Palestinian politician explains the media’s ‘double standards’ to BBC presenter
The UN has described the Israeli occupation of Palestinians as “apartheid”, and likened the situation in Gaza to an “open-air prison”. Israeli forces have killed thousands of Palestinian civilians. And yet the media is almost always more favourable towards Israeli politicians than it is towards Palestinian ones.
On Sunday 22 October, veteran Palestinian politician Dr Hanan Ashrawi laid out the issue in an interview with the BBC‘s Victoria Derbyshire:
Double standards
In the interview, Derbyshire said:
I wonder if you do have to acknowledge the barbarity – the brutality – of the attack on Israelis in Southern Israel by Hamas before this can move forwards?
Ashrawi responded:
Oh god [shakes head]. I mean I can’t believe I’m hearing this same thing over and over again. This is a preoccupation with the Western media because something happened to Israel for the first time in its history everybody’s up in arms, and its [Palestinian] victims have to condemn themselves.
While it’s hardly the “first time” something has happened to Israelis, the attack did result in Hamas killing an unprecedented number of Israelis – 1,405. On the Palestinian side, of course, high casualty counts are the norm. The following chart – provided by Statista – shows the unbalanced nature of the situation over a 12-year period:
Ashrawi continued [0:29]:
Israel has been doing this to us for decades. Piecemeal, day in, day out, people killed, homes demolished. And we’re telling you how many Palestinians have been killed by a brutal Israeli occupation. Total siege on Gaza; total destruction and land theft in the West Bank. Nobody brings… Israeli spokespeople and says ‘do you condemn this? Isn’t this brutal? Isn’t this genocide?’ No. But the moment people under siege look at Gaza – it’s an area where people haven’t had a day of normal life – and then, when they lash out; when they break out, immediately all sorts of horrific labels are used.
Ignoring all that, Derbyshire asked:
Were the Israeli citizens legitimate targets?
After a short exchange, Ashrawi answered:
No, I don’t believe in civilians being legitimate targets at all – at all. In the same way as we are not legitimate targets of Israel. Our homes, our lands are not at [Israel’s] disposal; our freedom, our rights have been denied. No, don’t put words in my mouth.
“Okay” Derbyshire responded quietly before Ashrawi continued:
Civilians are never legitimate targets, but what I’m talking about is the double standard. Israel is an occupying power. This has to be acknowledged. Israel has been torturing the Palestinians since 1947. It is time this stops, without constantly looking for excuses and blaming the victim.
The future
The ideal situation for all is one in which Palestinians do not have to live in “apartheid” conditions. It’s a situation which will be impossible to realise unless the oppressive conditions that Israel is subjecting Palestinians to are openly acknowledged.
Featured image via BBC – screengrab
Double standards
In the interview, Derbyshire said:
I wonder if you do have to acknowledge the barbarity – the brutality – of the attack on Israelis in Southern Israel by Hamas before this can move forwards?
Ashrawi responded:
Oh god [shakes head]. I mean I can’t believe I’m hearing this same thing over and over again. This is a preoccupation with the Western media because something happened to Israel for the first time in its history everybody’s up in arms, and its [Palestinian] victims have to condemn themselves.
While it’s hardly the “first time” something has happened to Israelis, the attack did result in Hamas killing an unprecedented number of Israelis – 1,405. On the Palestinian side, of course, high casualty counts are the norm. The following chart – provided by Statista – shows the unbalanced nature of the situation over a 12-year period:
Ashrawi continued [0:29]:
Israel has been doing this to us for decades. Piecemeal, day in, day out, people killed, homes demolished. And we’re telling you how many Palestinians have been killed by a brutal Israeli occupation. Total siege on Gaza; total destruction and land theft in the West Bank. Nobody brings… Israeli spokespeople and says ‘do you condemn this? Isn’t this brutal? Isn’t this genocide?’ No. But the moment people under siege look at Gaza – it’s an area where people haven’t had a day of normal life – and then, when they lash out; when they break out, immediately all sorts of horrific labels are used.
Ignoring all that, Derbyshire asked:
Were the Israeli citizens legitimate targets?
After a short exchange, Ashrawi answered:
No, I don’t believe in civilians being legitimate targets at all – at all. In the same way as we are not legitimate targets of Israel. Our homes, our lands are not at [Israel’s] disposal; our freedom, our rights have been denied. No, don’t put words in my mouth.
“Okay” Derbyshire responded quietly before Ashrawi continued:
Civilians are never legitimate targets, but what I’m talking about is the double standard. Israel is an occupying power. This has to be acknowledged. Israel has been torturing the Palestinians since 1947. It is time this stops, without constantly looking for excuses and blaming the victim.
The future
The ideal situation for all is one in which Palestinians do not have to live in “apartheid” conditions. It’s a situation which will be impossible to realise unless the oppressive conditions that Israel is subjecting Palestinians to are openly acknowledged.
Featured image via BBC – screengrab
October 19, 2023
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (L) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) hold a joint press conference in Tel Aviv, Israel on October 12, 2023. [GPO – Anadolu Agency]
by Ramona Wadi
walzerscent
“As long as the United States stands and we will stand forever, we’ll not ever let you be alone,” US President Joe Biden told Israelis in an address from Tel Aviv, before proceeding to repeat the same propaganda which NATO and mainstream media utilised to justify foreign intervention in Libya. His next move was to bring ISIS into the narrative: “atrocities that recall the worst ravages of ISIS”.
This manipulation follows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks after meeting US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, in Tel Aviv last week. “Hamas is ISIS, and just as ISIS was crushed, so too will Hamas be crushed. And Hamas should be treated exactly the way ISIS was treated,” Netanyahu stated.
One must also not forget Blinken’s threat. “Here in Israel, and everywhere, we will reaffirm the crystal-clear warning that President Biden issued yesterday to any adversary – state or non-state – thinking of taking advantage of the current crisis to attack Israel: Don’t. The United States has Israel’s back,” Blinken warned, while referring to the US deploying the largest aircraft carrier in the world to bolster Israel’s genocidal actions against Palestinians in Gaza.
Report: Israel’s heavy reliance on technology failed to protect it
Only the terror narrative sustains Israel’s current bloodbath against the Palestinians in Gaza. And only because the international community is too cowardly and complicit to call out Israel’s colonial violence. Meanwhile, the US promotes a false narrative that, together with Israel, both allegedly believe in “the fundamental dignity of every human life”. Basic empathy aside, which is non-existent anyway when speaking about colonial powers, how does the US$100 million in aid to Palestinians compare next to the $10 billion Biden will be requesting the US Congress for Israel?
The US is reciprocating Israel’s terror narrative with comparisons to 9/11, and justifying Israel’s colonial violence from the same narrative that brought the world’s powers together in the so-called “war on terror”. Positioning a US aircraft carrier against a besieged enclave, with a population that has been repeatedly displaced since 1948, and which is now estimated to have one million forcibly displaced Palestinians since 7 October, speaks of international engagement in colonial violence against Gaza. Not to mention the 3,785 Palestinians killed in Israel’s bombing of the area.
According to EU Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, “there is no contradiction in standing in solidarity with Israel and acting on the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people”. But there is. There is contradiction in standing in solidarity with a colonial enterprise built over the remnants and buried history of ethnic cleansing, stolen land and massacred people. Unless, of course, it is former colonial powers and their weaker allies depending on political allegiances that do not want a true decolonial reversal – one that restores land ownership to its rightful people – the Palestinians. Acting in solidarity with Israel is violating the Palestinian people’s humanitarian needs – there is and will never be any equivalence.
But such is the politics guiding the international community, sheltering Israel from facing a reversal of the terror narrative that would shatter its core.
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