Gaza genocide: 2 years of Western media stenographing for Israel. Western media has spent 2 years denying Gaza’s genocide, platforming Israel’s lies, & enabling ongoing violence through silence & distortion, writes Assal Rad.

Instead of interrogating official claims, even as Israel carried out mass killing, starvation, and destruction in Gaza, mainstream media echoed their language—speaking of “collateral damage” and “targeting Hamas”, writes Assal Rad. [GETTY]

https://www.newarab.com/opinion/gaza-genocide-2-years-western-media-stenographing-israel 

 AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies] 

Assal Rad

When we study historical atrocities—the worst crimes committed against human beings—they often raise haunting questions about the people of that era: How could they allow such horrors to happen? We reassure ourselves by saying they did not know, or did not know any better, and promise that we would never allow that to happen. Never again.

And yet, the world, and our generation, has watched one of the most well-documented genocides unfold, live-streamed on our devices for two years. We have seen Gaza become a wasteland, parents digging desperately through rubble, hospitals left in ruins, and the mass slaughter of children—what UNICEF describes as a “classroom of children killed, every day,” by Israel.

As of this writing, Israel’s killing in Gaza continues with the full global awareness and the support the world’s most powerful nations. We have seen the daily horrors from Gaza because of the immense resilience of Palestinian journalists, who paid with their lives to show the reality on the ground.

As Israel barred foreign press from entering Gaza, media workers in the field became the central source for what was happening.

Forced to record their own genocide, Palestinian journalists became targets themselves. Where they exemplified the highest ideals of their profession, many of their Western counterparts—and especially the institutions behind them—have utterly failed. It is the media institutions themselves, bound to political power and economic incentives, that bear the most responsibility.

Certainly, not all journalists share the blame—many of which protested, resigned, and tried to do their jobs under challenging conditions—but the betrayal lies with the systems that they work within.

Complicity

Rather than seeking truth and minimising harm, Western media often acted as stenographers for the narratives of powerful governments, particularly Israel and the US. Instead of interrogating official claims, even as Israel carried out mass killing, starvation, and destruction in Gaza, mainstream media echoed their language—speaking of “collateral damage” and “targeting Hamas”—and repeated government talking points with little scrutiny.

Time and again, headlines obscured the perpetrator of attacks, downplayed Palestinian suffering, and cast doubt on Palestinian sources, while validating Israel’s attacks on hospitals, homes and schools by saying they were “targeting Hamas.” In doing so, Western media helped to whitewash Israel’s crimes and the complicity of its allies.

But perhaps the gravest offence is the refusal to call what it happening by its name: genocide.

Just days into Israel’s assault on Gaza, Israeli scholar and genocide expert Raz Segal called it a “textbook case of genocide.” Segal was not only looking at Israel’s initial actions—like a complete blockade and carpet bombing a dense-civilian population in a strip of land the size of Philadelphia—but also listening to the explicit statements of Israeli officials.

Referring to the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, Segal stressed that “intent to destroy a group is defined as racial, ethnic, religious or national as such that is collectively, not just individuals. And this intent, as we just heard, is on full display by Israeli politicians and army officers.” His warnings received little coverage in legacy media and the language of genocide was largely overlooked in the early months of reporting.... READ MORE  https://www.newarab.com/opinion/gaza-genocide-2-years-western-media-stenographing-israel

 AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies]