5/10/21) ran an article that noted that Israel “shut a key crossing between Gaza and Israel,” but said nothing about the consequences of doing so.
In the first four days of the assault on Gaza, this Washington Post article (5/13/21) was the only report in a major US newspaper that mentioned that the Israeli government had blocked humanitarian aid, including Covid vaccines, from entering the occupied territory.
A Washington Post report (5/13/21) quoted Sasha Muench, Palestinian territories director for the US-based humanitarian group Mercy Corps:
At the moment, no goods or people can enter Gaza because the border crossings are closed. This means no medical supplies, including vaccines, can enter…. In addition, no fuel to run the generators can enter, and Gaza authorities are warning of increased blackouts, including at hospitals, and potentially having no electricity in Gaza at all within a few days.
The latter is the only one of the 114 articles that mentioned that Israel has been blocking the entrance of humanitarian aid even more so than before it began this round of violence against Gaza.
On May 12, the Israeli human rights group Gisha noted that Israel is “banning all access to Gaza’s sea space, a cynical and punitive measure that harms fishermen’s livelihoods and food supply,” and that this move is a form of collective punishment that is illegal under international law. Restricting Palestinians’ food access is particularly egregious, given that 68.5% of Gaza residents are already food insecure.
Collectively, the five newspapers ran 88 articles that mentioned Gaza between May 12 and 13. Just one mentioned anything about Israel barring access to the sea, a New York Times piece (5/10/21) that said Israel “barred fishermen from [Gaza] from going to sea,” but did not point out that there is already a major problem with food access in the Strip that Israel’s move is sure to worsen. In fact, zero of the 88 articles mention that there is widespread food insecurity in the territory that Israel is incinerating.
Thus, the enthusiastic cheers for attacks on Palestinians, coming from, say, the New York Times’ Bret Stephens (5/13/21), are not the only form of media misdeeds against Palestinians. It’s the inversion of attacker and attacked, or the flattening of distinctions between the two. It’s the burying of information that clarifies the scope of Israeli criminality. Such approaches can confuse the public about the differences between those who fight for liberation and those who fight to snuff it out.
Once again, the antisemitist, Greg Shupak slants the story to paint the Israelis poorly. Did this guy get beat up by Jews when he was a kid?
If Mexico launched thousands of rockets into the US, we wouldn’t punch back with equivalent force. We would stop it permanently. If some guy kept taking punches at you, you’d punch hard enough to make him stop. When Germany was low on oil and munitions, we didn’t limit our oil supply and limit our munitions. We fought harder than they. NOBODY fights and equivalency war. Naive!
The Palestinians that Greg identifies with hide their rockets in schools and hospitals. They dig tunnels into Israel.
Israel allows Muslims to be in the Israeli federal government.
Israeli doctors will practice medicine on Palestinians.
Palestinians pray for the annihilation of Israel.
The same is not true the other way.
Greg, move to Palestine and see how well you’d be treated by the Palestinians
Mexico? Its more the like the US going to war with Nogales.
You didn’t even read the article did you? Started right out with “anti-semitist” – touche’ – as if that’s an argument.
You prefer Nogales? OK. If Nogales launched a thousand missiles at the US, we would wipe Nogales off of the map.
I read the article. Now what? I’ve read Shupak’s articles before. Always Israel bad. He never looks at who fires the first shot. No mention of the tunnels that they dig. Never any mention at the representation that Palestinians have, but Israelis do not.
Food insecurity – the left’s new word for, “Well they aren’t starving, but we want it to sound bad.”
I compare the disparity to the Montgomery Police Department taking on an armed Rosa Parks. Clearly disproportionate, everyone knows whose blood will be on the ground. Winner foreordained going in.
Please explain the suffering that that Israelis put upon the Lebanese. They just shot rockets into Israel.
I don’t seem to remember Rosa Parks shooting her gun and trying to kill innocents. She didn’t dig tunnels to kill innocents. She didn’t plot the deaths of others from hospitals or schools.
If you picked a fight with Mohammad Ali, we’d all know whose blood would be on the ground. We’d all call you stupid for starting the fight. We’d call you stupid even if Ali called you names every day.
Israel has actually turned into ( re the zionists ) as the New Gestapo for Israelis who apparently want to be Kings of the World. Netanyahu appears to want to be Hitler, as it seems that no lie is too big for him to be anointed as King of the World!
So Israel, what kind of a nation would attack during the Moslem holy times? What kind of a nation would bomb homes and hospitals and say they had to bomb the news media , and besides that, they say, Hamas was there! NOT! They were not in that building!
Why Israel have you targeted hospital, doctors ,family homes? Why have you destroyed the water and sewer systems, and why do mobs made up of crazy Israelis think that they can steal Palestinian homes?
I give up on you Israel, although —perhaps Israel is the wrong name…ZION Land ..maybe? But maybe you should return to rereading your 10 commandments —as you continue to break so many of them. Israel, very sadly you have been attacking Palestinians since May of 1948. That’s 73 years—apparently God is looking out for them as they are still
in Palestine
Happily , in America, Jewish people are often involved with the ACLU and other positive human endeavors and they seem to be a much more positive mindset ———- and more positive for humanistic actions.
Considering what The Jewish people went through in Germany—I am amazed that this current generation of Netanyahu is so angry and so inhumane—-the Holocaust was not that long ago—and I do not understand why the actions of so many in your land— want to create a second Holocaust—but this one for the Palestinians.
Any proof of concentration camps or Netanyahu occupying other countries around him.
Why not just make up more stuff out of whole cloth.
If you hate the Jews just say so and save us all this time.
Gosh Tim, considering that the Palestinians barely have any water, and I suppose that Netanyahu is working on depriving them of having any water at all. And you know, bombing homes and hospitals is a war crime—and bombing the covid testing center—-is the mark of a nation with big egos and little substance. Oh and its also a war crime when the controlling nation uses Palestinians for target practice
Actually I don’t hate the Jewish religion, I don’t hate any religion— but you must know that Netanyahu is a piece of horrible humanity. If you believe that Israel, or any nation, can do no wrong, then you have been asleep for years!
As for taking land, sure, that’s ‘ what the Zionists do, and have done since 1948. I think you are confusing zionism with Judaism—- they are NOT the same thing. You need to read more and remember—- yelling at people doesn’t accomplish much—except that as you object continually when other’s thoughts do not mimic your thoughts, you seem to become a loon in the wilderness denying reality. In fact, I look forward to America cutting all those dollars that American taxpayers have given to Israel for years. America needs those dollars and as America has helped Israel for decades—-isn’t it time for Israel leadership to make it on their own?
“I suppose…” No facts. Just speculation?
It is not a war crime if the enemy is storing weapons in those places. Otherwise, all armies would store their weapons in hospitals.
Again, supposition. I don’t believe Netanyahu is a piece of horrible humanity.
Who yelled? It is impossible to yell in a printed dialog. Yelling has to do with volume (an audible feature, not print)
I also don’t believe we should give money to Israel. We shouldn’t give money to ANY country, employer, or person. No money to Planned Parenthood, PBS, oil companies, welfare, etc. I’m sure you only want to stop giving money to Israel, but then again, you don’t hate Jews, just those over is Jerusalem.
Wondering blames the blockade strictly on Israel. Why didn’t she mention that Egypt is part of the exact same blockade? If the blockade is killing Palestinians, why aren’t they firing any missiles at Egypt? Why aren’t they digging tunnels into Egypt? Why does Wondering leave that out? Intentional? Secretly hate Jews and don’t want to be called out for it?
The whole Israeli project is built land stolen from the Palestinians. What part of Israel was not taken fron the native people who have lived there since the time of Christ…??????
One more example of European colonists trying to wipe out the indigenous population. Americans don’t know what’s happening because they are too slothful to demand information beyond what the Zionist-owned corporate media spoon feed them. As several of the above comments on Greg’s trenchant analysis prove.
Dear Gregory Shupak!
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Well researched and a point that hardly anybody makes.
Please do not get disencouraged by trolls.
First of all let us make sure that we all understand that the Gaza strip is NOT occupied territory. The Israelis left the strip in 2005 or 2006. Gregory S your whole article is based on the assumption that Gaza is occupied. WRONG.
When you control everything that goes in or out, the air space, the sea space and talk about “mowing the grass” or “putting them on a diet” I guess it’s not hard to understand why some people might consider this “occupied” territory. But if you like, we can just call it what it is, an outdoor prison. Feel better?
Joseph, brutal prison guards don’t get brownie points for not “occupying” a prison in which they have locked and in which they continue to oppress numerous innocent people.
Thank you for your article. These truths need to repeated again and again. I am afraid that now a “truce” has been declared the tragic plight of the Palestinians will be forgotten again — until the next time. Today as a Canadian, I added my name to a New Democratic Party list of those supporting basic rights for Palestinians.
When you control everything that goes in or out, the air space, the sea space and talk about “mowing the grass” or “putting them on a diet” I guess it’s not hard to understand why some people might consider this “occupied” territory. But if you like, we can just call it what it is, an outdoor prison. Feel better?
Oh yes! Those terrible Hamas terrorists have started another war. So sad they didn’t just lay down and let their occupier steal one more bit of their rapidly disappearing country being snuffed out and even denied it ever existed. That their torrerment is buried, misrepented & twisted at every turn by the oppressor symphetic and mostly main steam media owned by the usurpers.
The whole Israeli project is built land stolen from the Palestinians. What part of Israel was not taken fron the native people who have lived there since the time of Christ…??????
Netanyahu is hardly the issue. Israeli politics is irrelevant. And the emergence of Jewish “pro-Palestinian voices” is the biggest fraud of all. All Israeli Jews and the overwhelming majority of American and European Jews are some flavor of Zionism. Zionism is and has always been settler colonialism. The one constant of Zionism is the eradication of the Palestinian People” anywhere between the sea and the Euphrates, God’s land grant to Abraham and his descendants in exchange for a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon. The most disgusting flavor of Zionism is the “pro-Palestinian Jew,” who throughout the West controls the “pro-Palestinian”
perspective. By doing so, he promotes a more gradual and “nonviolent” elimination of the Palestinian People” while appearing to champion their cause against the “Zionist” “right” or “hardcore” only too happy to murder and expel the Palestinian People immediately. You, Palestinian, your “friends” on “J Street,” in “Jewish voices for peace,
Code Pink,” etc. are a far more insidious threat to you than all the others
Aside from Tim and Joseph, everyone on this thread is breathtakingly stupid and uninformed. What other topic would you learn 5 percent about and then vociferously logorrhea all over the place, raging against one side of your uninformed narrative? More than a few tropes in these comments (“control” was bandied about several times)…do you ding dongs realize that the Israelis drop fliers and alert the Palestinians well in advance that they are going to bomb a particular building so that there is time for the Palestinians to get out? I think you don’t know that. The Israelis also supply water, medical treatment (including vaccines) and all sorts of other things to Palestinians all the time as a default…I’m sorry if you can’t wrap your double digit IQs around the fact that maybe they would pull back on that occasionally when they are being mercilessly attacked. When the Israelis left Gaza, they left behind factories and all sorts of means of production so that the Palestinians could earn something and start being productive in their own right. Within a day, the Palestinians had burned all the factories to the ground. That sounds like a bunch of well balanced innocents…go watch some UN Watch videos on YouTube. You all sound as dopey as those countries that blindly recite the words, “Israel, the Occupying Territory…” My favorite is when North Korea criticizes them for “human rights violations.” Oy vey! Lol.
“Logorrhea” is a noun. In the future, when you try to show how smart and literate you are, try harder.
Meanwhile, however, you are absolutely right. Jewish Israel have been nothing but a Godsend to the ungrateful Palestinians. The Israeli Jew–such humanitarians, the IDF the most moral army in the world, etc etc. Give Bibi the Nobel Peace Prize.
Superb reporting.
What a relief to see this in print