Israel, the Media and the Anatomy of a Sick Society
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Palestinian
youths confront Israeli forces in the West Bank town of Bethlehem on 6 October.Muhannad SaleemActiveStills
- Courtesy The Electronic Intifada
Israel, the Media and the Anatomy of a Sick Society
This
fundamental fact is only very rarely discussed, but it lies at the heart of the
Palestine
conflict. By seeing Arabs as subhuman, many Israelis are able to justify, often
on an unconscious level, all forms of brutality, violence, and oppression.
by ERIC
DRAITSER
The video of 13 year old Palestinian Ahmed Manasrah
bleeding to death on the pavement of an East Jerusalem
neighborhood has been described as “shocking,” “disturbing,” and “painful to
watch.” The callous verbal abuse and insults from Israelis watching the child
writhe in agony are variously characterized as “heartless” and “cruel”; and
indeed they are.
“Die
you son of a whore. Die! Die!” the Israeli onlookers can be heard shouting
in the video which has since gone viral on social media.
While
there has been much discussion of this video, and other similar incidents
involving the extrajudicial executions of Palestinian youths accused by Israel of
having stabbed Israelis (the veracity of some of these claims is disputed),
there is decidedly little examination of the sociological implications.
Specifically, it has become taboo to interrogate just what sort of ideological
and psychological conclusions can be drawn about Israelis society – a society
where such behavior is not an outlier; where, rather than being an anomaly, it
is indicative of a significant, if not mainstream, attitude. Such undeniably
barbaric treatment is not simple hate, and cannot be explained away or
justified. But that is precisely what the corporate media does.
Suffice
to say that there are many political analysts, activists, and others who are
timid about outright condemnations of Israeli society and Israeli attitudes.
They are, with much justification, fearful of being demonized as anti-Semitic,
terrified that rather than open dialogue and critical examination, they will
have their arguments twisted and portrayed as hateful and racist. While such
accusations are sometimes warranted – as in the case of fascist bigots and
neo-Nazis for whom “Jew” is synonymous with “evil” – more often than not these
are willfully deceptive deflections designed to shield Israeli society from the
criticism that it so clearly deserves.
But
those whose interest is in justice and speaking the truth cannot be silent,
cannot allow themselves to become the victims of self-censorship induced by
fear. For muted criticism of Israel is in fact a failure to properly defend
oppressed people; it is an abdication of the responsibility to speak against
injustice, the brutality of colonialism, and the inhumanity of contemporary
Zionism. It is equally an abandonment of the duty to deconstruct dominant
narratives in the interest of social justice, to challenge the propaganda of
corporate media whose primary function is to shield power from the
uncomfortable light of criticism. I cannot, and will not, be silent.
Media
Propaganda and the Danger of False Equivalence
Reading
the New York Times, Washington Post, and other allegedly liberal major media
outlets, one could be forgiven for thinking that the nature of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is tit-for-tat, that it is the product of an
ongoing cause-effect-countereffect relationship. That is precisely how the
conflict is portrayed in nearly all so-called ‘respectable’ papers.
Take,
for instance, an article published in America’s “paper of record,” the New York
Times, just hours after the incident with the headline Stabbings, and Deadly Responses, Add to Israel’s Security
Challenge. In deconstructing the headline alone, it is clear where the bias
and deception lies; the Times imbues the very headline of the article with a
presumption of guilt on the part of the Palestinians. According to the
syntactic logic of the headline’s construction, it is the “stabbings”
(presented first) which are the root of the problem and, therefore, the “deadly
responses” are just that, responses. The effect is to justify the murder of
Palestinians by portraying them as simply responses to an external factor:
violence against Israelis.
But
of course anyone who has even a rudimentary understanding of the issues knows
that the stabbings are themselves responses to the attacks by Israeli
settlers and security forces on Palestinians, as well as the
predictable outgrowth of seemingly endless brutality and occupation, poverty
and despair. The history of colonialism is replete with such examples.
And
yet Israelis, and the Israeli state itself, are presented as the victims. The
headline frames the issue as being one of a “security challenge” for Israel,
rather than, say, a colonialism problem, or a vicious occupation. So, taken in
total then, the headline and accompanying article have the cumulative effect of
making the victims into perpetrators, and perpetrators into victims, thereby
inverting the oppressor/oppressed relationship. This inversion is absolutely
necessary in order to whitewash Israel’s crimes, and absolve the state and its
fanatical, fascist far right of guilt.
Even
the allegedly even-handed treatment of the issue by a presumably moderate
liberal outlet such as NBC News, belies a dishonest treatment of the conflict
and the recent violence. In covering the incident, NBC News published a story
about the Ahmed Manasrah shooting and subsequent taunting with the headline Viral Video of Shot Ahmed Manasrah Sums Up Israel-Palestinian
Conflict. The article purports to present the issue fairly by presenting
the events surrounding Ahmed’s heinous shooting as emblematic of the entire
conflict. Essentially, NBC News here tries to present the competing narratives
of Israeli and Palestinian sources as indicative of the broader struggle for
public opinion, trying to convince readers that the ongoing allegations and
counter-allegations are just more of the same, and that the truth is simply
unknowable; after all, Israeli sources say X, Palestinian sources say Y. I
guess we’ll never know.
The
reader of the NBC article is left with the utterly dishonest, though
politically very useful, conclusion that both sides are equally guilty, equally
worthy of blame, and that the conflict itself is beyond critical analysis.
Moreover, in presenting the issue in this way, the outlet, in this case NBC, is
seen as fair, as having provided a balanced accounting. In reality however, it
has simply obscured the true nature of the conflict: one between a colonial
oppressor and its victims, displaced and dispossessed systematically for seven
decades.
But
false equivalence aside, by obscuring the truth of the issue, NBC News here
inadvertently reveals something fundamentally true about the conflict; that,
indeed, this incident very much “sums up the Israel-Palestine conflict.” Though
they didn’t intend it this way, NBC News correctly exposes the fact that the
behavior of the Israelis on camera is clearly emblematic of the broader society
of Israel, one which sees Palestinian children as “dogs,” and “sons of whores”
unfit to breathe, unworthy of living.
The
Pathology of Israeli Fascism
What
the Ahmed Manasrah video laid bare for the world to see is the inhumanity of
Zionism, a Jewish supremacist ideology which necessarily places non-Jews in an
inferior relation to Jews, which places less value on the life of the non-Jew.
It is not simple hatred that motivated the disgusting comments from the onlookers,
it is an ingrained, inter-generational sense of superiority bred of
dehumanization of the Palestinian, and the Arab generally.
This
fundamental fact is only very rarely discussed, but it lies at the heart of the
Palestine conflict. By seeing Arabs as subhuman, many Israelis are able to
justify, often on an unconscious level, all forms of brutality, violence, and
oppression. It should be said here that there are some Israelis who fight
against just such thinking (Gideon Levy is perhaps the most prominent and vocal
opponent of such supremacist ideology), but sadly they are drowned out by the
rabid barbarism of the Israeli right (and much of the center, it must be said).
And
this phenomenon, quick to get you rhetorically tarred and feathered as an anti-Semite,
is what underlies all Israeli policies, and the active or passive acceptance of
those policies by the Israeli body politic. While Ahmed Manasrah bleeding to
death amid a swirl of insults from Israelis may elicit a brief outpouring of
shock on social media, it is merely one instance of such violence. Is it really
that different from Israeli bulldozers demolishing countless Palestinian homes?
Is it somehow more barbaric than the torching of Palestinian homes with babies sleeping
inside?
Perhaps
it would be best not to express shock and outrage at the video, but rather to
see it as the logical outgrowth of the fascist, supremacist ideology espoused
by the leaders of the Israeli state. For the Israelis on the video are merely
following the example of leaders such as Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked who, at
the height of Israel’s criminal war on Gaza in the summer of 2014, infamously wrote:
The
Palestinian people has declared war on us, and we must respond with war. Not an
operation, not a slow-moving one, not low-intensity, not controlled escalation,
no destruction of terror infrastructure, no targeted killings. Enough with the
oblique references. This is a war…It is not a war against terror, and not a war
against extremists, and not even a war against the Palestinian Authority…This
is a war between two people. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian
people… What’s so horrifying about understanding that the entire
Palestinian people is the enemy? Every war is between two peoples, and in
every war the people who started the war, that whole people, is the enemy…
Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not
engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on
all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs… They
should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as
should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more
little snakes will be raised there.
Such
rhetoric, with all the attendant dehumanization, is reminiscent of any number
of fascist ideologies, from German Nazism of the 1930s to the contemporary
Ukrainian politics of Right Sector and Azov Battalion. The notion of “total
war” against an entire people, including non-combatant women and children, is
really beyond simple war propaganda, it is the advocacy of genocide and ethnic
cleansing.
And
this is exactly the point: ethnic cleansing as both a concept and military
objective has become the political currency of modern Israel. So why should it
surprise anyone when young Israelis wish death upon a bleeding Palestinian,
calling him a “son of a whore.” After all, isn’t Ahmed Manasrah just another
“little snake”?
…And
One More Thing
If
past history is any indicator, what has been written above will undoubtedly
elicit some negative reactions, condemnations, hate mail, and insults of every
sort. “Anti-Semite,” “traitor,” and “self-hater” are some of the most common
epithets I’ve heard countless times when I’ve written or spoken out about
Israel, Zionism, Jewish supremacy, and such issues. Not only do such obloquies
not deter me, they motivate me to further speak out because they are an
indication that the words are striking a nerve, one that is raw, and
desperately in need of exposure.
I
equally recognize the privilege with which I write these lines. As an avowed
atheist who rejects the ethno-nationalism and tribalism inherent in the
political ideology of Zionism, my Jewish background provides me with a modicum
of insulation from accusations of anti-Semitism (not that it stops them, of course).
Not only does that allow me greater latitude to write and speak freely on these
issues, it reminds me that I have a duty to do so.
For
those who don’t righteously oppose the crimes of imperialism, colonialism,
oppression, and genocide are undoubtedly complicit in them. I, for one, will
not be.
Long Live Palestine
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