What part of the tragedy in the Holy Land do we see? Who is creating the innocent victims, Palestinians or Israelis?
If we see young people at a peaceful protest, and then in another story we see smash-and-grab shoplifting, can we tell the difference?
This morning the New York Times ran a story with this photo:
It depicts the damage the Israeli bombs are doing to civilians in Gaza. But what about the murders and kidnapping that Hamas did on October 7? The New York Times published stories and photos on it, too.
A different form of bias comes in the inevitable problem that news items get placed in an arrangement on the page or in the order they are presented on TV. They can be conflated by readers and viewers. College classmate Jane Collins brought that to my attention yesterday with an example from broadcast news on TV. Placement on a page or adjacency of TV stories can make a peaceful pro-Palestine protest look and feel like a crime scene.
There will always be bias. That doesn't make news "fake." It means that human choices and the practicalities of telling a story are baked into the very nature of storytelling.
Jane Collins interrupted her college years to spend a year in Israel, working on a kibbutz. She lives in Massachusetts. Earlier Guest Posts depicted her lighting a menorah with her granddaughters, standing in a garden, and holding a baby. She shares her thoughts and writing at https://alicet4.com
Guest Post by Jane Collins
The main story on NBC Nightly News on November 24 concerned the first hostage release in the Israel/Gaza war. About 10 minutes into the broadcast, they ran three stories, all involving heightened mall security on Black Friday. The first story was about a pro-Palestine protest in LA that briefly blocked traffic to a mall; the second was on a bomb threat in New Jersey; the third was on the continuing upsurge of “smash and grab” robberies nationwide. But the headline banner read “Black Friday Protests”, while all three images that ran over it were of the completely unrelated robberies. Viewers were left with the impression that the protesters were wearing black like Antifa, concealing their identities with masks, smashing store windows, and grabbing the goods.
I don’t think the network deliberately conflated the protest and robbery stories. Maybe Lester Holt and his staff were still digesting their Thanksgiving turkey. However, their carelessness revealed an unconscious bias. They painted with the blackest of brushes protests that were clearly motivated by moral outrage.
Anyone who has attended big political demonstrations knows that there are usually a few people on the fringe who are looking for a fight, or for a distraction to cover some criminal activity. Often, the major media will cover the few bad actors and ignore thousands of peaceful demonstrators.
This case was worse than usual. The news venue used images of criminal activity that it knew had no connection with a protest to smear that protest, and by extension, all pro-Palestinian protests. Millions of people watched this piece of fake news. And it wasn’t even on Fox.
Still hoping for peace and justice,Jane Collins
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35 comments:
The media covered the horrific attack by Hamas on Israel, which killed 1,200 Israelis, at length. Coverage of the subsequent attacks by Israel on Palestinians, which have killed ten times that number, has been lengthier because the killing is ongoing and mainly affects the innocent.
Partisans expect everyone to take sides as they have, but many of us are simply appalled and disgusted by the slaughter of innocents, whether it’s in Israel, Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan, Nicaragua, the U.S. or wherever. Talk of moral equivalence is beside the point – there’s nothing moral about it. The killing needs to stop.
“There will always be bias. That doesn't make news "fake. Human choices … are baked into the very nature of storytelling.”
It always surprises me that people expect news to be objective. Stories are written by humans who are subjective, no matter how hard they try otherwise.
I like the explanation: NBC was suffering from tryptophan stupor…
There is no reasonable moral equivalence, in my view, between the cold-blooded terrorist slaughter of 10/7 and the Israeli military response thereto. Nonetheless, the legacy media and most of its left-leaning, equalitarian fellow travelers cast right and wrong in terms of pre-credentialed victim groups and pre-certified oppressor groups.
Israel is cast as an extension of the white Anglo-European West, and is more powerful than the Palestinian leadership of Hamas and the PNA. That means ipso facto "oppressor". (Likewise, income inequality is cast as if primarily caused by cheating or other unfairness). Ergo, terrorist atrocities from Israel's "victims" are essentially the brutal but sadly understandable warfare of the oppressed, and should be depicted as such. Israel's response, meanwhile, is scrutinized as yet more "kicking down".
Amen.
The fundamental point has to do with intentions.
Hamas intentionally targeted Israeli civilians, including women, children, and babies. Those deaths (and rapes, and torture) were the motivating point of the attack.
Israel is not intentionally targeting civilians. Israel is targeting Hamas terrorists. Those terrorists have chosen to hide behind Palestinian civilian human shields. The laws of war permit action to be taken against combatants who are using human shields. The resulting harm to those human shields is the moral and legal responsibility of those who attempt to hide behind them.
News coverage of this war has been heavily slanted against Israel, influenced by the “oppressed versus oppressor“ conceptual frame that has become endemic in our media, and which is applied to almost every situation regardless of whether or not it is an accurate fit.
Question for LD and Trigoboff.
Assuming you both are right. Assume that much of the political left of the USA, plus citizens around the world skeptical of Western power in its many forms, have a knee jerk assumption that they ought to defend the oppressed rather than the oppressor. Assume, too, that Hamas made a grotesque act of brutality to make a statement of objection to their current condition living in poverty without freedom of movement in a blockaded ghetto. Assume that Hamas' act was intentionally provocative.
So here is the question: Is killing ten civilian Palestinians for every Israeli enough? Would maybe killing them all -- as Stalin and Hitler and Turkey did with unwanted populations -- be moral. As the Israeli defense minister said, they are all animals, that they could have staged a coup and did not, and they are going to face the consequences of being unwanted and have no place to go except the grave, so Israel will send them there. God gave the land to Jews and they are unwanted squatters on their land. The current government majority in Israel has put such a policy into place, though it is not said so directly.
I don't question the morality of it. Many Israelis and American Jews write saying, in effect, that the Gazans have it coming. Like Germans in Dresden and Japanese in Hiroshima.
So, my question is: Is that policy going to succeed for Israel and for Jews worldwide? Will it make friends? Will it bring Israel peace and will Jews worldwide be better respected and safer in their homes and daily lives?
Humans have been pushing other tribes out of territory forever, justified by their tribal god. Read the Torah. Israel controls land by right of conquest. The people they displaced are not going away. Apparently Israel doesn't think it is politic to do a final solution of mass death. Tormenting them isn't working. So what's the plan? Another century of torment and violence?
Mike Steely. Perfectly stated. Thank you.
I anxiously await both Trigoboff and L D s response to your questions Peter. In particular, that portion "How much slaughter is enough". And perhaps L D or Trigoboff might answer my query ? What is the difference between the Warsaw Ghetto and the de facto Ghetto of Gaza ? I often wonder if William "Rusty" Calley and his merry band of murderers called the unarmed old men, women and children of My Lai "animals" before slaughtering them , as Netanyahus Stooge of a "defense" Minister referred to the Palestinians in the Gaza Ghetto.
I'm a Jew, and I fully support Israel's actions. I'm also a Zionist.
Israel is not targeting innocent Palestinians. Israel is targeting Hamas. Hamas needs to be exterminated. The problem is that Hamas has infiltrated itself within the Palestinian community (under hospitals), using Palestinians as "human shields". When Palestinians attempt to evade Hamas and leave Gaza, then they are killed by Hamas. Hamas doesn't give a damn about the Palestinians, but is only using them to protect themselves. It's unfortunate that innocent Palestinians are being killed, but Hamas has to be exterminated, regardless of the unfortunate side casualties. Remember, the Palestinians put Hamas into power. They are responsible partially for Hamas.
I'm sure both Israel and Hamas feel perfectly justified in whatever they do because of all the oppression they've suffered, but if Israel is "targeting Hamas," they're doing a piss-poor job of it. Perhaps they figure if they kill enough Palestinians, some of them are bound to be Hamas. I suppose Israeli partisans will dismiss them as "collateral damage," but it's hard to kill tens of thousands of people accidentally.
Ed Cooper asked:
And perhaps L D or Trigoboff might answer my query? What is the difference between the Warsaw Ghetto and the de facto Ghetto of Gaza?
The Warsaw Ghetto was a population of Jews fighting back against a Nazi regime that wanted to exterminate every last one of them.
Gaza is a regime of Hamas terrorists hiding behind civilian human shields. In the aftermath of 10/7, Israel has justifiably decided that it is necessary to destroy Hamas, despite the human shields that Hamas is hiding behind. Israel is not intentionally harming those human shields; it is doing its best not to harm them, consistent with the goal of destroying Hamas.
As I said, in a previous message, Israel has the power to kill every last human inhabitant of Gaza. But that is not Israel’s morality or its goal, which is the difference between Warsaw and Gaza.
Thanks for asking…
I strongly agree that there is a huge moral difference between Israel's bombing and attempts to root out Hamas -- on the one hand, and on the other -- Hamas trying to maximize the number of Israelis killed, doing so in the most sadistic and terrifying way, and then celebrating those acts.
Nevertheless, at a certain point, we have to start counting the bodies. That is Peter Sage's point, I think. It now seems likely that there have been 10 times as many civilians unintentionally killed in Gaza as those murdered within Israel. Notice that I write 'killed' vs. "murdered" -- to distinguish the way they died.
But at the end of the day, they are all just as dead. The very different sizes of those two heaps of bodies should get our attention. And as to the argument that the US did the same thing in WWII when we intentionally bombed German and Japanese civilians -- I think that was a war crime. It was pure terrorism, with no other military purpose. I think it was wrong, even though my parents' generation enthusiastically supported it.
Israel, I'm afraid, is cultivating Hamas rather than eradicating it. The young boys of Gaza? Now being well fertilized as they grow into adult Hamas adherents. This is vengeful slaughter; nothing else. No doubt Israeli military officers know the crudity and cruelty of this wanton enterprise against the "animals" of Gaza. To them, it is not murder; at worst, it's animal cruelty. General George Marshall, the greatest American, did not support the creation of Israel in this location, and I'm with him. Whenever I push for a serious rationale for the creation of Israel, it ultimately comes down to God's decision that it be done...and that's a conversation stopper right there. The Trumpist wing of Israel's politicians have all this blood on their hands, signaling that the West Bank settlers would keep coming for so many years and against international law. This doesn't make me an anti-Semite. It means I know that Jews, like all of us, are humans, and we are capable of anything, any justification.
The explanation for why there needs to be an Israel is this: after millennia of vicious persecution culminating in the Holocaust, Jews needed a country/military of their own so they could defend themselves.
Whatever you want to think about how Israel was established, now it exists. Attempts to eradicate Israel are going to go poorly for those who try it.
The Gazans aren’t “the animals.” The Hamas terrorists who perpetrated the atrocities of 10/7 are the animals, and they deserve to be treated as such. It’s too bad about the human shields those animals are hiding behind, but those animals need to be eradicated.
The difference between the Jews of Warsaw and the Palestinians of Gaza is that only the former, not the latter, were ever themselves targeted for genocide. Moreover, the leaders of the former were not and never were committed to the violent destruction of greater Germany, whereas the leaders of the latter are and have ever been committed to the violent destruction of Israel, period, these days in common cause with their military sponsors in Iran.
Perfect segue to our host's queries: Israel has repeatedly offered workable solutions over the years but been rejected without even counteroffer because of the dominance of Muslim fundamentalists in the region who cannot accept Israel's right to exist under any plan. Look what happened to Sadat. The solution is reform in Islam, the youngest of the Abrahamic monotheisms, still predominantly led (in Iran, anyway) in church-is-state crusader mode.
To LD
“The solution is reform in Islam.” OK, sure. And Israel is just the one to do that? Has Israel tried that? Good luck reforming it from the outside with guns. Islam will reform at the same pace as Christianity, I expect.
Israel has agency. Children in Gaza do not. Israel can make policy. All children and most adults in Gaza cannot.
In the meantime, is Israel doing things that will reform Islam? I think not. Is it doing things that will create new generations of embittered warriors against Israel? I suspect so. Is Israel making friends and gaining respect? I think not. Is Israel creating a way for Palestinians in the West Bank to meet their tribal/national aspirations. I think not. Is their present policy working for Israel? I don’t see that it is. If Israel won’t give them what they want, and won’t create a place for them to go, and won’t kill them all, I don’t see that Israel is serious about a solution.
Maybe ruthless mass murder will bring Israel respect among the warrior cultures of the Arab world. Announce what Germany did in occupied Greece in 1944. Demand 100 or 200 Palestinians be executed for every Israeli. But kill people’s with agency, adult men, not children. Execute 140,000 adult males, maybe? Is Israel ready to do that? And then to take whatever response that elicits?
I have written before that since hard liners are in control of Israel and Hamas both, and since both sides want extermination, then get the fighting done over there. Have at it. If peace is impossible, have the inevitable war. Get resolution. Better 10 million people in greater Israel die fighting for causes they believe in than 330 million Americans die because Netanyahu wanted to stay out of prison.
Have the war. Their war. They on both sides think the land is sacred. Solomon built a temple. Mohammed ascended to heaven. If it is worth fighting and dying for, then get it done, so the world can move on. As Carl Sandberg wrote, in a generation the grass will have covered all the graves and people will try to remember what the fuss was about. Just don’t kill everyone else while Jews and Muslims settle who God really, truly gave it to.
But if Israel does not want total war and it’s full share of the ten million deaths, then it should quit damning the sentimental peaceniks who think they need to give Palestinians some hope of a homeland and a better life.
Peter Sage
Hamas committed an atrocity and now so is Israel. Whatever justification Israelis may think they have for bombing civilians while depriving them of food, water and medicine, we shouldn't be contributing to it. It's sick and wrong.
There used to be a peace movement and leftist political parties in Israel. They died when the Palestinians rejected multiple offers of a two state solution and responded to those offers not with counter-offers, but with terrorist violence instead They died when the Israelis saw that the only piece that the Palestinians want is the peace that would come when there were no more Jews in the Middle East.
The leftist, pro-peace movement Labor Party used to rule Israel. Now it controls four seats out of the 120. Meretz was further to the left than Labor. It now controls zero seats. The left died in Israel because they had no answer to a Palestinian movement that could only be satisfied by the destruction of Israel.
Peter lives on the other side of the world in Oregon where his biggest recent local problem is what might happen to the county government. I take the views of the people whose lives are on the line much more seriously than views from that far away.
I agree completely with Trigoboff. I don't have a feel for the 2,500 year enmity between Jews and the Caaninite predecissors they displaced. Or about why the presumed place of Solomon's temple is so special, or why Palestinians claim the same place. But I don't believe that the promise of ancient tribal gods endow the "real true" ownership to a place.
I am more cold and realistic. Israel possesses it by right of conquest.
So now they should either kill everyone they consider an enemy or anyone not wiling to be a part of their religious community, , or work out peace. And since peacet is impossible, as Trigoboff has observed, then the USA should quit kidding ourselves. Israel wants to land for itself and the two sides are unable to get along . Apparently there is some very dangerous dirty work for Israel to do, in the nature of tribal conquerors through history. It will be ugly, but it is Israel's ugly work to do. The USA shouldn't have any part of it.. Israel will catch hell for it and there will be an ugly regional war and I expect the region to be left wasteland of traded nuclear strikes. Then, in the aftermath, the sides will have been exhausted. People will be buried. Grass will grow, as Sandberg's poem says. It will be a great reset, and it will accelerate the change in Islam that LD says is the only real solution. Judaism may change, too, if the current land is uninhabitable for a generation. There is room in the USA for the survivors.
What I don't want is to be drawn into their fight. I now recognize it is a fight to the death.Leaders of both sides take positions that make it necessary. Let it be. They want it. They will get it. But It isn't MY fight. My taxes pay to support Israel so that Israel can afford to fight this war without raising taxes so high Netanyahu loses his slender majority. Heck with that.
I understand and respect people who want to kill and be killed. That is Israel. That is Palestine. That is the history of the world. But as Trigoboff says, you have to be there to understand their fight. It doesn't need to cause the death of people in Omaha and Biloxi and Miami and Medford. I am not opposed to Americans who want to travel to Israel to fight for either of the various sides there. Some will go to each side. Go. Fight. Defend your conscience or your tribe or your sense of who is most aggrieved. Partisans who are sure their side is right should send money -- their money not my tax money -- and travel there and take up arms.
I don't expect Palestinians or Israelis to prune my grape plants or weed my melons. Don't make Americans die in a world war over the religious and cultural nuances that they don't understand and aren't part of. Trigoboff is right.
Peter Sage
It’s not Israel’s job to reform Islam. A few hundred years from now does seems on pace with Christianity. Freedom of individual conscience; no sentence of death for heretics, blasphemers, apostates, and defiant infidels. But what is ahistorical, what has crossed the line, like the murderous brutality of the 10/7 massacre, is the despicable use of ordinary Palestinians, especially their own children, as human shields, or victims per sentimental Western peaceniks. For many fundamentalist Muslims in the region, and worldwide, Palestinians are no more and no less than a means to an end. They don’t fear death, for others, for the ummah, even under these seemingly dishonorable circumstances. Respect? No accident perhaps that when Muslims last owned respect on the conventional battlefield, under the Ottomans, Jews and Christians alike were largely tolerated in the Holy Land. Palestinian casualties of the targeted Israeli response to mass murder is not murder. It’s not execution. Well, unless by Hamas. To be fair, it’s manslaughter even for them, a willingness to sacrifice civilians, as opposed to specific intention to kill. It’s the moral nadir of their idea of total war. Finally, a modest beginning for reform is the acknowledgement by orthodox Muslims is that Jerusalem is not their holy city—not theirs alone, anyway. It’s not too much to ask.
"Peter lives on the other side of the world in Oregon... I take the views of the people whose lives are on the line much more seriously than views from that far away."
Sounds like selective outrage from someone who lives as far from the fighting as Peter. The lives of Palestinians are also on the line, but he doesn't take their grievances at all seriously.
I am not saying anything about ancient. God-given rights. I am just saying that the Jews need a homeland, and Israel is it.
The Arabs could have accepted the 1947 UN partition, and there would have been two states side-by-side. The Arabs could have not attacked Israel in 1967, and they would have had the West Bank and Gaza. The Arabs could have accepted one of the number of offers Israel made for a two-state solution and they could have had that. The Arabs have rejected peace at every turn.
The Arabs want what they cannot have: no Israel. But in the aftermath of 10/7, Israel is going to get what it wants: no Hamas.
It looks to me like there is a good chance that there will not be a wider war. Hezbollah has not gotten into it in a significant way. Neither has Iran. They can both look at what is going on in Gaza right now, and see the word “deterrence“ flashing at them in red letters.
I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. There were friends of my family with the numbers from the Nazi concentration camps tattooed on their arms. It sounds to me like you (Peter) grew up on a much higher level of Maslow‘s hierarchy. I suspect that gave you a very different perspective from mine, but that does not make my perspective wrong.
there is substantial reporting that Israeli intel was aware of the 10/7 attack plan and allowed it to happen as a calculated opening for what they refer to as 'mowing the lawn.' (as reported by the Guardian, Jerusalem Post, Financial Times). Lots of internal struggle and turbulence inside Israeli orgs right now that seems to validate this cynical reading of events.
The moralist framing of your comment reflects the objectives of the Israeli messaging operation and is arguably their most crucial front in this conflict.
You mention 'terrorists' with pure moral tone. Many political theorists have written about the notion of "Terrorism" as a frame for those WITH power to place onto those WITHOUT power, to directionalize moral sentiment and manufacture mass consent for disproportionate retaliatory violence against the "terrorists". (background reading - Agamben's work on 'constituent power' vs 'destituent power'). Guess which group of people are granted passports, water rights, freedom of movement etc--those things, which Israelis have, are constituent rights.
( Destituent power is like when Black men armed themselves (eg in the 1960s, also now) to protect their families. They were/are labeled terrorists by those in power. )
The rape accusations you mention were debunked by the way --
but they serve to sensationalize and create a moral imperative in our emotional reaction to such news.
David Rudnick's description in the New Yorker, of the Israeli propaganda war room and their rapidfire manufacture of falsifiable slander and misleading info and talking points directed at cultivating American news media elites and media ecosystems (influencers, ad buyers etc) makes the Russiagate stuff look pretty tame.
In such an assymmetrical info environment we might forage for insight by imagining ourselves as a school of fish, darting away at false alarms, fake news or sensationalized triangulated media-- perhaps we can use these false alarms to become more skillfull in relating to real threats, the jumpscares harden the judgment of each agent as it ripples through the school... longtail positive network effects...
What's happened in the past can’t be changed, but what’s happening now can be. The wanton slaughter on both sides needs to stop. The attack against Israel by Hamas was horrific. Israel’s response has been even worse.
Even worse???
How many Gazan women have been raped by Israeli forces? How many Gazan women have had their naked corpses paraded through Israeli streets while Jewish onlookers praised God? How many Gazan children have been kidnapped?
World War II also needed to stop. It needed to stop with the definitive defeat and unconditional surrender of the evil regimes that started it. That’s also when this war will stop.
Travis’ comment is a prime example of how a hyper-intellectual attachment to a particular mode of analysis, can blind you to common sense. The mode here is critical social justice’s oppressor/oppressed framework.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
In our current information environment, it’s challenging to figure out what’s actually true. Everyone sees things through the lens of their own experiences and inclinations. I have been very honest around here about where I am coming from. It would be helpful if “Travis” chose to come out from behind the veil of theory and anonymity, and let us know who he actually is.
Hamas killed 1200 Israelis in their Nov. 7 attack. That was terrible. Israelis have killed an estimated 14000 Palestinians in retributions and totally destroyed a city of millions - so yes that's far worse, unless you're blindly partisan. Israel has killed more civilians in 7 weeks than Russia has in almost 2 years of fighting in Ukraine.
Hamas terrorists conducted a sneak attack in Israel on October 7th, in which they targeted, butchered and in some cases tortured and kidnapped specifically noncombatants. Israeli forces have targeted the Hamas perpetrators in response, who purposely ensconced themselves among Gazan noncombatants and civilian sites Hamas controls by threat of force, causing the death count (assuming it's even accurate, coming from "Gazan officials", i.e., Hamas) to increase beyond combatants thereby. Inhuman Hamas evil is behind both death counts.
Assuming that the figure of 14,000 dead Gazans is accurate, and not just Hamas propaganda, how many of those were Hamas fighters, and therefore appropriate military targets? How many buildings destroyed by Israel were being used by Hamas for military purposes?
Israel is fighting in an urban civilian environment, courtesy of Hamas’ choice to hide among human shields. The situation in Ukraine is very different, so comparing casualty figures from the two wars is neither valid nor relevant.
Whether you butcher people on the ground or do it from the air, burying them under concrete and steel, it’s equally inhumane. Depriving them of food, water and medical care is also torture. As I said before, if the IDF is “targeting Hamas,” they’re doing a piss-poor job.
The only way to assess how well Israel is doing at targeting Hamas would be to know the number of Gazans killed by Israeli military action so far, and the proportion of them who were Hamas fighters.
We do not currently have accurate and reliable sources for either of those numbers.
Anyone who makes claims about this in the absence of those numbers is just blowing their own brand of smoke.
There are reporters, TV crews, Doctors Without Borders and plenty of others laying their lives on the line, whose reports are infinitely more credible than the propaganda parroted by someone halfway around the world.
Every single reporter and doctor in Gaza is under the thumb of Hamas, and they report the way Hamas wants the information war to go, because otherwise they’d get thrown off the top of the nearest tall building.
In addition to being depraved terrorists, Hamas has no commitment to freedom of the press.
Travis. New York Times reported today that the Israeli Intelligence apparatus has known of the Hamas War Plans for one whole year, and that only a few months ago, a Colonel in Israeli Intelligence was alerted to an apparent dress rehearsal of the attack, and dismissed it as " highly improbable". It reminds me if G.W. Bush t op busy eating breakfast to be bothered by reading the Daily Briefing warning of an 8mminent attack by Al Quaeda, involving airplanes.
The New York Times report proves that Israelis are just people, not invincible, perfect gods. They are just as prone to complacency as we were before 9/11.
Hindsight is 20/20. Foresight would benefit from a white cane.
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