This month, the world watched South Africa provoke Worldwide Courtroom of Justice (ICJ) hearings on the genocidal acts Israel dedicated in Gaza. In a two-day session on January 11 and 12, the court docket heard the intensive proof the South African authorized crew had gathered to help their case in opposition to Israel, and the rebuttal by the Israeli crew.
The hearings have been historic for 2 causes. First, this was the primary time that Israel’s decades-long aggression in opposition to the Palestinians was articulated intimately for the world to listen to, with out having to move via the distorting lens of Western media or politicians. Second, this was the primary time that Israel was substantively held to account in public beneath worldwide legislation, with out being shielded from such accountability by its Western backers, because it has been for the previous century.
The unprecedented nature of the hearings drew worldwide consideration. The media world wide lined the proceedings extensively, typically with reside feeds of each shows. However within the West, as soon as once more an anti-Palestinian media bias turned obvious.
Channels just like the BBC have been accused of not absolutely exhibiting the South African presentation, whereas broadcasting extra of the Israeli one. American, Canadian and British newspapers have been chastised for not that includes the ICJ case on their entrance pages.
The bias was clearest within the obtrusive parallels between the details in Israel’s shows to the court docket – which mirrored the longstanding foremost themes of Israeli propaganda – and the reporting of Western mainstream media, with some exceptions. Certainly, Western protection of the struggle has been skewed since day one.
The US progressive publication The Intercept did its personal evaluation of three main US newspapers – The New York Instances, the Washington Submit, and the Los Angeles Instances – and located that their reporting “heavily favoured Israel”. It mentioned that they “disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict; used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians; and offered lopsided coverage of antisemitic acts in the U.S., while largely ignoring anti-Muslim racism in the wake of October 7.”
In response to the Intercept’s evaluation, the phrase “slaughter” was utilized in reference to Israeli deaths vs Palestinian deaths in a ratio of 125 to 2; the phrase “massacre” in a ratio of 60 to 1. Anti-Semitism was talked about 549 instances, whereas Islamophobia simply 79 instances.
This anti-Palestinian bias in print media “tracks with a similar survey of US cable news that the authors conducted last month that found an even wider disparity,” it concluded.
Many different such research and examples of Western media bias in the direction of Israel are actually obtainable.
Tweeting the Intercept report, Francesca Albanese, the UN particular rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, requested a pertinent query: “After months of western media misrepresenting or not reporting the unfolding genocide in Gaza and all sort of int’l law violations against Palestinians: I have a question. Don’t journalists have codes of conducts and professional ethics to abide by and be held accountable to?”
To reply her query: They do, in precept. However in observe, journalists and their media managers and homeowners function within the context of most Western media taking part in a central position within the persevering with legacies of Western-Israeli settler-colonialism, apartheid, and genocide in opposition to the Palestinians.
Consequently, the vast majority of residents and politicians are satisfied that they need to help Israeli insurance policies, even when these embrace settler-colonial brutality and apartheid.
It’s no shock that American, and most different Western, public opinion within the final half-century or so closely sided with Israel over the Palestinians – as a result of residents primarily heard Israeli views that dominated the information media and the statements and insurance policies of their governments.
Over the previous three months, nonetheless, the struggle in Gaza has revealed simply how a lot Israeli state propaganda shapes US coverage and the media’s dominant narrative of occasions. As Norman Solomon, media critic and government director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, put it in a January 18 Frequent Goals article:
“What is most profoundly important about the war in Gaza – what actually happens to people being terrorized, massacred, maimed, and traumatized – has remained close to invisible for the U.S. public … With enormous help from US media and political power structures, the ongoing mass murder – by any other name – has become normalized, mainly reduced to standard buzz phrases, weaselly diplomat-speak, and euphemistic rhetoric about the Gaza war. Which is exactly what the top leadership of Israel’s government wants.”
This twin legacy of the US’s distorted reporting and dysfunctional state insurance policies is not as potent because it was once, as the worldwide public reactions to the ICJ genocide listening to have proven.
The worldwide protests in solidarity with Palestine revealed that Israel and its Western protectors and media parrots, who repeat largely discredited Israeli propaganda arguments, can not persuade world audiences to the identical extent they did previously. This is because of Israel’s personal brutal actions, but additionally the modified world info system.
The world now sees every day on social media and a few various media Israel’s genocidal actions and apartheid insurance policies. The ICJ shows and 1000’s of related articles, commentaries, webinars, public talks and different occasions internationally uncovered these Israel-Palestine realities.
Modified info flows have brought on severe concern in Washington, in addition to Tel Aviv, as a result of first rate, justice-loving residents reject the US’s fervent help for Israel’s navy brutality – and plenty of say they’re prone to reject voting for “Genocide Joe” Biden within the presidential election this November. That is what occurs when bizarre residents see the complete story of occasions in Palestine – for the primary time in trendy historical past.
A brand new US opinion ballot confirms that seemingly voters are extra inclined to vote for candidates who supported a ceasefire in Gaza, by a 2-to-1 margin (51-23 %). Amongst younger and non-white voters, who’re essential for a Democratic win, between 56 and 60 % mentioned they might again ceasefire supporters.
However the rising consciousness of what’s going on in Israel-Palestine has had an influence nicely past US politics. As South African journalist Tony Karon famous in an article in The Nation on January 11: “So Israel is waging a classic colonial war of pacification of a native population resisting colonization – at a moment when much of the global citizenry is producing the receipts of centuries of Western violence and enslavement, demanding justice and a reordering of global power relations. Standing up for Palestine has become shorthand for that global struggle to change how the world is ruled.”
Certainly, the extraordinary world help for Palestine, which peaked throughout the ICJ listening to, represents the International South difficult the political and financial hegemony of the North. Folks internationally are saying they help justice and can proceed to withstand Western colonial forces which have ravaged scores of societies for half a millennium.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.