JFJFP

October 15, 2015

News

Sarah Benton

This posting has these items on American and European media coverage:
1) Mondoweiss: American press coverage grants Israelis all the humanity;
2) America Al Jazeera: Critics: US media often omit context of Israeli-Palestinian violence;
3) Times of Israel: In European coverage of Israel, confusion over who is attacking whom;
4) Electronic Intifada: Palestinian lives don’t matter to US media;

‘Glocker mum’ Aviva Yisrael, armed settler, in photo she supplied to USA Today

American press coverage grants Israelis all the humanity

By Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss
October 13, 2015

Hillary Clinton’s shocking statement yesterday sympathizing with Israeli Jewish victims of attacks and saying nothing about Palestinian victims is actually reflective of American press coverage. Mainstream news sites continue to emphasize Jewish victims over Palestinian victims, and leave out the larger context of the conflict, Israeli occupation and the hatred it is producing, on both sides.

For instance, USA Today has a grotesque account of a Glock-bearing settler that portrays her as a pioneer confronting savagery (“Glocker mom”) and leaves out the military occupation she lives inside, entirely.

As violent clashes erupted throughout Israel and Palestinian territories, Aviva Yisraeli decided to carry a handgun while commuting from her home in the West Bank settlement of Tekoa to a weekly course in Jerusalem. “I feel that it’s important for us to do everything in our power to protect ourselves,” said the mother of four, adding that she refuses to be a “sitting duck.”

Reporter Shira Rubin repeatedly speaks about “Arab” violence:

The Israeli government announced new policies to contain Arab violence..

But Yisraeli and many neighbors said tougher security measures have done little to deter Palestinian assailants….

The Arabs have absolutely no fear from our army .…but when I started carrying our gun, I realized that they do have fear from the civilian response,” she said. “As they say, it’s better to visit you in jail than at the graveyard.

Yagil Henken, a military historian at the Israeli Defense Forces college whose brother was killed in a West Bank shooting on Oct. 1, said he carries a gun to assuage his “paranoia,” but his West Bank community is still maintaining a calm resolve.

Did the Jim Crow south or the Algerian colonial-settlers ever get such a fair shake from the establishment press?

The New York Times publishes an article by Jodi Rudoren and Isabel Kershner, “4 Attacks by Palestinians Leave 3 Dead in Israel,” which again portrays Arabs as malefactors, some of whom actually have freedom to “freely roam the country” and “work in Jewish areas.”

A police spokeswoman said the steps to be considered included a complete closing of Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods, whose residents are generally not citizens of Israel but can freely roam the country and often work in Jewish areas, and an easing of gun-licensing procedures.

But those Arabs think that “the country” is also theirs, and for good reason. The Times mentions the occupation, but fairly far down. Donald Johnson explains that the article reflects an institutional bias:

It focuses on Israeli shootings but only in cases where the dead Palestinian either had stabbed someone or was accused of wielding a knife and whose innocence can’t be proven. (And yes, a Palestinian killed by Israelis is guilty until proven innocent, and if so it is still not Israel’s fault.). They quote critics and skeptics of the police, but the message is that the Israelis are at worst guilty of shooting Palestinians who have been violent or might be violent.

I don’t recall a single NYT story devoted to the shooting of Gaza fishermen–it has been mentioned in passing and I am certain this was only due to reader complaints, but shootings that can’t be spun as understandable reactions to Palestinian violence don’t interest the NYT. Doesn’t fit the narrative.

The Times piece is open to comment, the first time in days that the Times has permitted comment; and the Readers’ Picks echo concerns we have on this site. TMC in New York:

New York Times, this is outright racist coverage. I’m sick of it. I watched a video of a two year old girl killed by an Israeli bomb being hugged by her father and you attempt to make it sound like the Palestinians are are attacking Israelis out of the blue. You ignore the context of the occupation. Editors, writers, internet post reviewers, have you no empathy? Is this how you would have covered apartheid in South Africa? I’d love to say you are on the wrong side of history, but there is a distinct chance the Israelis will succeed in wiping out the Palestinians, partially because of resorting like this. For shame.

And Finnbar in Seattle makes a similar point.

Very biased reporting, showing compassion for Israelis but none for the Palestinians. When we are finally able to show compassion for all that suffer then maybe there will be a solution.

Is he not human too? Palestinians carry the body of Huthaifa Suleiman, 18, during his funeral in the Bal’a village near the West Bank city of Tulkarem, Oct. 5, 2015.

This Washington Post article about the spate of Palestinian attacks: by William Booth and Ruth Eglash dares to state that Palestinian violence is a response to occupation in the third paragraph:

Palestinians are also frustrated by their own weak leaders and almost 50 years of military occupation. The latest round of U.S.-brokered peace talks collapsed last year in failure.

But the article doesn’t really follow up that point. Its concern is Jewish victims, till the last paragraph says:

At least 30 Palestinians, including rock throwers and knife attackers, have been killed by Israeli forces and civilians. Palestinians say that several of their dead were shot and killed without cause.

And on twitter, Eglash reminds us of the society she lives in:

U know the situation is out of control when ur 13-yr-old comes home from school n says: “I’m still alive”

Here by contrast is fantastic coverage by Ynet of a racist mob of Israeli Jews going out at night to hunt down Arabs in Jerusalem.700 people are in this mob! And the reporting by Roi Yanovsky is terrifying:

During their entire march, organized by La Familia (a group of far-right fans of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer club) and Lehava (a right-wing organization dedicated to preventing the “assimilation” of Jews with non-Jews in Israel), the protesters chanted slogans such as “death to Arabs” and “may your village burn,” and looked for Arabs to attack. And indeed, after the protest ended a number of the participants attacked a taxi driver and attempted to attack other Arab passersby.

The main group of protesters, which was controlled by the police, didn’t engage in physical violence, but small splinter groups moved toward the city center and began searching for Arabs. They entered stores, asking clerks if Arabs were employed there. They asked employees random questions like “what’s the time?” in order to test their accent.

Yanovsky helps save a Palestinian storekeeper from harm.

Ynet is at least acknowledging the deep racism inside Israeli society. That hatred was also expressed in this shocking video from Jerusalem of a wounded Palestinian 13-year-old who was charged with stabbing someone before he was run over by a car. An Israeli shouts at him: “Die you fuck, die you son of a whore, die die, die you son of 66 whores.” His name is Ahmed Manasra and you can see that he is not receiving medical attention and that an Israeli officer pushes him to the pavement with his foot when he seeks to sit up. We haven’t put it on our site because it is so disturbing. The New York Times mentions the boy’s injury and the killing of his cousin Hassan, who also allegedly participated in the attack, but does not identify them by name.

Correction: I initially mixed up Ahmed Manasra, 13, for Hassan Manasra, 15, in my description of the video and said the boy in the video is dying. Ahmed survived the serious injuries. Palestinian Center for Human Rights has set the matter straight. It also makes clear that the cousins’ alleged attack took place in Pisgat Ze’ev, which is in occupied East Jerusalem, not Israel, as the NYT states.

Thanks to James North.

This is a rare photo of the right-wing march / mob shouting obscenities in Jerusalem, October 8th, 2015. It was covered by Haaretz and Ynet. Photo by Olivier Fitoussi

Critics: US media often omit context of Israeli-Palestinian violence

Some chastise news outlets for staying silent on settlements and occupation, others for downplaying Palestinian violence

By Ehab Zahriyeh, America Al Jazeera
October 14, 2015

As violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories returns to the headlines, critics are complaining that many prominent U.S. news outlets often omit or misrepresent contextual information vital to understanding the conflict. And perhaps predictably, partisans on both sides are targeting media coverage for different reasons.

A common complaint among some critics concerns some major U.S. media outlets’ characterization of neighborhoods and the legal and political context of the Israeli presence in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. “The biggest problem … is total lack of context in reporting in which all of this is taking place,” said Yousef Munayyer, the executive director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. He and others point to the frequent omission of references to settlements and the occupation when describing East Jerusalem and the West Bank and of how Palestinians’ daily lives are affected by Israel’s occupation of those territories.

As an example, he and others called out a New York Times article published Monday, in which Pisgat Ze’ev — where two Palestinian teens were shot (one was killed, and one was seriously injured) after stabbing a 13-year-old Jewish boy — was referred to as a “section” and “a Jewish area” of East Jerusalem. Pisgat Ze’ev is an Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem, which, like the rest of the West Bank, is internationally regarded as occupied territory. Israel’s claim to have annexed East Jerusalem after capturing it the war of June 1967 is not recognized by any other countries, including the United States. And all settlement of Israeli civilians in areas occupied since 1967 is deemed by the United Nations Security Council a violation of international law.

Blogger Phillip Weiss, writing on his Mondoweiss site, pointed out a segment on Monday from NPR’s Morning Edition titled “Wave of violence hits Israel and Palestinian territories,” noting that when referring to incidents in those territories, it failed to draw listeners’ attention to the fact that those territories are occupied. But the current violence is difficult to understand without noting the impact of life under occupation on ordinary Palestinians, who have effectively been ruled for 48 years by a state that denies them any of the rights of citizenship.

The expansion of settlements has been a major point of contention for Palestinians, because it results in loss of land and an expansion of checkpoints, military outposts and settlement-only roads that break up the continuity of Palestinian territories.

Munayyer said that news outlets that fail to disclose “the conditions that Palestinians live under that is really fueling the resentment and the anger that is leading so many of these young Palestinians to take actions themselves in these way — in stabbings, in protests” are not providing their audiences with information vital to making sense of tragic events.

He cautioned against the tendency to present the conflict as if it involved two states or evenly matched rivals rather than one of the world’s most powerful militaries and a people living under occupation. There are, of course, armed Palestinian security forces under Palestinian Authority (PA) control in the West Bank, but they operate in close coordination with Israel, and their function is to restrain Palestinians from challenging Israelis rather than defend their own community from Israeli soldiers or settlers. Palestinian armed groups are operating openly in Gaza, where they maintain significant arsenals of unguided missiles. The territory’s Hamas rulers currently enforce the cease-fire with Israel concluded at the close of Israel’s military campaign there last year. In the West Bank, PA security forces are believed — even by their Israeli counterparts — to have largely prevented such groups from staging operations.

U.S. media have also come under criticism from pro-Israel groups, which accuse outlets of giving an unacceptable pass to Palestinian violence. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), a pro-Israel media watchdog, highlights what it says is the media habit of focusing on Israeli violence but failing to adequately report the Palestinian crimes for which such violence is in retaliation, according to the group.

“There’s been a downplay in language and in headlines and in reports of explicit and straightforward reference to actual attacks by Palestinians,” said Gilead Ini, a senior CAMERA research analyst.

One example refers to an Oct. 4 headline from The Washington Post that read, “Palestinian is killed after fatal attack.” CAMERA noted that the headline failed to mention that the Palestinian’s victims were two Israelis.

He added that reports regarding an uptick in violence usually fail to mention “incitement from certain Palestinians,” citing Hamas’ call for Palestinians to increase stabbing attacks.

U.S. coverage of Israel and the Palestinian territories has often been the subject of debate throughout the decades-long conflict, but Ini and Munayyer agree that news outlets have more recently demonstrated greater willingness to tell the Palestinians’ side of the story. While Ini sees that as a troubling sign, Munayyer welcomes the change and credits it to social media.

“The credibility of news outlets who are printing [Israel’s official] narratives comes into question when you see video or imagery or eyewitness accounts … challenge those narratives,” Munayyer said.

Some news outlets have shown skewed footage of stabbing incidents, misrepresented facts in articles

By Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA / Times of Israel
October 13, 2015

At an Israeli bus station, several uniformed officers surround an Arab woman before opening fire on her, dropping her to the ground. Standing over her motionless body, a Border Police officer toting an automatic rifle speaks into a radio while another officer chases away a bystander documenting the scene on his cellphone.

That’s how the Dutch public broadcaster NOS presented an October 9 incident in the northern city of Afula, in which Israeli officers shot and arrested Asraa Zidan Tawfik Abed, an Arab Israeli woman from Nazareth who the police said had tried to stab a soldier at the city’s main bus station.

NOS used only 13 seconds of the 52-second cellphone video, dispensing with footage that showed Abed holding the knife aloft and making stabbing motions while officers shouted at her to drop the weapon. The full video also showed Abed alive despite being shot.

Marcel Gelauff, the chief editor at NOS News, defended his network’s coverage of the incident, telling JTA that it was not aiming to provide “a clear and detailed picture” of what transpired, but rather “an impression of a few events.” Gelauff added that NOS regularly receives complaints of perceived bias from both sides and noted that the title of the segment, “Violence in Israel is expanding,” demonstrates that “we are dealing with growing violence from both sides.”

A still image taken from cellphone footage of security forces surrounding a knife-wielding Israeli Arab woman after she allegedly tried to stab a security guard at Afula bus station on Friday, October 9, 2015. (screen capture)
A still image taken from cellphone footage of security forces surrounding a knife-wielding Israeli Arab woman after she allegedly tried to stab a security guard at Afula bus station on Friday, October 9, 2015. (screen capture)

But critics of European media coverage of Israel say the choice not to show the full video is emblematic of how missing or misleading context distorts public perceptions of the recent upsurge in violence in the region — mostly to Israel’s disadvantage.

“No media in Europe have recognized who’s attacking whom, to my knowledge,” said Simon Plosker, the Israel-based managing editor of HonestReporting.com, which monitors international news coverage of Israel. “Palestinians who are carrying out the attacks are being portrayed as victims who are presumably being driven to desperate measures by Israeli policies.”

On the website of London’s Daily Mail, a right-leaning tabloid, the Afula footage was presented under the headline “Amateur footage shows Palestinian woman executed in Afula,” though “executed” was later changed to “shot.” The paper posted 39 seconds of the video — enough to show the standoff with Abed, but not enough to see that Abed was still alive after being shot.

The BBC also changed a headline in its coverage of the recent violence. The story was about a Palestinian who was killed by Israeli security forces after stabbing two Israelis to death. Initially the headline read “Palestinian shot dead after Jerusalem attack kills two.” Following complaints, the BBC changed it to “Jerusalem: Palestinian kills two Israelis in Old City.” [On their website, the headline was “Israelis killed in Jerusalem, Palestinians banned from Old City“]

Salomon Bouman, a former Israel correspondent for NRC Handelsblad, a daily considered to be the Netherlands’ newspaper of record, attributed the problem in Europe to a scaling back of coverage of Israel in general.

The extent of reporting on Israel has “diminished considerably in Europe because of local problems, such as the refugee issue,” Bouman said. And while “concern over the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Muslims resulted in more sympathy for Israel on the one hand, the de-prioritization of news about Israel leads to shorter pieces with less context, which to some extent comes at Israel’s expense in the final product.”

During the last wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence, in 2014, coverage in Europe was more balanced than it has been of late, Plosker said. During the earlier round, European and other foreign journalists reported extensively — at least initially — on the targeting of Israeli civilians by Hamas, which was clearly portrayed as the aggressor.

Striking photo of a death – “Palestinian mourners carry the body of Moataz Zawahara, who was killed in clashes with Israeli troops, during his funeral in Deheisha refugee camp, near Bethlehem, Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2015.” But what’s the larger context? Caption, Mail Online, photo by Nasser Nasser/ AP

But in coverage of the recent spate of attacks — much of it perpetrated by lone Palestinians armed with knives rather than organized terror groups — “perpetrators are not seen as affiliated with either Fatah or Hamas, just desperate people who are being portrayed as taking desperate actions with the only weapons they have access to,” Plosker said.

Compared to the European media, American news coverage has been more mixed, Plosker said. Some US media reported what Plosker deemed an accurate cause-and-effect scheme, but others led with headlines that emphasized the victimhood of Palestinian assailants. On October 10, the Los Angeles Times website carried the headline “Four Palestinian Teens Killed In Israeli Violence, which was later changed to “6 Palestinians dead as violence grips Gaza, Jerusalem.”

Palestinians take part in an anti-Israel protest in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah on October 13, 2015 Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90

In Norway, the online edition of the country’s second-largest newspaper, Verdens Gang, informed its readers on October 10 that “a Palestinian was killed in East Jerusalem” in the headline of an article that also noted that the Palestinian died while stabbing a Jew.

Other recent headlines in leading Norwegian media included “2 teenagers killed by Israeli forces,” “20 Palestinians died in October” and “2 knife attacks committed on Friday.”

To Eric Argaman, a pro-Israel activist from Oslo, the trend in coverage shows that some European media outlets will “do anything” to fit the facts to an enshrined narrative of Israeli aggression.

“I don’t blame Norwegians for being one of the most anti-Israel countries in Europe,” Argaman said. “The right to the truth has been robbed from the public.”

Palestinian lives don’t matter to US media

By Rania Khalek, Electronic Intifada / Media Watch
October 09, 2015

As Israel ramps up its deadly attacks on Palestinians, mainstream US media outlets are actively concealing the alarming displays of genocidal racism emanating from Israeli Jewish society.

Violence against Palestinians is nothing new. Israel’s ongoing colonial project requires enormous levels of brutality against Palestinians. But this daily reality is only newsworthy when it blows back against Israeli Jews, which has been the case during the last week with a number of violent incidents against Israeli settlers.

Every unsavoury act allegedly committed by a Palestinian since the drive-by shooting of an Israeli settler couple last Thursday has garnered major headlines. During the same time period, Israeli settlers and soldiers have terrorized Palestinians across the occupied West Bank in attacks that have injured nearly 1,000 Palestinians, including at least 66 people with live rounds.

Yet these acts of systematic violence have barely registered as an afterthought in establishment press reports, sending a very clear and chilling message. Palestinian lives, it seems, have no value until Israeli Jewish lives are affected.

Meanwhile, incitement to murder by Israeli leaders and Jewish lynch mobs chanting “death to Arabs” were comprehensively omitted from US media coverage, much like they were in the lead up to the burning alive of 16-year-old Muhammad Abu Khudair last year.

“Death to Arabs”

Following a stabbing attack in Jerusalem’s Old City that killed two Israeli settlers last Saturday, hundreds of Jewish extremists paraded through the streets of Jerusalem demanding collective vengeance against Palestinians.

Chanting their hauntingly routine “death to the Arabs” rallying cry, they broke into lynch mobs hunting for Palestinians to attack.

Anti-Palestinian race riots have erupted with increasing regularity in Jerusalem since the lead up to the 51-day assault on Gaza in the summer of 2014 that killed 2,251 people, the majority of them civilians. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “this time it seems that the Jewish mob which took to the streets was accepted by Jerusalemites with understanding, if not downright approval.”

The crowd was made up of extremists from an assortment of far right groups, including activists from Lehava, the anti-miscegenation group that equates mixed Arab-Jewish relationships and assimilation with genocide of the Jewish people. There were also more female participants than usual and they played a key role in riling up the crowds.

“We have to kill them all, including the Arab Druze in the army,” one woman was quoted as saying.

“Where were you at seven in the evening?” another woman shouted at the police. “Go beat up Arabs.”

“Let the people of Israel enter the gates and kill Arabs,” hollered a youth at the police.

Despite their hostility towards the police, the mob attacked their Palestinian targets with relative ease under Israeli police escort throughout the weekend.

On Saturday night Israeli extremists targeted a Palestinian worker with tear gas and attacked a Palestinian driver who struck a pedestrian in his frantic attempt to flee.

At the Jerusalem light rail, extremists asked passengers if they were Arab to determine whether or not to attack them. More disturbing than the mob itself was the lack of concern from bystanders, who “responded apathetically and tried to look the other way,” reported Haaretz.

“There were many drivers who honked in solidarity and vocally supported them. The cafes and restaurants along Jaffa Road were full of people watching the march of hatred passing back and forth.”

In stark contrast to the saturation of headlines about the Palestinian attacks on Israeli soldiers and settlers, just one major US media outlet mentioned the hate fests but only after four Palestinians were stabbed by an Israeli Jew in Dimona following a week of incitement and race riots that went unreported.

How to whitewash a lynching

The race riots continued into early Sunday morning, with a mob of rightwing Jews chasing 19-year-old Fadi Alloun, shouting to Israeli police, “Shoot him! He’s a terrorist! Shoot him!” and “Don’t wait! Shoot him!”

The police obliged, firing several gunshots. Alloun, unarmed and visibly terrified, was executed on the spot and the racist crowd rejoiced in celebration, cheering, “Yes! Yes! Son of a bitch!” and “Wow!” and “He’s an Arab!” and “Death to the Arabs!”

Israeli officials quickly justified the killing by claiming without a shred of proof that Alloun was shot after stabbing a 15-year-old Israeli boy.

Despite publicly available videos showing Alloun being shot in cold blood while posing no threat and despite Israel offering no evidence to corroborate the accusation that he stabbed an Israeli, US media outlets accepted Israel’s version of events as fact.

The New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren and correspondent Isabel Kershner parroted Israeli police claims, reporting that Alloun “stabbed and wounded a 15-year-old Jewish boy on a road outside the Old City.” They went on to whitewash the video footage of Alloun’s killing, describing the lynch mob who hunted him as “Israeli civilians in pursuit,” as if they were good Samaritans tailing a dangerous criminal.

The New York Times published at least ten news stories about the recent spate of violence, yet it wasn’t until the tenth report on 9 October that it found space to report on a “death to Arabs” rally.

The Associated Press followed a similar rubric.

“A Palestinian teenager stabbed and moderately wounded a 15-year-old Israeli early Sunday morning in Jerusalem before being shot dead by an Israeli officer, police said,” was the extent of its coverage of Alloun’s killing.

The article went on to detail several instances of Palestinians allegedly behaving badly toward Israelis by hurling stones and Molotov cocktails at soldiers, though a vague recognition that Palestinians had been injured by Israeli forces was buried towards the end of its report.

In a follow-up report the AP whitewashed a massive gathering of “thousands of Israelis” outside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence on Monday night who were “demanding tough action,” according to the AP.

Who were these “thousands of Israelis” and what “tough action” were they demanding? The AP doesn’t say.

According to Haaretz, the protest was organized by the Samaria Settlers’ Committee, a far right group that produced an animated video earlier this year, which employed classical anti-Semitic tropes to incite against left-wing Jews.

In attendance were Israeli cabinet ministers Haim Katz and Yariv Levin, who demanded Netanyahu respond to Palestinian attacks on settlers by building more illegal Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank. Settlement construction, said Levin, will allow Israel “to beat terrorism in the most Jewish way possible.”

“Freezing [settlement] construction encourages the villains,” he told the crowd.

“Burn them in their villages”
Despite the US media’s refusal to report on them, the “death to Arabs” rallies have continued unabated.

On Thursday evening, hundreds of Jewish extremists marched through Jerusalem chanting “death to Arabs” and “burn them in their villages.”

They were reportedly led by extremists affiliated with Lehava and the notoriously fascist Beitar Jerusalem soccer fan club La Familia.

If not for social media and a handful of English-language Israeli media outlets, the existence of these lynch mobs would be virtually unknown.

A spectacle of violence