Dec 31 2008
Change MSNBC coverage of Gaza
An Israeli child lies in her bed in a bomb shelter at the Ashkelon Barzilai hospital in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, Sunday, Dec. 28. Wary of a missile strike from nearby Gaza, the largest hospital on Israel’s southern coast has moved into an underground bomb shelter.
This is the picture and caption of a lead story on MSNBC:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28413489
In the story, the White House blames Hamas for the Israeli offensive into Gaza. Hamas fired mortar and rockets into Israel, prompting an onslaught of Israeli force into Gaza, killing 360 Palestinians and injuring 1,400 others since Saturday. 17 Israelis have been killed since the January 2008. I’m not saying that the situation isn’t unacceptable for Israelis. I’m not saying that over at Al-Jazeera they’re not showing bodies of dead Palestinian babies. But shouldn’t US media be better than that? Don’t we have an obligation to be unbiased- challenge the norm?
In the article, the rationale behind blanket support of Israel is this: “Right now the people of southern Israel are not able to live in peace,” White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in Crawford, Texas, where President George W. Bush is spending time at his ranch. “They have to live in bomb shelters a lot of the time. And that’s unacceptable.”
I am trying so hard not to get involved in this issue, because somehow Palestinian supporters are presumptively and erroneously labeled as pacifists or unpatriotic or (horror of all horrors) Muslim-lovers. But, anyone who can read past mainstream media coverage of the conflict would know that the Palestinians have been living under such an oppressive state for so long. There are laws mandating that they deserve less resources than Israeli citizens. We, ourselves, fought for equal protection under the law- that all men are created equal. Yet, I can’t help but see how we have relegated the Palestinian people to a subordinate status of mankind. We could create a ratio of worth- how many Palestinian children = one Israeli child. Why is outrage and mercy on the ready for the Israeli position, yet we have to scrape and clamor for such support for a Palestinian?
Guess what, folks. The Palestinians are themselves not a threat to the US. Yes, the Israelis have somehow become our strategic ally, but, ironically, that has made them our greatest threat to security. Allowing this constant abuse and oppression of the Palestinians is like giving arm to terrorists, or Islamic fundamentalists, who use the US’s blanket support of Israeli actions against the Palestinians, as fuel for the fire. Is it just? No Is it fair? No. But it’s the truth. This should have been our number one priority in “The War Against Terror.” This had the potential to silence so many whose focal point in their anti-American rhetoric is our treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Billions of dollar later. Thousands of lives lost. Are we more secure than after 9/11? Have we gained or lost allies? Have we increased or decreased the number of enemies we have worldwide? Change is in order.
And media outlets like MSNBC need to be more responsible in their coverage of international events. The public isn’t as naive as before to take the news that they proliferate as gospel.
