As Israel was killing scores and maiming thousands of protesters in Gaza, rather than calling on Israel to “renounce violence,” the New York Times (5/18/18) published an op-ed arguing that “guarding the border was more important than avoiding killing.”
A FAIR survey of the phrase “renounce violence” in the New York Times over the past 10 years shows that 95 percent of the time the demand is made of Muslim organizations, people or political parties, the most prominent being the Taliban and Hamas. There are zero instances of anyone in the Times—whether reporters quoting officials or columnists—from March 28, 2009, to March 28, 2019, insisting or suggesting that the United States, Israel or any white-majority country “renounce violence.”
Almost half—48 percent—of the instances of “renounce violence” in the New York Times during the time period asserted that Palestinians “refused” to “renounce violence.” This was typically signaled with an umbrella label of “Hamas,” with varying degrees of specificity. Roughly a third of those said to not “renounce” violence were either Afghan or Iraqi insurgency groups fighting American military occupation. Thus, roughly 80 percent of the time, the term was evoked to describe people under military control of Israel or the US.
Of the 58 examples found of the phrase in the Times from 2009 to present day, only three instances expressed a demand that non-Muslims “renounce violence”: The Czech government (12/22/09) threatening to ban the Communist Party; Turkish criticism (7/29/10) of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a secular Communist party, though Kurds are mostly Muslim; and a report (2/5/17) on Obama’s commutation of Oscar López Rivera that noted the longtime Puerto Rican independence advocate “refused to renounce violence.”
The complete list can be viewed here. The New York Times was selected as the focus of the study due to its position as the US’s most influential newspaper.
It’s not clear why no reporters, columnists or experts quoted ever felt the need to ask the White House or the Pentagon, or any of their friendly allies in Britain, Israel, Saudi Arabia or Turkey, if they would “renounce violence.” The expectation that a party should refuse to engage in armed activity as a means of exerting political influence was almost exclusively reserved for those under military occupation from Western forces or their Middle Eastern allies.
“In sharp contrast to Dr. King, Mr. Mandela continues to call for an ‘armed struggle,'” a 1990 New York Times op-ed (6/21/90) complained.
Before the time frame of the survey, South African leader Nelson Mandela was often scolded in the Times opinion pages for refusing to unilaterally reject violence. “Why Won’t Mandela Renounce Violence?” asked a June 21, 1990, op-ed by congressional aide David G. Sanders. There’s no evidence in the Times archives that South Africa’s apartheid government was ever asked the same question.
For decades, Amnesty International infamously refused to label Mandela a Prisoner of Conscience because he wouldn’t formally pledge to refrain from violence—a rather precious, morally boutique demand Amnesty requires of all of its Third World causes. In the Western liberal mind, we can name oppressors, but never support those actually fighting them, instead demanding the oppressed unilaterally refuse the single most ubiquitous political tool in history—that of violence.
There are also instances prior to the survey period of the phrase being applied to white people—when they were also under Western occupation. From the 1970s to the 1990s, the Times made several mentions of Irish resistance fighters under the British occupation of Northern Ireland “refusing to renounce violence.” In this context, as well, there was no mention of Britain’s refusal to do so.
Vows by Muslim and Sikh groups to “fight back” against anyone who threatened their neighborhoods prompted the New York Times (8/10/11) to highlight a call to “renounce violence.”
During the 10-year survey period, other than Czech Communists and López Rivera, the only people in the West needing to “renounce violence” were Muslims—in a bit of editorializing during the 2011 London riots from Times reporters John Burns and Ravi Somaiya (8/10/11), suggesting the father of a person who had died during the unrest was appealing “for all in the community to renounce violence.” The community in question, according to the Times? London’s “Muslim populations.”
Hamas is regularly said, almost like it’s required by the Times style guide, to be failing this arbitrary moral test. Pro-Israel columnist Roger Cohen has evoked the phrase three times since 2009. The “refusal to denounce violence” box-checking was especially popular with Times Jerusalem chief Jodi Rudoren, who used the cliche five times in 2014 alone in reference to Hamas—the same year Israel’s violence killed 1,500 Palestinian civilians, including 523 children. During that same conflict, “Hamas violence” claimed the lives of six Israeli civilians. At no point in her coverage during this time did Rudoren mention that the IDF had, like Hamas, refused to “renounce violence”—and were exceedingly more efficient at carrying it out.
Demanding Iraqi or Afghan insurgents or Hamas “renounce violence” is, of course, a defensible moral stance. One could argue that their religious-infused militancy is reactionary or counter-productive. (Just this month, thousands of Palestinians protested Hamas in Gaza.)
But that’s not really the issue here. The issue is the wholly selective and loaded manner in which this burden is applied. Why should only these groups—Muslim 95 percent of the time—“renounce violence,” but the US and its allies never have to? What makes the West’s arbitrary, violent occupations per se justified, while less sophisticated counter-occupations who refuse to go full Gandhi are committing a profound moral transgression? There is no sense to it, other than serving a lazy, racist rhetorical tic. Ask Muslims to “renounce violence,” by all means, but maybe, at least every now and then, ask non-Muslim militants to do so as well.
Featured image: New York Times depiction (5/14/18) of the Great Return March in Gaza, which the Times reported “turned violent” when Israeli forces killed 28 demonstrators.
>> ‘Renouncing Violence’ Is a Demand Made Almost Exclusively of Muslims
Gosh, I wonder why?
Terrorism is what they do to us, not what we do to them. If you are a citizen of one of the “coalition” countries which bombed,sanctioned and invaded Iraq, Syria or Libya your government has killed well
over 2 million mainly Muslims.
That, plus when violence is indeed renounced, via a nonviolent BDS movement, suddenly that should also be illegal or illegitimate and crushed.
Thus there’s no possible valid resistance.
Thanks for doing the research. Those on the ‘other’ side (and non-Westerners, generally) have, of course, long criticised this one-sided reporting. But the complaint is usually dismissed as unfounded whinging. These statistics would be an eye opener, I suspect, even to the discerning fair.
This is a great article. Muslims are asked to renounce violence against non-Muslims. It should work both ways. Everyone should renounce violence against anyone of the same or different faiths. Thomas L Friedman of the New York Times says the Palestinians should renounce violence but fails to mention Israel is the cause of that violence with its occupation. Same goes for Bernie Sanders who is adored by much of the left as being pro peace & has dual citizenship with Israel & denied it in an interview with NPR. I checked a website naming politicians with dual US Israeli citizenship & Sanders name appears in bold letters.
You got duped, or that website did. That list is fraudulent.
No, Bernie lied.
Pink Prince:
I second the “You got duped,” comment. Per Pontifact: It appears that in 2015 Diane Rehm in an interview, stated to Senator Sanders that he had dual U.S. / Israeli. citizenship. Sanders said, “No, he did not.” It seems that this NON-fact appears first on Facebook in 2007——- listing supposed politicians who had dual citizenship.
This is incorrect as Sanders has only U.S. citizenship. The interviewer did apologize for her assumption. Facebook , once again, is found guilty of posting INCORRECT ” pseudo facts”
Pink Prince: Try a valid news source—as Facebook is not newsworthy—certainly gossip worthy though.
Excellent piece by AJ. It’s this lack of perspective he details that long ago drove me from the MSM.
Of course that “greatest purveyor of violence”, that ‘exceptional nation’ that I’m a citizen of, is involved in military actions (defacto WARS, albeit relatively small-scale ones) in 6 or 7 countries, has killed millions since WWII, spends ~$700B / year on the military, has 700+ military bases around the world, refuses to recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC, won’t sign a ‘no first-use’ pledge for nuclear weapons, etc-etc… THIS is the country that always demands that its adversaries (real or hyper-inflated) “renounce violence”?? If even the uninterested can’t sense the staggering hypocrisy/double standard at work, then they are truly ‘delusional by-choice’.
Not sure where this quote is from, but it’s very true.
“For the oppressor, ‘peace’ isn’t the absence of violence. For the oppressor, ‘peace’ is the absence of response to their violence.”
Israel will not be removed with force. Rightly or wrongly it has seized its state. Israel is no more illegitimate than 1/2 the middle east created by French and British. The UN and most countries do not ask for Sikhs to return to Pakistan punjab. Hell most of the world says nothing much about Rohyngans who have suffered murder, rape, pillaging and suffering which far surpasses returnees to Mynamar. Yugoslavia disintegrated and its too bad for Serbs in Croatia or Croats in Serbia not to mentiom Kosovo and Bosnia. does not . Hamas is a dead end. Israel has moved far to the right. The UN and EU are far too partizan and encourage Hamas violence. Isreal will go it alone in face of world criticism. This 70 year crisis will keep going with no resaloution as long as Force is the tool. Ironically Tibet independence is rarely heard and it’s unlikely it will ever be independent and it has been taken over by settler from China.
Okay Phil,
You can get your hasbara check now.
The article, overall, is spot on, addressing an obvious truth that the MSM will not due to its own bias in favor of established power.
However, there are two specific points, ones that go beyond the focus of the piece, to which I must object.
The first is the snide reference to Amnesty International’s supposedly “precious, morally boutique” requirement that a person must not use or advocate violence to be named a prisoner of conscience. That standard was adopted both to focus on those imprisoned solely for their beliefs and to avoid giving the oppressors the excuse of saying the person is in jail for being a “criminal” rather than for those beliefs. You may disagree but your sneering description (I can almost see your lip curl as you typed it) says much more about you than about AI. (It’s also worth noting the claim that AI makes this “demand” of “all of its Third World causes” is grossly misleading: The requirement is the same for all its campaigns.)
The other, related to the first, is the truly bizarre assertion that “[i]n the Western liberal mind, we can name oppressors, but never support those actually fighting them,” which can mean nothing other than “only those who use violence are actually resisting,” that “violence is the only form of resistance worth the name,” that “unless you use violence you are not resisting.” There is no other rational interpretation.
Please don’t try to tell me the rest of the sentence affects the meaning; it does not. And please don’t try to tell me that it was directed at AI; the broadening of the target to “the Western liberal mind” means it was not. That is especially true because it was clearly done deliberately: The entire paragraph could have been dropped with zero impact on the piece.
FAIR does an outstanding job of analyzing and pointing out media bias. Which makes it a shame to see its own biases so clearly on display.
A good bit of research. Two things come to mind. Arundhati Roy once said, “My question is, if, let’s say, there are people who live in villages deep in the forest, four days walk from anywhere, and a thousand soldiers arrive and burn their villages and kill and rape people to scare them off their land because mining companies want it—what brand of non-violence would the stalwarts of the establishment recommend? Non-violence is radical political theatre.” (“Things That Can And Cannot Be Said (Contd)” Outlook, 11/16/2015). MSM is really demanding that the opposition commit to tactics that don’t work–a sucker’s bet. The other is the concept of “structural violence” or “systemic violence” (that results from the hierarchical organization of social and economic systems in societies). The ideological crux of most MSM reporting is the *promotion* of hierarchies (especially status quo ones) and opposition to egalitarianism. This is bracketed out of the “renunciation of violence”.
You forgot about African Americans in the struggle for human rights in America! Mike’s philosophy of non violent resistance was held up as the Only approved method of struggle. And let’s be Clear he was talking about not responding to violent physical attacks! Malcolm X on the other hand said legitimate self defense is Not violence! And he’s vilified to this day.
The US & its allies practice what they don’t preach, which is going to war, drone strikes, nuclear weapons & sanctions. Israel causes violence against its people by displacing Palestinians to make room for settlers. On CNN, Fox & much of the media, they show Israelis crying because members of their families were killed in the Occupied Territories. They put themselves in that position by forcing people off their land so they can live there.