{"id":109759,"date":"2018-04-23T12:00:08","date_gmt":"2018-04-23T11:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=109759"},"modified":"2018-04-22T12:50:26","modified_gmt":"2018-04-22T11:50:26","slug":"a-tale-of-two-atrocities-douma-and-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/04\/a-tale-of-two-atrocities-douma-and-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tale of Two Atrocities: Douma and Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Photo by Jonas Moffat | CC BY 2.0<\/p><\/div>\n

20 Apr 2018 – <\/em>The mainstream media once again have enthusiastically endorsed\u00a0Donald Trump\u2019s latest\u00a0<\/strong>strike on Syria, pulled off without Congressional approval\u00a0and in blatant\u00a0violation of US and international law.\u00a0Reporting in breathless detail the weapons used and the sites bombed, the mainstream media seem to agree with President Trump that Syrian President Bashar Assad is a\u00a0\u201cGas Killing Animal\u201d responsible for the ghastly deaths of Syrian innocents in a chemical attack, one which demands swift, forceful retaliation. This rush to judgment comes even as\u00a0international organizations have yet to conduct any formal investigations into the evidence of what, if anything, happened in Douma and who is responsible.<\/p>\n

Now compare this intense media coverage of the alleged Syrian chemical attacks to the near silence accorded the horrific civilian massacre perpetrated by Israeli soldiers in Gaza, at the very same time. The Gazan health ministry reports that at least 34 unarmed Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces over the past weeks, with hundreds more injured during\u00a0six weeks of planned demonstrations titled the \u201cGreat March of Return.\u201d\u00a0which largely consisted of tire-burning\u00a0and prayer.\u00a0Human Rights Watch\u00a0denounced<\/a>\u00a0the killings as \u201ccalculated\u201d and \u201cunlawful.\u201d A\u00a0video of an Israeli sniper shooting an unarmed Palestinian man is but one example of the substantial available evidence of this deliberate killing of innocent civilians.\u00a0\u00a0After the sniper shoots the man, one of the soldiers yells \u201cyes!\u201d and \u201cson of a bitch!\u201d in celebration as a crowd rushes toward the body.\u00a0Israel\u2019s defense minister Avigdor Lieberman rejected calls for an inquiry into these Israeli\u00a0 killings of Palestinians,\u00a0saying soldiers along the Gaza frontier \u201cdeserve a medal\u201d for what they did.\u00a0\u00a0The United States, rather than labeling Lieberman a \u201ckilling animal,\u201d instead blocked a Kuwait-drafted U.N. Security Council statement that would have called for an independent investigation. And the mainstream media says next to nothing.<\/p>\n

Three differences in the reportage here are readily apparent: First, the evidence: In contrast to still unverified reports of who\u2019s responsible for the alleged Syrian attacks, there is overwhelming first-hand video evidence of the flagrant massacre of unarmed Palestinian civilians in Gaza by Israeli soldiers. Second, the manner of killing. The alleged murder of civilians using chemical weapons apparently calls for worldwide moral indignation and humanitarian retaliation, whereas indiscriminate murder by sniper rifles, as done by Israel in Gaza, causes no such concern. Third, the victims: the US media\u2019s almost total neglect of the brutal murders of innocent Palestinian men, women and children leads to the inescapable conclusion that, in contrast to Syrian victims, Palestinian victims don\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

How do we account for this discrepancy? Thirty years ago Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman explained it incisively in their book on US mass media called\u00a0Manufacturing Consent.<\/em> Their seminal insight was the distinction between\u00a0worth<\/em>y and\u00a0unworthy<\/em>\u00a0victims. They showed through copious research that the US media consistently portray people abused or murdered by enemy states, such as Syria, as\u00a0worthy<\/em>\u00a0victims, whereas those treated with equal or even greater severity by US client states, such as Israel, are ignored as\u00a0unworthy\u00a0<\/em>victims.<\/p>\n

They also showed that as long as the major media outlets\u00a0endorse official US consensus \u2013 say, that\u00a0Assad is a\u00a0\u201cGas Killing Animal\u201d \u2013\u00a0they are not required\u00a0to produce credible evidence, construct serious arguments, or present extensive documentation. Meanwhile,\u00a0the public generally does not even notice the chilling silence accorded to\u00a0unworthy<\/em>\u00a0victims of client states like Israel, whose suffering is drowned out by the disingenuous humanitarian outcry for the suffering of\u00a0worthy<\/em>\u00a0victims of enemy states like Syria.<\/p>\n

Of course what determines whether victims are worthy or unworthy has nothing to do with their actual suffering, or the ghastliness of their deaths, but rather with whether the state perpetrating the suffering is friend or foe. Conclusive demonstration of this is that Assad\u2019s alleged Syrian victims are deemed worthy and must be avenged,\u00a0whereas the Syrian victims of US airstrikes and drones are almost invisible, as unworthy as their suffering Palestinian counterparts. Such is the monstrous calculus of the criminal US regime and its criminally complicit media.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Doug Noble<\/em>\u00a0is an activist with Upstate (NY) Drone Action Coalition.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 counterpunch.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

20 Apr 2018 – Compare this intense media coverage of the alleged Syrian chemical attacks to the near silence accorded the horrific civilian massacre perpetrated by Israeli soldiers in Gaza, at the very same time. The US media\u2019s almost total neglect of the brutal murders of innocent Palestinian men, women and children leads to the inescapable conclusion that, in contrast to Syrian victims, Palestinian victims don\u2019t matter. How do we account for this discrepancy?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":109760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}