Today’s Good News: More Cracks In Pro-Israel Media Wall
Certainly most of what we in America hear and see about Israel’s current offensive in Gaza is the usual “Poor little Israel can do no wrong” PR blitz. However, the alternative media is becoming bolder in presenting the truth. And thanks to the Internet, we have more access to foreign media. With any luck, Israel will come to regret this attack as the beginning of the end of their unstinting support in America. Alternet has been great, featuring scholar Stephen Zune on how the US and Israel conspired to create the Hamas bogeyman in the 80’s. A quote from Zune’s article: “Israel’s priorities in suppressing Palestinian dissent during this period were revealing: In 1988, Israel forcibly exiled Palestinian activist Mubarak Awad, a Christian pacifist who advocated the use of Gandhian-style resistance to the Israeli occupation and Israeli-Palestinian peace, while allowing Sheik Ahmed Yassin to circulate anti-Jewish hate literature and publicly call for the destruction of Israel by force of arms.”
Another story notes that Palestinians are “under a rain of cluster bombs, dropped by Israel, bought and sold by us. Last night, the US blocked – once again – a call for a cease-fire at the UN Security Council, today Senate “leaders” Harry Reid, Dick Durbin and Mitch McConnell were standing solidly behind Israel’s ground operation against Hamas…let’s tell them where we stand.” Check out all of Alternet’s coverage here.
Common Dreams headlines “UN Leader: Invasion A Monstrosity.” Huffington Post, called one of the biggest media stories of the year by Adweek for its explosive growth, tells us that even Jews in Sderot, where Hamas rockets have fallen, oppose this war (see the story here). (Most deliciously, E&P notes the almost complete silence of the New York Times on this matter.) They give us a story in the under-appreciated Editor and Publisher entitled “US Media Coverage Of Gaza Invasion Largely Biased Toward Israel.” (Stop the presses! Check out the story here) Huffpo also links to a story in the Israeli paper Haaretz entitled “Right and Left, Diaspora Jews More Critical of Israel Than Ever.”
Anshell Pfeffer writes that Jews who care about Israel but are troubled by the excessive violence find that “others around them… can’t find in themselves compassion for the dead and wounded on the other side. They begin asking themselves very awkward questions: Are they surrounded by latent racists?” He ends this way: “While the world’s Jews are still broadly in favor of Israel, they have more information and less innocence than ever before, and will give support, but with a healthy dose of criticism…Both Israeli and Diaspora leaders should be providing space for this kind of discourse, because stifling [it] will not consolidate support for Israel but increase frustration and disillusionment with it.”
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