not buying the "balance" bull shit

 The idea of Objectivity and Balance in Journalism is something that i began to question and mistrust a long time ago. That there can be any of that in the reporting from Palestine/ Israel  is a myth that just will not go away.  Most  of  the  so called balanced reporting is usually just unquestioned Israeli hasbara with an occasional bone thrown the  Palestine  way.

The idea of  balanced political thinking  about the region is a dangerous myth that makes the  resolution of this almost eternal problem,  impossible. 





Everything about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict follows the same pattern over and over, including the reaction of Americans. In the first couple of days after a new round of violence breaks out, there is intense interest and passion, which is quickly replaced by weariness, irritation, and even anger that one has to be bothered by this never-ending, always-ugly and seemingly irresolvable conflict. These sentiments then morph into an attempt to separate oneself from the entire matter by declaring both sides to be equally horrendous and thus washing one's hands from any responsibility for thinking further about it ("I'm sick of both sides"), followed by recriminations against anyone who actually has an opinion that is more supportive of one side than the other.

For years now, US financial, military and diplomatic support of Israel has been the central enabling force driving this endless conflict. The bombs Israel drops on Gazans, and the planes they use to drop them, and the weapons they use to occupy the West Bank and protect settlements are paid for, in substantial part, by the US taxpayer, and those actions are shielded from recrimination by the UN veto power aggressively wielded in Israel's favor by the US government. As the excellent Israeli writer Noam Sheizaf put it on Chris Hayes' MSNBC program this weekend:

"Ultimately, the status quo is the solution from the perspective of [the Netanyahu] government. . . . . There's no incentive for the current [Israeli] political leadership to move from it, especially with the free hand it gets from the world and from the United States."

"An Israeli official close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Obama administration's response to the conflict 'has been everything we could ever hope for.'" Though it should produce serious dismay rather than gloating, Benen is absolutely right in his factual claim: Obama specifically and Democrats generally have long been, and still are, every bit as loyal to and supportive of all Israeli actions as the American Right believes the US should be.





If one wants to try to wash one's hands of this entire matter by declaring both sides equally culpable, that's fine. But doing so requires an acknowledgment that the US government is doing nothing of the sort. It is fueling, funding and feeding the Israeli war machine, and, with its own militaristic conduct, is legitimizing the premises of Israeli aggression.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/21/israel-gaza-us-support