Yes, The U.S. MEDIA is deceptive in their coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict.
LIZA on the US Media: They never talk about the blockade, the seven year siege of Gaza, the occupation, the settlements, the fact that any person who is born in Gaza is born into a prison where Israel hopes for them to die as soon as possible.
The US is a major part of the problem and the sole reason why a right wing fanatic like Benjamin Netanyahu is so emboldened to kill Palestinians with impunity. He has the support of the US government and a large percentage of Americans who don’t give a damn what happens to Muslims, any Muslims, no matter how young they are.
Israel has nuclear weapons, everyone knows it, but Gaza is not allowed even a sling shot to use in self defense.Why in the blazing hell do people there turn to Hamas? Because no one else, absolutely no one, defends them. This is not about Hamas. This is about land, water, and gas fields for Israel’s future.
According to The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill, “We’ve hit all time lows with media coverage in this country.” The journalist appeared on HuffPost Live Wednesday to discuss media coverage of the conflict between Israel and Hamas and issued some sharp criticism to U.S. press outlets that he says are producing nearly one-sided coverage.
“When you look at what’s happening right now in Gaza, this is a massive massacre and one epic series of war crime after war crime, child after child being killed,” Scahill told host Alyona Minkovski. “And most news organizations are forced to acknowledge that the Palestinians and its children and whole families are being killed. They’re forced to because cameras are there; they’re forced to because there are reporters on the ground reporting on that.”
But, he added, “if you step back and you look at the way that this is always framed over these weeks of Israel’s constant bombardment of Gaza, it’s as though Hamas and Israel are sort of two equal military powers fighting one another.” Considering Israel has its Iron Dome missile-defense system in place to protect its citizens, Scahill said this was a fundamentally incorrect assumption.
Scahill described Israel as “a nuclear-powered nation that has a history of systematically killing Palestinians, indiscriminately targeting civilians and civilian institutions.” But if you listen to American media, he said you would think that it is just a “battle between two military powers.” He added, “Israel is gratuitous in its disproportionate use of force against the Palestinians.”
Foreign Journalists Refuse to Meet Netanyahu’s Expectations
http://www.imemc.org/article/68797
Foreign correspondents covering Gaza have rejected Israeli PM Netanyahu’s allegations regarding their reports, which have been described as “unbalanced” and “biased” towards Palestinians due to pressure exerted by Hamas.
Netanyahu held a meeting with journalists, Thursday evening, claiming that “when they (foreign correspondents) leave Gaza, they will not be subject to the restrictions and threats by Hamas”, further stating: “I expect to see documented reports about (terrorists) who are hiding behind the civilians.”
According to Al Ray Palestinian Media Agency, journalists who recently left the strip say that Netanyahu lied, stressing that no one pressured them, and that they didn’t even meet any one belonging to Hamas, during their stay in Gaza.
Spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry Yigal Palmor declared, “I can not believe that any veteran photographers could not succeed in taking a photo even to one group launching a missile, or one fighter from Hamas.”
The journalists, near unanimously, confirmed and agreed on one thing: that they had not witnessed one scene which would serve to prove the PM’s allegations.
Friday, Hebrew daily Haaretz reported that, among the 710 journalists who entered Gaza to cover the Israeli offensive, only one correspondent (from Indian TV channel NDTV) documented resistance fighters firing rockets into Israel, adding that “similar images may be revealed later, but we met all the reporters who said that they did not notice such pictures, and if they did, they would take them.”
Israelis torturing non-Jewish children
Netanyahu asks U.S. lawmakers to help fend off war crimes charges
http://www.haaretz.com/mobile/1.609436?v=41988E3802FBC532BF15C4F021D8C236
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked United States legislators to assist Israel in fending off charges that Israel committed war crimes during its month-long operation in Gaza, the New York Post reported on Wednesday.
“The prime minister asked us to work together to ensure that this strategy of going to the International Criminal Court does not succeed,” Democratic congressman Steve Israel told the Post by phone from Tel Aviv.
******************
Lets see if the US has any morals left?
Gaza Health Ministry: 430 Children Killed; UNICEF Warns of “Tragic Impact”
C.A.M.E.R.A = Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting) also has a FULL page ad today in USA Today
CAMERA Launches National Ad Campaign to Support Israel & Gaza Living in Peace
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) today launched a national advertising campaign with full-page advertisements in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Washington Post, to focus world attention on the facts on the ground in Gaza concerning the war between Israel and Hamas.
The advertisements outline key facts in the current conflict, as well as quotes from world leaders in support of Israel’s right to defend herself.
Included below is text of the advertisement:
Israelis & Gazans can live in peace. But not under Hamas’ rule.
In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew all of its citizens and soldiers from the Gaza Strip, hoping to live in peace and prosperity with her Palestinian neighbors
See how they flaunt the supporters in this ad?
world leaders have said about Israel’s right to defend herself:
“As I’ve said many times, Israel has a right to defend itself against rocket and tunnel attacks from Hamas.”
-U.S. President Barack Obama, Statement at the White House, 7.21.2014
“Canada is unequivocally behind Israel. We support its right to defend itself, by itself, against these terror attacks, and urge Hamas to immediately cease their indiscriminate attacks on innocent Israeli civilians.”
-Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Press Statement, 7.13.2014
“There is a new quality of Hamas arms – Tel Aviv, Jerusalem can be reached with rockets – so countries should be able to defend themselves from such attacks.”
-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Press Conference, 7.18.2014
“I have been clear throughout this crisis that Israel has the right to defend itself. Those criticizing Israel’s response must ask themselves how they would expect their own government to react if hundreds of rockets were raining down on British cities today.”
-U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, Statement to the U.K. Parliament, 7.21.2014
“Now, we support Israel’s right to exist, we support Israel’s right to self-defence, we support the Palestinians’ right to a state of their own, but that’s got to go hand-in-hand with the recognition of Israel’s right to exist behind secure borders. The problem in the Middle East is that in the end so many people are not prepared to accept Israel’s right to exist. “ – Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot, Interview with Radio 3AW, 7.31.2014
The New York Times reporting American officials are seething on the sidelines about Netanyahu’s disrespectful treatment. Stop fronting for the got damn cameras. Call the mofo OUT!
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/05/world/middleeast/gaza-is-straining-us-ties-to-israel.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0
London Times Rejects Elie Wiesel Anti-Hamas ‘Child Sacrifice’ Ad
N.Y. Times and Wall Street Journal Approved Piece-
… AND USA TODAY- I just got saw it during my lunch break.
The London Times refused to run an ad featuring Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel speaking out against Hamas’ use of children as human shields.
The ad sponsored by The Values Network, which was founded by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, has run in The New York Times, Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, among other U.S. newspapers. The refusal was first reported by the New York Observer.
The London Times refused the ad because “the opinion being expressed is too strong and too forcefully made and will cause concern amongst a significant number of Times readers,” according to a statement from a representative of the newspaper, the Observer reported.
Headlined “Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now it’s Hamas turn,” the ad began running last week. It reads, in part: “In my own lifetime, I have seen Jewish children thrown into the fire. And now I have seen Muslim children used as human shields, in both cases, by worshippers of death cults indistinguishable from that of the Molochites.
Read more: http://forward.com/articles/203581/london-times-rejects-elie-wiesel-anti-hamas-child/#ixzz39daGEPXS
CNN is trying hard to justify Netanyahu’s slaughter of innocent civilians in Gaza. A military super power vs a slingshot. That dog won’t hunt!
Former President Carter’s op ad is in USA Today too.
WATCH LIVE: UN discusses Gaza situation
http://tiny.cc/wjl6jx
Have you seen this 2009 article?
How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas
By Andrew Higgins
Updated Jan. 24, 2009 12:01 a.m. ET
Moshav Tekuma, Israel
Surveying the wreckage of a neighbor’s bungalow hit by a Palestinian rocket, retired Israeli official Avner Cohen traces the missile’s trajectory back to an “enormous, stupid mistake” made 30 years ago.
“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” says Mr. Cohen, a Tunisian-born Jew who worked in Gaza for more than two decades. Responsible for religious affairs in the region until 1994, Mr. Cohen watched the Islamist movement take shape, muscle aside secular Palestinian rivals and then morph into what is today Hamas, a militant group that is sworn to Israel’s destruction.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB123275572295011847
Thank you!
IF any other country would have fired upon a defenseless people, the USA would have deemed this terrorism in a snap. I see you, America!
cease fire talks should always include:
END THE MOFO BLOCKADE, ISRAEL!
I still WAITING to hear either PBO or SoS Kerry say:
The Palestinian PEOPLE-HUMAN BEINGS, have a RIGHT TO DEFEND THEMSELVES!
GODDAMIT!
HELLO!
The LIE is still all the people in Gaza are lumped in with HAMAS. They don’t have any ways to defend themselves from Israel who are being BANKROLLED by USA.
I’m thoroughly DISAPPOINTED and heartbroken over the LACK of respect for HUMAN LIFE by the USA leaders, and this includes PBO.
FUCK AIPAC & Congress!
Bigger, broader approach’
John Kerry told the BBC that the US fully supported Israel’s right to defend itself against militant rocket attacks.
“No country can live with that condition, and the United States stands squarely behind Israel’s right to defend itself in those circumstances. Period.”
I’M SO OVER THIS LINE OF BULLSHIT SoS, Kerry!
Asked whether he supported Palestinian demands for a lifting of Israel’s blockade of Gaza, Mr Kerry said: “What we want to do is support the Palestinians in their desire to improve their lives and to get food in and to open crossings and to reconstruct and have greater freedom.”
Mr Kerry said a “bigger, broader approach to the underlying solution of two states” was needed – one that would provide security for Israel and “a better life and greater freedoms for the Palestinians”.
http://www.tv360nigeria.com/israel-palestinian-talks-under-way/
Palestinian leaders poised to join ICC in order to pursue Israel for war crimes
Diplomats expect plan to join international criminal court and call for investigation to be used as bargaining chip in Cairo talks
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/05/palestinian-leaders-icc-israel-war-crimes
Palestinian political leaders are poised to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) with the aim of putting Israel in the dock on war crimes charges, officials said today.
“Israel has left us with no other option,” Riad Malki, the Palestinian foreign minister, told reporters after meeting ICC officials in The Hague to discuss the implications of signing the Rome Statute. It would make the Palestinian state a member of the court with the authority to call for an investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The Palestinian Authority has asked Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) to sign the accession document before it is formally presented, and officials say they now expect both organisations to agree.
The development came as Palestinian negotiators were due to meet the head of Egyptian military intelligence in Cairo to discuss a permanent ceasefire with Israel, after all sides observed a 72-hour truce that came in to force at 8am local time (0600 BST) on Tuesday.
Arab foreign ministers on Gaza solidarity visit “soon”
https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/mena/559044-arab-foreign-ministers-on-gaza-solidarity-visit-soon?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
CAIRO – A delegation of Arab foreign ministers, including those of Egypt and Jordan, will visit Gaza “soon” in a show of support for Palestinians, Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi said Wednesday.
The ministers will also assess reconstruction needs in the battered enclave after a nearly month-long war between Israel and Hamas, Arabi said.
“An Arab ministerial delegation will go to Gaza soon in solidarity,” he told reporters.
The delegation, which is expected to expand, so far includes the foreign ministers of Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan and Morocco, as well as Arabi himself.
A 72-hour ceasefire took hold on Tuesday in the conflict, which is expected to cost the territory up to $6 billion (4.5 billion euros) in damage, said Palestinian deputy economy minister Taysir Amro in Ramallah.
A more precise assessment would be carried out once calm returns permanently to the overpopulated sliver of territory where more than 1,850 people were killed and nearly half a million displaced, he said.
They’re all a day late and a DOLLAR short aren’t they? The carnage in GAZA speaks for itself.
That’s what I’m saying. The woman and man on the Massacre at Dawn video ask God to punish the Arab Nations for not helping & watching Gaza get slaughtered.
These Arab countries do not give a shit about GAZA and its people. They’re just a pawn in the game for power. Sickening!
All Palestinians are NOT Hamas. I’m standing in the gap for all those little slaughtered Palestinian children.
SG2 I expected a more balanced view from you. I can see you don’t even recognize Israel’s right to exist. You can’t see to allow her to defend herself. This is my last post. I cannot abide by the blood you’ve drunk to think that terrorists have any dignity, honor or rights. You are wrong. And history will prove you wrong.
Listen here Missy, until the media starts presenting a “more balanced view on Israel and Palestine, and Israel recognizes the Palestinians “RIGHT to EXIST, ” and I’m not talking that “Hamas” bullshit you’re not getting what you want to hear or read from 3 Chics.
BYE GIRL!
Hey, SG2, great post and thread. Thx for quoting me.
YVW! It’s very good.
Baldwin, so PROPHETIC
Just stunning!
Michael Lerner: “Israel has broken my heart”
Salon
I’m a rabbi in mourning for a Judaism being murdered by Israel
My heart is broken as I witness the suffering of the Palestinian people and the seeming indifference of Israelis. All my life I’ve been a champion of Israel, proud of its many accomplishments in science and technology that have benefited the world, insistent on the continuing need for the Jewish people to have a state that offers protections from anti-Semitism that has reared its head continuously throughout Christian and Islamic societies, willing to send my only child to serve in the Israeli Army (the paratroopers unit-tzanchanim), and enjoying the pleasures of long swaths of time in which I could study in Jerusalem and celebrate Shabbat in a city that weekly closed down the hustle and bustle of the capitalist marketplace for a full 25 hours.
And though as editor of Tikkun I printed articles challenging the official story of how Israel came to be, showing its role in forcibly ejecting tens of thousands of Palestinians in 1948 and allowing Jewish terrorist groups under the leadership of (future Israeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir) to create justified fears that led hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians to flee for their lives, I always told myself that the dominant humanity of the Jewish people and the compassionate strain within Torah would reassert itself once Israel felt secure.
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/04/israel_has_broken_my_heart_i%E2%80%99m_a_rabbi_in_mourning_for_a_judaism_being_murdered_by_israel/
Gaza op spurs Italian call for ‘Nuremberg for Israel’ trial
A petition by academics, describing Israel’s ‘slow genocide’ of Palestinians, is one of many signs – including incendiary slogans, swastikas and vandalism – that reflect anti-Semitic undercurrents in Italy.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.609046?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
MILAN, Italy – An online petition posted recently by hundreds of Italians during Israel’s operation in Gaza calls for creation of “an international tribunal,” in which the State of Israel and its people will be put on trial for the “slow genocide of the entire [Palestinian] people.”
2 words:
OCCUPATION & BLOCKADE
Rula Jebreal is still kicking ass. She’s not letting up either. And looking beautiful while doing so. Is Ben Shapiro’s face still stinging?
Rula beat that ass like he stole SUM-THIN
Rula is throwing down! Drop kicking mofos all over the place.
Bring, Minister Warsi!
Hey now!
5 Ways Israel Created a Real Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza
Gaza is reeling.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/5-ways-israel-created-real-humanitarian-crisis-gaza
The Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, now entering its fourth week, has unleashed a humanitarian crisis in the coastal enclave. The crisis could worsen if Israel’s attacks don’t cease.
Even before Israel’s air and land campaign began in early July, Gaza was reeling from two wars in the past five years and a crippling blockade that has largely prevented building materials from entering and has caused mass unemployment. In August 2012, nine months after an intensive Israeli campaign of airstrikes, the United Nations Relief Works and Agency, the organization specifically created to serve Palestinian refugees, released a report with a stunning conclusion: if no action is taken to address the dire needs of people in Gaza, it will become “unlivable” by 2020.
The UNRWA report shows how grim life in Gaza was even before this latest punishing attack. Power cuts are common. Only 10% of aquifer water is drinkable—and in 2016, the aquifer water may become “unusable.” Population density is high and growing. The economy has been decimated by Israeli restrictions on fishing, agriculture and building. “The daily lives of Gazans in 2020 will be worse than they are now,” the report states. “There will be virtually no reliable access to sources of safe drinking water, standards of healthcare and education will have continued to decline, and the vision of affordable and reliable electricity for all will have become a distant memory for most.”
Cielo act as if all Palestinians are Hamas.
Gaza voted Hamas as their leaders. Yes, at least gazans are the same as Hamas.
Gazans participated in democracy like we do. Israel doesn’t like the outcome. Too bad.
SG2- lots of countries didn’t like the outcome,INCLUDING the West Bank., and neighboring Arab countries. Hamas is bad news in every place they’ve landed and started fighting.
I support Palestine and their right to live, survive and thrive.
I was wrong about Gaza: Why we can no longer ignore the horrors in Palestine
I tried to limit my exposure to the bombings and screams. But here’s why being black in America made me think twice
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/05/i_was_wrong_about_gaza_why_we_can_no_longer_ignore_the_horrors_in_palestine/
Over the last few weeks, as the stories of rocket launches, bombings, screams and pictures of babies with their heads blown off have filtered out of Gaza, I have tried to limit my exposure to such horrors. Those are the privileges of living in the West, the ability to turn off the world by turning off one’s TV and bypassing articles in ones news feed.
I commenced this turning off of horrors after being bombarded this summer with story after story of police brutality in the U.S. – of a California Highway Patrolman pummeling 51-year-old Marlene Pinnock in the face for walking on the shoulder of a Los Angeles freeway; of the NYPD choking Eric Garner to death; of Brooklyn police officers putting another pregnant woman in a chokehold, and dragging a naked grandmother out of her home; of Renisha McBride’s character being placed on trial beside that of her killer, Theodore Wafer.
It sometimes feels too much to bear. To be black in America, even when you are rich, is to live in constant awareness that you have little protection against violence, either from desperate people in your own neighborhoods or from police who see you as a body to protect themselves from rather than a citizen worthy of protection.
What does any of this have to do with the struggles of Palestinians in Gaza?
Everything. First, we have a black president, who is commander in chief of a pro-Israel state. And black people are generally not into publicly and vocally criticizing Barack Obama, despite plenty of privately whispered reservations around kitchen tables and in barber shops and beauty shops. Second, African-Americans are disproportionately evangelical Christians, and evangelical Christianity, with its love of the story of Moses leading the Israelites (almost) to the Promised Land, is rooted in a kind of conservative theology that justifies a pro-Israel position. When President Obama was elected to office, many considered him to be the progenitor of the new “Joshua Generation,” who having thrown off the Mosaic tropes of older models of black leadership, which characterized everyone from Harriet Tubman to MLK, was now poised to actually lead the nation into the “promised land.”
Israel’s origin story has had deep and profound meaning for African-Americans and our ongoing freedom struggle. And conservative evangelical preachers generally don’t invite their congregants to consider how the Israelites’ ethnic cleansing of the Canaanites squares with our moral outrage against the murder of innocent people. That’s not especially surprising in white evangelical churches, given how bound up white evangelicalism is with the Western colonial project. But it always gives me pause in black churches, when preachers (my own pastor being an exception, thankfully) take this text as the subject of a sermon, with no sense of irony.
As a black person attuned to the processes of colonization, slavery and apartheid that built the West on the backs of black and indigenous people, I cannot help seeing these acts of war and terror as interconnected. There is no way to morally justify the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip or the West Bank. Therefore, I must redirect my outrage from organized resistance groups or “terrorists” toward the powerful nations that make people vulnerable to these militant extremist groups.
I place the term “terrorist” in scare quotes not because the violence and terror that Palestinians and some Israelis are enduring isn’t real but rather because the social construction of the “terrorist” performs important political work in justifying our political interests. In prior centuries, European powers constructed ideas of a savage Indigenous other and a benighted animalistic African other to justify the plunder and enslavement of the places where these people lived. Indigenous people and West Africans were not a threat, except if their land was what you wanted.
We must ALWAYS remember this is the SAME USA media that were COMPLICIT in Bush/Cheney admin taking us into war with IRAQ!
With blogs, Instagram, YouTube, and any other form of SOCIAL MEDIA.
These LYING, DECEPTIVE idiots can no longer feed us a bag-o-bullshit, when we can see and hear with our own EYES & EARS.
I have great respect for you, southerngirl2, but you are very wrong on this issue. Hamas is a terrorist organization vowed to destroy Israel; nothing more, nothing less. The BILLIONS in aid sent to Palestinians ends up, not in infrastructure, schools,hospitals, or even bomb shelters, but in tunnels and more weaponry to kill Israeli civilians. No, they are not equal militarily, but Israel has been hindered by the anti Israel mob at the UN. This issue would have been settled decades ago if Palestine would stop trying to destroy Israel and take the land that was offered to them dozens of times. But no, they want the whole area! And I can assure you,Israel is not going anywhere.
Cielo,
America labeled Nelson Mandela and the ANC a terrorist organization because they resisted the occupation. The Apartheid regime was slaughtering black South Africans because they dared to stand up for their rights. Nelson Mandela was still on a terrorist watch list until 2008. So spare me who America calls a terrorist. My stand on this issue will not change. Israel is the terrorist trying to commit genocide on a defenseless people because they want Palestinians land. Israel is the occupier, the invader. It’s Palestinian land to begin with. People across the globe is against what Israel is doing to a people who aren’t allowed to defend themselves. Palestinians have a right to defend themselves against a brutal terrorist invader who will stop at nothing to annihilate them. We’ve seen the horrific photos of little mangled babies coming out of Gaza. So I’m standing with Palestine.
And you react from pure emotion instead of seeing the historical picture of the conflict. You are falling for the Hamas PR machine, ignoring all aspects of violence from the Palestinian side, the countless offers of land fir peace from Israel’s side. You sound like you also do not recognize Israel’s right to exist!! They have a right to exist and defend itself, like it has since it’s creation in 1948, when every surrounding Arab nation tried to destroy it with a simultaneous attack. No, Israel is not going anywhere. Palestinians are angry because they want Israel dead. Again I say to you, Israel us not going anywhere. And I stand with Israel. The only way to a two state solution is to destroy Hamas once and for all. Hamas is making sure they will take as many civilians with them as possible.
BTW, it’s not just America that labels Hamas a terrorist organization. Every nation except 5 have condemned Hamas and their tactics. Notice if you will, that Egypt, Syria and Lebanon are quiet about the whole thing. They are hoping Israel destroys Hamas before Hamas tries to attack them. And they are willing to sacrifice gazan lives to do so.
More Israeli propaganda. The Arab countries are quiet b/c they don’t want democracy to spread there.
Totally agree with you, SG2. Israel can in one breath berate and label Hamas a terrorist group, yet in the next breath terrorize schools and hospitals by bombing them in the name of defending themselves.
There are NO TUNNELS in a UN school. Get real folks!
There are missiles and launch sites at schools. Even the UN found several. Not an Israeli lie.
We’re going to have to agree to DISAGREE Cielo.
John 8:44 ye are like your father the devil
Viewing some pics of the little kids from #Gaza will leave you traumatized. Those images are going to be embedded in my mind forever.*tears*