Last week Palestinians celebrated 73 years of ‘Al-Nakba’ – their displacement in 1948 by the creation of Israel. However, the event surely won’t be finding a place in the news on western media.
Biased reporting of ongoing brutalities of Israeli forces in Al-Quds and Ghaza is yet another example of the hypocritical character of western media. This is not the first time that Palestinians had to face such an unfortunate and deadly series of events.
Read more: How is the western media presenting Israel’s crimes against humanity?
Their fundamental rights have been put in jeopardy on various occasions and each time the western powers and media have highlighted the worrisome events by whitewashing the Israeli colonialism in Palestine.
The ongoing genocide of Palestinians started on 7th May 2021 when the Israeli forces attacked the worshippers in the Al-Aqsa mosque by firing rubber bullets and throwing stun grenades. As a result, more than 200 Palestinians were severely wounded, causing one of the Palestinians to lose both eyes.
Read more: Pakistan condemns Israeli raid on Al-Aqsa Mosque
On the night of 10, May 2021 Israeli forces launched deadly airstrikes on Gaza, leaving 21 Palestinians dead, among which, 4 were children.
Western media’s reliance on euphemism
Thus far, the escalated violence and recent heaviest aerial exchange have left 43 people dead in Gaza. However, the western media still adopted the approach of selective humanity and referred to hideous events in Gaza as “conflict”, “night of chaos” or “bouts.”
Words like “Israeli occupation”, “Israeli apartheid” or “Israeli terrorism” were not found to be making headlines in Western media or channels.
Read more: Things to learn from the Israeli violence
While making news on Israel’s illegal occupation in Palestine, western media has heavily relied on euphemism to reduce the visibility of crimes being executed by the illegal Israeli forces in Palestine. For instance, one of the news headlines posted by the New York Times said “Israeli Court Delays Expulsion of Palestinian Families in East Jerusalem.”
While the whole world stands witness to the tragedy in Palestine, western media and great powers turn a blind eye towards the whole issue and practice what I would like to call “plastic humanity.”
Read more: How the western media constructs false narratives?
Attacking religious sites or killing innocent civilians during war or conflict is strictly prohibited under International Law. To regulate the international and non-international armed conflict, various laws and conventions like International Humanitarian Law (IHL), or Law of Armed Conflict, and Hague and Geneva Conventions hold a prominent position in International Law.
These laws and conventions laid down the rules of war and limit the means and methods of warfare to avoid suffering caused by war. However, no action has been taken to enforce the laws of war or armed conflict to limit the suffering of Palestinians.
Read more: Palestinians rise up against illegal Israel annexation plan
Twisting the narratives?
Among many crimes against humanities, apartheid and genocide are egregious violations of human dignity but the western media is nowhere to be found reporting all the crimes executed by Israel in Palestine as “genocide” or “war crimes.”
To further dash the hopes of the Muslim world, Western media has termed the heavily armed military attack on innocent civilians worshiping in their third-most holiest site as a religious conflict. Words like “Jews” and “Palestinians” have been mentioned repeatedly to camouflage the real cause of Israel’s illegal occupation.
Read more: Palestinians supporting Israeli annexation have been arrested
Moreover, many articles were found to be contextualizing the violence with Islam. Headlines like “Israeli-Arab tensions have been on the rise since the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan” portrayed the whole situation as a result of religious tension instead of colonialism of Israeli forces.
In a recent article published by BBC News, the Palestinian protestors were termed as “militants” and were blamed for the whole situation by stating “with protesters throwing rocks at police, who responded with stun grenades.”
Read more: 5 Times media fell for western “Fake News”
Given that the current series of horrifying events were a “response”, one might get an impression that Palestinians are violent people who act out and are only then targeted by Israeli forces.
Lies will always be exposed
By compromising the truth, western media has exposed its hypocrisy and biases against the Palestinians and Muslim Ummah.
At first, it was the UN and great powers that had always been ignorant of apartheid in Palestine, but now even the western media is building a false narrative to cover the atrocities being committed against the people of Gaza.
Read more: CNN Pakistani journalist fired for tweeting ‘world needs Hitler’ to save Gaza
Nevertheless, the Western media and great powers forget that it does not take long to reveal the truth in this age of digitalization and social media.
They can hide the erroneous chronicles of Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid in Palestine, but the world is not blind. We are witness to the killing of innocent children, women, and men and then terming it as “collateral damage.”
Read more: Pakistan strongly condemns Israel’s Gaza airstrikes
If not our leaders, we will fight the anti-Islam sentiments, Islamophobia, colonialism in Palestine, and its last bastion Zionism by spreading awareness through social media and other mediums. The biases of western media and great powers under the Zionist influence shall be brought to an end.
The author holds a bachelor’s degree in Clinical Psychology. She is currently a student of Masters in Development Studies at the National University of Science and Technology, Islamabad. Her stream of interest is Peace, Conflict, and Development. The views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space.