The Mechanisms of Media Bias in the I/P Conflict

[Evilroddy]

This a a reasonably good video explaining why mainstream media present a pro-Israel bias in reportage about the I/P conflict and why independent media have so much trouble dealing with organised blow-back for trying to be more objective than the mainstream media giants they share reportage with.

The video is not perfect, as twice it uses the very slanted word "god-father(s)" (with a clear mafioso connotation) to describe David Ben Gurion and other early leaders of the Zionist project. But aside from these two transgressions, the video presents a very clear and remarkably accurate view of the organised media manipulation done by partisan organisations (cited often by posters in this forum, including myself) and the self-censorship of media organisations plus their censure of reporters who go against the self-censorship in the wake of that media manipulation.



How can clearer and less slanted media coverage of the I/P conflict be achieved and how can the media manipulation be hamstrung to allow more view points and greater truth of different dimensions of this conflict to be reported in this hotly contested area? The very language and vocabulary of reportage is now a battlefield in the reportage!

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[Fishking]

the video presents a very clear and remarkably accurate view of the organised media manipulation done by partisan organisations (cited often by posters in this forum, including myself) and the self-censorship of media organisations plus their censure of reporters who go against the self-censorship in the wake of that media manipulation.

Haven't gotten to the video yet (I will and will post further thoughts on that, I'm sure), but the whole "Jews control the media" is an old anti-Semitic trope and it's also quite divorced from reality as the media has always had a bias against Israel and a bias for Palestinians, outside of the very few conservative sources.

 

[Evilroddy]

Haven't gotten to the video yet (I will and will post further thoughts on that, I'm sure), but the whole "Jews control the media" is an old anti-Semitic trope and it's also quite divorced from reality as the media has always had a bias against Israel and a bias for Palestinians, outside of the very few conservative sources.

Fishking:

Yes, you really should watch the video because it has little to do with any kind of "Jewish control" of the mainstream media. It's about media self-censorship and the selective and biased language and terms used by the media and its agents to shape the terms of public debate with regards to the I/P conflict.

When media outlets do not use these terms, self-censor and becomes too objective, then a public relations machine kicks into gear to demonise and discredit the offending media outlet. Knowing this ahead of time and wanting to avoid a shit-storm of cyber-flaming and brand damaging attacks, the commercial mainstream media rather censors itself, it's reporters and its reportage and thus becomes incapable of objectively reporting on the I/P conflict without bias. Meanwhile independent media outlets and individual freelance and amateur journalists are watched, monitored, publicly pilloried and in the worst case legally sanctioned or intimidated/killed if they are too objective or present their reportage in a manner which threatens to jam the messaging from the self-censoring commercial mainstream media.

It is this PR machine which is largely funded by, and based in, the USA which shapes the terms of public debate in the I/P conflict and to a lesser extent in many other conflicts in which the US state has a role or an interest. Corporate/private/commercial media, mainstream public media and independent journalism is herded or bullied to follow a certain line or suffer serious consequences to their brands, their bottom-lines and their ability to function smoothly. There is an American-funded, globally active media-mafia at work in the reporting media space and it is a ruthless racket which brooks no deviation from a certain locus of perceptions and language being peddled in key conflicts of interest.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[Fishking]

This a a reasonably good video explaining why mainstream media present a pro-Israel bias in reportage about the I/P conflict and why independent media have so much trouble dealing with organised blow-back for trying to be more objective than the mainstream media giants they share reportage with.

So I'll start breaking things down as I come across them.

He takes issue with Israel being mentioned but not Palestine. I don't know if that's an actual thing but even then it's not so simple. Palestine isn't really a solidified country, they don't even have UN status. It is a territory run by terrorist organizations that haven't had a legitimate government for my entire life, so far as I understand (I'm 42). Further, Gaza and the West Bank aren't even run by the same terrorist organization and they'd kill each other if they had the power to do so. So which one of those is "Palestine"?

Further, he claims terms are "objective" like "war" isn't while "siege" and "occupation" are. That's merely showing his bias. Showing, not objectivity.

He claims there was "peace in the Middle East" which wasn't the case at all. There has always been some war and conflict but, yes, there was a time when Jews (or any non-Muslim) were treated as second class citizens and discriminated against. As soon as they tried to gain some power for themselves that was not allowed. Look at every Muslim-majority country and tell me that other people are allowed to gain power and what type of leadership exists there.

He talks about the Palestinian refugees as if there wasn't and ongoing conflict that was causing that to happen. Nope...it was just a one-way street according to his POV.

He complains that you can't call Israel a "settler-colony" when just previously he said there were Jews there already. And who "colonized" Israel? No country sent their citizens there to set up a colony. A desperate and oppressed ethic group went to their historical homeland fleeing the atrocities of the Holocaust to try and gain some control over their own fate, but this guy just blithely acts like they just come in as a powerful group for no reason and were assholes because he doesn't ****ing care that Jews were slaughtered by the millions in the most systemic manner to ever happen in human history.

"Decades of ethnic cleansing" is used by him instead of defensive operations because, you know, the ****ing multiple wars of attempted genocide and the non-stop terrorist attacks that have never stopped. Remember, Hamas (the "legit" government of Gaza) has in it's charter the call for literal ethnic cleansing of Israel of Jews. What this dude omits from his extremely biased drivel could fill a mountain.

He treats criticism of anti-Israel news stories as some kind of proof in itself that the media is pushed to bias towards Israel but doesn't allow for the things being criticized as possibly being criticized legitimately. That's ****ing dumb.

Finally, half the premise of his entire video is based off of his made up impression of one tweet that he found and guessing that it was the cause of a single journalist's firing. No questions asked about it, no follow up, no statements from anyone, just him making shit up from out of his ass.

I think that covers pretty much everything.

 

[Fishking]

Fishking:

Yes, you really should watch the video because it has little to do with any kind of "Jewish control" of the mainstream media. It's about media self-censorship and the selective and biased language and terms used by the media and its agents to shape the terms of public debate with regards to the I/P conflict.

The whole thing was about Jewish/Israel control of the media. It's literally it's premise. "The news can't/won't report on the conflicts honestly because Israel controls them/they are afraid of Israel."

The reality is is that the media is fairly rabidly biased against Israel, academia is rabidly against Israel, and it's not even close. That he has somehow turned it on it's head to try and say that it is the opposite is crazy-town.

 

[Mithrae]

The video is not perfect, as twice it uses the very slanted word "god-father(s)" (with a clear mafioso connotation) to describe David Ben Gurion and other early leaders of the Zionist project. But aside from these two transgressions, the video presents a very clear and remarkably accurate view of the organised media manipulation done by partisan organisations (cited often by posters in this forum, including myself) and the self-censorship of media organisations plus their censure of reporters who go against the self-censorship in the wake of that media manipulation.

There were numerous glaring omissions, half-truths and biased perspectives in that video, as Fishking pointed out.

That said there's no question that politicians and governments all around the world work hard on their PR and media image. Actual examples were pretty thin in the video, but presumably the Israeli government funds pro-Israeli advocacy groups, just as in decades past or present historic enemies such as Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and so on presumably fund anti-Israeli advocacy. Choosing to focus only on Israeli advocacy is of course another biased choice.

 

[Evilroddy]

So I'll start breaking things down as I come across them.

He takes issue with Israel being mentioned but not Palestine. I don't know if that's an actual thing but even then it's not so simple. Palestine isn't really a solidified country, they don't even have UN status. It is a territory run by terrorist organizations that haven't had a legitimate government for my entire life, so far as I understand (I'm 42). Further, Gaza and the West Bank aren't even run by the same terrorist organization and they'd kill each other if they had the power to do so. So which one of those is "Palestine"?

Fish king:

Palestine is an historical term and a fait substitute for the Palestinian Occupied Territories. There is no reason not to use it unless one implicitly supports the Zionist movement to absorb all of Palestine into the State of Israel. A good example of this is the effort by State of Israel spokespersons and agents in the media to rebrand the "Occupied Territories" which Israel militarily occupied in 1967 as "Disputed Territories". It's all about the language shaping the debate. California or the tri-state area of the American northeast are not solidified countries but media have no problem using them to describe parts of North America. No one gets grief for doing that. But somehow it's an issue when the word Palestine is uttered in the press. Palestine has official status as a UN Observer Nation, despite vigorous efforts by the State of Israel and its allies to block that. Both Gaza and the Est Bank plus East Jerusalem are part of the Palestinian Occupied Territories even if they are at loggerheads, just as both the Confederacy and the Union were part of America in the 1860's.

Further, he claims terms are "objective" like "war" isn't while "siege" and "occupation" are. That's merely showing his bias. Showing, not objectivity.

Do you dispute that the territories which the State of Israel seized by military force in a war of aggression which Israel initiated in 1967 are not under military occupation? Do you dispute that the Gaza part of the Occupied Territories is under siege and blockade by the military arms of the State of Israel since 2007 and the election of Hamas to power in Gaza? The terms "siege" and "occupation" are proper terms for the historical reality lived by Palestinians in the Occupied Territories today, even if certain American PR firms don't appreciate reading and hearing these descriptors.

He claims there was "peace in the Middle East" which wasn't the case at all. There has always been some war and conflict but, yes, there was a time when Jews (or any non-Muslim) were treated as second class citizens and discriminated against. As soon as they tried to gain some power for themselves that was not allowed. Look at every Muslim-majority country and tell me that other people are allowed to gain power and what type of leadership exists there.

Under Ottoman rule there was comparative piece in what is today called the Middle East. Before you give grief to the treatment of Jews and Christians under Islamic rule in the 19th Century and very early 20th Century, remember the treatment of indigenous Americans, Chinese Immigrants and of course African Americans in your own country during that same period of time. By that standard the Jews and Christians were not so badly of in the Islamic world.

He talks about the Palestinian refugees as if there wasn't and ongoing conflict that was causing that to happen. Nope...it was just a one-way street according to his POV.

Sure it's a conflict but is it a conflict between two states or is it a brutal COIN operation against insurrgents and military occupiers in Occupied Territories invaded by a foreign military force? That dimension is not not discussed often in the media, now is it? I wonder why?

Post continued below.

 

[Evilroddy]

He complains that you can't call Israel a "settler-colony" when just previously he said there were Jews there already. And who "colonized" Israel? No country sent their citizens there to set up a colony. A desperate and oppressed ethic group went to their historical homeland fleeing the atrocities of the Holocaust to try and gain some control over their own fate, but this guy just blithely acts like they just come in as a powerful group for no reason and were assholes because he doesn't ****ing care that Jews were slaughtered by the millions in the most systemic manner to ever happen in human history.

Sephardic Jews lived in the Levant in small numbers for much of the modern era. However when the Zionist project got started an ever accelerating stream and later deluge of Ashkenazi Jews from Europe moved in, displaced and disrupted local Arab lives and by the turn of the 20th Century were actively involved in terrorist activities and paramilitary activities in support of the Zionist project. This project was a settler-colonialist project where individual and group actions replaced the actions of the state to drive the colonial objectives forward. The existence of a small, ethnicly different body of Jews in the Levant has nothing to do with settler-colonialism. These original Sephardim looked on in dismay as the Ashkenazi new-comers disrupted their lives too and made the Sephardim equal targets of Arab hate to the Ashkenazi settlers who were driving the violence. The Jews claimed the land as their historical homeland based on their own perceptions of history and religion and by wilfully ignoring the fact that there were people who were non-Jews living on that land when the Zionist bandwagon got rolling. That's the issue the media seldom if ever discusses. Did, as some call it, the "moral imperative" to establish a Jewish State in the Levant include the right to deprive the local Arab population of their land and civil rights? Did the "moral imperative" have baked into it allowances for immoral means to reach a moral goal? Does a home for Jews exclude a equally viable home for Arab Palestinians in the Levant? Does the Zionist project supersede international laws and agreements, willingly signed without duress by the State of Israel?

"Decades of ethnic cleansing" is used by him instead of defensive operations because, you know, the ****ing multiple wars of attempted genocide and the non-stop terrorist attacks that have never stopped. Remember, Hamas (the "legit" government of Gaza) has in it's charter the call for literal ethnic cleansing of Israel of Jews. What this dude omits from his extremely biased drivel could fill a mountain.

The Likud Party Charter has in its preamble and body the assertion that there will never be a Palestinian state in the Levant. Perhaps the terrorism is a product of that occupation and land displacement (we can't use the term you chose to use in this forum). Half of the four Arab Israeli Wars which I think you are referring to were started by the State of Israel (1956 and 1967). Almost all of the post Arab-Israel conflicts since the four Arab-Israeli wars were initiated by the State of Israel. So your case, while emotionally charged, is not so sound based on historical fact. Finally there is the weighing of non-state terrorism and its impacts on people's lives compared to the state terrorism waged by a country against people who are in the way of that country's most important national and religious project.

The State of Israel was born out of terrorism against Arabs and the authorities of British Mandate and the terrorism continues as state-terrorism today. That does not excuse Palestinian terrorism but it does give context. Why does the media ignore the context of terrorism of one side in this struggle for land but rather focuses almost exclusively on the terrorism and militant resistance of just one side, without providing any context.

He treats criticism of anti-Israel news stories as some kind of proof in itself that the media is pushed to bias towards Israel but doesn't allow for the things being criticized as possibly being criticized legitimately. That's ****ing dumb.

Is it dumb or is the dumbness being externally imposed by American interests and American-based PR management firms trying to steer the terms of public debate? That's the question under debate here.

Continued next post.

 

[Evilroddy]

Fishking:

Finally, half the premise of his entire video is based off of his made up impression of one tweet that he found and guessing that it was the cause of a single journalist's firing. No questions asked about it, no follow up, no statements from anyone, just him making shit up from out of his ass.

That impression was confirmed by AP when they issued a clarifying public statement that Ms. Wilder was fired for her public social media posts betraying bias towards the Palestinian cause which she made before being hired by AP. If they objected to these posts then why hire her in the first place? No, the posts which upset AP management were the ones she made during her employment including the one focused on by the video. It is ironic the AP regularly quotes people like Mark Regev who shamelessly and openly supports the actions of the State of Israel but tries to muzzle and then fires a reporter who won't self-censor regarding the people on the other side of the conflict.

I think that covers pretty much everything.

I think your comments have nicely illustrated the effects of self-censorship and shaping the public debate with respect to the I/P conflict. Kill the messenger rather than deal with the message.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[Evilroddy]

There were numerous glaring omissions, half-truths and biased perspectives in that video, as Fishking pointed out.

That said there's no question that politicians and governments all around the world work hard on their PR and media image. Actual examples were pretty thin in the video, but presumably the Israeli government funds pro-Israeli advocacy groups, just as in decades past or present historic enemies such as Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and so on presumably fund anti-Israeli advocacy. Choosing to focus only on Israeli advocacy is of course another biased choice.

Mithrae:

The point is that it is not Israeli PR firms and advocacy groups driving this self-censorship. It is American based groups, firms and the main-stream commercial media editorial and directorates doing the muzzling and language shaping. As I said, this process is not exclusive to the Arab-Israeli conflicts either. It occurs anywhere where American interests are concerned. Are the "Stanford Republican Students" who raised an Internet firestorm over the past comments of former AP reporter Emily Wilder on social media agents of the State of Israel? No, of course not. They're an American advocacy group trying to shape the public debate by disposing of a troublesome reporter, and they succeeded.

Emily Wilder, tradition, and the double standards around objectivity

Three weeks ago today, Emily Wilder, a twenty-two-year-old journalist, joined the Associated Press as a news associate for the Western US region, based in Phoenix, Arizona. A week or so later, conflict in Israel and Palestine started to consume the news cycle. It would go on to consume Wilder’s...

www.cjr.org

AP, in Leaked Memos, Doing Damage Control With Staff: "You Will Have a Voice"

The signature of outgoing AP Executive Editor Sally Buzbee is conspicuously absent from the memo sent over the weekend addressing Wilder's firing.

theintercept.com

Emily Wilder’s Firing Is No Surprise: AP Has Always Been Right-Wing

Emily Wilder’s firing is no surprise: The Associated Press has always been right-wing.

theintercept.com

Understanding this context is key to understanding media bias today with respect to many conflicts arums the globe, including the I/P one.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[Evilroddy]

Both Fishking and Mithrea:

The terms and bias you objected to were not from the video producers but were from Ms. Wilder's social media posts. The makers of the video did not choose these terms, Ms Wilder did. I hope that clarifies both of your attempts to cast the video as biased while it was truly reporting and commenting on words and phrases used by Ms. Wilder.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[Fishking]

Fish king:

I was on a quick break and don't have time to respond or read everything, but I'll come back to you.

 

[Evilroddy]

I was on a quick break and don't have time to respond or read everything, but I'll come back to you.

Fishking:

Sorry about mangling yip our user name. I'm at war with the auto correct on this ai-Pad. Take your time, no need to rush.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[oneworld2]

Haven't gotten to the video yet (I will and will post further thoughts on that, I'm sure), but the whole "Jews control the media" is an old anti-Semitic trope and it's also quite divorced from reality as the media has always had a bias against Israel and a bias for Palestinians, outside of the very few conservative sources.

The presentation in the video clearly shows how terms like seige and miltary occupation, and a couple of others that are not mentionable due to the rules here, are NOT being used to describe the reality of the situations. It's lazy to try to discredit this obvious truth by playing yet another " antisemite" card. You played it without even watching the video !!! That the Israeli/Jewish side of the argument is hugely more effective and organized isn't even in question to any who have been following events for any reasonable length of time.

 

[oneworld2]

He takes issue with Israel being mentioned but not Palestine. I don't know if that's an actual thing but even then it's not so simple. Palestine isn't really a solidified country, they don't even have UN status. It is a territory run by terrorist organizations that haven't had a legitimate government for my entire life, so far as I understand (I'm 42). Further, Gaza and the West Bank aren't even run by the same terrorist organization and they'd kill each other if they had the power to do so. So which one of those is "Palestine"?

Your comments ,imo, show your own hardline bias. You want to know what constitutes the territory of Palestine ? It's the Gaza strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Further, he claims terms are "objective" like "war" isn't while "siege" and "occupation" are. That's merely showing his bias. Showing, not objectivity.

Nobody is ever completely objective about anything. That is a lesson that seems to have escaped most people I come across here, regardless of the subject. There are , however, people who show more objectivity by trying to see through the MSM bs and apply the same standard to all parties.

Is there a seige of Gaza aimed at dethroning Hamas control ? Yes there is and it can be seen as a collective punishment.

Is Israel guilty of an occupation of Palestinian territories ? Yes it is and to make it even worse they have hundreds of thousands of illegal settlers living there.

So why are those terms his "bias" ?Aren't they just the correct terms to apply to the situations ?

He claims there was "peace in the Middle East" which wasn't the case at all. There has always been some war and conflict but, yes, there was a time when Jews (or any non-Muslim) were treated as second class citizens and discriminated against. As soon as they tried to gain some power for themselves that was not allowed. Look at every Muslim-majority country and tell me that other people are allowed to gain power and what type of leadership exists there.

Compared with war in Europe it enjoyed relative peace , with the real wars/battles being the will of the Ottoman overlords. When the first European Zionist Jews started to arrive in Palestine, the indigenous Jewish population sought to keep their distance from them precisely because they had had relatively good relations with their Arab neighbours and saw the influx of European Jews bent on dispossessing the Arab population as trouble. So we are back to, when should we ignore a Jew ? when they don't agree with Zionism or criticize Israeli actions /policies

 

[oneworld2]

This a a reasonably good video explaining why mainstream media present a pro-Israel bias in reportage about the I/P conflict and why independent media have so much trouble dealing with organised blow-back for trying to be more objective than the mainstream media giants they share reportage with.

The video is not perfect, as twice it uses the very slanted word "god-father(s)" (with a clear mafioso connotation) to describe David Ben Gurion and other early leaders of the Zionist project. But aside from these two transgressions, the video presents a very clear and remarkably accurate view of the organised media manipulation done by partisan organisations (cited often by posters in this forum, including myself) and the self-censorship of media organisations plus their censure of reporters who go against the self-censorship in the wake of that media manipulation.



How can clearer and less slanted media coverage of the I/P conflict be achieved and how can the media manipulation be hamstrung to allow more view points and greater truth of different dimensions of this conflict to be reported in this hotly contested area? The very language and vocabulary of reportage is now a battlefield in the reportage!

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

The clip of Chomsky educating Andy Marr is already burned into my memory because of the simplicity of what he stated. Manufacturing Consent is a MUST WATCH for anyone wanting to understand how the propaganda system works in a " free society ". Without the option of openly sending in the goons it has to be much more subtle imo

How do we stop/combat these biased media perspectives on the I/P conflict? Doing what we can to expose them for what they are until there is a tipping point whereby off limit terms are given the light of day by sheer pressure from without, the same as how anything and everything has been changed despite the intransigence of those in power.

I read a great book about this very subject many years ago written by some guys from Glasgow university entitled " Bad News From Israel" ( 2004) and it basically analyzed media coverage of that time and came to the same conclusion

Bad News From Israel

Promoting the development of new methodologies and substantive research in the area of media and communications.

www.glasgowmediagroup.org

worth a read imo

The MSM are guilty of a great many services to the powerful of their own country and that of allies, and not just about the I/P conflict. Once you have pulled yourself off of Plato's cave wall you see it everywhere and in everything. Most people , imo, prefer the security of looking at the cave wall and that's a big problem too

 

[Evilroddy]

The clip of Chomsky educating Andy Marr is already burned into my memory because of the simplicity of what he stated. Manufacturing Consent is a MUST WATCH for anyone wanting to understand how the propaganda system works in a " free society ". Without the option of openly sending in the goons it has to be much more subtle imo

How do we stop/combat these biased media perspectives on the I/P conflict? Doing what we can to expose them for what they are until there is a tipping point whereby off limit terms are given the light of day by sheer pressure from without, the same as how anything and everything has been changed despite the intransigence of those in power.

I read a great book about this very subject many years ago written by some guys from Glasgow university entitled " Bad News From Israel" ( 2004) and it basically analyzed media coverage of that time and came to the same conclusion

Bad News From Israel

Promoting the development of new methodologies and substantive research in the area of media and communications.

www.glasgowmediagroup.org

worth a read imo

The MSM are guilty of a great many services to the powerful of their own country and that of allies, and not just about the I/P conflict. Once you have pulled yourself off of Plato's cave wall you see it everywhere and in everything. Most people , imo, prefer the security of looking at the cave wall and that's a big problem too

oneworld2:

Yes, I read Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent more than 30 years ago. A very well annotated book but a struggle to wade through because of the deluge of references.

Was this the clip which you were referring to with Andrew Marr of the BBC?



I'll look up the "Bad News from Israel" book and its authors to see what it's all about.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[Fishking]

The presentation in the video clearly shows how terms like seige and miltary occupation, and a couple of others that are not mentionable due to the rules here, are NOT being used to describe the reality of the situations. It's lazy to try to discredit this obvious truth by playing yet another " antisemite" card. You played it without even watching the video !!! That the Israeli/Jewish side of the argument is hugely more effective and organized isn't even in question to any who have been following events for any reasonable length of time.

I addressed everything you wrote later one when I was able to watch the video, your comment is dismissed.

 

[Fishking]

Your comments ,imo, show your own hardline bias. You want to know what constitutes the territory of Palestine ? It's the Gaza strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Really? With two different terrorist governments running them that would likely kill each other if they had the chance? Or how about not even having U.N. membership? Nah...you're right, it's just *my* bias and nothing else.

Nobody is ever completely objective about anything. That is a lesson that seems to have escaped most people I come across here, regardless of the subject. There are , however, people who show more objectivity by trying to see through the MSM bs and apply the same standard to all parties.

Is there a seige of Gaza aimed at dethroning Hamas control ? Yes there is and it can be seen as a collective punishment.

Were lockdowns from COVID a siege? Or were they more closer to something like a quarantine? Hamas is a terrorist organization that takes any opportunity they get to commit terrorist acts. Biden reverses foreign aid freeze for Gaza and they start launching hundreds of rockets, indiscriminately. And that's not even "collective punishment", but collective terrorist attacks. Btw, why is it that you're only focusing on Israel here? Are you ignorant that Egypt also holds a border with Gaza but you're not going to say shit about them? Hmmm....your omission tells me something.

Is Israel guilty of an occupation of Palestinian territories ? Yes it is and to make it even worse they have hundreds of thousands of illegal settlers living there.

So why are those terms his "bias" ?Aren't they just the correct terms to apply to the situations ?

Israel won land during war. That's over and done with. Don't want to lose land? Don't try genocidal wars.

Compared with war in Europe it enjoyed relative peace , with the real wars/battles being the will of the Ottoman overlords. When the first European Zionist Jews started to arrive in Palestine, the indigenous Jewish population sought to keep their distance from them precisely because they had had relatively good relations with their Arab neighbours and saw the influx of European Jews bent on dispossessing the Arab population as trouble. So we are back to, when should we ignore a Jew ? when they don't agree with Zionism or criticize Israeli actions /policies

Yeah...North Korea is pretty peaceful too. There is peace via oppression.

 

[Fishking]

Fish king:

Palestine is an historical term and a fait substitute for the Palestinian Occupied Territories. There is no reason not to use it unless one implicitly supports the Zionist movement to absorb all of Palestine into the State of Israel. A good example of this is the effort by State of Israel spokespersons and agents in the media to rebrand the "Occupied Territories" which Israel militarily occupied in 1967 as "Disputed Territories". It's all about the language shaping the debate. California or the tri-state area of the American northeast are not solidified countries but media have no problem using them to describe parts of North America. No one gets grief for doing that. But somehow it's an issue when the word Palestine is uttered in the press. Palestine has official status as a UN Observer Nation, despite vigorous efforts by the State of Israel and its allies to block that. Both Gaza and the Est Bank plus East Jerusalem are part of the Palestinian Occupied Territories even if they are at loggerheads, just as both the Confederacy and the Union were part of America in the 1860's.

Right...they do not have country membership in the UN. They are run by different terrorist organizations. Let's talk about the Civil War example you brought up. There were, in fact, two different countries during that time. It actually supports my side.

Do you dispute that the territories which the State of Israel seized by military force in a war of aggression which Israel initiated in 1967 are not under military occupation? Do you dispute that the Gaza part of the Occupied Territories is under siege and blockade by the military arms of the State of Israel since 2007 and the election of Hamas to power in Gaza? The terms "siege" and "occupation" are proper terms for the historical reality lived by Palestinians in the Occupied Territories today, even if certain American PR firms don't appreciate reading and hearing these descriptors.

Israel responded to aggression by Egypt. They closed down shipping lanes and to Israel and then mobilized their military along the border. They got shat on for that move. What happens when you lose a war a lot of the time? You lose land. That's how it's been for almost the entirety of human history and still happens today. The only difference is that, for some reason, the world feels really strongly about one very small Jewish nation in an entire region of Muslim and Arab nations. It's disproportionate. So far as Gaza being under siege, it's more like a quarantine to limit the effects of the disease called terrorism. Hamas is a terrible organization that was elected, and they want genocide of all Jews and Israel. Why is that always left off when talking about the issues? Why did you leave out Egypt from criticism and only focus on Israel? You understand that Egypt holds a border with Gaza as well, right? The omission says something.

We do our best to isolate North Korea and yet somehow that's different?

Under Ottoman rule there was comparative piece in what is today called the Middle East. Before you give grief to the treatment of Jews and Christians under Islamic rule in the 19th Century and very early 20th Century, remember the treatment of indigenous Americans, Chinese Immigrants and of course African Americans in your own country during that same period of time. By that standard the Jews and Christians were not so badly of in the Islamic world.

Ottomans were out of Turkey. Are you saying the Ottoman empire that actually controlled the whole region is what you prefer? None of those countries existed as their own during that time, but now some small areas today is too much for you? Do you know that 60% of the population of Jordan is Palestinian? Btw...the poor treatment of minority groups isn't limited to the past. How do you think ISIS got away with it's excesses? They had enough support to do it.

Sure it's a conflict but is it a conflict between two states or is it a brutal COIN operation against insurrgents and military occupiers in Occupied Territories invaded by a foreign military force? That dimension is not not discussed often in the media, now is it? I wonder why?

Post continued below.

Brutal? It's pretty damned controlled and restrained compared to what it could be, from ongoing terrorist attacks. No other country in the world would put up with constant rocket attacks. You know what we'd call Mexico if they were launching thousands of rockets into the U.S. year after year? "Ours". They wouldn't have their own government or anything. We'd have complete control over it.

You know what else? Palestinians had been offered a two state solution, multiple times, but they've always rejected it.

 

[Fishking]

This project was a settler-colonialist project where individual and group actions replaced the actions of the state to drive the colonial objectives forward. The existence of a small, ethnicly different body of Jews in the Levant has nothing to do with settler-colonialism.

Again, there was no colonialism. There was no country sending people to set up and take over land to add to their territories. Was Israel ever part of Germany or Poland? No. So there was no colonialism. There was only a desperate group of people that were killed in the millions in the most systematic and formalized manner in human history. That's it, a group of people that were never accepted living in other countries and then were slaughtered. Your phrasing does more than white-washes that reality, it completely ignores it.

The Likud Party Charter has in its preamble and body the assertion that there will never be a Palestinian state in the Levant. Perhaps the terrorism is a product of that occupation and land displacement (we can't use the term you chose to use in this forum). Half of the four Arab Israeli Wars which I think you are referring to were started by the State of Israel (1956 and 1967). Almost all of the post Arab-Israel conflicts since the four Arab-Israeli wars were initiated by the State of Israel. So your case, while emotionally charged, is not so sound based on historical fact. Finally there is the weighing of non-state terrorism and its impacts on people's lives compared to the state terrorism waged by a country against people who are in the way of that country's most important national and religious project.

I've addressed what I believe is your misrepresentation of those wars in the previous post.

The State of Israel was born out of terrorism against Arabs and the authorities of British Mandate and the terrorism continues as state-terrorism today. That does not excuse Palestinian terrorism but it does give context. Why does the media ignore the context of terrorism of one side in this struggle for land but rather focuses almost exclusively on the terrorism and militant resistance of just one side, without providing any context.

The state of Israel was born out of desperation and the right for self-determination. No one has ever accepted Jews living in their countries as being equal.

Is it dumb or is the dumbness being externally imposed by American interests and American-based PR management firms trying to steer the terms of public debate? That's the question under debate here.

Continued next post.

Yes...he doesn't support his assertions at all. He makes claims, and that is it. For example, he read a tweet and made up half of his talking points from it, without actually knowing if what he was assuming was true.

 

[Fishking]

That impression was confirmed by AP when they issued a clarifying public statement that Ms. Wilder was fired for her public social media posts betraying bias towards the Palestinian cause which she made before being hired by AP. If they objected to these posts then why hire her in the first place? No, the posts which upset AP management were the ones she made during her employment including the one focused on by the video. It is ironic the AP regularly quotes people like Mark Regev who shamelessly and openly supports the actions of the State of Israel but tries to muzzle and then fires a reporter who won't self-censor regarding the people on the other side of the conflict.

I think your comments have nicely illustrated the effects of self-censorship and shaping the public debate with respect to the I/P conflict. Kill the messenger rather than deal with the message.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

1. Do you have a link?
2. That doesn't excuse him for making up his own narrative without confirmation. He never once said in the video anything about confirmation from the AP.

 

[Mithrae]

The terms and bias you objected to were not from the video producers but were from Ms. Wilder's social media posts. The makers of the video did not choose these terms, Ms Wilder did. I hope that clarifies both of your attempts to cast the video as biased while it was truly reporting and commenting on words and phrases used by Ms. Wilder.

I didn't say anything about the tweet of Wilder's which Bastani chose to highlight; rather about the biased selection and omission of information (and on some points, misinformation) regarding Israel by the video's creators themselves.

But you don't even need to be that meta to clearly see it, it's perfectly obvious from the direct presentation itself. Try 4m30s into the video in which Bastani highlights the tweet of CNN's Jerusalem correspondent Hadas Gold; a picture of a soldier cake with the words "My baby cousin entered the Israeli army today ". That's it, a barebones statement of fact with a teary face emoji. Bastani chooses to interpret it as "celebrating her sibling [sic] joining the IDF" and goes on to say that "Surely this is by any measure taking sides." Is it, though? It's obviously personal rather than political, and yet even then is entirely objective besides a highly ambiguous emoji. This is a tweet which Bastani had to go back to 2016 to find (though the date is edited out of the video presentation), from a different news organization no less. He then goes on to loftily declare that if a journalist shared a picture of a sibling on a Palestine solidarity march or even just wearing a keffiyeh, "we already know" that they would share a similar fate as Emily Wilder (who in her fist 17 days with AP posted no fewer than 11 Israel/Palestine related tweets/retweets, almost all of them highlighting views which were either pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli or critical of news coverage of the issue and none favourable to Israel or opposed to or even mentioning the killing of Israeli civilians by Hamas).

If you can't see the bias in Bastani's interpretation, false equivalency and rampant speculation there, I imagine it could only be because you are choosing not to.

 

[oneworld2]

Really? With two different terrorist governments running them that would likely kill each other if they had the chance? Or how about not even having U.N. membership? Nah...you're right, it's just *my* bias and nothing else.

Really. And here's another bolt from the truth offensive. Your own country is and has been the biggest prosecutor of state terrorism on the global stage since the end of WW2 and it has been sanctioned/bankrolled by the two terror loving US political parties that have held power during that period. That you have been so conditioned not to see through such an obvious situation is only trumped by your wiilingness to engage in major league hypocrisy by making accusations about others that have committed terrorist acts/war crimes for a fraction of that time and on a level many many leagues below that of your own nation. The sheer brass neck of some Americans is hysterical to behold!!

And, it is only the US veto at the UN that has been responsible for the hamstringing of the creation of a Palestinian state on the territories mentioned. The world is supportive of it, much more so than they are of Israels illegal annexations of East Jerusalem and the Golan.

So yep, it's your bias

Were lockdowns from COVID a siege? Or were they more closer to something like a quarantine? Hamas is a terrorist organization that takes any opportunity they get to commit terrorist acts. Biden reverses foreign aid freeze for Gaza and they start launching hundreds of rockets, indiscriminately. And that's not even "collective punishment", but collective terrorist attacks. Btw, why is it that you're only focusing on Israel here? Are you ignorant that Egypt also holds a border with Gaza but you're not going to say shit about them? Hmmm....your omission tells me something.

Covid!!!?? Seriously !!? Wow!! That you cannot diffentiate between an ongoing military conflict and a pandemic is bizarre imo You are saying a people under a military occupation and illegal settlement programme are " in quarantine" because some of them refuse to accept the status quo and the ongoing denial of their eight to a state of their own and fight for their rights/freedoms ? lol


You seriously have little or no idea about the terms you are happy to bandy about. The rocket fire from Gaza is considered, at least by those trying to apply the same standards to all parties, which might well rule you out, war crimes because they are indiscriminate attacks within the context of an ongoing military conflict. The seige of Gaza is a collective punishment affecting all Gazans for the actions of the resistance movements. Israel also uses collective punishment in the form of house demolitions . If you are going to use terms like these it helps if you actually do some reading up about them imo

Israel won land during war. That's over and done with. Don't want to lose land? Don't try genocidal wars.

A war of aggression it itself started. BTW you never even had the decency to acknowledge the ongoing occupation and illegal settlements. You just misrepresented a war to try to justify an illegal land acquisition programme lol

Yeah...North Korea is pretty peaceful too. There is peace via oppression.

Wow have you swallowed your own state propaganda so far down you cannot see the wood for the trees ? How many bases and how many soldiers does N Korea have around the globe compared to your own nation ? Are they in Iraq? No, that's your lot. Are they in Afghanistan ? No. that's your lot again. Are they in Ukraine? Japan? etc etc............people in glass houses doesn't even come close to framing how ridiculous the above actually is

 

[oneworld2]

oneworld2:

Yes, I read Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent more than 30 years ago. A very well annotated book but a struggle to wade through because of the deluge of references.

Was this the clip which you were referring to with Andrew Marr of the BBC?



I'll look up the "Bad News from Israel" book and its authors to see what it's all about.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

Yep, that's the clip and you will find the " Bad News From Israel" to be a solid work based on much research of media framings/commentary wrt the I/P conflict.

The tide is slow but it is catching up with Israeli actions/crimes imo There is a PR/image war going on which Israel has been winning hands down for decades. That is beginning to change and many American Jews hold a negative view of the actions/policies of the state that acts as though it represents ALL Jewish people. That turning will be critical going forward imo Wait until people realize that the two state solution was killed by Israeli illegal settlements and outright racism and the only game in town is a civil rights fight for equality in the land from the river to the sea