London Guardian Criticism of Israel
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)
Israel gets away with mass murder and much more because of bipartisan US support and encouragement - a deplorable situation, ongoing for decades.
Palestinian suffering under apartheid rule is much worse than what Blacks in South Africa endured.
It’s been ongoing for over 70 years with no relief in prospect, no world community toughness against Israel, no end to its institutionalized racism, state terror against defenseless civilians, collective punishment, occupation, dispossession, economic suffocation, and brutalizing repression.
Last week, the NYT surprisingly published a stinging indictment of Israeli viciousness by Law Professor Michelle Alexander, a rare example of major media truth-telling on a vital issue, festering unresolved, an entire people subjugated under the boot of a ruthless occupier.
Alexander said she could no longer remain silent about “one of the great moral challenges of our time: the crisis in Israel-Palestine.”
It’s hard imagining the Times turning a page for Palestinian justice after one-sidedly supporting Israel from inception.
Yet it featured Alexander’s commentary, attracting a great deal of attention deservedly, hopefully more of the same coming from others, published by the Times and other major media.
One swallow does not a summer make. Nor another by London Guardian editors, nearly always on the wrong side of major issues, on the right side of this one this time - a one-off or is there more of the same coming.
Neither the Times or Guardian are models of what journalism is supposed to be - polar opposite with rare exceptions, the vast majority of the time sticking to the official narrative, suppressing what’s most important to report.
Broken clocks are right twice daily. Perhaps that’s all the Times and Guardian pieces represent. Still they were most welcome. Hope springs eternal for much more of the same.
The Guardian headlined about “Israel’s democracy (sic): killing with impunity, lying without consequence? The broadsheet was mostly right. As in America, Britain, other Western societies and Israel, democracy is pure fantasy.
Guardian editors took aim at Israeli viciousness, discussing what’s almost never reported by major Western media, saying:
For months last year, “Palestinians – many of them children – were killed at the rate of around one a day while taking part in protests along Israel’s perimeter fence with Gaza about their right to return to ancestral homes.”
“They included medics and journalists. Most of the dead were unarmed and posed no danger to anyone, with little more than rocks in their hands and slogans on their lips.”
“Yet Israel continued with an immoral and unlawful policy that sees soldiers of its military, which is under democratic civilian control, shoot, gas, shell and kill protesters, including those who pose no credible threat.”
What’s stated above is almost never reported by US and other Western media with a few corrections and additions.
Democracy is pure fantasy in Israel, the West, and most everywhere else.
Since last March, Gazans protested nonviolently, no weapons used, no threats to Israeli soldiers or civilians.
Official Israeli policy permits live fire against peaceful Palestinian demonstrators anywhere in the Occupied Territories - a flagrant breach of international law.
Israel calls peaceful Palestinian protests for fundamental rights they’re denied “incitement.” It calls international law permitted self-defense “terrorism.”
Israel and America partner in each other’s wars of aggression. Republicans and undemocratic Dems supply the Jewish state with billions of dollars in military aid annually at a time its only enemies are invented ones.
Israel is nuclear armed and dangerous. It maintains stockpiles of banned chemical, biological, and other terror weapons, using them at its discretion unaccountably.
Daily life in Occupied Palestine is intolerable by any standard, blockaded Gaza worst of all by far.
The Guardian: “Hospitals in Gaza, which already struggle under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade, have been stretched to breaking point in dealing with the flood of patients ferried in from the protests.”
The Strip is an undeclared “war zone…(Israel’s) blatant disregard for Gazan lives and the lack of accountability is underpinned by a politics of resentment and dissembling that has profound repercussions for Israel. If one can kill with impunity, then can one lie without consequence?”
Israel rejects Palestinian self-determination in any form. So does the US. No equitable proposal exists that “Palestinians will swallow…just a rebranding of the status quo, maintained by force by Israel, and with Palestinians within and without Israel’s borders subjugated…”
Guardian editors didn’t match Michelle Alexander’s powerful commentary, featured by the NYT. But they went where few Western major media ever dared go before.
The US, NATO, Israel, and their partners in high crimes get away with them time and again because major Western media fail to hold their feet to the fire till they burn.
Strong and sustained criticism by Western media may be the only possible way to change some of the ongoing horrors - in Occupied Palestine and elsewhere.
Two commentaries on Israeli high crimes are a good start. A tsunami is needed, sustained for the long haul.
Responsible change is only possible if ruling authorities are held accountable for their actions. Popular revolution may be the only solution.
The power of the press can help enormously when on the right side of vital issues - what’s very much not the case, what’s vitally needed.
The commentaries discussed above can only help if followed by many more - and not just about brutalized Palestinians.
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