[link removed]
FAIR
View article on FAIR's website ([link removed])
'Apartheid' Designation Ignored as Israel Kills Children in Gaza Again Bryce Greene ([link removed])
Human Rights Watch: A Threshold Crossed
Human Rights Watch (4/27/21 ([link removed]) ) recognized Israeli domination of Palestinians as an apartheid system more than two years ago.
Israel's recent bombing ([link removed]) of the Gaza Strip from May 9–13 killed 33 Palestinians, including seven children. FAIR looked at coverage of these attacks from the Washington Post, New York Times and CNN, and didn’t find a single reference to Israel as an apartheid state, despite this being the consensus in the human rights community.
Since apartheid is the overriding condition that leads to Israel’s violent outbursts, and since the US has vigorously supported Israel for the last 60 years, US media should be putting it front and center in their coverage. Omitting it allows Israel to continue to portray any violence from Palestinians as a result of senseless hostility, rather than emerging from the conditions imposed by Israel. For audiences, that distortion serves to justify Israel’s attacks on civilians and continued collective punishment of all Palestinians.
The term apartheid originated with the South African system of systematic racial segregation, which was not unlike ([link removed]) Jim Crow in the United States. Apartheid is considered a crime against humanity—defined in the UN's Apartheid Convention as “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.”
The term has been increasingly applied to the Israeli apparatus of checkpoints, segregation, surveillance, arbitrary detentions and extrajudicial murders that it uses to oppress Palestinians. In particular, the exclusion ([link removed]) of most Palestinians under Israeli control from participation in Israeli politics, under the pretense that Palestinian areas either are or someday will be independent, mirrors ([link removed]) the disenfranchisement of Black South Africans through the creation of fictitious countries known as bantustans.
Human Rights Watch published a report ([link removed]) in 2021 titled A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution. That same year, the leading Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, labeled ([link removed]) Israel’s rule “a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” Amnesty International published a major report ([link removed]) in 2022 on “Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians.”
After the biggest, most respected human rights organizations labeled Israel an apartheid state, much of the US political establishment erupted in bipartisan indignation ([link removed]) in defense of Israel. The New York Times actually refused to even mention the Amnesty International report for 52 days (Mondoweiss, 3/24/22 ([link removed]) ).
** 'Trading fire'
------------------------------------------------------------
WaPo: Israel and Gaza militants face off for fourth day amid scramble for truce
The Washington Post (5/12/23 ([link removed]) ) depicts a "face off" between a society under siege and the besieging forces.
Gaza, the Palestinian enclave between Israel and the Mediterranean, is arguably the most abused territory under the apartheid regime. Most of the water in the enclave fails to meet international standards, and was even called “undrinkable ([link removed]) ” by the United Nations. The illegal blockade regularly prevents important medicine and other supplies from being widely available in the country.
Regular Israeli military attacks on the Gaza Strip are a key part of the repression, killing unarmed civilians, destroying neighborhoods, schools and hospitals—most notably in 2008 ([link removed]) , 2012 ([link removed]) , 2014 ([link removed]) and 2021 ([link removed]) . These periodic attacks on the Palestinians, often crassly referred to ([link removed]) as “mowing the grass,” have killed ([link removed]) 5,460 Palestinians since 2007. International observers have often referred to Gaza as an “open-air prison
([link removed].) ,” with 2 million people being crammed into 146 square miles.
The recent Gaza coverage fails to capture this context, and instead portrays the situation as a conflict between equals. The Washington Post (5/12/23 ([link removed]) ) described it as a "face off" when (at that point) 30 Palestinians, including six children, were killed by Israeli airstrikes, along with one Israeli killed by Palestinian rocket fire; a New York Times article (5/11/23 ([link removed]) ) described the conflict as Israel and Islamic Jihad “trad[ing] fire.” Another New York Times (5/12/23 ([link removed]) ) headline vaguely referred to the attack as “A New Round of Middle East Fighting.”
CNN (4/12/23 ([link removed]) ) used the classic whitewashing word “clash ([link removed]) ” in describing the attacks. CNN’s use of the term was even more striking because it appeared in a headline that included the incongruity between 30 dead Palestinians and one dead Israeli.
Outlets gave several “how we got here” pieces that purported to give context for the current escalation (e.g., New York Times, 5/9/23 ([link removed]) ; Washington Post, 5/13/23 ([link removed]) ). Again, not a single article FAIR reviewed used the term "apartheid" or referenced the recent findings from human rights NGOs to describe the current situation in Palestine.
** 'Consequences of territorial ambitions'
------------------------------------------------------------
Guardian: Israel treats Palestinian territories like colonies, says UN rapporteur
UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese (Guardian, 5/12/23 ([link removed]) ): Israel "cannot justify the occupation in the name of self-defense, or the horror it imposes on the Palestinians in the name of self-defense.”
On a recent trip to London, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Territories, criticized the the tendency to omit important context and trends in the discussions about Israel (Guardian, 5/12/23 ([link removed]) ):
For me, apartheid is a symptom and a consequence of the territorial ambitions Israel has for the land of what remains of an encircled Palestine.... Israel is a colonial power maintaining the occupation in order to get as much land as possible for Jewish-only people. And this is what leads to the numerous violations of international law.
Member states need to stop commenting on violations here or there, or escalation of violence, since violence in the occupied Palestinian territory is cyclical, it is not something that accidentally explodes. There is only one way to fix it, and that is to make sure that Israel complies with international law.
The dominant and overriding context of anything that happens in Israel/Palestine is the fact that the state of Israel is running an apartheid regime in the entirety of the territory it controls. Any obfuscation or equivocation of that fact serves only to downplay the severity of Israeli crimes and the US complicity in them.
Read more ([link removed])
Share this post: <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="[link removed]" title="Twitter"><img border="0" height="15" width="15" src="[link removed]" title="Twitter" alt="Twitter" class="mc-share"></a>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="[link removed]" title="Facebook"><img border="0" height="15" width="15" src="[link removed]" title="Facebook" alt="Facebook" class="mc-share"></a>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="[link removed]" title="Pinterest"><img border="0" height="15" width="15" src="[link removed]" title="Pinterest" alt="Pinterest" class="mc-share"></a>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="[link removed]" title="LinkedIn"><img border="0" height="15" width="15" src="[link removed]" title="LinkedIn" alt="LinkedIn" class="mc-share"></a>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="[link removed]" title="Google Plus"><img border="0" height="15" width="15" src="[link removed]" title="Google Plus" alt="Google Plus" class="mc-share"></a>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="[link removed]" title="Instapaper"><img border="0" height="15" width="15" src="[link removed]" title="Instapaper" alt="Instapaper" class="mc-share"></a>
© 2021 Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because you signed up for email alerts from
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
Our mailing address is:
FAIRNESS & ACCURACY IN REPORTING
124 W. 30th Street, Suite 201
New York, NY 10001
FAIR's Website ([link removed])
FAIR counts on your support to do this work — please donate today ([link removed]) .
Follow us on Twitter ([link removed]) | Friend us on Facebook ([link removed])
change your preferences ([link removed])
Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp
[link removed]
unsubscribe ([link removed]) .
