US Media Bias: The Other Side of the Gaza Invasion

Collective punishment has long been the policy of Israel towards the Palestinian people. For years, Israel cut off access to Israel from the territories whenever there was a terrorist strike leaving a large proportion of Palestinians out of work. Most gainful employment was in Israel. Israel has consistently denied that was it's intent, citing security considerations.
This week, Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his cabinet that, “I want nobody to sleep at night in Gaza.” The quote was published worldwide, but not in the US. Why is that? It would appear that the Neocons, on the outs in the White House, still control US Corporate media.
ZNet

On July 2 Ehud Olmert told his cabinet that, “I want nobody to sleep at night in Gaza. I want them to know what it’s like” in Israel’s communities near Gaza that have been hit by Palestinian Qassam rockets. His statement referred directly to Israel’s practices of waking Palestinians in the middle of the night by repeatedly flying jets overhead that create sonic booms, and of shelling Gaza at night. Additionally, Israel keeps Gazans awake at night with worry about poverty, siege, imminent attack, and lack of electricity, water, fuel and food. Olmert’s statement was widely reported in the Israeli media, and by the Associated Press, The Chicago Tribune, The International Herald Tribune, and the UK’s Guardian, among others. A google news search for his quote yields 279 articles, mostly from newspaper websites around the US. Some of these papers undoubtedly printed this story.
Yet there was no hint of Olmert’s words in LA Times or Washington Post. The New York Times’ coverage is more interesting. New York Times’ correspondents Steven Erlanger and Ian Fisher reported the quote in an on-line article that was also published in the International Herald Tribune. However, the quote never appeared in the Times’ print edition. The Times’ editors seem to have decided that Olmert’s words were not “fit to print,” and deleted them from their journalists’ report. The conspicuous absence of such a widely reported and telling quote raises the possibility that the leading US papers actively avoid printing information that makes Israel look too obviously bad.


What is certain is that the leading US papers generally omit the frameworks of human rights and international law as well as related concepts like collective punishment, and proportionality, all of which have been consistently violated by Israel. On July 3, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem specifically criticized Olmert’s statement, saying that, “The use of sonic booms flagrantly breaches a number of provisions of international humanitarian law. The most significant provision is the prohibition on collective punishment. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention… categorically states that "Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited." In addition to criticizing sonic booms, Human Rights Watch noted on June 29 that “The laws of war prohibit attacks on “objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population.” Israel’s attack on Gaza’s only power plant is in violation of its obligation to safeguard such objects from attack.”


[...]None of the editorials noted that Palestinians killed and captured Israeli soldiers implementing a siege of Gaza. None noted the irony that Palestinians were holding a single Israeli soldier prisoner, while Israel is holding 9,000 Palestinian prisoners, many civilians held without due process, and some enduring torture. In a sentence that could have been drafted by an Israeli government PR firm, The Post’s editors wrote that “the militants' demand that Israel release Palestinian prisoners it has legally arrested in exchange for a soldier who was attacked while guarding Israeli territory.”


After rationalizing Israel’s arrest of 60 Hamas leaders, many of them Palestinian Authority Ministers and elected members of the Palestinian parliament, The Post’s editors then downplayed Israel’s destruction of an electric plant that provides half of Gaza’s power. In a final outrage that combined both blindness towards Israeli violence and complete disregard for international law, The Post’s July 1 editorial recommended that the Arab States and the UN stop “fulminating about supposed Israeli war crimes.”


Once again, Israeli government spin overpowers the Palestinian narrative, and human rights and international law are belittled. These examples illustrate how the US corporate media is actively shaping the information reported to the US public to Israel’s advantage, and promoting the view that Hamas and Palestinian terrorism are the sole problem in Israel/Palestine. Without more balanced reporting from establishment media outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times, US policy and public opinion on Israel/Palestine are also unlikely to become much more balanced. The need for media activism on Israel/Palestine is more vital than ever.

Update: A growing number of Jews agree that what is going on in Gaza is about collective punishment.
BBC

Some 300 British Jews have signed a petition condemning Israel's military actions in the Gaza Strip. The group, including dozens of well-known figures, says it has "watched with horror" Israel's response to the capture of a soldier.