Prime
The Western media’s complicit in Gaza
Author: Moses Khisa. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- What’s the difference between Hamas’ attacks and Israel’s bombardments? And crashing Hamas can’t be the solution.
I know almost nothing about politics in the Middle East. As a matter of principle, I always refrain from commenting on subjects I know little or nothing about.
But it is morally wrong not to speak out against the horrors we are seeing. The relentless bombardment of a small densely populated strip of land, Gaza, is simply gut-wrenching and indefensible. There can never be justification for inordinate use of military might in circumstances where innocent, helpless civilians are indiscriminately massacred.
A CNN news anchor used the tired and facile phrase of ‘collateral damage’, to refer to the masses of Palestinians mowed down by the aerial firepower of a state with enormous military might currently under the leadership of individuals with extreme and highly reactionary tendencies, backed by a world superpower whose military arsenal is unparalleled – USA.
Dear reader, if you are late to this. Here is a quick recap. Three Saturdays ago, a group of fighters crossed from the Gaza strip into southern Israel, committed heinous acts, rampaging on a killing spree, murdering whoever came in their path. They took hostages too.
The fighters belonged to what many in the West call a ‘militant group’ – Hamas – the organisation popularly chosen by Palestinians in Gaza as their government but officially designated by Western governments as a terrorist group.
On that fateful day, October 7, several hundred Israeli citizens and foreign nationals were reported dead. In the next few days, the death count had crossed 1,000. The most recent figure is in the region of 1,400. This attack is the worst on Israel perhaps since the 1973 war with its regional Arab adversaries. In response, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) swiftly embarked on an scotched-earth assault from the air. Troops have amassed at the border in what is billed to be a massive ground invasion. An Israeli military officer speaking to CNN stated categorically that they had no choice but bomb any target they could find. More than a million Palestinians have been ordered to evacuate to nowhere.
The Western media, governments, politicians and a slew of commentators rightly condemned Hamas’s attack, but they did more, emphasising that Israel had the right to fightback and defend itself. In essence, it is a carte blanche to do as it pleases, to go after Hamas with maximum power and ferocity regardless of the fate of the people of Gaza, who at any rate live under a siege and conditions that some refer to as open-air prison.
In a matter of days, more than 3,000 were reported dead from aerial bombardments on Gaza. Then on Tuesday came the most horrific incident: an explosion on a hospital run by the Anglican Church, an estimated more than 500 killed. A blame game ensued. Hamas predictably pointed the finger at the IDF. The IDF countered blaming not Hamas but another militant group in Gaza, suggesting a rocket meant to travel into Israel failed to launch and dropped on the hospital.
Asked on BBC about attacking a hospital judged to be a military target, the IDF international spokesperson rambled and equivocated, in one line insisting the IDF cannot strike a hospital but then conceded it would be rare and with highest level clearance! In a word, he conceded the IDF can hit a hospital. It has done so in the past.
In fact, a senior leader of the Anglican Church that runs the hospital revealed that part of the facility had been struck a few days earlier by Israel aerial bombardment.
Israelis insist on claiming a moral high ground, exercising the right of self-defence against terrorists, but this self-defence takes the form of collective punishment against a whole population. There’s an illusion of surgical precision and accurately targeted strikes. How’s that possible in a densely populated city with high-rise buildings inhabited by civilians?
A former head of the hostage unit of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, told CNN they are in a conflict where one side is civilised and operates according to laws, while the other side is not! This, of course, is ludicrous. What’s the difference between Hamas’ attacks and Israel’s bombardments? And crashing Hamas can’t be the solution. Again, for the uninitiated, Israelis and Palestinians have been at war since the state of Israel was forcefully created in 1948, producing mass displacement and a de facto colonial occupation.
Since then, it has been a struggle and conflict with competing claims to place, land, livelihoods and sacred sites. From the outset, with modest exception of the BBC attempting to give a little balanced coverage, the Western media has taken a very skewed and slanted coverage of the latest escalation in brutal violence. A glaring failure to provide context, to pushback against the assertion of blanket indiscriminate self-defence, to highlight the root causes and why Israel lives with everyday rocket fire from Gaza to which it responds with unbridled military bombardment.
No giving voice to the occupied and humiliated people of Gaza, the West Bank and other places forcefully annexed and occupied courtesy of military might enabled by the USA and Europeans.
