This site has long explained that one way the U.S. mainstream media distorts the news from Israel/Palestine is by downplaying or hiding vicious, violent Jewish supremacists. The latest example of this bias is how the U.S. press reacted to yesterday’s provocative Flag March by thousands of Israelis through Jerusalem’s Old City.
The New York Times report is breathtakingly distorted — but at least the paper ran an article. In the Washington Post and on National Public Radio: nothing. CNN did cover the event, which included footage of the Israeli police physically attacking the cable network’s reporter.
Let’s dissect the Times article. The bias started right in the sub-headline, which reads: “The annual parade marks the unification of the city after Israel captured East Jerusalem [during the Six-Day War] in 1967.” Stop right there. Palestinians have argued for decades that any two-state solution must include East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital — but the Times is apparently already annexing the entire city for Israel.
In paragraph 3, the report resorts to both-sides-ism to a nearly comical degree: “Israeli officials say the parade is a largely peaceful and festive event marred only by a small minority of participants. But several groups of marchers were filmed making threats to Arabs, and some threw sticks and bottles for several minutes at Arab journalists in full view of the police, injuring at least four journalists, according to medics.”
The bias here is astonishing. Keep in mind that the paper has an actual correspondent based in Jerusalem. Why would you quote “Israeli officials” about how peaceful the march was instead of using your own eyes? Why wouldn’t you interview the four injured journalists instead of citing “medics?” (And why call people “Arabs” who prefer to be known as either “Palestinian citizens of Israel” or “Palestinians?”)
Luckily, we live in the age of the internet. A quick perusal of Twitter shows Israeli Jewish marchers attacking Palestinians while the police either stand by or even join in. In one tweet, a mainstream Israeli TV news program is interviewing an older Palestinian gentleman — when an Israeli police officer approaches, and right on camera throws the Palestinian’s phone to the ground and then drags him away.
Israeli police and their Jewish supremacist allies were so arrogant that they even manhandled a CNN reporter, Ben Wedeman, and producer, Kareem Khadder. The clip that CNN aired is above, but here is a longer version that circulated on social media:
The paper also downplayed the fact that Israel’s present government was well represented in yesterday’s march. You had to wait until paragraph 12 to learn that Itamar Ben-Gvir, the powerful Jewish-supremacist national security minister, joined the procession. Why didn’t a Times reporter ask him for comment?
The Times also whitewashed part of the reason Palestinians are so worried about the future of the Old City, particularly the Al-Aqsa mosque. The paper quoted the leader of a rightwing Jewish group, who it said “advocates building a new Jewish temple at the heart of the Aqsa compound.” The Times makes it sound like an innocent construction proposal. In fact, the 1300-year-old mosque is already there, but the Times failed to explain that Jewish supremacists actually want to blow it up to replace it with a temple.
The Times also made no effort to connect the Flag Day march with the larger dangerous and worsening reality in Israel/Palestine. By contrast, the Israeli daily Haaretz said in an editorial:
Regrettably, the march, with its displays of racism, hatred and violence, accurately reflects Israeli society today, not only in Jerusalem and not only on Jerusalem Day. The essence of the Flag March is to poke a finger in the eye of the city’s Palestinian inhabitants, to humiliate them and to drive home the fact that 40 percent of the residents of Israel’s capital live under occupation.