Maryam Sakeenah – Hiba Magazine Team Writer
A cursory look at the history of the implantation of the Zionist state in the heart of Palestine and the events that ensued make it absolutely clear that Palestinians have been subjected to systematic oppression and injustice. When October 7th, 2023 happened, it was evident for anyone with a very basic understanding of the history of the region that this was an inevitable reaction to over 70 years of brutal subjugation and state sponsored violence.
Yet for most people residing in the European or American continents, the writing on the wall had never been obvious. Ten months down the blood-splattered trajectory, many still debate whether Palestinians are also entitled to human rights.
For still more, it took thousands of excruciating images of unimaginable cruelty, death and destruction to realize that Israel’s right to defend itself does little to vindicate the agony being inflicted on vulnerable Palestinians.
It has taken ten months of relentless, brutal assault and incomprehensible suffering for some of us to abandon our indifference and insensitivity – and for many more, it is still not enough.
Yet psychologists and philosophers tell us that human beings are endowed with empathy as a part of their nature. The systematic dehumanization of a people renders others incapable of empathising with them. For Palestinians to be perceived as non-human, the powerful Zionist lobbies influenced Western media to make a concerted and consistent effort.
Through selective relaying of information, prioritization of a single narrative and suppression of counter-narratives, the media has deflected human empathy away from the plight of Palestine.
In addition, distortion and manipulation of facts and the ground realities in order to suit the interests of Israel, stereotyping and propaganda are routinely used by the global media. This has made sure Palestinian voices remain unheard, their stories untold and their narrative marginalized. The Israeli narrative is mainstreamed unquestioningly.
Language is used very insidiously to push forward the narrative of Israel as a victim of Palestinian ‘terrorism’, entitled to ‘defend itself’ against a battered, besieged nation of orphans, limbless youth, bereaved widows and traumatized, emaciated men.
For example, mainstream news media routinely refers to the Israeli assault on Gaza as the ‘Israel-Hamas conflict’. This is problematic because it puts the Zionist nuclear armed state at par with the Palestinian resistance whose arsenal only comprises home-made primitive ‘rockets’ that work more like small fireworks and are nearly always intercepted by the Israeli Iron Dome technology. It makes it seem like a war between equals.
However, Israel is one of the most heavily armed nations in the world equipped by the wealth of the entire Western hemisphere, while the besieged Palestinians are homeless stone-throwing, slingshot-wielding barefoot children. On the one hand is an invincible military power and on the other hand is a stateless entity reduced to rubble, a population comprising refugees and internally displaced people deprived of the most basic essentials for meagre survival. It is not a conflict, but a military onslaught- an offensive, a genocidal war on civilians who are mostly children and women.
Another problematic construct that is frequently used in stories from Agence France Presse (AFP) is that what is going on in Gaza is Israel’s ‘retaliatory campaign provoked by the Hamas attack on October 7.’ This conveys that the incursion into Israeli territory on October 7 was the reason why Israel launched its biggest military onslaught that pales the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the defenceless people of occupied and besieged Gaza. It ignores the fact that October the 7 was itself a reaction or retaliation to ongoing systematic oppression unleashed on Palestinians since years.
It ignores the fact that the Israeli attack on Gaza was well-planned, pre-meditated and orchestrated after decades of military buildup, planning, AI-assisted execution under the supervision of Israel’s ultra conservative rightwing government.
Hardline Zionist warmonger Netanyahu presides over a cabinet dominated by radicals who openly reject the two state solution and any prospects of Palestinian statehood. Individuals like finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir had been kicking up war hysteria well before October 7, and have never masked their intent to carry out the wholesale elimination of Palestine. October 7 certainly did not happen in a vacuum.
Similarly, referring to the Palestinian resistance as ‘militancy’ or worse, ‘terrorism’ implies that the resistance movement against illegal occupation is a sort of rebellion against a legitimate authority.
Referring to Israelis who have forcibly occupied and have illegally settled in Palestinian lands as ‘settlers’ ignores that, under international law, these ‘settlements’ are a violation and a breach of fundamental rights. It also ignores that these ‘settlers’ are in effect colonizers who use violence and terror to extort territory from those who rightfully own it.
A careful study of news headlines from mainstream media reveals that the passive voice is often used when referring to Israeli war crimes. For example, saying that a certain number of Palestinian deaths or casualties occurred as a result of a certain operation ‘targeting Hamas’ does not convey the fact that Israel killed children playing in a football field or sheltering in a school, or under treatment at a ramshackle hospital. It does not report that the attack was planned knowing fully well that children, families, women, grandmothers would be killed. Often, the ‘Hamas target’ the attack aimed for has no additional details provided at all other than a vague reference, and the death toll of innocent civilians is minimized as ‘collateral damage’ in an operation for self-defence.
The overall effect of the use of language to vindicate the Israeli narrative is that of desensitization of the Western public towards the suffering of Palestine. It makes atrocities committed against innocent people seem routine- as if this was the Palestinian ‘normal’.
In employing language to undermine the cause of Palestinian freedom so deliberately, systematically and strategically, the international media bears responsibility and culpability as a diabolical party to the genocide of Palestinians.
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