{"id":110609,"date":"2018-05-07T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2018-05-07T11:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=110609"},"modified":"2018-05-06T14:40:03","modified_gmt":"2018-05-06T13:40:03","slug":"as-israel-kills-dozens-and-maims-thousands-palestinian-violence-under-media-microscope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/05\/as-israel-kills-dozens-and-maims-thousands-palestinian-violence-under-media-microscope\/","title":{"rendered":"As Israel Kills Dozens and Maims Thousands, Palestinian \u2018Violence\u2019 Under Media Microscope"},"content":{"rendered":"

30 Apr 2018 – <\/em>Corporate media help set the terms of debate about the issues they cover by pointing toward specific sets of questions and ignoring others. When news outlets highlight particular points of contention, they encourage audiences to see these as the central aspects of the story and discourage consideration of other facets of the topic. Recent reporting on the Palestinians\u2019 Great Return March offers a case study in how news media establish truncated, distorted parameters of discussion.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Reading this Washington Post headline (4\/20\/18), you\u2019d have no clue that these \u201cclashes\u201d have injured thousands of Palestinians and killed dozens, while no Israelis have been hurt.<\/p><\/div>\n

During the recent demonstrations in Gaza, Israel has injured nearly 3,000<\/a> Palestinians and killed 35 of them, while there have been zero Israeli casualties<\/a>. Yet a Washington Post<\/strong> report (4\/20\/18<\/a>) devotes portions of 10 of its 29 paragraphs to the spectre of Palestinian violence, making references to \u201cmolotov cocktails\u201d as well as \u201cmasked youths [who] launched kites with rags and plastic bottles attached, which they set alight with lighter fluid,\u201d and including quotes from Israeli officials describing Palestinians as participating in \u201cviolent riots.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

In CNN\u2018s headline (4\/17\/18), Israel is not responsible for Israeli violence; it just naturally \u201cerupts\u2026as Palestinians march again.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

A quarter of the paragraphs in a CNN<\/strong> article by Ingrid Formanek and Ian Lee (4\/17\/18<\/a>) cast Palestinian actions as violent or threatening, largely through the use of quotes from Israeli officials making baseless claims about Palestinian demonstrators trying to \u201ccarry out terror attacks\u201d and other such falsehoods. Similarly, five of the 16 paragraphs in a CNN<\/strong> article by Ian Lee, Abeer Salman and Ameera Ahmed \u00a0(4\/20\/18<\/a>) portray Palestinians as violent or menacing, in one case amplifying Israel\u2019s groundless assertion that the Palestinians killed by Israel were \u201cknown terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Devoting substantial attention to the question of Palestinian violence, as each of these articles does, carries the suggestion that readers should be assessing how violent the Palestinians were in order to determine whether Israel was justified in killing them.\u00a0 Coverage shouldn\u2019t be fostering a debate about Palestinian violence during the Great Return March, since it\u2019s been essentially nonexistent (though it\u2019s worth noting that Palestinians have a right under international law<\/a> to resist occupation via armed struggle). Instead, coverage ought to foster discussion about how to rein in the extreme violence that Israel is actually inflicting.<\/p>\n

The Focus on Hamas<\/strong><\/p>\n

A subset of the outsized focus on Palestinian armed resistance is coverage that concentrates on assessing Hamas\u2019 role in the demonstrations. The Post<\/strong> article notes that \u201cIsrael has accused Hamas, which the United States has designated a terrorist organization, of using civilian protesters as shields to \u2018terrorize Israel,\u2019\u201d though there isn\u2019t a shred of evidence of Palestinians \u201cusing civilian protesters as shields,\u201d and though no Israelis have been harmed during the demonstrations.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The New York Times (4\/15\/18) sees irony in a Hamas leader \u201cstanding before portraits of the giants of nonviolent resistance \u2014 Mahatma Gandhi, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela\u201d\u2014forgetting that Mandela was the leader of the African National Congress\u2019 guerrilla wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (\u201cSpear of the Nation\u201d).<\/p><\/div>\n

A piece by David Halbfinger in the New York Times<\/strong> (4\/15\/18<\/a>) revolves around whether Hamas is committed to nonviolence. The article describes the organization as \u201cthe Islamic militant group that has tried suicide bombs, rockets and attack tunnels in its long struggle with Israel.\u201d The piece quotes Hamas political leader Ismail Haniya advocating peaceful protest, and then says:<\/p>\n

Minutes later, though, he called the same protests \u201ca deadly weapon\u201d with which to achieve the Palestinians\u2019 goals, saying that guns, rockets and attack tunnels\u2014the more familiar weapons that have kept Hamas listed as a terrorist group by the United States, European Union and Israel\u2014remained at hand if needed.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Though both the Times<\/strong> and the Post<\/strong> note that the US and its allies consider Hamas a terrorist group, neither publication provides background information about the institutional character of Israel, such as a United Nations report\u2019s finding that it is an apartheid state (Reuters<\/strong>, 3\/15\/17<\/a>). This framing encourages debates about the Great Return March to pivot around whether Israel has the right to use force against an outfit that \u201cthe United States has designated a terrorist organization,\u201d rather than how Palestinians might be able to protect and emancipate themselves from an apartheid regime.<\/p>\n

An Associated Press<\/strong> report (4\/26\/18<\/a>), furthermore, says that \u201cany degree of nonviolence would be a striking departure for Hamas, which over the years has attacked Israelis with suicide bombings, shootings and rockets.\u201d The authors write that \u201cHamas says it wants to keep its weapons for defensive purposes \u2014 a claim undercut by the group\u2019s tunnel program,\u201d mischaracterizing Palestinian violence as offensive, which by definition it cannot be, since they are subject to a brutal military siege<\/a> that constitutes an act of war.<\/p>\n

The AP<\/strong>, Times<\/strong> and Post<\/strong> reports encourage debate about whether Hamas will refrain from violence, and are premised on the assumption that it ought to do so despite Israel\u2019s military occupation of Palestine. None of the articles, however, encourage public discourse about Israel renouncing its violent occupation and colonization.<\/p>\n

That the only Israeli crimes that are mentioned in these three reports are the lethal violence it has used during the Great Return March could leave readers who are not well-versed in the subject with the mistaken impression that such conduct isn\u2019t a longer-term feature of Israeli policy. All three articles enumerate past instances of Hamas violence, failing to note that this happened in the context of Israel\u2019s systematic denial of Palestinian rights, and none of them provide a clear sense of Israel\u2019s history of using much larger-scale and much more deadly violence<\/a> to oppress and dispossess Palestinians, practices that have gone on since decades before Hamas even existed. The cumulative effect is to establish parameters of debate within which Hamas is understood to be irrationally wedded to violence for its own sake, while Israel is presented as, at worst, overreacting to provocations from a criminal organization.<\/p>\n

That media help make these the terms of discourse reduces the likelihood that public discourse will be about compelling Israel and its US patron<\/a> to end their efforts to consolidate wholescale domination of all of historic Palestine and the broader Middle East, or about how Palestinians\u2019 long-delayed liberation can be realized. In this regard, the way that the media frame debates about Palestine\/Israel undermines the likelihood of successful movements for peace and justice in the region.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Gregory Shupak teaches media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto. His book, <\/em>The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media<\/a>, is published by OR Books.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 fair.org<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Join the<\/em><\/strong> BDS-BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS <\/em><\/strong>campaign<\/em><\/strong><\/span> to protest the Israeli barbaric siege of Gaza, illegal occupation of the Palestine nation\u2019s territory, the apartheid wall, its inhuman and degrading treatment of the Palestinian people, and the more than 7,000 Palestinian men, women, elderly and children arbitrarily locked up in Israeli prisons.<\/p>\n

DON’T BUY<\/strong> PRODUCTS WHOSE<\/strong> BARCODE<\/strong> STARTS WITH<\/strong> 729<\/strong>, which indicates that it is produced in Israel.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

7 2 9: BOYCOTT FOR JUSTICE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

30 Apr 2018 – Corporate media help set the terms of debate about the issues they cover by pointing toward specific sets of questions and ignoring others. When news outlets highlight particular points of contention, they encourage audiences to see these as the central aspects of the story and discourage consideration of other facets of the topic. Recent reporting on the Palestinians\u2019 Great Return March offers a case study in how news media establish truncated, distorted parameters of discussion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110609","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=110609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}