So is this just how our great free press of the West really operates?

 By Alex Lo

Oct 14, 2024

To appreciate the true magnitude of its disgrace, imagine the response if murdered Gazan journalist Hassan Hamad were an Uygur or a Tibetan.

Earth, receive an honoured guest … In the nightmare of the dark / All the dogs of Europe bark, And the living nations wait, Each sequestered in its hate; Intellectual disgrace / Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie / Locked and frozen in each eye.

– W.H. Auden

“I have seen the insides of too many dead kids to ever view the mainstream Western media with anything but pure disdain,” wrote independent Australian journalist Caitlin Johnstone.

I know the feeling, but unlike Johnstone, I chickened out watching unbearably gruesome pictures or videos of ordinary Palestinians, most of them women and children, being torn to shreds by weapons fired by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and provided by the United States, but also to a lesser extent by Britain, Germany, Canada and Italy – in short, the Free World, the great protector of global freedom, democracy and human dignity.

It’s quite extraordinary what modern weapons can do to the human body. That’s the main reason there is intense dispute over how many Palestinians have been killed. Often all you have are bits and pieces of human flesh, so it’s difficult to be precise. The weight standard in Gaza is reportedly 75kg of body parts in a garbage bag for one adult, half that for a child.

But what if you were a skinny young lad like Hassan Hamad, the brave and beautiful teenage journalist blown to pieces this week at his home in a drone assassination by the IDF? You’d probably weigh somewhere in between. And of course, countless teenagers like Hamad have been killed, their mortal remains left in pieces.

I have no doubt if this number, though uncertain, of people killed were Israeli or Jewish, there would have been howls of a new Holocaust, with US-led Western militaries preparing for a third world war.

But these dead kids are Palestinians, killed by Israelis with Western weapons, so it’s A-OK! It’s a tragedy, it’s nobody’s fault. You haven’t heard about Hamad? You really should. For a year now, the 19-year-old had been carrying out his own acts of resistance against the Israeli military onslaught. So he was a terrorist? Hmm, not quite.

Actually most Palestinians are not terrorists. Hamad worked as a journalist documenting Israeli military atrocities. He received repeated warnings from the Israelis to stop filming in Gaza … or else. He posted one threatening message on WhatsApp: “Listen, if you continue spreading lies about Israel, we’ll come for you next and turn your family into … This is your last warning.”

Since he continued, they killed him this week. Reporters sans frontieres (RSF) has posted on X a clip about his work, including his remains being put in a shoebox and prepared for burial, with the gruesome bits edited out.

Palestinians commit all kinds of non-violent resistance. The poet and professor Refaat Alareer, killed in an Israeli air strike, wrote about the voiceless suffering of his own people. Filmmaker Shrouq Aila has continued the journalism of her late husband Roshdi Sarraj, killed by the Israeli war machine, as she wears his press vest to work.

But no, you don’t usually hear about such acts of resistance because they don’t fit the grand narrative of Palestinian terrorism and fanaticism in the Western news media. So like Hamad’s murder, they are under-reported, censored or simply ignored.

“At least 128 journalists and media workers, all but five of them Palestinian, have been killed – more journalists than have died in the course of any year since [Committee to Protect Journalists] began documenting journalist killings in 1992 … [A]t least five journalists were specifically targeted by Israel for their work,” said that New York-based organisation. RSF has filed complaints at the International Criminal Court alleging war crimes against reporters in Gaza.

If you want to appreciate the true magnitude of the disgrace of the Western news media, just imagine their response if Hamad were a Uygur or a Tibetan.

 

Republished from South China Morning Post, October 09, 2024

https://johnmenadue.com/so-is-this-just-how-our-great-free-press-of-the-west-really-operates/