Mind your language is what you might say when talking about so-called controversial topics. But the media blatantly use double standards to frame Palestinians negatively, and the whole world reads that.
Sparking disputes on social media by pro-Palestinian activists, global news broadcasters, whether that’s The Daily Mail, BBC, or US outlets like Fox News and CNN; even from headlines, the completely wrong image is portrayed of a particular group of people. And that’s an issue because it instils that the one who deserves to be denounced is rather protected. After all, aren’t they paid to entertain lies rather than inform the truth?
Twitter was flooded with Tweets of comparison when the Russia-Ukraine war erupted, at how the media coverage celebrated Ukraine’s resistance fighters but labelled Palestinian resisters as ‘terrorists’. Even TikTok and Instagram were swarmed with outrage as videos gaining over a million views portrayed Ahed Tamimi as a Ukrainian girl confronting a Russian soldier. The footage was from 2012 when she was 11 years old, confronting an Israeli soldier after her older brother was detained.
Every time an attack on Gaza takes place, news companies fail to label that it’s been 15 long years of blockade and instead use misleading headlines. Moreover, rather than stating a certain number of Palestinian children had been brutally killed, and targeted, they instead write they had ‘died’.
And apart from this, most of the time mainstream media coverage suggests Palestinians as being aggressors whilst the Israeli army act in self-defence. Rather, it is Israel’s aggression on Gaza, the ongoing siege and tightened restrictions that escalate violence. For the most part, the Israeli government provokes Palestinians to retaliate with self-defence by allowing settlers to continue to colonise Palestinian lands with illegal settlements under the protection of the IDF, who claim to be the world’s ‘most moral army’.
In 2022, Israel committed at least 700 violations against Palestinian journalists, simply because they showed the world true coverage based on evidence and not stereotypes. Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead in Jenin almost eight months ago and wearing a clearly marked ‘PRESS’ jacket, it is clear she was targeted. She hasn’t received justice, and funny enough news reports covering her funeral stated there was ‘violence’ at her funeral. Rather, Israeli forces were the ones using unnecessary violence by attacking crowds of mourners and in the end pallbearers.
The complete context of the Palestinian narrative is discarded as the media evade the legitimate struggle of Palestinians living under Israel’s apartheid regime. It’s as if the world expects Palestinians to not even use self-defence when they are being ethnically cleansed by Israel.
As this all happens, Palestinian youth take to social media to share what it’s like to live under an illegal occupation, only to be censored and attacked by a pro-Israeli-owned algorithm. Social media censorship of posts highlighting the plight of Palestinians also takes a role in framing what the whole world reads about the ‘conflict’. It’s worse when celebrities spread this misinformation, they may do it with the intention of using their platform but they are too narrow-minded and prefer to follow the popular stance which is based on myths, such as it all being too complex and that it’s all about religion.
In fact, most people know the Israeli apartheid state attempting to ethnically cleanse Palestinians as a ‘conflict.’ Why? All because of the way news broadcasters have dismissed the crimes of Israel just like Israel’s allies do.
The majority of people are aware that China, Russia, and North Korea are countries that control the media and the news of their respective countries. Although the Western mainstream media criticise this, they nonetheless support a biased view of the government, disregarding justice and, in more concrete terms, acting like that of those nations, i.e., sharing the view that the government wants to be imposed upon the general public. The issue is that this viewpoint is founded on misleading information, which leads to the public being misinformed and causes them to learn twisted information rather than the real facts.
Politicians globally divide society to gain power, even if it means them siding with injustice. Pejorative terms are what Israeli Knesset members used throughout their political journey to gain votes, and now those same people are the ones running the new extremist, far-right government. Right-wing Israeli politicians divide society and bring about a fear of Muslims, who make up over 90% of the Palestinian population including besieged Gaza and the occupied West Bank. For example, current Knesset speaker Amir Ohana’s racist quote, “Who is responsible for the acts of murder and massacre in the world over the past 50 years? Muslims…”.
What’s worse is mainstream media promote this by labelling Palestinian resisters as ‘militants’ and ‘extreme’ whereas illegal Israeli settlers conducting marches in Jerusalem annually are at the most by media referred to as ‘nationalists’ when it is not the case. They are provoking peace to be broken and are storming Islam’s third holiest site, and are not referred to as settlers at the least?
“By mainstream media misrepresenting certain groups to please the government’s bias, they are indirectly inciting hatred against that group of people”, says TPO researcher Hamzah Al-Amoush. Forget the debate on British media being Islamophobic, the British media when broadcasting on Israel-Palestine support the Israeli nationalistic idea of Jewish supremacy. For instance, Jewish illegal settlers are at most referred to as extreme while Muslim Palestinians who defend themselves in their own country are referred to as “militants” and “terrorists.”
The acts of Jewish settlers are protected from being released into mainstream media, whether that be the hundreds of Palestinian-owned olive trees they uproot almost daily, all whilst activists who strive and give a voice to Palestinians are silenced with a single label of being ‘anti-semitic’, for calling out against zionism, which countless Jews are against anyways.
Only recently, extremist Jewish settlers vandalised over 30 graves at the Protestant Cemetery very close to Jerusalem’s Old City, and BBC News, typical of mainstream media whose headlines constantly fail to highlight the committer of a crime when it’s a non-Israeli being the victim did just that. In the article was written “Jewish extremists have been blamed for the vandalism,” when it was fully apparent from circulating CCTV footage that it was certainly Jewish extremists who desecrated graves in the historic graveyard. So why state ‘blamed’ when the culprits are obvious?
British linguist and professor at Lancaster University, Paul Baker, says ‘control language and you can control society.’ Now that statement surely brings back the idea of countries like North Korea. But allies of Israel, who seamlessly fund and aid the execution of an indigenous population, such as the US and the UK, spread fear about certain groups of people. Whether that’s Muslims, which led to the division of society following the 9/11 and the marginalisation of Muslims, it’s all down to the way the media portray groups of people. “Eventually these methods, even if used indirectly, isolate a group of people from society, and therefore the views society have on certain matters are controlled by those using language in this way”, continued Amoush.
As a result, whilst Israel occupies Palestinians and continues to steal their land under an oppressive apartheid regime, Israel is seen as the victim, due to the way the media misportray the events in occupied Palestine.
Language is vital when talking about Israel and Palestine, it shapes how those around you see it. What is happening between Israel and Palestine is not a conflict, because the definition of a conflict, according to Cambridge Dictionary, is ‘fighting between two or more groups of people or countries.’ But how is it a conflict when what is truly happening is settler colonialism, settler violence, and attempted ethnic cleansing by a military occupier who sieges their enemy in the world’s largest open-air prison? And when the ‘fighting’ is rather oppression and the oppressed stand up in self-defence?
So for those seeking unbiased and honest reporting, the Western media is a no-go for news, because all mainstream media do is victimise the wrong side and create a war of words.
The Palestine Observer 