AFP (CBS, 8/13/20) describes attacks on Gaza as “the latest retaliation against fire bombs suspended from balloons that have been released from the Palestinian territory.”
Israel is bombing Palestine again, although you likely wouldn’t guess that from watching TV news. For the eleventh straight night, Israeli Defense Force warplanes have been bombing the densely populated Gaza Strip. Israel’s bombs have caused considerable damage, forcing the shutdown of the area’s only power plant.
But US corporate media, focused on the coronavirus and election coverage, have shown little interest in the renewed violence in the Middle East. Searching for “Gaza” on the websites of NBC News, CNN, MSNBC and PBS elicits no relevant results. Nor has Fox News addressed the bombings, although it did find time (8/18/20) to cover the archaeological discovery of an old soap factory in Israel’s Negev Desert.
Other major news networks were not much better. In a wide ranging interview with Trump advisor Jared Kushner, CBS’s Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan (8/16/20) did mention that “there were hostilities overnight in Gaza. There were Israeli airstrikes. Palestinian militants fired off rockets,” in a question about the US’s role in the Middle East, but did not return to it.
CBS (8/13/20) also reprinted an AFP newswire story headlined “Israel Responds to Fire Balloons From Gaza Strip With Fighter Jet Strikes,” which began by stating (emphasis added):
Israel attacked targets of Islamist group Hamas in Gaza and halted fuel supplies to the enclave Thursday in the latest retaliation against fire bombs suspended from balloons that have been released from the Palestinian territory.
The story clearly presents the bombing as a reactive Israeli counter-effort—not an attack on Palestine, but a response against Hamas, which it describes not as a political party but as an “Islamist group.” Hamas, it insists, was the target, despite later noting that a UN-run school was also hit. AFP did not comment on the lack of symmetry between homemade explosives tied to balloons and F-35 jets.
ABC News, meanwhile, relied on another news agency for all of its (limited) coverage (two pieces), reprinting (8/16/20) an Associated Press article that similarly presented the cutting off of Gaza’s electricity supply as a “response” to aggression from the “Palestinian militants” of Hamas.
AP (Washington Post, 8/16/20) reported that “Israeli aircraft bombed several sites belonging to the militant Hamas group in the Gaza Strip”—though in the Post the article was accompanied by a photo of a boy with his destroyed home.
A second AP story, headlined “Israel Strikes Gaza Targets After Arson Balloons Launched,” was picked up not just by ABC (8/16/20) but by influential outlets like the New York Times (8/15/20), Washington Post (8/16/20) and Guardian (8/16/20). The piece is at pains to present Israeli actions as directed purely against Hamas, and as a response, not an aggressive action, allowing Israeli military spokespersons to drive the narrative. Indeed, much of the report reads like an IDF press release.
A leaked 2009 publication from the Israel Project, an Israeli/American group that advises Israel advocates on what language to use when discussing the Palestine conflict, stresses that they should “clearly differentiate between the Palestinian people and Hamas.” “If it sounds like you are attacking the Palestinian people (even though they elected Hamas) rather than their leadership, you will lose public support,” they counsel. Media, it seems, are doing their job for them, in much the same way they reflexively present US actions against Iran as a “response” or a “counter” to the threat from Tehran (FAIR.org, 6/6/19).
In their seminal books on media coverage of the conflict, Bad News From Israel and More Bad News From Israel, Greg Philo and Mike Berry wrote that TV news followed a “consistent pattern,” which misleadingly presented the events as “Palestinian action and Israeli response and retaliation,” their focus group sessions showing that the presentation had a “significant effect” on how the public remembered events and apportioned blame, effectively legitimizing Israeli actions. Sixteen years after their first study was published, corporate media appear to be following exactly the same playbook.
The US press sampled here have produced barely any original coverage of the 11-day (and counting) bombing campaign of the area commonly described as the world’s largest open-air prison. This is in contrast to foreign channels such as Al-Jazeera and RT, or alternative media like Democracy Now!, all of whom have followed the events in more depth, and often with fewer resources. When corporate media have covered it, they have followed tried and tested conventions that reproduce an Israeli-friendly narrative.
Media coverage of Israel/Palestine is a topic FAIR has criticized for decades (e.g., Extra!, 1/91; Extra! Update, 2/05; FAIR.org, 8/6/14, 3/29/19). The reporting on the latest round of attacks on Gaza follows the patterns we have often remarked on: downplaying Palestinian suffering and viewing the conflict from an Israeli state perspective.
A Gaza stripped of human consequence
What does that even mean?
Because of FIRE BALLOONS you idiots. I am so tired of reading headlines from the extreme Left loonies that seem to exist to discredit the rest of the Left that always post articles that make it appear like Israel bombs Palestine for no reason, or for fun … what is wrong with your fake new fools. You are working hard to get Trump re-elected aren’t you?
Isreal steals land, palastinians attack, then isrealis attack. No leftist extremists or incel school/church shooters are saying or have ever said the Palestinians stole land.
I used to think that if a weaker opponent attacks a stronger opponent then it’s only natural that the response is asymmetrical. That isn’t the whole equation. One side is stealing land from the other. The Israelis are taking and occupying Palestinian land. That’s why the Palestinians are fighting despite overwhelming odds. There is nothing extreme about knowing that there is a reason for the fighting or in knowing that one party is stealing land from the other. What is extreme is when conservative freaks shoot random unarmed people.
Agreed. The MAIN CRIME here is not what the Palestinians do to the Israelis, but the OCCUPATION, against UN Resolutions for many years! That is the crime. If a woman is getting raped and she lashes out at her attacker and injures or even kills him, is that a crime? Israel has molested the rights of Palestinians for many years it is NO secret! But the USA, in its blind obedience to an apartheid nation, enables this occupation and the resultant crimes. If poor little Israel takes exception to homemade missiles and fire balloons, they can quickly mend this situation by just acting like and treating others like human beings! To me, the ball has ALWAYS been in their court, so to speak, because Israel is the one breaking international laws here, not Palestinians, who ARE entitled top fight back against any occupational situation.
Geez Brux….. I guess you missed israel’s recent bombing the only covid testing site——in Palestine.Of course Israel has been stealing Palestinian land and killing Palestinians since 1948—–isn’t that enough for you?
And the Arabs evicted 750,000 Jews from their homes in the Muslim world, but that is OK with you.
You have been lied to. Not only did Arabs NOT evict 750,000 Jews, but in fact Arab league countries forbade Jews from leaving because they didn’t want them moving to Israel.
Truth is a lot more complicated then revisionist history that they fed you. Many Jews probably left because they were oppressed or faced backlash. At the same time a lot of people were promised financial incentives to more to Israel and their trips were paid. Mosad and Zionists even terrorized people into moving. Of course, the fact that many of them believed that they were moving to their ancient homeland that was given to them by God was also a factor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_Arab_and_Muslim_countries#Criticism_of_Jewish_Naqba_narrative_in_Israel
You have been lied to. Egypt and Libya EXPELLED their Jews. Race riots in Yemen told them to leave or die. The Farhud pogrom in Iraq occurred years before the establishment of the state of Israel.
Jarry
You are not actually contradicting me. You are implying that all Jews were suddenly expelled or left in fear, but you are not actually saying that. In fact, you are lying by omission. For example, Fahrud pogrom occurred in 1941, years before the state of Israel was established.
Israel strikes refugee camp with F-16’s in response to fire balloons.
The corporate U.S. media do not produce news. They merely produce propaganda for Zionism. Why no journalism? Follow the money.
AH, so its the “zionists and their “money” and “media control” again
Obviously. Now you clearly know what the set up is yet whinge like it’s all a shock to you.
The old disease again.This is precisely why Israel came into being and justly so
Actually it’s not the money. Papers would make more money and would not lose credibility if they just told the Truth. A lot of people who work in the media actively try to control what is published on behalf of Israel:
https://israelpalestinenews.org/uncovering-canadian-medias-devastating-pro-israel-bias/
Gee, do you think you might actually want to report the truth for a change that the bombing is in self-defense and SOLELY caused by Hamas and their firing of missiles and arson laden balloons at innocent civilians in Israel? Good grief man-come into reality and stop apologizing for palestinian murderers and terrorists!
Don’t lie you Zionist terrorist lover, you start this war and you will lose.
James CoIIier:
Read the SEVENTH MiIIiON by Tom Segev: The best book available for what happened to the PaIestinians when the British puIIed out after WW 1. Review what happened to the USS Liberty too.
—Americans were murdered and the US did nothing. YOU might want to review how
IsraeI attacked the recent fIotiIIas and murdered Americans —and perhaps reading about how 12 year olds are arrested in the middle of the night and dragged to prison, or maybe read about what happened to RachaeI Corrie when she was murdered by an Israeli on Palestinian Iand——–TruIy the US media cares not a whit about Palestine or the PaIestinians . But then neither does America, as the Trump Admin has made a travesty out of the treatment of PaIestinians, Even more sad is how this negative IsraeIi treatment of PaIestinians is changing the idea of Judaism —into something sadIy negative and this creates possible Iong reaching negative consequences for that Iand and that religion.
Israel as the colonizer has no moral or legal right to claim self-defense.
We need to stop playing this game where we try and argue starting from Zionist false premises, where we criticize both sides and are chiefly concerned with how ludicrously disproportionate Israel’s response always is (jet bombers vs fire balloons). The fact is that Israel has zero right to *any* kind of response.
Leave the Occupied Territories. Disband all the Settlements. End the blockade of Gaza. Only then can Israel begin to claim they’re being unjustly attacked.
To All Palestinians
I am disgusted beyond words about Trump;
I regret US complicity with Israel and your occupation ignored by so many;
It is a tragedy that Israel’s supporters control the US Congress with big money;
I am saddened that Biden and Harris support Israel and little will change;
Please accept my personal apology.
As the recent Mondoweiss article says. “Kamila is more AIPAC than J Street” – and J Street is moderate on the Jewish spectrum. Bibi – a nonobservant secular ‘Jewish who has aligned with the hard-core Settler right wing – still claims the Bible as his ‘deed’ to the whole Land though he doesn’t believe. Leave that unbelief to Bibi’s Buddy ‘the Donald’ (another crook.)
When did American media show any interest in the Palestinian tragedy. These Zionist owned outfits only cover up Israeli crimes