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MAINSTREAM MEDIA - If you rely on mainstream US print and broadcast media, such as the LA Times, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NPR, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox for news on global crises, you will probably be misinformed. While they are extremely skillful in repackaging US government talking points, their track record reveals extensive bias. They repeatedly lied about the light at the end of the tunnel in Vietnam, for two decades in Afghanistan they assured viewers and readers that victory was just around the corner, and in Libya they claimed the purpose of US/NATO intervention was protection of civilians, not regime change. In Iraq the public US goal was protection from weapons of mass destruction and sleeper cells. But, years of inspections revealed the hidden truth, these threats never existed. They were nothing more than cynical claims to justify a U.S. military attack on Iraq – that unintentionally benefitted Iran.
Nevertheless, despite these slick media offensives, the American public eventually soured on these wars-of-choice. In the end the invasions flopped, and the US military withdrew in defeat. In the Ukraine this same pattern is repeating. The US government and the ever-reliable US media have repeatedly claimed that US and NATO are intervening to support democracy. But propped up by $115 billion in US aid, the media missed several critical details: Zelensky’s government has banned 13 opposition parties, blocked independent media, and cancelled elections. Even in TIME magazine Zelensky the hero has been pilloried, preparing the American public for another defeat in a US war-of-choice.
How does this background inform us about the US government’s full support of Israel’s month-long bombardment of Gaza, while denying Gaza’s 2.3 million residents water, food, medicine, and fuel? Part of the answer is that unlike their offspring, older Americans largely rely on legacy media for news. As a result, most of their readers and viewers know little of the following:
- Israel’s population totals about 7.5 million Jews and 7.5 million Palestinians, excluding the 6,000,000 members of the Palestinian diaspora. The 2,000,000 Palestinians who live within Israel’s 1948-1967 “green line” borders are Israeli citizens but also victims of systematic discrimination and social segregation. The 5.5 million Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza cannot become Israeli citizens. Those in the West Bank are subject to military, not civilian law. They are also subject to vigilante settler violence, cannot vote in Israeli elections, and cannot live in the thousands of new homes Israel constructed in 144 segregated West Bank settlements.
- About two-thirds of the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza are refugees, forced out of southern Israel in 1947-1949. In addition, the surviving Palestinian refugees in Gaza, along with their children and grandchildren, are targeted for a second mass expulsion, this time to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
- The 2.3 million Palestinians crowded into Gaza have not been subject to direct Israeli occupation since 2006, when Israel unilaterally withdrew its settlers and troops. Since then, Israel has totally controlled Gaza’s population from land, sea, and air. It maintains drone surveillance 24/7, carefully restricts the flow of food and equipment into Gaza, and shoots anyone who moves too close to the Gaza-Israeli border. In Gaza all financial transactions are conducted in the Israeli currency, the shekel. Furthermore, Gaza residents cannot enter Israel, except for some older men issued work permits and a few gravely ill Gaza residents allowed treatment at Israeli hospitals.
- Many human rights organizations and scholars have concluded that Israel is now an apartheid state. Their reports are on line, including those from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, and the United Nations Human Rights Council.
- When South African experts on apartheid visited the West Bank, they concluded that Israel’s version of apartheid was more extreme than South Africa’s. For example, even South Africa had not segregated its road system. In contrast, Israel bars West Bank Palestinians from driving on the new highways that connect Israeli settlements to pre-1967 Israel.
- When the United States gives Israel $4 billion each year in military aid, the White House and Pentagon violate three U.S. laws: the Leahy Law, the Arms Export Control Act, and the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. The Leahy Law does not allow the United States government to provide weapons to countries that perpetrate human rights violations. The Arms Export Control Act only allows the United States to export arms to countries where the weapons are used “solely for internal security, for legitimate self-defense.” In addition, the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 does not allow the United States to provide military hardware to countries, “which engage in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”
- Many experts on these laws, as well the international laws of war, have concluded that Israel has perpetrated frequent human rights violations and that weapons provided by the United States are used for gross violations of human rights laws. For example, Harvard University Law School expert on international law, Bruce Fein, recently sent a letter to President Joe Biden. He explained exactly how Israel has violated the UN’s Convention on Genocide, the Fourth Geneva Convention, and the law of proportionality.
- Professor Fein also wrote that President Biden’s actions have made the United States a co-belligerent because of its unconditional diplomacy and endless re-supply of weapons to Israel in its war against Gaza
These bullet points only scrape the surface on the role of the US media in justifying ethnic cleansing and mass slaughter, including the slow starvation of non-combatants in Gaza. For those who want a more detailed analysis on these actions, you can read this statement from Antonio Guterres, the UN’s Secretary General, Norman Solomon’s recent columns, and Professor Norman Finkelstein’s scholarly interviews, book, and articles about Israeli military attacks on Gaza.
(Victor Rothman is a California-based policy analyst.)
