Is it too much to ask people to view Palestinians as humans? Apparently so.

The Guardian

As the last few weeks have made abundantly clear, Palestinian lives don’t count.

I do not want to ever hear western democracies lecture the rest of the world on human rights ever again.

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‘It isn’t enough that Palestinians are dying and being displaced: we must be dehumanized and discredited too.’ Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Anadolu/Getty Images.

As I write this, more than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza – almost half of them children. One child is being killed every 10 minutes in Gaza. (...)

Those numbers don’t count the kids slowly dying of hunger and thirst. The kids getting sick from drinking sewage and sea water. They don’t count the kids with cancer who will not be able to get any care now that the Israeli siege has forced the only cancer hospital in Gaza to suspend operations. They don’t count the kids who are going to die from entirely avoidable diseases because hospitals in Gaza are ceasing to function. (...)

But also? Those numbers just don’t count, period. They’re Palestinians. And, as the last few weeks have made abundantly clear, Palestinian lives don’t count. They don’t count to many in the media, who steadfastly refuse to empathize with Palestinians. (...) Who immediately report anything that the Israeli government says, sending out every IDF statement as a push alert, while looking at Palestinian voices through a permanent lens of suspicion. (...)

Those numbers certainly don’t count to the president of the United States. (...) Joe Biden came right out and said: we don’t believe Palestinians about the death toll. (...)

what does Biden think is happening, exactly? (...) Does he think the pictures of entire neighborhoods being wiped out are some sort of AI deepfake? (...)

He knows very well that the numbers from the Gaza health ministry have been proven to be accurate time and time again. (...)

And, rather than champion the importance of the press, the US is actively trying to suppress coverage of the living hell in Gaza. Two weeks ago, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, asked Qatar to moderate Al Jazeera’s coverage of Israel’s war against Hamas. Can’t have too much of the truth coming out; too much truth is a terrible thing. (...)

Of course I will absolutely condemn Hamas massacring innocent Israeli civilians on 7 October and taking hostages. And let’s be very clear here: while nothing Hamas did on 7 October can be condoned, their actions did not take place in a vacuum. This conflict did not start on 7 October. Palestinians have been killed, displaced, humiliated, detained unlawfully, for decades; the media only sits up and pays attention, however, when an Israeli dies. Ask yourself this: do you know how many Palestinians were killed last year by Israeli forces and settlers? Do you know how many Palestinians are being forced out of their homes by settlers in the West Bank – where Hamas is not in charge? Do you know how many Palestinian children are being held by Israeli forces without trial or charge for “crimes” that can be as minor as waving a Palestinian flag?

I will absolutely condemn Hamas but I ask that the absolute condemnation goes both ways. (...)

As for non-violent resistance? That’s not allowed either. The US has long been trying to criminalize the peaceful boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. (...)

What are Palestinians supposed to do? That’s a rhetorical question because the last three weeks have made the answer to this crystal clear: we are supposed to shut up and die. (...)

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Mokhiber noted: “Usually the most difficult part of proving genocide is intent, because there has to an intention to destroy in whole or in part a particular group. In this case, the intent by Israeli leaders has been so explicitly stated and publicly stated – by the prime minister, by the president, by senior cabinet ministers, by military leaders – that that is an easy case to make.” (...)

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Tags: #israel #palestine #palestinians #occupied_territories #gaza #gaza_strip #west_bank #terrorism #war_crimes #international_law #media #news #journalism #journalist #hamas #illegal_settlements #human_rights #illegal_settlements #hypocrisy #double_standard #press #false_equivalence #bds

Hamas’s barbarism does not justify the collective punishment of Palestinians

The Guardian
Laying siege to a civilian population isn’t the same thing as targeting a terrorist organisation.

‘They too have casualties, they too have captives and they have mothers who weep … Let’s make real peace”. Not a liberal peacenik speaking from the safety of London or Washington but Yaakov Argamani, whose daughter Noa was taken hostage by Hamas at a music festival near Re’im on Israel’s border with Gaza. (...)

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The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at a joint press conference in Tel Aviv with the US secretary of state Antony Blinken on 12 October. Photograph: Israeli PM Press Service/UPI/Shutterstock.

Many have celebrated the murderous actions of Hamas gunmen. And many, even if they refrained from rejoicing, have tried to justify those actions. (...)

Yes, there is a historical context to Palestinian violence, and Palestinians continue to suffer from Israeli repression. There is, though, no context in which the mass murder of more than 260 revellers at a music rave, or a massacre in a kibbutz, comes close to being justified, let alone provides an occasion for rejoicing. (...)

These were the acts of an antisemitic, theocratic organisation detached from the moral and political frameworks that guided traditional liberation movements. As with other jihadi groups, terror has become an end in itself. (...)

There have been Palestinian leaders, and supporters, who have deplored the depravity of the acts. Hamas represents a betrayal of Palestinian hopes as well as a threat to Jews.

Condemning Hamas, its policies and actions, is not, though, the same as supporting Israeli policies. Israel has cut off power, water, food and medical supplies to Gaza, begun mass, indiscriminate bombings, and a probable ground invasion. (...)

Yet, this collective punishment and killing of civilians has won the backing of western leaders, who justify it as Israel’s “right to self-defence” against Hamas. But as Daniel Levy, one-time adviser to the former prime minister Ehud Barak, asked a BBC presenter: “Can someone credibly tell me that when the leadership of a country says ‘We are cutting off food, electricity, water, all supplies, to an entire civilian population’, that they’re targeting militants?”

Israeli leaders themselves leave little doubt. “The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy,” Daniel Hagari, a spokesperson for the Israeli Defence Force, acknowledged. (...)

Meanwhile, Israel is turning the occupation of the West Bank into annexation. (...) Israeli government policy is effectively for a de facto single state, but one in which most Palestinians are denied basic rights. (...)

Whether in a single state with equal rights, or in two states, “self-determination” can only be the self-determination of all the people who live between the river and the sea, Palestinians and Jews, in a shared future. No bomb, no butchery can erase that.

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Tags: #palestine #palestinians #israel #gaza #west_bank #occupied_territories #human_rights #illegal_settlements #hamas #hezbollah #hypocrisy #double_standard #media #press #news #journalist #journalism #false_equivalence

The double standard with Israel and Palestine leaves us in moral darkness

The Guardian

Biden and Zelenskiy support a war they say was ‘unprovoked’ but a defenseless population will pay for media misinformation. (...)

After Hamas’s deadly attacks in Israel and Israel’s hellish bombardment of Gaza, I checked in on MSNBC. Before long, I heard one of their reporters talk about “the violent history between these two nations” – as if Palestine were a country – and had to turn off the TV to get a break. Palestine is not a country. That’s the whole point. Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel all live under various regimes of organized discrimination and oppression, much of which makes life nearly unlivable, and if the US media can’t even frame the issue correctly, what use is there in even covering it?

It’s not just laziness either. The reflexive identification with Israel, by both US media professionals and politicians, always obscures the fuller picture of what’s happening between Israel and the Palestinians. (...)

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Women hold candles during a rally to show support to Palestinians and against Israel's military operations in Gaza, in Santiago, Chile, on 10 October 2023. Photograph: Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images.

[T]he US “unequivocally condemns the unprovoked attacks by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians”. (...)

What exactly counts as a provocation? Not, apparently, the large number of settlers, more than 800 by one media account, who stormed al-Aqsa mosque on 5 October. Not the 248 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces or settlers between 1 January and 4 October of this year. Not the denial of Palestinian human rights and national aspirations for decades. One can, in fact must, see such actions as provocations without endorsing further murderous violence against civilians. But if you watched only US news, you would be likely to presume that Palestinians always act while Israel only reacts. You might even think that Palestinians are the ones colonizing the land of Israel, no less. And you probably believe that Israel, which holds ultimate control over the lives of 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and yet denies them the right to vote in Israeli elections, is a democracy. (...)

There’s the nagging hypocrisy of the war in Ukraine. So many around the world support Ukraine’s resistance to foreign occupation (as they should) but blithely deny Palestinians any way to resist their occupation. Even non-violent methods of resistance like the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign is vilified and even criminalized. Why the double standard? (...)

One fundamental way this double standard operates is through a false equivalence, a two-sides-ism that hides the massive asymmetry of power between the state of Israel and the scattered population groupings that make up the Palestinian people. They’re not equal. One dominates while the other is dominated. One colonizes. The other is colonized. (...)

Today, a negotiated peace seems farther away than ever. (...)

The future is full of unnecessary and horrific bloodshed all around. Desperate western attachment to morally bankrupt double standards bears a large portion of the blame.

Complete article

> See also: The West’s hypocrisy towards Gaza’s breakout is stomach-turning

Tags: #palestine #palestinians #israel #gaza #west_bank #occupies_territories #human_rights #illegal_settlements #hamas #hezbollah #hypocrisy #double_standard #media #press #news #journalist #journalism #false_equivalence