Israel/Palestine
An Open Letter to the Corporate Media
By Sadu Nanjundiah
Dissident Voice
December 20, 2002
Two weeks ago
(December 5), a massive force of Israeli tanks, helicopter gunships and
warplanes raided one of the poorest Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza
(al-Bureij), killing ten (eight civilians that included two United Nations
relief employees) and maiming at least twenty people. This barbaric attack, yet
another in a series of horrific Israeli onslaughts on crowded refugee camps in
Gaza since August and, as usual, conducted under cover of darkness hardly made
it into the mainstream American media (video, audio and print).
The
"newspaper of record" (New York Times, Dec. 6) carried its
correspondent's report on an inside page titled, "10 Palestinians killed
in Israeli Hunt for a Militant." The typical provincial broadsheet
(Hartford Courant, Dec. 6 as one example) printed a wire service report buried
deeper inside the paper, with the article merely repeating assertions of the
Israeli military that its "operation targeted a militant" and Israel "regretted"
the death of Palestinian civilians.
While
Palestinian suicide attacks on Israeli civilians are routinely excoriated by
the media even as they are acts of utter desperation by some people, the
mightily armed (by none other than the U.S government) Israeli military is
immune from any criticism even as it commits acts of unmitigated savagery upon
the Palestinian people at will. Its government actually has the gall to claim
its actions as gratuitous service to the civilized world, "ridding"
us of the menace of "global terrorism." And the unfortunate fact that
many innocent Palestinian civilians also pay for the "service" with
lives and property is a small price to pay for ensuring the
"security" of Israel.
The humiliation
of Palestinians at checkpoints, using Palestinians as human shields, preventing
medical staff from carrying out their work without interference, opening fire on civilians, exploding a house without
informing and removing all the residents, shooting and
killing first - and investigating later, all stem from the same cause, the
Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Young Israeli
soldiers feel they can act with impunity, because no one
is watching them and no one really cares. The fact that over 2,070 Palestinians
have died in the last 2 years and three months - that's almost an average of
three Palestinian deaths every day - bears out this fact.
The ongoing Israeli destruction of homes, shops, orchards in the occupied
West Bank and Gaza is horrific and being conducted with little
publicity in the U.S. media. The "pinpoint precision" attacks of the
Israeli military against Palestinians have been carried out with wanton
disregard for the lives of the most deliberately devastated people on earth,
and with the complete support of the U.S. administration and Congress. While
the European Union, the United Nations and many of the governments in the
outside world condemned (albeit ineffectively) dastardly Israeli attacks on the
most densely populated spot on the globe (the Gaza strip), the U.S. State
Department trots out (for the bloodiest incidents only) a low-level official who
urges Israel to "exercise restraint." After the December 5 slaughter
of Palestinians, Philip Reeker (one of Colin Powell's mouthpieces) said,
without any shame, "Israel must complete its anti-terrorist operations as
quickly as possible to prevent further Israeli casualties"(!)
Surely the time
has come (one would be more accurate saying it has long passed) for the
American mass media to recognize the reality of the Israeli agenda - denying
the Palestinians any hope of a genuine freedom and a just peace?
All we hear and
read about is the need to "balance" the aspirations of the
Palestinian people with "security" for Israelis! As though the
Palestinians don't desire or deserve any security from the Israeli juggernaut
supplied courtesy of American taxpayers. Whenever the angry, frustrated and
desperate Palestinians attack Israelis in misguided ways (suicide bombing of
civilians) or in legitimate ways (attacking the Israeli soldiers of
occupation), the American corporate media goes into convulsions of revulsion
with no effort to put Palestinian acts of resistance in the context of
half-a-century of relentless Israeli oppression. But when the fourth most
powerful military machine in the world decides to seek blood-revenge on
Palestinians, flouting all international conventions and treaties with utter
disdain, there is nary a peep from the Bush administration. And the
pusillanimous media here follows suit, fighting shy of criticizing
"democratic" Israel for fear of being targeted by its zealous supporters.
The fundamental
fact of Palestine - its illegal and belligerent occupation by Israel - goes
unrecognized. There is no other place on earth under such a repressive colonial
occupation. Any fight against occupation is just – there are no two ways about
it. The U.S. fought British colonialism and, once upon a time, even claimed to
support the just aspirations of subjugated people everywhere to be free.
But now this
hyper-power and its apologetic hacks only mock people who want to be free,
offers lip services to, or actually impedes, the valiant efforts of the
oppressed who desire to throw off their shackles. Not surprising perhaps,
considering that the shackles have been provided courtesy of this
"greatest" bastion of "democracy and freedom."
Under normal
circumstances, one would expect Americans to support wholeheartedly the just
cause of the Palestinian people. But things are hardly normal when people in
the United States get to see, hear and read only of Palestinian
"terrorism" and the "carefully measured," "justifiable"
and "targeted" Israeli responses to it. Who would have thought that
such a deliberate suffering could ever be inflicted on a people by any
government, least of all by one that cloaks itself in the mantle of the
Holocaust?
But that is the
real story most of the American media obtusely refuses to believe in and reveal
to the public. All the circumstantial evidence leads one to conclude that
corporate media is blinded by a combination of intent, guilt and fear. The
occasional op-ed bemoaning the awful plight of the Palestinian people (and yet,
blaming it on them) is swamped by the news, commentaries and editorials that
favor Israel's unforgiving and deadly belligerence. How can the media highlight
certain atrocities (Israeli), as though some people's lives mattered more than
others?
The reality of U.S. culpability (another $14 billion in arms and aid has been solicited by the Sharon government) in the indescribable, relentless and willful oppression of the people of Palestine, day in and day out, is rapidly becoming yet another shameful chapter in the history of this country.
Sadu Nanjundiah
teaches physics at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain,
Connecticut, and works with the Coalition for Social Justice, a group of
faculty and students at CCSU that discusses and acts on issues of peace and
justice, locally and internationally. Email: sadanand@ccsu.edu