{"id":248116,"date":"2023-11-13T12:00:04","date_gmt":"2023-11-13T12:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=248116"},"modified":"2023-11-11T05:11:04","modified_gmt":"2023-11-11T05:11:04","slug":"media-coverage-of-israel-and-gaza-is-rife-with-deadly-double-standards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/11\/media-coverage-of-israel-and-gaza-is-rife-with-deadly-double-standards\/","title":{"rendered":"Media Coverage of Israel and Gaza Is Rife with Deadly Double Standards"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Terrorism\u2019 vs. \u2018self-defense\u2019 –\u00a0 Journalism that presents Palestinians as less than human makes their killing more acceptable: Palestinians \u201cdie\u201d while Israelis are \u201ckilled\u201d.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

23 Oct 2023 – <\/em>In March 2022, one month into Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, a Syrian refugee wrote<\/a> in The New Humanitarian\u2019s pages: \u201cI know what it feels like having to leave your home and family behind to escape war, and I want to help Ukrainians going through this now. But I also want to know why us refugees not from Europe had to freeze in the forest.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was referring to the special treatment Ukrainian refugees received when entering Europe, welcomed with hugs and chocolate bars rather than electric fences and attack dogs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very sympathetic to the Ukrainian people,\u201d he wrote. \u201cNobody deserves war, destruction, and exile from their homeland. But the difference in treatment just hurts so much. The blood that comes out of all people is the same colour.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the world\u2019s leading news organisation specialised in covering crises around the world, The New Humanitarian sees on a daily basis stark differences in whose suffering counts: Lives from Sudan to Myanmar, from Ethiopia to Haiti, are routinely neglected.<\/p>\n

The media plays a key role in shaping why our societies care about some crises and some victims more than others. There is no better example of this double standard than the coverage of current developments in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.<\/p>\n

The choices we make \u2013 to label one side the aggressor and the other the victim; or to humanise one side and not the other \u2013 elevate and perpetuate narratives that treat certain people as more human than others.<\/p>\n

The truth is: We are preconditioned not to see Palestinian humanity because colonialism, white supremacy, and Islamophobia are still the dominant lens through which states, institutions, people, and media in the West view the world (although geopolitical interests are, of course, also at play).<\/p>\n

This is why, in some media coverage<\/a>, Palestinians \u201cdie\u201d while Israelis are \u201ckilled\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

TV host Bassem Youssef (right) calls out asymmetry in media coverage during an interview on Piers Morgan Uncensored, holding a piece of paper showing the death tolls in Israel (left) and Palestine (right) over the last 15 years.<\/p><\/div>\n

Yes, Hamas, the Palestinian militant and political group that governs the Gaza Strip, is responsible for the killing of hundreds of Israeli civilians and the taking of hundreds of hostages on 7 October. But the Israeli government has also been responsible for killing thousands of Palestinian civilians since. And before 7 October, 3,803 Palestinian civilians had been killed \u2013 compared to 177 Israeli civilians \u2013 since 2008, according to the UN<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So why are many Palestinians interviewed on US or British TV asked to condemn Hamas as a ticket of entry to the conversation, while Israelis aren\u2019t asked to account for their government\u2019s crimes?<\/p>\n

As Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestinian Mission to the UK, responded<\/a> to the BBC when asked to condemn Hamas: \u201cHow many times has Israel committed war crimes live on your own cameras? Do you start by asking them to condemn themselves? You don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Terrorism\u2019 vs. \u2018self-defence\u2019<\/h2>\n

How do we decide when to apply the word \u201cterrorism\u201d?<\/p>\n

The BBC does not call Hamas militants terrorists<\/a> specifically because \u201cterrorism is a loaded word, which people use about an outfit they disapprove of morally. It’s simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who to support and who to condemn \u2013 who are the good guys and who are the bad guys,\u201d wrote veteran foreign correspondent John Simpson. \u201cWe don’t take sides. We don’t use loaded words like \u2018evil\u2019 or \u2018cowardly\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others would do well to follow that example.<\/p>\n

There is no definition of terrorism under international law. As the saying goes, one person\u2019s terrorist is another person\u2019s freedom fighter. But the UN General Assembly in 2006 defined it as \u201ccriminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes\u201d.<\/p>\n

If we label criminal acts by Hamas that terrorise Israeli civilians for political purposes as terrorism, why do we not do the same for criminal acts by the Israeli government that terrorise Palestinian civilians for political purposes? And why are several UN General Assembly resolutions that affirm the Palestinians\u2019 right to armed struggle<\/a> as a response to Israeli apartheid and occupation hardly ever mentioned?<\/p>\n

As Angela Davis writes in Freedom is a Constant Struggle<\/a>: \u201cThe important issues in the Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination are minimised and rendered invisible by those who try to equate Palestinian resistance to Israeli apartheid with terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Palestinian professor Nada Elia, this results in a depiction of Palestinians as \u201cthe attackers, the invaders, the occupiers\u201d, and not a people engaged in a <\/a>decolonial struggle.<\/p>\n

By the same token, a framing of Israeli violence as \u201cself-defence\u201d takes a very short view of history.<\/p>\n

We owe it to the professional standards we committed to as journalists to stick to verified facts, provide the broader historical perspective that helps our audiences put news into context, avoid amplifying hate speech, and call out all <\/em>abuses of power, regardless of who the aggressor is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Media reports that focus solely on Hamas\u2019 brutal killings in Israel in one weekend, without putting the incident in the context of Israel\u2019s brutal occupation and oppression of Palestinians for more than half a century, create dangerous false narratives. As the Palestinian Ambassador to the UN in New York, Riyad Mansour, put it<\/a>: \u201cHistory for some media and politicians starts when Israelis are killed.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of which raises another important question: Which forms of resistance do we consider legitimate? Why are Ukrainians who use violence to resist occupation considered heroes and armed by Western countries, while Palestinians who use violence to resist occupation are considered terrorists and bombed with US support?<\/p>\n

Last year, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described Russia\u2019s attacks against civilian infrastructure in Ukraine as war crimes. \u201cCutting off men, women, children of water, electricity\u2026 are acts of pure terror,\u201d she said<\/a>. \u201cAnd we have to call it as such.\u201d So will she now describe Israel cutting off water and electricity from men, women, and children in Gaza as terrorism? Will she now condemn Israel\u2019s 17-year blockade of Gaza the same way she condemned Russia\u2019s blockade of the Ukrainian coast?<\/p>\n

The typical response to such questions is that Palestine is different because Hamas is a terrorist organisation that targets civilians.<\/p>\n

But another double standard is at play here.<\/p>\n

The killing of civilians in Israel rightly sparked outrage, but why is it an acceptable price to pay when the United States drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima during World War II; when the British and the Americans bomb Dresden after that war has been won; when the US army and its allies disproportionately kill civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan; or when Israel bombs Gaza en masse and pledges to wipe out its entire population<\/a>, or kills Palestinian protesters in the West Bank?<\/p>\n

Whether intentional or when viewed militarily as (not our phrase) collateral damage, the killing of civilians in the name of fighting evil should never be acceptable \u2013 not in Hiroshima, not in Iraq, not in Israel, and not in Gaza.<\/p>\n

The information war<\/h2>\n

We see double standards at play in the media\u2019s treatment of unverified information too.<\/p>\n

When referencing the blast at al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City that killed hundreds of sheltering Palestinian civilians, most media outlets are very careful to note that the source of the explosion is unclear. But many of the very same media ran front page stories featuring unverified reports of Hamas decapitating babies (claims that even US President Joe Biden circulated \u2013 referring to \u201cterrorists beheading children\u201d \u2013 before walking them back<\/a>; and that El Pa\u00eds later described as, \u201cThe decapitated babies that no one saw, but someone used<\/a>\u201d).<\/p>\n

In the lead-up to the US invasion of Iraq, false claims that Saddam Hussein was harbouring weapons of mass destruction \u2013 notably amplified by Western leaders and Western media \u2013 made the killing of innocent Iraqis more acceptable. Widely circulated misinformation about decapitated babies in Israel has exactly the same effect: It makes the killing of Palestinians more acceptable.<\/p>\n

And finally, why is it almost impossible to challenge dominant narratives about Israel without being subjected to vicious, visceral attacks and being labelled \u2013 as this Editorial probably will be \u2013 antisemitic?<\/p>\n

In the wake of the violence in Israel and Gaza, three prominent Muslim hosts at MSNBC \u2013 Ayman Mohyeldin, Ali Velshi, and Mehdi Hasan \u2013 were taken off anchoring duties, according to Semafor<\/a>. Parent company NBCUniversal said the moves were \u201ccoincidental\u201d.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, The Guardian said it wouldn\u2019t renew<\/a> the contract of veteran cartoonist Steve Bell, after pulling his cartoon featuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. \u201cIt is getting pretty nigh impossible to draw this subject for the Guardian now without being accused of deploying \u2018antisemitic tropes\u2019,\u201d Bell wrote<\/a> on the social media platform X.<\/p>\n

BBC Arabic is investigating six of its journalists <\/a>for tweets they wrote about the conflict. Even Instagram and Meta are being accused of censoring <\/a>pro-Palestinian content (Meta says it was due to a \u201cbug\u201d).<\/p>\n

Many journalists describe feeling \u201csilenced\u201d on this topic: \u201cIf you\u2019re trying to tell the story from a perspective which recognises Palestinian humanity and recognises that Israel has failed [to uphold] its obligations under international law, you are held to a high standard,\u201d Ash Sarkar, contributing editor at Novara Media, told<\/a> Al Jazeera\u2019s The Take.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone is waiting for you to trip up. And even when you jump through all the hoops, and dot every \u2018i\u2019 and cross every \u2018t\u2019, you can still find yourself being silenced, without any form of due process whatsoever\u2026 Whereas when it comes to telling the Israeli narrative, those standards no longer exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

The deeper problem<\/h2>\n

So why is media coverage of Israel and Palestinians so asymmetrical?<\/p>\n

The truth is: Palestinians are depicted as less deserving of our sympathy because they are seen as less than human.<\/p>\n

When Politico (and others) quote Israeli ministers saying they are fighting \u201chuman animals<\/a>\u201d \u2013 mirroring the Nazis\u2019 description of Jews as \u201crats\u201d ahead of the Holocaust or the Hutus\u2019 description of Tutsis as \u201ccockroaches\u201d ahead of the genocide in Rwanda \u2013 it contributes to a dehumanisation of people that makes them easier to kill (dehumanisation is a stage of genocide<\/a>).<\/p>\n

As professor Judith Butler puts it in the London Review of Books<\/a>, \u201cIf the dominant frame considers some lives to be more grievable than others, then it follows that one set of losses is more horrifying than another set of losses. The question of whose lives are worth grieving is an integral part of the question of whose lives are worth valuing.\u201d<\/p>\n

We must face up to a difficult truth. Many Western media see Palestinian and Syrian lives as less important than Israeli and Ukrainian lives because they are subject to the legacies of colonial, white supremacist thinking.<\/p>\n

The racist coverage<\/a> of the war in Ukraine proves this point.<\/p>\n

Western journalists presented European people \u201cwith blonde hair and blue eyes<\/a>\u201d being killed in Ukraine as worse than elsewhere. Ukraine \u201cisn\u2019t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades,\u201d one senior CBS foreign correspondent said live on air<\/a>. \u201cThis is a relatively civilised, relatively European\u2026 city, one where you wouldn\u2019t expect that, or hope that it\u2019s going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

We in the media can do better than that. We owe it to the professional standards we committed to as journalists to stick to verified facts, provide the broader historical perspective that helps our audiences put news into context, avoid amplifying hate speech, and call out all <\/em>abuses of power, regardless of who the aggressor is.<\/p>\n

We have a responsibility to examine the assumptions \u2013 conscious or unconscious \u2013 that underpin our framing; to recognise how perpetuating dominant narratives upholds inequitable power dynamics; and to realise that the way we frame things has a real impact on people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n

When we dehumanise people in a way that makes them less worthy of public sympathy and thus makes violence against them more acceptable, we have blood on our hands.<\/p>\n

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

\u2018Terrorism\u2019 vs. \u2018self-defense\u2019 –\u00a0 Journalism that presents Palestinians as less than human makes their killing more acceptable: Palestinians \u201cdie\u201d while Israelis are \u201ckilled\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":248117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[922,378,234],"class_list":["post-248116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-bias","tag-journalism","tag-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248116","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=248116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248118,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248116\/revisions\/248118"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}