MEDIA - LOOKING GLASS NEWS | |
Corporate Media Reports Selectively on Palestine |
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by Kurt Nimmo Another Day in the Empire Entered into the database on Thursday, March 02nd, 2006 @ 14:42:17 MST |
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As a primary example of how the corporate media in the United States
and Europe ignore Israel’s continued theft of Palestinian land, consider
the remarks of Israeli Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz: “When we talk about
Israel’s permanent or future borders it includes the Jordan Valley, Maale
Adumim, Gush Etzion, Ariel, Kedumim-Karnei Shomron and Rehan-Shaked,”
Mofaz declared during a speech this week in Jerusalem. “The areas he mentioned
comprise 20% of the West Bank, home to 3.5 million Palestinians, many of them
refugees from what is now Israel,” notes the International
Middle East Media Center, one of several news outlets to cover the
speech. A Google News search reveals that coverage of Mofaz’s declaration of
additional theft of Palestinian land, a violation of international law, was
not covered by the corporate media in the United States and Europe, although
the story was covered by newspapers and websites in Jordan, Lebanon, and elsewhere
in the Middle East. “Mofaz’ statement collaborates statements made
several weeks ago by acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who said that Israel
would ‘take the Jordan Valley’. Their party, the Kadima Party, is
expected to win in Israel’s March 27th elections, after which it is predicted
that they will engage in some highly-publicized ‘pull-outs’ from
some small, isolated West Bank outposts, while firming their hold on the areas
detailed by Mofaz.” In short, the so-called “centrist”
Kadima Party and its plan to steal more Palestinian land and “transfer”
(ethnically cleanse) its inhabitants is supported by the Israeli people. For
some reason this is not considered newsworthy by the corporate media. Meanwhile, the corporate media is all over Paradise
Now, a film directed by Israeli-born Palestinian, Hany Abu-Assad. The New
York Sun, MSNBC, Newsday, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Variety,
the Observer, Salon, and a dozen or more Jewish publications are reporting on
a petition effort against the nomination of the film in the best foreign film
category. “Film industry experts said it was unheard of for an Oscar nomination
to be withdrawn,” reports Reuters.
“The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is already debating how
to present the provenance of the film. The academy’s Web site had listed
it as coming from ‘Palestine,’ drawing Israeli complaints as the
state does not yet exist,” and never will if Shaul Mofaz and other “centrist”
Jabotinskyites have their way. Pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian “bias is inherent in the professional news
media structure and is absorbed by the reporters who don’t want to be
criticized by the pro-Israeli editors and publishers who manage these media
operations,” explains Ray
Hanania. “The news media also goes to great lengths to dissect Israeli
actions to the point of anti-Arab precision. There are two kinds of Israeli
attacks, one involving Israeli soldiers who are sent in to oppress the Palestinian
civilians. All are considered ‘defensive’ and therefore ‘justified’….
The second is the kind involving the fanatic settler movement. Israeli settlers
are among the worst fanatics in the world, even though the media seems consumed
only with the so-called ‘Islamic fanatic.’ These Israeli settlers
have been engaged in a hate war against the Palestinians with the goal of killing
Arabs and stealing their lands.” But lest you consider this sociopathic and genocidal behavior confined to a
few hundred thousand rabid settlers, consider the comments of Illan
Pappe, a Jewish Israeli revisionist historian: “You can see this new
assertion talked about in Israel: the discourse of transfer and expulsion which
had been employed by the extreme Right, is now the bon ton of the center.”
In short, ethnic cleansing of the sort engaged in by Nazis and maniacs such
as Ratko Mladic is now the subject of polite conversation by the Israeli mainstream,
a few million people sick and tired of violent Palestinian reactions to decades
of unrelenting apartheid and brutal Israeli policies devised to cut up Palestinian
land and dispossess Palestinians in the process. Since the Straussian neocons seized the government by way of a Supreme Court
coup d’état in 2000, the Israelis have experienced a continual
green light to steal Palestinian land, kill thousands of Palestinians, and erect
a prison wall around what is in essence the largest open-air concentration camp
on the planet. “It now appears that the primary policymakers in the Bush
administration have been the Likudnik neoconservatives all along,” Stephen
J. Sniegoski wrote in 2003. “As I have noted, Likudniks have always
sought to deal in a radical fashion with the Palestinian problem in the occupied
territories—a problem that has gotten worse, from their standpoint, as
a result of demographic changes. A U.S. war in the Middle East at the present
time provides a window of opportunity to permanently solve that problem and
augment Israel’s dominance in the region.” Indeed, since Bush invaded Iraq, the Jabotinsky Likudite party and its “centrist”
Kadima bastard child have reacted with increasing brutality in response to continuing
Palestinian resistance to more than a half century of occupation and theft.
Shaul Mofaz’s recent comments underscore the fact Israel has no reservations
talking openly about its intention to steal all of Palestine and eventually
stampede the Palestinians into neighboring countries. Of course, when the final
act of this massive crime against humanity finally begins, the corporate media
will tell us the Palestinians have nobody to blame but themselves. |