How western media helped turn Israel's genocide into 'fake news'.
https://x.com/Jonathan_K_Cook/status/1960369676346606052
Piers Morgan, whose hugely popular online show Uncensored has been one of the main debating platforms where Israel’s supporters and critics clash, illustrates how easily Israel is allowed to shape the narrative.
Morgan perfectly illustrates the way in which western journalists willingly accept racist assumptions about non-western journalists, even when they appear to be challenging those assumptions.
Shortly after Israel’s murder of Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif, Morgan invited on Jamal Elshayyal, the director of the station’s programme 360.
He had to go head-to-head with Jotam Confino, a journalist who once worked for the Israeli TV channel i24 News, which was central to spreading Israel’s “beheaded babies” deception, and now writes for right-wing, and fervently pro-Israel, publications such as the Telegraph and the New York Sun.
Confino’s role in the debate was to bolster Israeli talking points about suspicions that Sharif was a Hamas terrorist.
Elshayyal countered by listing Israel’s decades-long record of assassinating journalists who embarrass it, especially Palestinians. He noted Israel’s infamous execution of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022, and the subsequent exposure of its serial lies designed to obscure its role in her murder.
He also highlighted the wider dangers to the safety of journalists from colluding in vilification campaigns like the one against Sharif, premised on the idea that assassination is warranted for journalists who hold political views their executioners dislike.
Predictably, this argument passed right over Morgan’s head.
Confronted by the absence of any evidence for Sharif being a Hamas cell commander, as Israel has alleged, Confino switched his attack to wider claims that the Al Jazeera journalist might have been sympathetic to Hamas.
But he did not stop there. He turned his sights on Elshayyal, arguing that he was in no position to defend Sharif, as he had expressed anti-Israel views on social media.
Extraordinarily, Morgan then joined Confino in interrogating Elshayyal on his political views – demanding that he condemn Hamas for its 7 October 2023 attack. Notably, no demand was made of Confino to condemn Israel for its far graver genocide.
Implicit in this deeply disturbing – and racist – exchange was the assumption that Arab journalists must demonstrate their ideological bona fides to western journalists before their views, and lives, count.
Elshayyal was there to defend not only Sharif, but the right of journalists to report freely without threat of assassination, whatever their politics. Instead, he found himself forced to defend his right to participate in the debate, based on his own political positions.
A show, hosted by a leading British journalist, that should have clearly denounced the Israeli war crime of systematically murdering journalists in Gaza quickly got sidetracked into a witch hunt against journalists critical of Israel.
This is an extract from my latest article How western media helped turn Israel's genocide into 'fake news'. Read more here: middleeasteye.net/opinion/how-we
posted by Satish Sharma at
02:14
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