Jennifer Loewenstein (no relation) writes on the media's capitulation to the Israeli propaganda machine during the Gaza withdrawal:
"There was never the slightest reason for Israel to send in the army to remove these settlers. The entire operation could have been managed, without the melodrama necessary for a media frenzy, by providing them with a fixed date on which the IDF would withdraw from inside the Gaza Strip. A week before, all the settlers will quietly have left with no TV cameras, no weeping girls, no anguished soldiers, no commentators asking cloying questions of how Jews could remove other Jews from their homes, and no more trauma about their terrible suffering, the world's victims, who therefore have to be helped to kick the Palestinians out of the West Bank."
Australia has been little better. Journalists should report on the settler's pain during removal, BUT would the same reporters ever give similar coverage to the many more Palestinians whose homes are destroyed almost daily or lives ruined by the Israeli occupation?
One rule for "us" and another for "them."
"There was never the slightest reason for Israel to send in the army to remove these settlers. The entire operation could have been managed, without the melodrama necessary for a media frenzy, by providing them with a fixed date on which the IDF would withdraw from inside the Gaza Strip. A week before, all the settlers will quietly have left with no TV cameras, no weeping girls, no anguished soldiers, no commentators asking cloying questions of how Jews could remove other Jews from their homes, and no more trauma about their terrible suffering, the world's victims, who therefore have to be helped to kick the Palestinians out of the West Bank."
Australia has been little better. Journalists should report on the settler's pain during removal, BUT would the same reporters ever give similar coverage to the many more Palestinians whose homes are destroyed almost daily or lives ruined by the Israeli occupation?
One rule for "us" and another for "them."
6 Comments:
Vide Tony Parkinson in today's Age and the lunar right wing Yossi Halevi in today's SMH.
Fairfax races to the bottom on more fronts than the life-style focus.
Add the Oz's self-abasement in becoming a mouthpiece for the Israeli Ambassador in Australia.
There is a hysteria about the scale and pitch of this propaganda that indicates that the Israeli lobby sees the withdrawal as a significant loss of face in the battle for hearts and minds.
Hence the even higher-pitched diversion of blaming everything on the victims and forewarning that nothing of substance will be conceded to the Palestinians.
All true.
I've tried to publish a piece on the matter in both Smh and Age. Rejected. What a shock! It's a view that's not acceptable in the mainstream here. The line on the withdrawal is clear, set by the usual suspects and one can't even talk about West Bank, Jerusalem etc.
Thouh this silence is starting to wear thin. Cracks are appearing...
'BUT would the same reporters ever give similar coverage to the many more Palestinians whose homes are destroyed almost daily or lives ruined by the Israeli occupation?'
The absolute nub of the issue, and of course the answer is no.
Yossi Klein Halevi is given op-ed space in the SMH this morning to bray the usual 'sadly the Palestinians want to destroy Israel' line. Right next to Peter Hartcher's 'analysis' of The Alliance in terms of US fo-po, which went about an inch deep and stayed there.
Welcome to Fairfax 2005.
It's only gonna get worse.
Staying close to power is so much easier.
Remember, many of these people are not journalists, they're dutiful Court Reporters...
The assumption being, that if the IDF left, all the settlers would leave.
I'm not so certain. What if the following were to happen:
A few Gaza Strippers would remain, and outsiders from Hebron and the like would take up residence in the homes of those who left. Hamas would launch further attacks to try to drive them out, which would be responded with the settlers setting up their own guard posts with shoot-to-kill policies. Then vigilante gangs would form, or maybe even bombings and attacks to try to drive Palestinians out of "strategic" villages, like during the formation of Israel (which I've heard was mainly done by armed Jewish groups that were formed in response to the failure of British forces to protect Jews during rioting).
If the situation were allowed to fester enough, when the IDF comes in, it'd have to engage in a full-on battle with the settlers.
Hebron settlers are mostly mad already. Having spent some time there months ago, I can attest to that.
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