Yesterday – see What can a poor girl do? – I referenced Caitlin Johnstone’s post, written the same day and containing this:
According to an Israeli media report, last May IDF troops strapped explosives to the neck of an 80 year-old Palestinian man in Gaza and used him as a human shield for hours. They then shot and killed him and his wife.
A minor detail here is that the unit which strapped explosives to this man’s neck – using him not only as human shield but as an expendable probe, sending him into ruined buildings to trigger any booby traps left by the resistance – is not the unit which shot him dead. The first criminals, after using him for eight of the most harrowing hours imaginable and holding his wife hostage, released the two. They did not, however, tell neighbouring units to let them pass through terrain which IDF Command had ordered all Palestinians to leave, or be shot on sight.
The couple were gunned down after enjoying some two hundred metres of freedom.
Here are the top half dozen returns for my online search for media covering the story: Israel’s liberal Ha’aretz … Al-Jazeera … Middle East Eye … Palestine Chronicle … The New Arab … Al Mayadeen. 1
Specifically, no Western outlet featured in these returns. Even more specifically, when I entered the same search terms using facilities within the Guardian, I got nothing. At which point a chap more diligent would have done the same in NYT, WashPo, HuffPo and European equivalents like Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El Paso. But I’m not always as patient as I might be, and in any case should I really have to ransack the media basement archives for such a story …
… with every likelihood of still – I welcome correction on the point – drawing a blank?
Owen Jones – yes, again 2 – has done a good job on this, in just thirteen minutes exposing not only the nature of a near unspeakable atrocity, but of the media silence my own unsuccessful searches attest to.
So here’s a thought experiment. Imagine Hamas doing something like this, or Russian forces in Ukraine? Would it not be lead story for every broadcaster, emblazoned across every front page, in the collective West? The hypocrisy and double standards are the least of it. Corporate media lies of omission are, when all is said and done, par for the course. But in their silence on this as on so many other deeds of the Zionist regime and its enablers, are they not themselves a party to war crimes?
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In that same post yesterday I empathised with Caitlin’s insistence that “I write about Israel all the time because I have to, not because I want to”. Indeed, I spoke of being “similarly gripped by a sense of choicelessness at times oppressive and always expensive”.
I say “at times oppressive” but these moments are eclipsed by the sense, far more prevalent, of being blessed. How many get to apply their skills to matters so important? As for “expensive”, I had in mind time and energies taken away from attending to those matters – from housework through walking the dog and fixing to see the dentist to making a will – which form a tax we all of us, even the super-rich who rule, must pay for the privilege of living. But writing as I do has also been expensive on friends. Over a decade of blogging I’ve lost a few – I don’t claim to be blameless here, and haven’t always acted with due tact and respect for rules of engagement – but while the immediate topic has differed, a common feature has been that the friends I’ve lost put a good deal more trust than I do in media struck dumb by atrocities like the one described.
Which is one of the lesser reasons I keep harping on about those media and their subversion of the democracy they purport to serve. As for the greater reasons, I can think of no more cogent argument for insisting Western democracy is ninety-five percent bogus than that (a) democracy implies consent, (b) consent is meaningless if not informed, and (c) informed consent implies truly independent media. That last we do not have when, as Noam Chomsky has said, they are:
Large corporations selling privileged audiences to other corporations. Now the question is, what pictures of the world would a rational person expect from this arrangement?
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- Al Mayadeen was formed by Al Jazeera staff disgusted by the latter’s coverage of Syria by its Assad-loathing Qatari Government owner.
- To say I disagree with Owen on very important matters, led by his witless contributions to the vilification of Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad, would be an understatement but, with a few important carps – such as his eagerness to condemn October 7 when the hypocrisies our media and politicians spew without let or hindrance need no assistance from either of us – the boy done good on Gaza.