May 3, 2024
Pro-Palestinian protestors gather outside of the New York Times building to protest the newspaper’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war on December 11, 2023 in New York City. [Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images]
Western media has lost all semblance of neutrality and has become “part of the problem” when it comes to Israel’s ongoing war crimes against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to a Palestinian journalist, Anadolu Agency reports.
“The Western media is enabling Israel to commit these war crimes and massacres of Palestinians because they refuse to cover what’s actually happening on the ground,” Ahmed Alnaouq, a Palestinian journalist based in London, told Anadolu.
“It’s very loud and clear that Western media is now a hypocrite when it comes to this war on Gaza.”
Alnaouq has had more than 23 family members killed in Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza, including his father, brothers, sisters and 14 nieces and nephews.
For him, Western media outlets are “partners” in Israel’s crimes.
Western media: an accessory in Israeli war crimes
“The Western media have a job. Their job is to report the news as it happens and they’re not doing their job,” he said.
“The international community also has the responsibility to stop Israel from committing these atrocities against the Palestinian people but, unfortunately, they’re not doing their job.”
He also called out Western media outlets for their apathy on the relentless killing of journalists in Gaza, where at least 142 media workers have been killed in Israeli attacks since last October.
Western media does not care about their Palestinian colleagues because of their “identity” and “skin colour.”
“If this mass killing of journalists happened in another country, if they were not Palestinians, we would have seen uproar from all the Western media,” he said.
“Unfortunately, just because they’re Palestinians, the world did not care much about it. This is a tragedy. The Western media is racist.”
Israel will not succeed in silencing Palestinian journalists
Israel is facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its assault on Gaza, which has now killed over 34,600 Palestinians, the vast majority being women and children, and wounded nearly 77,900.
It has displaced millions more, around 85 per cent of the population, leaving them facing famine and acute shortages of medical aid and other essentials.
Israeli attacks have also laid waste to large swaths of the besieged enclave, devastating everything from housing to medical facilities, educational institutes, and all sorts of civic infrastructure.
These are the crimes that Israel wants to somehow hide with its “assassinations” of journalists, but it will not succeed, said Alnaouq.
“When you kill a journalist in Palestine, another 100 people will want to become a journalist,” he said.
Palestinians and the people of Gaza have long relied on “citizen journalists who take it upon themselves to record what’s happening … and share it with the world,” he said.
Despite all of Israel’s atrocities, these people will continue doing that because they view it as a “moral, ethical and professional responsibility” that will do anything to fulfil, he added.
Censoring Israeli violence: Western media outlets capitulate
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