Legal proceedings at the ICJ expose Western media bias and Israeli state propaganda
Protesters carry placards in front of the US Consulate in the global day of action to support a free Palestine, Johannesburg, South Africa on 13 January 2024
Rami G Khouri writes in Al Jazeera on 23 January 2024:
This month, the world watched South Africa initiate International Court of Justice (ICJ) hearings on the genocidal acts Israel committed in Gaza. In a two-day session on January 11 and 12, the court heard the extensive evidence the South African legal team had gathered to support their case against Israel, and the rebuttal by the Israeli team.
The hearings were historic for two reasons. First, this was the first time that Israel’s decades-long aggression against the Palestinians was articulated in detail for the world to hear, without having to pass through the distorting lens of Western media or politicians. Second, this was the first time that Israel was substantively held to account in public under international law, without being shielded from such accountability by its Western backers, as it has been for the past century.
The unprecedented nature of the hearings drew international attention. The media around the world covered the proceedings extensively, often with live feeds of both presentations. But in the West, once again an anti-Palestinian media bias became apparent.
Channels like the BBC were accused of not fully showing the South African presentation, while broadcasting more of the Israeli one. American, Canadian and British newspapers were chastised for not featuring the ICJ case on their front pages.
The bias was clearest in the glaring parallels between the main points in Israel’s presentations to the court – which reflected the longstanding main themes of Israeli propaganda – and the reporting of Western mainstream media, with some exceptions. Indeed, Western coverage of the war has been skewed since day one.
The US progressive publication The Intercept did its own analysis of three leading US newspapers – The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times – and found that their reporting “heavily favoured Israel”. It said that they “disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict; used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians; and offered lopsided coverage of antisemitic acts in the U.S., while largely ignoring anti-Muslim racism in the wake of October 7.”
According to the Intercept’s analysis, the word “slaughter” was used in reference to Israeli deaths vs Palestinian deaths in a ratio of 125 to 2; the word “massacre” in a ratio of 60 to 1. Antisemitism was mentioned 549 times, while Islamophobia just 79 times.