Shots were fired again at a Jewish school, the same school in my daughter's neighbourhood that was shot at last week. This time my daughter reports hearing the gunshots, they woke her up at about 5am.
That is unnerving enough.
Forget about MSNBC, and the everpresent Ayman Mohideen, who looks like he's about to explode as he tries to withhold his bias every time he's asked to provide 'analysis' of the conflict. On the weekend I watched the gorefest, otherwise known as the coverage of "Israel's War With Hamas" as they call it on CNN. Why is Fox looking moderate these days, as the so-called mainstream media tries to 'two-sides' this. Have they not learned a thing from the trump years? On CNN I watched the heartwrenching pleas from a Norwegian doctor working in Gaza named Mads Gilbert. His face filled the screen, eyes looked desperate and frightened, as he pleaded to 'President Biden and Mr. Blinken' to stop the bombing, amid horrific background screams. You'd have to be a stone not to feel for this man's anxiety. But a few minutes passed, the high emotion of the moment receded (I changed the channel) and then I asked myself, wait, why is he asking for Biden and Blinken to take action? They aren't the ones dropping the bombs and firing the bullets. Why the two-step dance. Why not ask Hamas to release the hostages and surrender? That would do the trick in one straightforward step. Easy. The answer is just as straightforward. Because he knows Hamas won't do it. He knows they don't give two hoots about all the lives of the people at the hospital. He knows that Hamas has been sacrificing those lives, innocent women and children, for almost two decades at this point, and more bloodshed is their best strategy because they are so outgunned. He knows that Biden and Blinken may actually be the only ones with any influence who care. A little online digging reveals that in addition to being a physician who has worked in Gaza, Dr. Gilbert is a Norwegian politician and activist. He is outspoken about US 'aggression' in the Middle-East and has been a public apologist for terror attacks against both Israel and the US. He even excused the attacks of 9/11 as morally justified. In 2006 he encouraged people to boycott Medecins Sans Frontiere (Doctors Without Borders) because they were not political enough. You wouldn't know any of this from the clip that aired on CNN.
It's affective journalism to personalize news coverage. When it comes to covering conflict, they talk to the people directly involved, the eyewitnesses and people impacted by the terrible events. There are always victims on both sides, so once you hear from one side of the victim equation, you have to hear from the other side if there is going to be 'journalistic balance'. The coverage becomes all about which side is suffering more, which encourages the sides to play up their suffering as much as possible, of course. From the standpoint of optimizing TV viewership this gets dicey, because at some point a fascination with suffering becomes overwhelming and starts turning people off. Rather than turning people off hopefully it gets them to take a step back from the pain and horror to think about which side they should be on, the side that perpetuates the conflict or the side that wants it to end:
The side that cares about the wellbeing of its citizens, or the side that sees them as expendable?
The side that has achievable political goals like peace and security, or the side that is motivated by absolutist religious ideology that glorifies maryrdom?
Whenever I've been asked about what side of the Israel-Palestine conflict I'm on, I always say the side of peace. I support any policies, actions and initiatives that I believe will take us closer to peace. What I know for certain is that Hamas is not interested in peace. Iran is not interested in peace. The media is not interested in peace. Flag-waving students chanting for intifada to 'Free Palestine' are not interested in peace. Defeating Hamas is a step toward peace. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that.
3 comments:
The media make the completely biased Norwegian doctor appear like he's "objective" when in fact he has his own political agenda.
The last paragraph of your post is perfect! Perfectly articulated!
He’s Norwegian! The place where they give the Nobel Peace Prize. He can’t be biased!
I also watched a clip of Dr. Gilbert saying that he's worked at Shifa hospital for many many years and he's never seen a hint that there is a Hamas command center built under the facility. Yesterday, US intelligence publicly issued a statement that they agreed with Israel's assertion that it's there. I suspect that there is no way Israel would take the risk of surgical (pun intended) military operations at the hospital if they weren't sure it was there. Once it's proven, as it was at Rantisi, will Dr. Gilbert and apologists like him come forward to publicly admit they were wrong? In the face of such unequivocal proof will they finally denounce Hamas as war criminals and a threat to humanity? Somehow I doubt it. It should be a turning point in public opinion, but in the current political climate, with people so stuck in their informational silos, it's hard to see much changing.
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