Much of the mainstream media, regardless of political leanings, do not often touch on the topic of Israel and Palestine. On the occasions they do, they never paint an accurate picture of Israel’s brutally violent and inhumane occupation of Palestine.
Indeed, with Israel considered an ally of the United States, it is no wonder that the majority of mainstream media typically depict Israel as acting in self-defense against Palestine when violence breaks out. As Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) put it in a 2014 article, the media tend to “construct a symmetry of violence where none exist.”
FAIR pointed out the loaded language media use in discussing the Israel-Palestine narrative. One reporter for ABC World News declared Israel was “striking back,” while a USA Today article explained that war began after Hamas launched rocket attacks on Israel. However, as Israeli human rights monitor B’Tselem reflected, Israel’s past assaults on Gaza are always conveniently forgotten.
U.S. media love to utilize the words “conflict” and “clashes” when it comes to reporting on Israel’s occupation of Palestine. This, as FAIR wrote, is “an obvious effort to ‘balance’ coverage to show suffering on both sides, despite the obvious fact that the suffering was overwhelmingly occurring on one side.”
Most recently, Palestinians kicked off a six-week campaign of protests called the Great March of Return in the Gaza Strip. Since the end of March, Israeli forces have killed over 30 Palestinians, including children and journalists, while over 1,000 have been injured.
These facts are vastly under-reported by the Western mainstream media. Another disturbing issue is how they often repress information on the U.S.’s ties to Israel. A 2016 article from the New York Times reported that the U.S. had agreed to send Israel $38 billion of military aid over the next 10 years. Noor Wazwaz, a producer for National Public Radio (NPR), noted that to date, the U.S. has given Israel $100 billion of aid.
These numbers are staggering and, to say the least, sickening. It makes one wonder, for all the Israeli weapons that have struck, injured and murdered Palestinian bodies, how many were funded by the U.S.? How many Palestinian lives have been lost due to the complicity of the U.S.? We surely will not be able to find the answer from our own media.
Our country’s allyship with Israel does not stop with military aid. If one has been paying enough attention, then one would recognize the increasing militarization of the U.S.’s own police force. According to a database maintained by The Washington Post, 351 people have been shot and killed by police this year alone. They reported a total of 987 were shot and killed in 2017. The database mentioned that, “as of a week ago, there have been 34 more fatal shootings this year than at the same time last year.”
These statistics are frightening enough, especially when one compares these numbers to the amount of people killed by police in other countries across the world. Plenty of people in the U.S. have also survived police violence, but it is disturbing to think about the level of force and aggression the police exert against the citizens they are supposed to serve and protect. All one has to do is look to Newnan, Georgia for one of the most recent
examples.
On Saturday, April 21, a small group of white supremacists held a neo-Nazi rally. As one may imagine, counter protesters turned out as well to fight back against this public display of bigotry. The Huffington Post described the town of 38,000 as looking like it was under military occupation. Over 400 police officers showed up to this tiny rally, heavily armed and patrolling in armored vehicles.
They ended up arresting about 10 counter protesters on the grounds of them wearing masks, referring to a rarely enforced 1951 law originally aimed to combat Ku Klux Klan members. One counter protester from Charlottesville, Virginia remarked, “The irony of enforcing masking laws to prosecute leftists is just incredible. Those are anti-Klan statutes. And to be roughing up anti-Nazi protesters while handling literal Nazis with kid gloves… it’s absurd.” What is equally absurd is the footage that shows officers cornering these unarmed protesters, some not even wearing masks, while pointing “what seemed to be a modified AR-15” at their faces.
How does this relate to Israel? As it turns out, segments of U.S. police forces receive Israeli training and instructional materials. As a 2017 article from The Intercept noted, “Israel’s policing prowess is marred by its primary purpose: occupation.” Reporter Alice Speri wrote how Israel has “carried out a half-century military rule” that is “rife with abuses” in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, while their police “regularly violate the rights of Palestinians and immigrants.”
Both the violent occupation and the U.S.-Israel police exchange programs are hardly common knowledge to the majority of the public in this country; I personally just learned about the latter a few short months ago. To learn more about this particular phenomenon, visit www.deadlyexchange.org, a campaign launched by the organization Jewish Voice for Peace.
This lack of honest coverage forces the questions: Why do the mainstream media seem to conceal such significant information from us? Would it be against their corporations’ interests to reveal these gross injustices?
Since our own country has played a hand in maintaining the occupation, it is our responsibility to do all we can to defend the people of Palestine. Do research. Spread awareness. Resist Zionism. Support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement. Push back against the Western media’s disingenuous narrative. After all, none of us are free until all of us are free.
Casey Tobias is a fourth-year student majoring in women’s and gender studies and communication studies with a minor in journalism. ✉: CT822683@wcupa.edu.