‘Movement Media Has Really Emerged in Its Own Right’
CounterSpin interview with Maya Schenwar on grassroots journalism
Fair, JANINE JACKSON
Janine Jackson interviewed Truthout‘s Maya Schenwar about grassroots journalism for the October 27, 2023, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
CounterSpin231027Schenwar.mp3
Janine Jackson: The future of journalism—how to grow and sustain independent reporting—has been a front-burner concern for decades now as we recognize the structural constraints of corporate news reporting, its top-down bias that favors the powerful, and how it can never challenge the social-economic status quo in a serious or ongoing way.
Because, of course, the need for strong journalism is not for journalism’s sake, but for the health of communities that need information to make choices, to see political possibilities, to communicate and participate. The search for models that support people’s information needs and reporters’ livelihoods is a work in progress, shall we say, but one that could hardly be more key.
Maya Schenwar is editor-at-large for Truthout and director of the Truthout Center for Grassroots Journalism. She’s author of the book Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better, and co-author, with Victoria Law, of Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms. And she co-edited the book Who Do You Serve? Who Do You Protect?: Police, Violence and Resistance in the United States, from Haymarket. She joins us now by phone from Chicago. Welcome to CounterSpin, Maya Schenwar.
Maya Schenwar ………….. I think, one, we’ve got this situation where journalism as a field is in crisis, just financially, just in terms of, how do we get our word out? We see social media algorithms crashing entire outlets within a few months when they change. We see organizations scrambling to completely change their financial models when their corporate sponsors pull out, or when the one foundation sustaining them pulls out.
………………….. I think movement media as a field has really emerged in its own right. It’s always been there, but I think it’s being recognized, particularly among the left, but even beyond, as a valid component of journalism. And, actually, this is the journalism we need,
…………………….. I think the expansion of all of these different types of online media has both introduced this increasingly vicious phenomenon of disinformation, but also has exposed people to more of this reality that has always been true, that, depending on your source, you can be getting a completely different version of the news.
…………………. right now we’re witnessing Israel perpetrating this rapid genocide in Gaza with US complicity. And meanwhile, much of the dominant media is still completely misrepresenting the situation, removing the context of 75 years of colonization and occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and representing the current situation as a “both sides” war. And so I think, increasingly, even people who haven’t realized this before, but are tuned into that issue, are recognizing, oh, media is such a political force.
……………………. we’re in this moment that’s pretty tough for truly independent journalism, and particularly movement journalism. We have seen outlets shut down. We’ve seen some shrink. We’ve seen a lot hovering on the edge of precarity.
…………………………. Janine Jackson: And at Truthout, we’ve been thinking a lot about, OK, we want to exist as a publication, but we can’t do it alone. We don’t want to be anyone’s sole news source. We want to have this vibrant ecosystem of different publications that are helping enrich people’s understanding of the world, and propel them toward action on all these different fronts.
So the Truthout Center for Grassroots Journalism is a little corner of Truthout which is focused on supporting and assisting smaller movement media organizations, using the lessons that we’ve learned at Truthout over the last 22 years, of sustaining ourselves primarily based on small reader donations, of figuring out how to broaden our reach and bring in new audiences, and figuring out how to build a news organization that is able to approach even issues in which there’s a lot of controversy, and uplift particularly what social movements are doing.
So in addition to that support and assistance and mentoring, we’re also focused on bringing together movement media and social justice news organizations of all sizes around the country. This is aspirational, but we’re working on it now, since we recognize that’s what’s going to allow us to survive. And when I say “us,” it’s not just Truthout, it’s all publications that have social justice at their heart, who rejects this idea of “objectivity,” and are looking to make media that are going to ultimately help the human race survive, and support each other in ways that are going to uplift the movements that get us there.
………………………………….. Maya Schenwar one thing that we do at Truthout, that I think a lot of the publications that we’re working with have in common, is we think about: What is this story going to do in the world? Are there ways that it could cause harm? What is it intended to uplift? What impact do we hope it will have? Why is this topic necessary in the world? Why is this focus necessary? Who do we hope to reach? All of those things that tie into questions of liberation, tie into questions of justice, but aren’t traditionally the type of questions you’re supposed to ask as a journalist.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with Maya Schenwar. You can find out more about Truthout and the Center for Grassroots Journalism on the site Truthout.org https://fair.org/home/movement-media-has-really-emerged-in-its-own-right/
The Invisible Slaughter of Palestinian Children
CHARLES HIRSCHKIND11/03/2023 https://www.juancole.com/2023/11/invisible-slaughter-palestinian.html
Berkeley, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – According to our most reliable news sources, the children of Gaza are being slaughtered at a horrific rate. No, you will not find the terms “slaughter” or “horrific” in Western media accounts of Israel’s current assault on the Palestinians residents of Gaza (these terms are reserved for Israeli deaths), but nonetheless, there is little disagreement among media professionals that nearly half of the deaths resulting from Israel’s current assault on Gaza are children, as I write, close to 4000 of them. And the killing of 4000 children by aerial bombardment in the short span of 3 or 4 weeks is nothing if not a horrific and terrible slaughter.
Statements made by politicians or military personnel to mitigate the significance of this number—that Israel is making every possible effort to spare civilian lives, that collateral damage is sadly unavoidable in war, that Hamas is to blame for forcing Israel to defend itself, or, most perversely, Biden’s baseless caution about the numerical accuracy of the data—all of these qualifications seem morally obscene when weighed against the fact that close to 4000 children have been blown to shreds in a few short weeks.
According to the charity, Save the Children, “More children have been killed in the Gaza Strip over the last three weeks than in every other armed conflict annually since 2019.” Whatever viewpoint one may hold in regard to Israel’s military actions in Gaza, in one very real and empirical sense, this has been a war carried out -— to a stunning and unprecedented degree -— on the bodies of children. This, I would argue, is a salient moral fact of the conflict, one that any attempt to come to terms with Israel’s assault necessarily confronts.
Or perhaps not. For when our major news media update us on the results of Israel’s relentless bombing campaign, we hear, not that 100 Palestinian children were crushed in the day’s rubble, a now daily occurrence, but rather, that Israel successfully destroyed more of the “terrorist infrastructure,” that “terror tunnels” were eliminated, that 15 Hamas terrorists were killed by the Israeli Army and Air Force, and so on.
We are presented, in other words, with a narrative that conceals the very slaughter that we know from the available casualty statistics is occurring. The massive carnage in children’s lives -— again, an inescapable moral fact of the conflict, whatever one’s point of view—is replaced by the so-called “war on Hamas,” and presented in a language ever more obedient to Israeli military speak, where protocol seems to demand that every third word in a sentence be “terror” or one of its derivative terms.
From the standpoint of Western media, Palestinian lives are relevant precisely in proportion to their ability to resist Israel’s crushing grip upon them. Insomuch as Hamas is the primary institution of organized resistance in Gaza, it is they -— not dead children -— who are the only significant Palestinian casualties in this war. It is this perceptual regime that lays behind comments such as the following, made by a US government official, just a few days ago: “We believe that a ceasefire right now benefits Hamas, and Hamas is the only one that would gain from that right now.” The thought that thousands of Palestinian children might also derive some benefit from a ceasefire, namely by not being blown to pieces, is not even to be entertained.
The erasure of enemy deaths is an established practice within war, and the deaths of children are no exception. Thousands of children were killed by the US in the “War on Terror.” These deaths never achieved significant visibility within American public discourse, never weighed heavily on the American political conscience.
Our mainstream media present us today with two events that cannot be squared, the war on Palestinian children and the war on Hamas, and then proceed to coach us in how not to see one of them. This is the task in perception management that today sets their agenda. #Israel #Palestine
Book review of “Too Hot to Touch: The Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste”
This is a book review of “Too Hot to Touch: The Problem of High-Level
Nuclear Waste” and the best book I’ve read on the topic, as well as
additional research on the topic. Now that world wide production of
conventional and unconventional oil probably peaked in 2018 (coal in 2013,
and perhaps natural gas in 2019), our top priority should be to bury
nuclear wastes as soon as possible. Once severe shortages arrive, remaining
oil will to to agriculture and other essential needs. This short window of
time now may be our only chance to bury nuclear wastes — our descendants
certainly won’t have the energy, diesel equipment, or technology. Yucca
mountain is the best possible place to put nuclear waste in the U.S. The
only place to put it actually, a $15 billion facility that models put
through thousands of permutations of multiple calamities such as
earthquakes, volcanoes, flooding and more. Yucca was found to be a safe
place to put nuclear waste.
Energy Skeptic 1st Nov 2023 https://energyskeptic.com/2023/book-review-nuclear-waste-too-hot-to-touch/ #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
When the Journalists are Gone, the Stories Will Disappear
Over 29 Palestinian journalists have been killed since October 7 in Israeli’s genocidal bombing of the Gaza strip.
By Zoe Alexandra and Vijay Prashad / CounterPunch, https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/30/when-the-journalists-are-gone-the-stories-will-disappear/
Every few hours we check the social media timeline of Muhammed Smiry, the Gaza-based Palestinian journalist. He has been walking the ruined streets of Gaza, documenting everyday life amidst Israeli bombs and the impact they have had on Palestinian life. Close to seven thousand Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli barrage, and any one of them could have been Muhammed. “I am still alive,” he wrote on October 10. A few days later, Muhammed wrote, “I am still alive. I can’t tell you how bad the situation is in Gaza.” On Telegram, Muhammed wrote, “Nowhere is safe in Gaza.” His Telegram timeline is horrifying – so many killed here, so many killed there. It is unrelenting.
Journalists in Gaza with whom we are texting tell us that they are charging their phone with repurposed car batteries and with small solar devices. They are covered with dust, some of it – they say – the incinerated bodies of Palestinians blown to bits in their homes.
Since Israel began this unrelenting bombing of Gaza, journalists – many of them Palestinian – have been posting pictures in real time of the airstrikes and their victims, entire families wiped out in a flash. They tell us about the difficulties of survival for those who do not die, people trying desperately to access food, water, and some energy. “I want to die with my family,” says a journalist in a text.
I was just reporting….
Not long after that text is sent, Wael al-Dahdouh, al-Jazeera’s bureau chief in Gaza, learns that an Israeli airstrike hit the house where he had been living in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza. His wife, daughter, and son have been killed immediately. They had left their home in central Gaza and headed southwards, following the instructions of the Israeli military. Dahdouh saw his family’s bodies at al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah. “What happened is clear,” he told al-Jazeera while he rushed to the hospital. “This is a series of targeted attacks on children, women, and civilians. I was just reporting from Yarmouk about such an attack, and the Israeli raids have targeted many areas, including Nuseirat.”
Dahdouh and his team have been central to the coverage of this bombardment. Brave journalists, including those who work for al-Jazeera, have gone from streets to hospitals, covering the screams of parents and the quivering of children. Dust, debris, and blood is the canvas of their stories. There are videos of heroic rescue teams, rushing on foot because the ambulances have no fuel, trying to dig out survivors from the rubble. Text messages from beneath the shattered concrete cry for help. Some of them are dug out, but many die, their bodies buried deep underneath the buildings that have been hit by powerful bombs. Half of the population of Gaza is beneath the age of 18, and half of the dead are young people – children, really, who have no idea about why they are being hit so hard by a government led by a man who says he wants to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah. “We are the people of light,” said Benjamin Netanyahu, “and they are the people of darkness.” Underneath the concrete, Netanyahu’s cruel vision comes true.
Dangerous assignment.
Reporters never have an easy time in a war zone, particularly if one of the combatants sees them as part of the enemy in the information war. Walk into al-Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar, and the first thing you see are the clothes worn by Tareq Ayoub (age 35). Tareq worked at the network’s Baghdad bureau office – whose coordinates had been given to the United States military as a precaution. On April 8, 2003, Tareq – a Jordanian national – was reporting on the violence in Iraq when the United States bombed the office and killed him, leaving his wife Dima and his one-year-old child Fatima. Tareq was the twelfth journalist killed in Iraq, and he would be followed by many more (one report counts 283 journalists killed in Iraq since the US began its illegal war in 2003).
We remember names of journalists killed in the wars because their deaths were spectacular or we knew them personally, but otherwise they are forgotten, part of the anonymity of the war dead.
The database at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) counts twenty-two journalists killed in the Occupied Territory of Palestine – most of them due to “dangerous assignment.” This is a strange designation. Salam Mema (age 32) was the head of the Women Journalists Committee at the Palestinian Media Assembly. She was at her home in the Jabalia camp in the northern Gaza Strip on October 13, 2023, when an Israeli airstrike levelled it. Her “dangerous assignment” was to be Palestinian and to live in Palestine.
The CPJ database now has the name of Duaa Sharaf, a presenter for Al-Aqsa Radio and a facebook friend of one of us. Duaa, like Salam Mema, was at home early in the morning of October 26 with her young daughter in the al-Zawaida area in central Gaza. Israeli fighter jets fired not one missile but many into her home. Duaa was, it seems, on a “dangerous assignment,” waking up with her daughter to make some food and rush off to be on the radio.
Murder.
Al-Jazeera has lost many reporters in the conflicts from Iraq to Libya (Ali Hassan al-Jaber, a cameraman, was killed in Suluq, Libya, on March 13, 2011; one of us knew him in Doha, where he worked for Qatar TV). The most dramatic of the killings of al-Jazeera journalists appears in the CPJ database under “Murder” not “Dramatic Assignment,” and that is the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh on May 11, 2022, in Jenin, Palestine by the Israeli military. The Israelis argued that Abu Akleh was shot by Palestinian gunmen, in the same way as they argued that the airstrike on the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, City on October 17, 2023, was actually a rocket strike by Islamic Jihad.
Despite the numbers of these deaths and the danger of the war zone, more and more reporters go out there – bravely – to tell the stories that need to be told. Thanks to the reporters in Gaza who are uploading pictures and videos on their ordinary phones, and who are writing posts on telegram and facebook, we are able to pierce the ugly multi-billion-dollar hasbara or propaganda machine of the Israeli government. The atrocities depicted and evidenced in their work have in a significant way been responsible for the mass outpouring of support for the Palestinian struggle and the overwhelming condemnation of Israel’s actions.
Say their names.
Each tweet we read, each picture we see, reminds us of the journalists who are putting their lives on the line, some of them being targeted by the Israeli war machine. Say their names, these journalists murdered in a vicious war. Say their names. Say their names:
- Mohammed Imad Labad
- Roshdi Sarraj
- Mohammed Ali
- Khalil Abu Aathra
- Sameeh Al-Nady
- Mohammad Balousha
- Issam Bhar
- Abdulhadi Habib
- Yousef Maher Dawas
- Salam Mema
- Husam Mubarak
- Issam Abdallah
- Ahmed Shehab
- Mohamed Fayez Abu Matar
- Saeed al-Taweel
- Mohammed Sobh
- Hisham Alnwajha
- Assaad Shamlakh
- Mohammad Al-Salhi
- Mohammad Jarghoun
- Ibrahim Mohammad Lafi
- Duaa Sharaf
Since this piece was written, the number of journalists killed in the bombing of Gaza has risen. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported on October 29, 2023 that this number was at 29. #Israel #Palestine
Media Manufactures Consent for Gaza Genocide
“As long as Hamas does not release the hostages in its hands, the only thing that needs to enter Gaza are hundreds of tons of explosives from the Air Force, not an ounce of humanitarian aid.”
KIT KLARENBERG, OCT 31, 2023, https://kitklarenberg.substack.com/p/media-manufactures-consent-for-gaza?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=552010&post_id=138432771&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&utm_medium=email
Ever since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was initiated on October 7th, the Western media has been monomaniacally focused on events in Israel and Gaza. Remarkably, none of this relentless coverage has provided Western audiences with any information relevant to even vaguely understanding what has been happening, and why. Even more egregiously, the deluge distorts, obfuscates, and even justifies Zionist atrocities against innocent civilians. Sometimes, preemptively.
Given the pace at which events are moving, it is all but impossible to keep up with the sheer volume of misleading or outright false propaganda and whitewashing that has spewed from the mouths and social media accounts of Zionist officials, pundits, and think tank “experts”, duly regurgitated unquestioningly and uncritically by major news outlets and the alleged “journalists” they employ.
Nonetheless, at the core of all this misreporting and malfeasance is a total lack of any context whatsoever. Readers, viewers and social media users are provided no understanding of the causes of the current crisis, or the paths to its resolution. Countless reporters, pundits and editorials in prominent agenda-setting newspapers have claimed that Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was completely without provocation, some even implying it was motivated purely by the virulent anti-Semitic hatred of Hamas.
On October 9th, the New York Times boldly declared Hamas had “burst through border fences without warning or any immediate provocation.” In reality, that “border” is a weaponized, lethal fence of an open-air concentration camp, equipped with motion-sensor-activated automatic guns, barbed wire, and cameras usually meaning death for any Palestinian who dares tread nearby. This dishonest sleight of hand is nonetheless not quite as shocking as the obfuscatory insertion of “immediate” before “provocation”.
In August, the UN issued an updated analysis on the plight of Gaza. It ruled that Palestinians “have been living under collective punishment” as a result of Israel’s blockade, which results in 95% of the population lacking access to clean drinking water, among other horrors. UN secretary general António Guterres concludes the measures “contravene international humanitarian law, as they target and impose hardship on the civilian population, effectively penalizing them for acts they have not committed.”
In late September, Israel bombed Gaza for several days, then on October 4th, Zionist settlers attacked Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites. From January 1st this year until that date, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) murdered 234 Palestinians, and made 821 homeless by demolishing their houses.
‘Kill and Kill and Kill’
The closest a mainstream outlet has come to acknowledging a rationale for Hamas’ attack on Israel was the Washington Post in its first editorial on the strike, October 7th. The article parenthetically referenced “legitimate Palestinian grievances,” albeit in the context of Hamas “exploiting” them for its own cynical purposes. Even more egregiously, there was no detail provided on what those “grievances” might be.
No mention of the Nakba. No mention of Palestinians being illegally prevented from returning to their stolen homes and lands stolen, in contravention of UN resolutions. No mention of the peaceful Great March of Return March 2018 – December 2019, during which over 200 unarmed civilians were killed, and 9,200 injured. Many were shot by IOF snipers in their knees, crippling them for life – horrific, wanton mutilation about which the perpetrators openly boasted to Zionist media.
All of these facts are urgently relevant to consider in the context of any modern day Palestinian violence directed towards their Zionist occupiers. So too that systematic, industrial scale slaughter of Palestinians was hardwired into Israel’s plan to blockade Gaza and the West Bank from the outside world, from the very beginning. In 2004, Arnon Sofer of Haifa University laid out detailed proposals for how this genocidal strategy would work directly to Ariel Sharon’s government.
Israeli forces would be withdrawn from the area entirely, and a stringent surveillance and security system constructed to ensure nothing and no one entered or exited without Zionist proviso. Anyone attempting to flee would be murdered. Sofer forecast – and eagerly welcomed – absolutely dire results:
“When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today…The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day…the only thing that concerns me is how to ensure the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings.”
‘Evade Detection’
As this journalist revealed on September 21st, declassified files show as far back as the 1960s, British intelligence was well-versed in surreptitiously packaging weaponized information serving specific psychological warfare objectives as innocuous, “unemphasised news items” for broadcast via the BBC, and other “organs of publicity” London’s spies “control or influence.” This way, British spooks recorded, their brazen propaganda campaigns were “far more likely to be believed” by unsuspecting target audiences.
(excerpt here on original)
Such revealing excerpts resonate ominously today, given the British state broadcaster has repeatedly laid justificatory foundations for genocidal Zionist attacks before they happen. In the most egregious example to date, on October 16th the BBC investigated whether Hamas constructs tunnels “under hospitals in schools,” reportedly in response to a question from an “anonymous reader.”
The British state broadcaster declared that Hamas did, contending based on uncorroborated “reports” and a graphic map supplied by the IOF, that “some passages have entrances located on the bottom floors of houses, mosques, schools and other public buildings to allow militants to evade detection,” therefore “effectively using them as human shields.”
On cue, the very next day, Gaza’s al-Ahli Arab Hospital, brimming with hundreds of injured patients, and thousands of Palestinians seeking refuge from the inexorable onslaught of Zionist airstrikes, was struck from the sky. The damage was absolutely cataclysmic, and fatality estimates range from 300 – 800.
Even at the lower end of the scale, this represents the largest single loss of life in Gaza since Israel sealed the area off from the outside world almost two decades ago. Before the dust had settled at the hospital, Hananya Naftali, an IOF operative “recently called up from the frontline to another front – the digital war,” took to Twitter to boast about the carnage:
“Israeli Air Force struck a Hamas terrorist base inside a hospital in Gaza. A multiple number [sic] of terrorists are dead. It’s heartbreaking that Hamas is launching rockets from hospitals, mosques, schools, and using civilians as human shields.”
‘Nakba 2.0’
The echo in these words of the BBC’s “unemphasised news item” from 24 hours earlier is palpable. Conspicuously though, Naftali deleted this within hours. A post on Netanyahu’s official Twitter account, which perversely branded the IOF assault on Gaza “a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle” was almost promptly purged. Hurriedly, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a video purporting to show a Palestinian rocket striking the hospital.
Almost instantly though, online sleuths determined the clip to be fraudulent, and it was retracted. Despite such suspicious retractions and falsification being unambiguous signifiers of guilt, mainstream journalists not only persist in refusing to attribute the hospital strike to either “side”, but urge their audiences to avoid jumping to conclusions, and/or blaming Zionist forces. Veteran Sky News editor Adam Boulton went to the extent of declaring, “Israel had nothing to gain from this.”
Yet, the Zionists absolutely did have much to gain from destroying the hospital, just as they do from it wholesale destruction of the Occupied Territories, and all who live there. The current blitz on Gaza is concerned with completing their founding objective of purging Palestine of its entire indigenous population, and leaving what remains a monoethnic state forever. In the wake of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’s launch, multiple Israeli lawmakers and officials openly called for a “Nakba 2.0”.
Translated from the Hebrew by Google
“As long as Hamas does not release the hostages in its hands – the only thing that needs to enter Gaza are hundreds of tons of explosives from the Air Force, not an ounce of humanitarian aid“
Those horrific proposals remain extant today. So too does a heinous statement from Israeli National Security minister Itamar Ben-Givr, issued not long after the destruction of al-Ahli Arab Hospital:
Those horrific proposals remain extant today. So too does a heinous statement from Israeli National Security minister Itamar Ben-Givr, issued not long after the destruction of al-Ahli Arab Hospital:
“As long as Hamas does not release the hostages in its hands, the only thing that needs to enter Gaza are hundreds of tons of explosives from the Air Force, not an ounce of humanitarian aid.”
Zionists over many, many years have made their genocidal intentions towards the Palestinian people abundantly clear. It is therefore urgently incumbent upon us all to do what Western journalists refuse to do. Namely, take them at their word, and act accordingly. #Israel #Palestine
Israel Cut Off Gaza’s Communications Because Murderers Don’t Like Witnesses
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, OCT 28, 2023 https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-cut-off-gazas-communications?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=138354929&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email
Israeli ground forces have ramped up activities in Gaza in what anonymous US officials are reportedly telling the press is a “rolling start” to the long-anticipated ground invasion.
Israel has also concurrently crippled Gaza’s largest telecommunications service, which had been the enclave’s last remaining contact with the outside world after Israel knocked out all the others. Humanitarian organizations and mainstream press outlets now say they have lost communication with their contacts in Gaza in a level of information blackout we’re unaccustomed to seeing in modern times.
“This information blackout risks providing cover for mass atrocities and contributing to impunity for human rights violations,” Human Rights Watch correctly notes.
And I’m going to go ahead and say that’s probably not just a convenient coincidence for Israel. A genocidal massacre in total darkness works very much to the advantage of those doing the massacring.
As Israeli siege warfare cuts Gazans off from both electricity and communications, we’re seeing the lights go out in Gaza in more ways than one.
The light has been further dimmed by the rampant killing of journalists by the Israeli military. Wikipedia, whose notoriously rigged editing system tends to skew information in the favor of US information interests, still currently lists 17 journalists killed by the IDF in Gaza and another one in southern Lebanon in this current onslaught. NPR lists the numbers a bit higher, while conveniently declining to say who did the killing.
An Al Jazeera reporter named Wael Dahdouh lost his wife, son, daughter and baby grandson to a single Israeli airstrike in Gaza, saying “They’re taking their revenge by killing our children!” on the air while kneeling over the body of his dead son. He had reportedly moved them south of Gaza City following an Israeli evacuation order, believing it would keep them safe.
According to Reuters, the IDF is now telling both the Reuters and AFP news agencies that it cannot guarantee the safety of their reporters if they continue operating in the Gaza Strip. After Israel’s historically unparallelled assault on journalists these past three weeks, this can only be interpreted as a threat.
As we have discussed previously, Israel has been suffering for years from an increasingly worsening PR crisis as the ability to share and circulate raw video footage of its abuses emerged with the arrival of smartphones and widespread social media access.
During a 2021 video appearance for the International Festival of Whistleblowing, Dissent and Accountability, Israel-based journalist Jonathan Cook made some remarks that I find myself contemplating frequently as Israel scrambles to shut all the lights off in Gaza. Cook described the changes he’s seen as smartphones and internet access made Palestinians less dependent on the work of sympathetic western activists and gave them the ability to directly share footage of their own abuse.
Here’s a quote:
“Sadly most corporate journalists paid little attention to the work of these activists. In any case, their role was quickly snuffed out. That was partly because Israel learnt that shooting a few of them served as a very effective deterrent, warning others to keep away.
“But it was also because as technology became cheaper and more accessible — eventually ending up in mobile phones that everyone was expected to have — Palestinians could record their own suffering more immediately and without mediation.
“Israel’s dismissal of the early, grainy images of the abuse of Palestinians by soldiers and settlers — as ‘Pallywood’ (Palestinian Hollywood) — became ever less plausible, even to its own supporters. Soon Palestinians were recording their mistreatment in high definition and posting it directly to YouTube.”
Israel is perhaps more acutely aware than any other government on earth of how disadvantageous it is to have your crimes recorded in the light of day and shared with the world. That’s why it shut the lights off in Gaza: because murderers don’t like witnesses. #Israel #Palestine
Short film explores nuclear legacy through the lens of the Marshallese community
Hawaii Public Radio | By Cassie Ordonio. October 27, 2023, https://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/local-news/2023-10-27/short-film-explores-nuclear-legacy-through-the-lens-of-the-marshallese-community
Several decades after the United States detonated 67 nuclear bombs on the Marshall Islands, many Marshallese in the diaspora are longing to return home.
“In Exile,” which explores the nuclear legacy in the Pacific told through the experience of the Marshallese community in Arkansas, premiered at the Hawai’i International Film Festival this month.
Brooklyn-based director Nathan Fitch said the nuclear migration of the Marshallese is a blind spot in American history.
“The film is partly intended for an American audience who just doesn’t know anything about the Marshall Islands, let alone that piece of American history,” Fitch said. “Also, the fact that the (Marshallese) people have been in exile for nearly 70 years and still dream of going home.”
The Marshall Islands is located roughly 2,000 miles southwest of Hawaiʻi. It’s a sovereign nation comprising over 1,200 islands and chains of coral atolls, including its most populous Majuro and Kwajalein. The U.S. conducted a series of nuclear tests in Bikini and Enewetak Atolls during the Cold War between 1946 and 1958.
The radioactive fallout from the tests impacted people’s health, and many experienced birth defects and cancer. Descendants of the Bikini islands have lived in exile since 1946, and much of the island today is still unlivable.
Thousands of Marshallese have lived in the U.S. under the Compacts of Free Association. This agreement allows the Marshallese to migrate visa-free to the U.S. and its territories in exchange for the U.S. military having strategic denial rights of vast swaths of water in the surrounding islands.
The film follows the story of the Marshallese in Springdale, Arkansas, who gather annually to commemorate the Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day. Arkansas has one of the largest populations of Marshallese in the U.S., with a population of roughly 15,000.
Also, the film revealed that many Marshallese only knew the nuclear history once they were older. This was eye-opening for Angela Edward, a film producer and a Pohnpeian podcaster.
“They were never told about the nuclear testing their whole lives, almost until they were adults,” Edward said. “For them, it was almost a survival thing because they felt like it was their way of coping with this humongous tragedy that happened historically. “
The debut of “In Exile” is in juxtaposition with the negotiations of the Compacts of Free Association, according to Fitch. Recently, the U.S. and the Marshall Islands have renewed their agreement to extend economic assistance for another 20 years.
Fitch said he hopes the film will give an audience an understanding of why Marshallese, as well as other COFA citizens, migrated to the U.S.
“In Exile” sold out tickets at the Hawaiʻi International Film Festival. It recently won the Reel South Award at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival.
The short film is part of a larger film project called “Essential Islanders,” which Fitch said is still in the works.
“In Exile” will be available online next year. #nuclear #antinuclear #NoNukes #radiation
Australians Call to End Long Persecution of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange
ROBIN ANDERSEN, 25 Oct 23 https://fair.org/home/australians-call-to-end-long-persecution-of-wikileaks-julian-assange/
As WikiLeaks founder and Australian citizen Julian Assange has nearly exhausted his appeals to British courts against a US extradition order, Australia has ramped up its advocacy on his behalf. Six Australian MPs held a press conference outside the US Department of Justice on September 20 to urge the Biden administration to halt its pursuit of Assange (Consortium News, 9/20/23).
They came representing an impressive national consensus: Almost 80% of Australian citizens, and a cross-party coalition in Australia’s Parliament, support the campaign to free Assange (Sydney Morning Herald, 5/12/23). Opposition leader Peter Dutton joined Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in urging Assange’s release.
The day before, an open letter to the Biden administration signed by 64 Australian parliamentarians appeared as a full-page ad in the Washington Post. It called the prosecution of Assange “a political decision” and warned that, if Assange is extradited, “there will be a sharp and sustained outcry” from Australians.
Given what is at stake for freedom of the press in the Assange case, and the intensified pressure from Australia—a country being wooed to actively enlist in the US campaign against China by spending $368 billion on nuclear submarines and supersonic missiles (Sydney Morning Herald, 8/10/23)—we ought to expect coverage from the Washington Post, New York Times and major broadcast networks. But coverage of the press conference was virtually absent from US corporate media.
Prosecuting publishing
The US has been seeking to extradite Assange from Britain on charges relating to the leaking of hundreds of thousands of documents to international media in 2010 and 2011, many of which detailed US atrocities carried out in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and other human rights violations, such as the torture of detainees at Guantánamo Bay (Abby Martin, 3/10/23).
In 2019, President Donald Trump’s administration brought Espionage Act charges against Assange for obtaining and publishing leaked documents, a dramatic new attack on press freedom (FAIR.org, 8/13/22). Assange could face 175 years in a supermax prison if convicted under the Espionage Act, “a relic of the First World War” meant for spies (American Constitution Society, 9/10/21), and not intended to criminalize leaks to or publications by the press. The Biden administration has rolled back much of the legal mechanism used by Trump to attack journalists, but President Joe Biden has reaffirmed the call to extradite Assange.
Assange also coordinated with international news outlets to publish other material known as Cablegate about the “inner-workings of bargaining, diplomacy and threat-making around the world” (Intercept, 8/14/23). Indeed, the New York Times (e.g., 11/28/10) published many articles based on the WikiLeaks documents, which had been sent to Assange by US army whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
US officials have repeatedly justified their case by charging that Assange put lives at risk; to date, no evidence has surfaced that any individuals were harmed by the leaks (BBC, 12/1/10; Chelsea Manning, Readme.txt, 2022). As the Columbia Journalism Review (12/23/20) admonished, don’t let the Justice Department’s
misdirection around “blown informants” fool you—this case is nothing less than the first time in American history that the US government has sought to prosecute the act of publishing state secrets, something that national security reporters do with some regularity.
US officials have repeatedly justified their case by charging that Assange put lives at risk; to date, no evidence has surfaced that any individuals were harmed by the leaks (BBC, 12/1/10; Chelsea Manning, Readme.txt, 2022). As the Columbia Journalism Review (12/23/20) admonished, don’t let the Justice Department’s
misdirection around “blown informants” fool you—this case is nothing less than the first time in American history that the US government has sought to prosecute the act of publishing state secrets, something that national security reporters do with some regularity.
In failing health after suffering a stroke, Assange has been held in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison since he was removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy in April 2019. He had sought asylum at the embassy in London in 2012 to avoid being sent to Sweden for questioning over sexual assault allegations, because Sweden would not provide assurances it would protect him from extradition to the US. Sweden dropped charges against Assange in November 2019 (BBC, 11/19/19), after he was in British custody.
International condemnation
The Australian diplomatic mission coincided with the convening of the UN General Assembly in New York City, where President Lula da Silva of Brazil condemned the prosecution of Assange, offering yet another opportunity for US corporate media to cover the strong international opposition to Assange’s treatment.
A video (9/19/23) of Lula speaking at the opening of the UN General Assembly was widely circulated on social media. “Preserving press freedom is essential,” Lula declared. “A journalist like Julian Assange cannot be punished for informing society in a transparent and legitimate way.”
Former British ambassador Craig Murray commented about Lula’s reception at the UN (Twitter, 9/17/23):
It is really not normal for the hall at the UN General Assembly to break into this kind of spontaneous applause. The US has been losing the room internationally for a decade. The appalling treatment of Julian is a focus for that.
US media absence
Yet, with a few exceptions (Fox News, 9/20/23; The Hill, 9/21/23; Yahoo News, 9/21/23), none of this made the major US news outlets.
Over a week later, Business Insider (10/1/23) ran a long piece that featured an interview with Gabriel Shipton, Assange’s half-brother. It pointed out that Assange had become an obstacle to US plans to involve Australia in its aggression toward China, quoting the PM. But the piece also hashed through a number of long-debunked claims, including one that reminded readers that Mike Pompeo once called Assange “a fugitive Russian asset” (FAIR.org, 12/03/18; Sheerpost 2/25/23), and another that repeated US assertions that WikiLeaks releases would put the US at risk.
The New York Times has been conspicuously absent from the coverage of Assange. Though the Times signed a joint open letter (11/28/22) with four other international newspapers that had worked with Assange and WikiLeaks, appealing to the DoJ to drop its charges, the paper has remained almost entirely silent on both Assange and the issues raised by his continued prosecution since then.
As FAIR pointed out, during the Assange extradition hearing in London, the Times
published only two bland news articles (9/7/20, 9/16/20)—one of them purely about the technical difficulties in the courtroom—along with a short rehosted AP video (9/7/20).
There were no editorials on what the case meant for journalism. FAIR contributor Alan MacLeod noted that the Times seemed to distance itself from Assange and WikiLeaks, and its own reporting on the Cablegate scandal, coverage that boosted the papers’ international reputation.
Other opportunities for coverage have been missed by the Times. For instance, Rep. Rashida Tlaib wrote a letter (4/11/23), signed by six other members of the Progressive Caucus, calling for the DoJ to drop the charges against Assange. Tlaib cited support from the ACLU, Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Defending Rights & Dissent and Human Rights Watch, and many others, stating that his prosecution “could effectively criminalize” many “common journalistic practices.” The letter was covered by The Nation (4/14/23), the Intercept (3/30/23), Fox News (4/1/23), The Hill (4/11/23) and Politico (4/11/23), but the Times and other major newspapers were conspicuously silent.
When Assange lost his most recent appeal against extradition in June, a few outlets reported the news online (e.g., AP, 6/9/23; CNN, 6/9/23), but not a single US newspaper report could be found in the Nexis news database. (Newsweek‘s headline framed the news as a “headache for Biden”—6/8/23—rather than a blow for press freedom.) The Times only vaguely referred to the news (Assange “keeps losing appeals”) two weeks later in a feature (6/18/23) on the late whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who had criticized Biden’s decision not to drop the case against Assange.
The world is watching
A huge collective breath is being held as the world watches to see what will happen to Assange, the most famous publisher on the globe. Will he be returned to his country and his family by Christmas, as the Australian MPs have requested? Or will Britain and the US continue to slowly execute him?
Assange’s case is expected to be discussed during Prime Minister Albanese’s current visit to the US, which includes a state dinner hosted by Biden on October 25. MP Monique Ryan, part of the pro-Assange delegation, told news outlets: “Our prime minister needs to see this as a test case for standing up to the US government. There are concerns among Australians about the AUKUS agreement, and whether we have any agency” (Business Insider, 10/1/23).
As Common Dreams (9/19/23) quoted from the delegation’s letter:
We believe the right and best course of action would be for the United States’ Department of Justice to cease its pursuit and prosecution of Julian Assange…. It is well and truly time for this matter to end, and for Julian Assange to return home.
Propaganda War: Pro-Israel Trolls are Mobbing Twitter’s Community Notes
An army of pro-Israel trolls has invaded the Community Notes function on X/Twitter, attempting to influence the online debate around the ongoing crisis.
SCHEERPOST, By Alan MacLeod / MintPress News, October 25, 2023
Almost as important as its military campaign for Israel is its battle to control its public image. Even as it kills thousands of people in Gaza, the small Middle Eastern nation is spending millions of dollars on a propaganda war, purchasing ads on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and other online apps. At the same time, an army of pro-Israel trolls has invaded the Community Notes function on X/Twitter, attempting to influence the online debate around the ongoing crisis.
Spending Millions to Whitewash Massacres
Since October 7, Israel has inundated YouTube with advertisements, with its Ministry of Foreign Affairs spending nearly $7.1 million on ads in the two weeks following Hamas’ incursion. According to journalist Sophia Smith Galer, this equates to almost one billion impressions.
With its campaign, the Israeli government overwhelmingly focused on rich Western nations, its top targets being France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium and the United States. In France alone, the ministry spent $3.8 million. Other branches of the Israeli government undoubtedly also spent money on ads. The overwhelming message of the campaign was that Hamas are terrorists linked with ISIS and that Israel – a modern, secular democracy – is defending itself from foreign aggression.
Much of the content blatantly violated YouTube’s terms of service, including a number of ads featuring gory shots of dead bodies. Another ad that piqued public attention was played before videos aimed at babies. Amid a scene of pink rainbows and soothing music, text appears reading:
We know that your child cannot read this. We have an important message to tell you as parents. 40 infants were murdered in Israel by the terrorists Hamas (ISIS). Just as you would do everything for your child, we will do everything to protect ours. Now hug your baby and stand with us.”
Nearly all the Ministry of Foreign Affairs views are inorganic. Most of their YouTube uploads garner only a few hundred views. But the ones selected as advertisements have hundreds of thousands or even millions of views.
Israel’s YouTube campaign has been matched by expansive attempts to control the public debate on other social media platforms. In barely a week, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ran 30 ads seen over 4 million times on Twitter. Like with YouTube, analytics data shows they were inordinately targeting adults in Western Europe.
One ad contained the words “ISIS” and “Hamas,” showing disturbing imagery that gradually sped up until the names of the two groups blended into one. In case the message was not clear enough, it ended with the message, “The world defeated ISIS. The world will defeat Hamas.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also bought large numbers of advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, mobile games and apps such as language trainer Duolingo.
Taking Notes
The Community Notes function on Twitter is an attempt to fight false information. Contributors who sign up for the feature can leave notes on any post, adding context to potentially misleading statements. The community then votes on these notes, and if enough people consider the note useful, it is presented below the original tweet.
While it has its advantages, the system is ripe for abuse and infiltration. Since October 7, an army of pro-Israel trolls has brigaded the function and is attempting to undermine and attack as many posts as possible showing Israel in a negative light or Palestine in a positive one. This has often been done in an attempt to hide Israeli war crimes.
“If you’re not a Community Notes contributor, then you may be unaware that any tweet about Gaza that poses an inconvenience to Israeli information interests is being mobbed by Israel apologists working to manipulate the narrative, including on tweets just voicing an opinion,” wrote journalist Caitlin Johnstone.
A case in point is the attack on the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. Under a tweet from journalist Dan Cohen noting that Hananya Naftali (an aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) had boasted that Israel carried out the attack before deleting his message, Community Notes wrote that “Naftali has openly retracted his statement, as conclusive evidence has since shown the explosion was fired from a misfired rocket from Gaza.” The “conclusive evidence” offered was a statement from the Pentagon and a tweet from a former Israeli Air Force squad commander.
Meanwhile, a tweet from Lebanese political commentator Sara Abdallah breaking the news that Israel had just bombed the St. Porphyrius Church in Gaza was flagged by Community Notes. This meant that all users saw a note added reading, “False. Saint Porphyrius Orthodox Church in Gaza has posted they are untouched and operating as of October 9, 2023.” The problem was this was breaking news related to October 19, so any statement before that time was meaningless in assessing the news. Further undermining the community note was that Israel almost immediately accepted responsibility for the destruction.
Pro-Israel trolls have also not been above blatant smears. On a popular post from myself where I shared a picture of Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu embracing with the words, “In the future, this image will be looked upon as one of the most shameful moments in history,” Community Notes added the message: “Alan MacLeod is a Senior Staff Writer at MintPress News. MintPress is renowned for publishing far-left disinformation and antisemitic conspiracy theories.” Other MintPress staff, such as Lowkey and Mnar Adley, have also been consistently targeted with smears and arguments dressed up as clarifications.
Seeing What Sticks
In the fog of war, the Middle Eastern network Al-Jazeera has been a consistent source of live reporting. The well-funded network has a large team of reporters in Palestine and the wider region and has a long history of covering the conflict.
Therefore, when Al-Jazeera released an investigation that found no evidence to support Israel’s claim that a failed Palestinian rocket launch was to blame for the damage at the Al-Ahli Hospital, the story went viral.
This was a major blow to Israel and its apologists, who did not want the blood of hundreds of innocent doctors and patients on their hands. And so, pro-Israel users attempted to get community notes plastered all over the Al-Jazeera story……………………………………………………….
Wiki Wars
This is not the first time that Israel and its supporters have attempted to hijack and manipulate public highways of information. For over a decade, well-organized and well-funded Israeli groups have infiltrated Wikipedia and attempted to rewrite the encyclopedia to defend Israeli actions and demonize voices who speak out against them.
One of the most well-known of these is the Yesha Council, which, as far back as 2010, claimed to have 12,000 active members. Yesha members painstakingly police Wikipedia, removing troublesome facts and framing articles in a manner more favorable to Israel…………………………………………………
Spies Among Us
One of the reasons that social media companies have not cracked down on disingenuous pro-Israeli activities could be that former Israeli government and military officials hold top positions at a great number of the world’s most important platforms.
Emi Palmor, for example, is one of 22 individuals who sit on Facebook’s Oversight Board. Palmor was formerly the General Director of the Israeli Ministry of Justice. In this role, she directly oversaw the stripping away of Palestinian rights. She created a so-called “Internet Referral Unit,” which would push Facebook to delete Palestinian content that the Israeli government objected to. In her new role at the Oversight Board, she effectively writes Facebook’s rules, deciding what content to promote to the platform’s 3 billion users and what to censor, delete or suppress.
Palmor is also a veteran of Unit 8200, perhaps the most controversial unit in the Israeli military. Described as “Israel’s NSA,” Unit 8200 is the centerpiece of the country’s high-tech surveillance industry. Unit 8200 spies on the Palestinian population, compiling vast dossiers on millions of people, including their medical history, sex lives, and search histories, to be used for extortion later. ………………………………………………….
A MintPress News investigation unearthed a network of hundreds of Unit 8200 veterans working in influential positions at some of the planet’s most important tech and social media companies, including Google, Amazon and Meta (Facebook).
For example, Google’s Head of Strategy and Operations for Research, Gavriel Goidel, was previously a senior officer in Unit 8200, rising to become Head of Learning. Facebook Messenger’s Head of Data Science, Eyal Klein, served for six years in Unit 8200, rising to the rank of captain. And after serving in the controversial unit, Ayelet Steinitz became Microsoft’s Head of Global Strategic Alliances…………………………………………………………. more https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/25/propaganda-war-pro-israel-trolls-are-mobbing-twitters-community-notes/ #Israel #Palestine
Israeli Attacks on Journalists Stifle Reporting on Gaza Horrors
By Ari Paul / Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), October 23, 2023 https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/23/israeli-attacks-on-journalists-stifle-reporting-on-gaza-horrors/
The ability of reporters to cover Gaza is jeopardized by the alarming number of newspeople Israel has killed since the crisis began.
he Israeli communications minister’s attempt to shut down Al Jazeera’s bureau in Jerusalem—on the grounds that the Qatari news outlet is biased in favor of Hamas and is actively endangering Israeli troops (Reuters, 10/15/23)—should inspire some déjà vu. In the last war in Gaza, an Israeli air strike destroyed a Gaza building housing both Al Jazeera and Associated Press offices (AP, 5/15/21). And just months ago, Al Jazeera (5/18/23) reported that “the family of Shireen Abu Akleh,” a Palestinian-American AJ journalist killed by Israeli fire while on assignment, “has rebuked Israel for saying it is ‘sorry’ for the Al Jazeera reporter’s death without providing accountability or even acknowledging that its forces killed her.”
Since the launch of the network’s English service, Americans interested in Middle East news beyond what can be found in US broadcasting have often turned to Al Jazeera, and even more so as the BBC’s foreign service has declined (Guardian, 9/29/22).
But the ability of Al Jazeera and other Arab reporters to cover the assault on Gaza is jeopardized by the alarming number of newspeople Israel has killed since the crisis began. The Committee to Protect Journalists (10/18/23) has counted 13 Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in Gaza since the crisis began, with two more missing or detained. Three Israeli journalists were also killed in Hamas’s October 7 attack, with another taken prisoner.
While the primary focus of this conflict is Gaza, journalists have wondered if a second northern front would open between Israel and the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah, creating a multifaceted regional war (New York Times, 10/17/23; CNN, 10/17/23). Israeli fire in southern Lebanon injured Al Jazeera staffers, along with Agence France-Presse personnel, and killed a Reuters journalist (Reuters, 10/14/23). Lebanon has planned to file a complaint with the United Nations over the incident (TRT World, 10/14/23), calling the attack deliberate (Telegraph, 10/14/23).
Press advocates fear those numbers will rise, and it is all happening as the humanitarian situation in Gaza worsens (UN News, 10/13/23).
The BBC (10/15/23) reported that its own journalists “were assaulted and held at gunpoint after they were stopped by police in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv,” and that they were “dragged from the vehicle—marked ‘TV’ in red tape—searched and pushed against a wall.”
In addition, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said in a statement that the Israeli military caused “severe damage to 48 centers of press institutions,” including “the Palestine and Watan towers, and other buildings that include media institutions,” including the AFP office. It said that the army had also “completely or partially demolished the homes of dozens of journalists.”
‘Terror attack against democracy’
War reporting always carries risk. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented the deaths of media workers in the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria. Middle East conflicts have always been dangerous places for journalists; it’s hard to ignore high-profile deaths of journalists like Marie Colvin of London’s Sunday Times in Syria (CNN, 2/1/19), or freelance photographers Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington in Libya (Washington Post, 4/21/11). In that sense, the war in Gaza and a possible war in southern Lebanon are no exceptions.
But as FAIR (5/19/21) documented during the previous Israeli military operation against Gaza, Israel has a long history of targeting Palestinian journalists, as well as harassing foreign journalists and human rights activists entering the country. Over the summer, the International Federation of Journalists (7/4/23) reported that “several journalists have been directly targeted by Israeli snipers as they were reporting on Israel’s large-scale military operation in Jenin.”
Inside Israel, the situation for journalists is relatively safer, but the far-right government has—like authoritarian governments in Poland and Hungary—attacked journalists and the ability to critically cover institutions in power. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2019 accused the owners of Israel’s Channel 12 of committing a “terror attack against democracy” for reporting on the corruption charges against him (Times of Israel, 9/1/19).
In 2020, Netanyahu (Ha’aretz, 6/11/20) indicated that “Channel 13 journalist Raviv Drucker should be arrested and jailed” for airing “recordings of Netanyahu crony Shaul Elovich and his wife, which demonstrated how they sought to tilt news coverage in the prime minister’s favor.”
Galit Distel-Atbaryan, who recently resigned from her role as public diplomacy minister (Jerusalem Post, 10/14/23), reportedly said this summer that she wanted the “authority to deny press credentials to foreign journalists critical of Israel” (Ha’aretz, 8/30/23).
‘You better be saying good things’
The threat to journalism has only become more explicit as Israel’s assault on Gaza escalates. An Israeli security officer interrupted a live report by Ahmed Darawsha, correspondent for Qatar-based Al-Araby news (Arab News, 10/15/23):
The officer then shouted at the camera: “Detestable! We’ll turn Gaza to dust. Dust, dust, dust.”
Israel’s siege of Gaza becomes more nightmarish as the days go on, and as that happens, the ability of journalists to document the horror becomes next to impossible. Palestinian journalist Sami Abu Salem told the International Federation of Journalists (10/12/23) about working in Gaza: “We have no internet service, there is a lack of electricity, no transportation, and even the streets are damaged. That’s why we cannot tell lots of stories—thousands of stories.”
Because audiences in the US and the Anglosphere depend on Al Jazeera, as well as local journalists in Israel and the Occupied Territories, to receive news from the region, these attacks do act as filters through which the truth is diluted. In many ways, Americans can see in real time how the powers that be attempt to control information coming out of the region. #Israel #Palestine
Sizewell Nuclear Court Case on 1st and 2nd November will be available to watch online
The Sizewell Court case on 1st and 2nd November will be available to watch
online at the link below. At present, it is expected that the court hearing
will start at 10.00am on 1st November 2023 but the actual start time on
that day will not be confirmed until the court’s daily list is published
on 31st October – the list can be found at
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/royal-courts-of-justice-cause-list/royal-courts-of-justice-daily-cause-list#court-of-appeal-civil-division-daily-cause-list
Judiciary UK (accessed) 22nd Oct 2023
#nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
The Atlantic Magazine, Covering Palestine Without Palestinians
Two weeks in and 38 articles on the topic, the Atlantic has found only one token Palestinian to write about Palestine.
SCHEERPOST, By Adam Johnson / The Real News Network, October 23, 2023
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Southern Israel that killed 1,300 Israelis, The Atlantic has published 38 articles, podcasts, and Q&As on the assault and Israel’s subsequent retaliatory bombing campaign, which has killed over 4,000 Palestinians and counting. Only one of these pieces was written by a Palestinian, whom the story is, at least in theory, 50% about.
The writers The Atlantic has featured in the past two weeks are mostly Americans—there were also several Israeli and a few Lebanese and Lebanese-Americans, but only one Palestinian writer, Ghaith al-Omari, who is a senior fellow at the pro-Israel Washington Institiute for Near East Policy, which was founded by the pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
The article, “How the Palestinian Authority Failed Its People,” is a fairly dry and academic breakdown of the positions of the Palestinian Authority on the current crisis. Beyond this one token entry, The Atlantic has not published any Palestinian writers.
That erasure is not an accident; it is consistent with The Atlantic’s almost-uniform pro-Israel bent and its long history of excluding Palestinian voices in discussions of Palestine. Even a cursory survey of their coverage throughout the years shows that the writers whose perspectives on the conflict have been published at The Atlantic have been overwhelmingly American and Israeli in nationality and perspective……………………………………………………………………………………………
The Atlantic is not alone. In a blockbuster report published last Friday, Semafor’s Max Tani documented how MSNBC was sidelining three Muslim anchors they felt were too pro-Palestine. Jewish Currents’ Mari Cohen detailed Wednesday how CBS producers took down an interview from its online archives with Palestinian-American legal scholar and human rights attorney Noura Erakat because she didn’t play the one-noted role of grieving victim and, instead, pushed back on the interviewer’s loaded questions. “They wanted me to be up there to lament our dead,” Erakat told Jewish Currents, “but not to establish international responsibility for [their deaths].”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
All of this paves the way to the latest iteration of The Atlantic’s coverage of the so-called Israel-Palestinian conflict. Readers of The Atlantic are fed a steady stream of standard pro-Israel talking points and framing devices that involve putting Palestinians in a specimen jar and examining them solely through an “anti-terror” framework that set up discussions about, rather than by, those most affected by the ongoing apartheid and siege imposed by Israel. The result is more of the same rote conversations and dehumanizing, dead-end War on Terror framing, while the dead in Gaza continue to pile up.
Listening to Americans, Israelis, and others is, of course, perfectly fine. But maybe, as the ongoing siege and potential ethnic cleansing of Palestinians escalates more and more by the day, the country’s most influential center-left publication could maybe bother publishing more than one token Palestinian. https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/23/the-atlantic-magazine-covering-palestine-without-palestinians/ #Israel #Palestine
How Big Media Facilitate Israeli War Crimes in Gaza
Corporate media’s dehumanization of Palestinians, lack of historical context, and repeating hearsay as fact make the current tragedy unintelligible to Americans.
By Robin Andersen / Project Censored, October 22, 2023 https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/22/how-big-media-facilitate-israeli-war-crimes-in-gaza/
On October 6, 2023, Hamas broke out of Gaza, lobbed rockets, and sent fighters into Israeli territory. The attacks killed hundreds of Israeli soldiers and civilians. Images of violence and brutality were recorded and distributed widely over broadcast news over and over again, repeatedly showing abused, bloodied, and crying women and children. The violence was presented with voices of US and Israeli officials asserting that the attack was “unprecedented.” Israel retaliated immediately and bombed the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated places on the globe. Photographs of death and destruction ran side by side, each with only brief captions about location. Many news outlets reported that the violence came out of nowhere, offering no historical context. The attacks therefore were without motivation, attributed only to the pure evil of Hamas and Palestinian terrorists.
German media scholar Hektor Haarkötter, who partners with Project Censored for his work with the News Enlightenment Initiative, was recently in the US speaking on an international roundtable at a critical communication conference and said he was stunned by the coverage: “When I saw the images of such violence repeated many times, on rotation, I was shocked. This would not be considered news in Germany. It would have been seen as little more than sensationalism.”
On October 7, the AP reported that US President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States “stands with the people of Israel in the face of these terrorist assaults. Israel has the right to defend itself and its people, full stop.” On October 9, The Times of Israel quoted Defense Minister Yoav Gallant saying, “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian directed his threat at all Gazans on October 10, declaring, “Kidnapping, abusing and murdering children, women and elderly people is not human.” He then announced, “There will be no electricity and no water. There will only be destruction. You wanted hell; you will get hell.”
In a piece published on October 8 titled “Media Calls The Attack On Israel Unprovoked: Experts Say That’s Historically Inaccurate,” the Huffington Post pointed to the Israeli government’s “apartheid against Palestinians” as a provocation. It quoted IfNotNow, an American Jewish group that opposes Israeli apartheid, expressing their dread for the loss of life and loved ones, Israelis and Palestinians alike. It continued, “Every day under Israel’s system of apartheid is a provocation. The strangling siege on Gaza is a provocation. Settlers terrorizing entire Palestinian villages, soldiers raiding and demolishing Palestinian homes, murdering Palestinians in the streets, Israeli ministers calling for genocide and expulsion” are all provocations.
Indeed, multiple international human rights groups have defined the long-term Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands as a system of apartheid. The death toll on each side exposes the false assertion that Israeli violence is always retaliatory and that of Palestinians is “unprecedented.” The UNOCHA documents 6,407 Palestinian deaths since 2008, compared to 308 Israeli fatalities. Gregory Shupak reported that since 2001, more than ten thousand Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, with “nearly 9 out of 10 deaths this century have been on the Palestinian side.” In addition, the Israelis have made daily life in Gaza miserable. As UK journalist Jonathan Cook wrote, “[Gaza’s] inhabitants—one million of them children—are denied the most basic freedoms, such as the right to movement; access to proper health care, drinkable water, and the use of electricity because Israel keeps bombing Gaza’s power station.” But voices such as Shupak and Cook are virtually absent from US establishment news coverage of the violence.
The Hamas attacks were taken out of the context of ongoing violence, presented without cause, and in narratives that see only Hamas violence but have rarely featured or condemned equivalent Israeli violence against Palestinians. Establishment media’s one-sided pro-Israel coverage, established over many years, fed into the growing consensus that a major retaliation by Israelis would be forthcoming. Early corporate news reporting seemed to confirm its inevitability, with almost no voices of reason or caution allowed to enter the militarized revenge frame coalescing around a major attack.
The verbiage used by the New York Times on the Tribe of Nova music festival also illustrates Big Journalism’s sensationalized, inaccurate reporting. The Times wrote that the “massacre of its youth” and Israel’s “75-year-old quest for some carefree normalcy” met the “murderous fury of those long-oppressed Palestinians who deny the state’s right to exist.” The language of the Times’ report—using “murderous” and denial of Israel’s “right to exist,” with “long-oppressed Palestinians”—makes a mockery of what Gazans have experienced. Additionally, it is not true that Palestinians deny Israel’s right to exist. A quick look at the US State Department’s summation of the 1993 Oslo Accords states that the Palestinian Authority “renounced terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to exist in peace” and “Israel accepted the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians,” concessions that undergirded the two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. But Rashid Khalidi has called out the “empty words about a two-state solution while providing money, weapons and diplomatic support for systematic, calculated Israeli actions that have made that solution inconceivable.”
Most important among the systemic violence against Palestinians is the growing weaponization of Israeli settlers. As Israel was dropping bombs on Gaza, Common Dreams reported that the California-based Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) accused Israel’s far-right National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, of enabling settler attacks by handing out thousands of military assault rifles to settlement residents. “The extremist settlers Israel is arming have spent years attacking Palestinian cities in lynch mobs, with full backing from the Israeli government.” IMEU continued, “This year alone, they have killed Palestinian civilians and set fire to cars and homes with families inside.” Such stories are virtually absent from establishment media.
Gregory Shupak examined the editorial pages of major US newspapers from October 7 to 9, concluding that none of them provided readers with “information necessary to comprehend what is happening and why, and they consistently mislead readers about key facts.” Some papers were openly ravenous in their demonization of Palestinians. For example, the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed titled “The Moral Duty to Destroy Hamas,” telling its readers that “Israel is entitled to do whatever it takes to uproot this evil, depraved culture that resides next to it.” Calling for the destruction of Hamas and extending the call to exterminate the “culture” is a call for genocide. It mirrored and promoted Israeli announcements that they would turn Gaza into “hell,” “rubble,” and a “city of tents.”
Ironically, on October 8, the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz offered more explanation and context than most US papers when it criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to “annex the West Bank” and “to carry out ethnic cleansing in…the Hebron Hills and the Jordan Valley.” It pointed to the massive expansion of settlements and increasing Jewish presence on Temple Mount, near Al Aqsa Mosque. In April 2022, Mondoweiss reported that the Israeli military attacked Palestinians on their way to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque seven times in eight days, injuring dozens of worshipers and arresting hundreds of Palestinians. Israeli forces used remote-controlled drones to drop teargas inside the mosque. Meanwhile, Israel facilitated the entrance of thousands of Jewish settlers for the Passover holiday.
War Propaganda: Babies were Decapitated and Women were Raped
Sensationalized repetition and media saturation of decontextualized Hamas violence quickly evolved into full-blown atrocity propaganda with horror stories claiming that Hamas had slit the throats of forty Israeli babies, decapitating many of them. Visceral baby slaughter is classic war propaganda, first used in World War I with false claims that German soldiers joyfully bayonetted babies. Similar stories convincedskeptical Americans to support the First Persian Gulf War, with the fake news story about Iraqi soldiers tossing over three hundred Kuwaiti babies out of their incubators. Roundly debunked after the war, journalists published the story uncritically, just as they eagerly circulated the unverified decapitation story.
Alan MacLeod investigated the story that Hamas had slaughtered Israeli babies, finding that it came from an anonymous Israeli military source and was originally reported by Israeli i24 News.
Without verification, Fox News, CNN, MSN, Insider, and the New York Post picked up and repeated the incendiary propaganda in the US. The UK’s largest newspapers screamed outrage as the salacious story was flung across the front pages of the Times of London, the Independent, the Financial Times, and the Scotsman (as documented by Mint Press News).
The key source for the false claim was an Israeli soldier, David Ben Zion, a fanatical settler who has incited riots against Palestinians, describing them as “animals” who need to be “wiped out.”
Another propaganda trope circulated to justify war is the rape of women, made more devious by its actual use as a military strategy. The Intercept noted that unverified claims that Hamas was raping women had gone viral online, and President Biden claimed that women were “raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies.” Caitlin Johnstone noted, “We’re seeing claims about mass rapes being uncritically pushed by the mass media, only to see them retracted as unverified after the narrative has taken hold.”Any legitimate journalist should recognize such war tropes, and if not, should at least track the stories’ origins and refrain from publication until those sources are verified. President Biden was forced to walk back his lie about seeing “confirmed pictures of terrorist beheading children,” while talking to leaders of US Jewish organizations at the White House.
What was the purpose of perpetrating such lurid fake news, the stuff of visceral propaganda? The Hamas attacks that killed civilians were met with outrage and widely condemned, even by those who advocate for Palestinian rights, express criticism of the “unprovoked” news frame, or have criticized Israel’s growing violence and worked to create humanitarian spaces amidst the cruelty. Certainly, the attacks alone could be considered justifications for Israeli retaliation. But as Caitlin Johnstone argued, that was not enough. Israel’s response was about to dwarf the initial Hamas offensive. Israel and its allies needed to frame the attack in “the most shocking and rage-inducing discourse in order to make Israel’s ongoing murder of civilians in Gaza look appropriate.”
War Crimes and Wiping Out Gaza
Writing for Declassified UK, Jonathan Cook detailed how Israel’s retaliatory attacks on Gaza violated numerous international laws and the Geneva Convention, pointing out that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were committing war crimes. “One of the fundamentals of international law—at the heart of the Geneva Conventions—is a prohibition on collective punishment: that is, retaliating against the enemy’s civilian population, making them pay the price for the acts of their leaders and armies.” He continued, “What Israel is doing to Gaza is the very definition of collective punishment.”
Two days earlier on October 11, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken spread what can only be called “fake news” on Sky News when he claimed, “What separates Israel, the US and other democracies…is our respect for international law and the laws of war.” By October 14, Al Jazeera reported that in the first seven days of the conflict, an estimated one million Gazans had been displaced, according to the UN, and aid groups said the situation in the besieged enclave was “catastrophic,” as fourteen Palestinians were being killed every hour. Israel had dropped the equivalent of “a quarter of a nuclear bomb on Gaza,” accordingto the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. And by October 16, Euro-Med posted, “The Stench of Death Looms Everywhere in #Gaza, Immediate Halt to the Killing of Civilians Required.”
The saturation bombing of Gaza, where entire apartment buildings filled with residents are destroyed, taking out entire families, amounts to horrific collective killings. Israelis are committing numerous violations of international law, as hospitals are on the verge of collapse, and food, water, and electricity are blocked along with humanitarian aid to Gaza. An Israeli air strike targeted a convoy, killing seventy-three Palestinians and injuring 130 others as they attempted to move south. Euro-Med Monitor condemned the deliberate targeting of civilians being forcibly displaced after Israel’s orders to leave. It was an open practice of forced transfer (transference) outside international law and a “blatant violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” NBC News reported the airstrike on the convoy but failed to report it as a war crime. A PBS news brief softened the blow with a baseless speculation that it was not clear “whether militants were among the passengers.”
Just as President Biden left for Israel, a bomb hit the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, killing five hundred people, including patients and doctors: a war crime. Israel claimed that Hamas or Islamic Jihad was responsible for the precision strike and huge explosion. From the AP to the New York Times, establishment media framed the story as a dispute between Hamas and the IDF or as an exchange of air strikesbetween them. Jonathan Cook called it Western propaganda, saying, “If Hamas or Islamic Jihad could cause the kind of damage that happened last night, you would hear about it happening in Tel Aviv or Ashkelon too. You don’t, because they can’t.” Caitlin Johnstone included the text of a phone conversation presented by Israel and also argued the unlikely veracity of the evidence. Using altered or invented audio and video, Israel has succeeded in the past in delaying and planting doubt about their role in such violence, at least long enough to allow the story to do its damage. For example, an altered video was used to “prove” that an Israeli sniper did not assassinate Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh or the unprovoked Israeli violence perpetrated at her funeral.
It took time for the dozens of investigations to counter the gaslighting, and the delay facilitated President Biden’s failure to hold the Israeli military accountable. For the time being, once again, the denial allowed Biden to re-confirm US support for Israel, this time allowing Israel to carry on with the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.
Choosing Humanity Over Killing and Destruction
While condemning the Hamas attacks as a crime against humanity, the Center for Constitutional Rights also stated, “It is our commitment to human dignity and the preciousness of life that has long led our organization to stand with Palestinians as they resist Israeli colonization, occupation, and apartheid.” The Center’s statement expressed grief for “the many Israeli civilians killed in the assault on their communities on October 7,” while also decrying “Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, which is in danger of becoming a genocide.”
Common Dreams reported on protests calling for a ceasefire and an end to the genocide in Gaza, organized by IfNotNow and Jewish Voices for Peace. IfNotNow has stated, “We absolutely condemn the killing of innocent civilians and mourn the loss of Palestinian and Israeli life, with numbers rising by the minute. Their blood is on the hands of the Israeli government, the US government which funds and excuses their recklessness, and every international leader who continues to turn a blind eye to decades of Palestinian oppression, endangering both Palestinians and Israelis.”
US establishment media should consider these humanitarian narratives, in contrast to their standard militarized revenge frames, which only fan the flames of genocide that imperil the Palestinian people. #Israel #Palestine
The Mainstream Press Keep Slamming Israel’s Hospital Bombing Story
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, OCT 19, 2023 https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-mainstream-press-keep-slamming?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=138092278&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email
A new report from the UK’s Channel 4 News adds to the surprising amount of opposition we’re seeing in the mainstream press to Israel’s narrative about the deadly explosion at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza this past Tuesday.
The report, led by Channel 4 chief correspondent Alex Thomson, spotlights glaring plot holes in Israel’s claim that a failed rocket by Palestinian Islamic Jihad was responsible for the blast, and in the supposed audio clip Israel published which it claims is an intercepted conversation between two Hamas fighters saying Israel was not responsible. It also presents an argument that will be inconvenient for Israel apologists who’ve been claiming photos of the damage to the hospital rule out the possibility of an Israeli airstrike.
“So what of Israel’s explanation?” says Thomson. “Sensing a major problem they worked through the night to get their version out. Press conference first thing. Conclusion: an Islamic Jihad rocked caused it all.”
“They present what they say is two Hamas operatives talking about the attack,” Thomson reports. “Hamas call this an obvious fabrication. Two independent Arab journalists told us the same thing, because of the language, accent, dialect, syntax and tone. None of which is, they say, credible.”
“Equally, Israel claims the Islamic Jihad failed missile was fired from here: a cemetery very close to the hospital,” Thomson continues. “But look again at the video of the event — the trajectory of the missile doesn’t line up with that location. Too high. Too horizontal. Confusingly, the Israelis’ presentation also says the missile was fired from a location down in the southwest; it can’t be both.”
Thomson also reports that while the photos of the blast site do appear to rule out a ground-detonating Israeli munition, they’re entirely in keeping with other munitions used by Israel which could easily have taken such a toll on human life.
“This is what you see at the hospital today — small craters you’d expect to see from a mortar strike or artillery round, not a missile,” says Thomson. “Surrounding buildings have only superficial damage, not structural collapse. Some of the windows of an adjoining church remain intact. This makes a ground-detonating Israeli missile strike unlikely, but it doesn’t rule out an airburst munition, which could cause major loss of life, but would produce far less structural damage.”
Thomson also notes that “Israel has form when it comes to war propaganda”, citing its false denials of the IDF killings of British filmmaker James Miller and Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
On Twitter (or whatever we’re calling it now), Thomson’s remarks on the Israeli audio file were even more pointed.
“Several experts confirm Hamas’ view to Channel 4 News that the audio tape of ‘Hamas’ operatives talking about the missile malfunction is a fake,” tweeted Thomson. “They say the tone, syntax, accent and idiom are absurd.”
This is a still developing story with much still to be revealed, but this to me might be the most damning evidence against Israel yet. If Israel didn’t bomb that hospital, then why is it publishing fake audio clips of people posing as Hamas fighters agreeing with each other that Israel definitely didn’t bomb that hospital?
I mean, if people were saying I bombed a hospital, and I knew I didn’t, the last thing I’d do is publish an audio file of me pretending to be two guys talking about how Caitlin definitely didn’t bomb the hospital.
Picture a recording of me doing two blokey-sounding voices going,
“Hello my evil friend!”
“Hello!”
“Did you hear that Caitlin definitely did not bomb that hospital?”
“She didn’t?”
“No! It turns out it was we, the Evil Bad Guys!”
“We did it?”
“Yes, it was us!”
That would look pretty silly, right?
If Israel is making itself look this ridiculous, then it’s no wonder the western press are not lining up to help it cover up this particular misdeed. They’ve got to maintain at least some credibility if they’re going to keep manufacturing consent for other wars, after all.
Mass Media Reporters Aren’t Buying Israel’s Hospital Bombing Story
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, OCT 18, 2023 https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/mass-media-reporters-arent-buying?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=138065016&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email
A huge blast in Gaza has destroyed the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, killing hundreds of people. The exact death toll is still unknown.
Details of who is responsible for the explosion are being hotly debated by all parties, and this is still a developing story with a lot of details yet to be revealed. But what I’d like to quickly document as things unfold is the highly unusual number of mass media reporters I’ve been seeing who haven’t hesitated to point to Israel as the probable culprit.
After noting that Israel is blaming the blast on a failed rocket launch by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), MSNBC foreign correspondent Raf Sanchez quickly pointed out that PIJ rockets don’t tend to do that kind of damage, but Israeli missiles do. He also noted that Israel has an extensive history of lying about this sort of thing.
“The Israeli military at this point is not providing any evidence to back up its claims that this was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket; they are citing intelligence that they have not yet made public,” Sanchez said. “We should also say that this kind of death toll is not what you normally associate with Palestinian rockets. These rockets are dangerous, they are deadly, they do not tend to kill hundreds of people in a single strike in the way that Israeli high explosives — especially these bunker buster bombs that are used to target these Hamas tunnels under Gaza City — do have the potential to kill hundreds of people.”
“And we should say finally that there are instances in the past where the Israeli military has said things in the immediate aftermath of an incident that have turned out not to be true in the long run,” Sanchez added. “And the one example I’ll give you is that when the Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was killed in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military initially said that she was killed by Palestinian gunmen, and it was only months and months later that they admitted that it was likely an Israeli soldier who fired the fatal shot.”
CNN’s Clarissa Ward said essentially the same thing.
“I will say, just based on seeing these rocket attacks many times over the years, that they don’t usually have an impact like that in terms of the size of the blast, in terms of the scale of the death toll and the scale of the damage,” Ward said. “It’s also not the first time, it’s important to add, that we have seen the IDF categorically deny something before being forced to kind of do an about-face after an extensive investigation.”
BBC foreign correspondent Jon Donnison gave basically the same opinion.
“It’s hard to see what else this could be, really, given the size of the explosion, other than an Israeli air strike, or several air strikes,” Donnison said from Jerusalem. “Because, you know, when we’ve seen rockets being fired out of Gaza, we never see explosions of that scale. We might see half a dozen, maybe a few more people being killed in such rocket attacks, but we’ve never seen anything on the scale of the sort of explosion on the video I was watching earlier.”
That’s three mass media reporters that I’ve seen just in my random information-gathering meanderings — not on their personal social media accounts, but live on air.
It’s highly unusual to see this degree of skepticism in the western press right off the bat when it goes against the information interests of Israel specifically or the US power alliance more generally. Typically we’ve been seeing the media uncritically report unverified claims about Palestinian militants while expressing rigorous skepticism solely toward any information which might benefit the Palestinian resistance, so there’s clearly something about this particular story which makes mass media reporters remarkably reluctant to push the Israeli narrative.
Maybe they’re getting information in their group chats which has caused them to keep Israel’s claims about the hospital bombing at arm’s length, or maybe they’re just looking at the facts and deciding this narrative is too flimsy to get behind. If it looks like Israel’s version of events will fall apart after investigation, they’re not going to want to stake their reputation and their pride on pushing it with their usual gusto during an Israeli military operation that is facing unusually intense scrutiny from the entire world.
Israel does after all have an extensive history of attacking hospitals and healthcare facilities, including in this current operation in Gaza, including apparently bombing this exact same hospital just a few days ago. ReliefWeb, which is run by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, recently published a report on the numerous Israeli strikes that have hit hospitals, ambulances and healthcare workers between October 12 and October 15, and listed among the hospitals hit is the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City — the same hospital that was just destroyed a few days later.
Citing “Al Jazeera V and Personal Communication,” ReliefWeb reports the following:
“14 October 2023: In Gaza city city and governorate, Ahli Arab Hospital was hit by Israeli airstrikes, partially damaging two floors and damaging the ultrasound and mammography room. Four people were injured.”
It’s also probably worth noting that according to the World Health Organization this hospital was one of the twenty hospitals which the IDF had ordered to evacuate because of the aggressions it was planning to inflict on that part of Gaza.
Again, information is still coming in and this developing story could possibly wind up looking very different from what it looks like right now. But if I was an Israel apologist, I don’t think I’d find the current winds in the mass media very encouraging. #Israel #Palestine
1 This Month
petition to oppose the rapid increase of space-military industry threatening Jeju Island and the region.
[Petition by April 19th (KST)] Stop the joint military-Hanwha Systems-Jeju Provincial Government Sea Launch!
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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