Assal Rad at Zeteo: When a poll in March showed that only about half of Americans could correctly answer that more Palestinians had been killed in the war on Gaza than Israelis, many of those who have been following the conflict were stunned. After all, the gap between Israeli and Palestinian deaths is enormous. By early March, Israel’s war on Gaza had killed more than 31,000 Palestinians.
Perhaps, however, it’s not all that surprising, given the coverage of the war by U.S. mainstream media, which appears to be going to great lengths to help absolve Israel of its crimes and dehumanize Palestinians.
The New York Times has been particularly egregious in removing Israel’s criminal responsibility from the broader story. In April, the Intercept reported a Times memo leak in which the paper’s reporters were instructed to avoid words and phrases like “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” “occupied territory,” and “Palestine,” according to the Intercept.
To see the memo’s impact, you only have to look at the NYT’s headlines – something I’ve been doing since the war began. I’ve also been ‘fixing’ them so that they reflect the reality on the ground rather than covering it up.
Take the paper’s headline from a live blog update about the most recent Israeli massacre in Gaza’s Al-Mawasi camp, an area – designated a “safe zone” by Israel – that’s sheltering tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians. “Questions Swirl After Deadly Strike Targeting Hamas Commander,” the headline read.
There is no mention of Israel, which carried out the “deadly strike,” and the phrase “questions swirl” casts doubt on the nature of Israel’s attack. Instead of focusing on yet another Israeli massacre of civilians in a “safe zone,” the headline draws attention to the official Israeli point of view that a Hamas commander was the target. It fails to mention at least 90 Palestinians were killed.
The Times June 21 headline about an earlier Israeli massacre in the same camp wasn’t much better. “Strike on Area Where Displaced Gazans Were Camped Kills Up to 25,” it said.
The passive headline does not mention Israel, instead attributing the killing of Palestinians to a vague “strike.” Nor does it say that this wasn’t the first time Israel bombarded Al-Mawasi, among the areas where the Israeli military ordered Palestinians to go early in the war and after it invaded Rafah. The paper appears to go to painstaking lengths to avoid calling the area a “refugee camp” – another phrase Times reporters were told to avoid, per the Intercept.
It also uses “Gazans” as the catch-all term for all Palestinians in Gaza, when, in fact, more than half of the enclave’s population is made up of displaced Palestinians whose families were forced to leave their towns and villages during the 1948 Nakba.
More here.
