As the Israeli aggression against Gaza continues unabated, the human tragedy that Western media is trying to obscure in various ways continues. In their biased coverage, these media outlets adopted Israeli propaganda narratives and rhetoric, which led to a clear loss of their credibility recently.
The Palestinian issue has always received great attention from the international community, however, accusations of bias in the Western media, especially towards Israel, have remained a recurring topic, so the Israeli aggression on Gaza came and swept away with it all the standards of professionalism, freedom and objectivity that these ongoing media edifices often sang about. For more than three months, we have been ignoring the genocide against civilians in the Gaza Strip.
Critics say Western media often downplays or neglects the suffering of Palestinians, presenting an incomplete and biased narrative. In an interview with Anatolia , the Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative Movement, Mustafa Barghouti, said: “The Western media’s coverage of the Gaza war reflects racism against the Palestinian and the Muslim,” referring to what he calls “an absolute Western media bias toward Israel that is based on fanaticism, racism, and repeating the Israeli narrative without any professional research.” ".
According to The Intercept's analysis of mainstream media coverage, the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times' coverage of the Israeli war on Gaza showed a consistent anti-Palestinian bias. The print media, which plays an influential role in shaping American views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has paid little attention to the unprecedented impact of Israel's blockade and bombing campaign on children and journalists in the Gaza Strip.
Complete bias towards Israel
Just as Western governments failed to assume their responsibility to act to confront credible accounts of war crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, the masks fell once again from the double standards followed by the Western media, which claims to be platforms for freedom and democracy, by playing a clearly biased role in favor of Israel. According to observers, this has greatly increased the spread of misinformation and dehumanization.
In light of the discrimination, Western media not only adopted the Israeli narrative, but also distanced themselves from journalistic objectivity, as the destruction of Gaza and the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians, most of them women and children, received only a small amount of coverage in the United States and Western media. The other, whose dozens of correspondents cover the war from inside Israel, while a few are on the ground to cover the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza.
These Western outlets have focused disproportionately on Israeli deaths in the conflict by using emotional language to describe the killings of Israelis, while blatantly ignoring the killing of Palestinians whom they dehumanize, considering their deaths so everyday and normal that journalists report them as if they were... They report weather news.
Moreover, those who dared to raise their voices against the loss of civilian lives, call for a ceasefire, or appeal for essential aid to reach Gaza were cruelly labeled as “anti-Semitism.”
Deliberate ignoring
One aspect of bias is selective framing , where the media chooses specific angles or narratives that align with their biases or the prevailing political climate. In the case of the recent aggression on Gaza, critics believe that the Western media tends to frame the conflict as a reaction to the Al-Aqsa Flood operation carried out by Hamas on October 7, 2023, focusing on Israeli security concerns and marginalizing the root causes of the conflict, as well as ignoring the response. The unprecedented act of committing genocide in full view of the entire world.
Another concern revolves around the underrepresentation of Palestinian voices in Western media coverage. Most Western media deliberately marginalize the views, experiences and grievances of Palestinians, as the lack of diverse narratives reinforces a one-sided understanding of the conflict, leading to misconceptions about root causes and potential solutions.
Critics also point to the media's tendency to humanize Israeli victims while dehumanizing Palestinian victims. By individualizing Israeli stories and presenting them in a more relatable way, the media may inadvertently contribute to creating a sympathy gap that reduces the seriousness of the situation for Palestinians.
Not only have these media outlets skewed sharply in their framing of the tragedy and ignored the crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinians, but their spread of misinformation, rooted in unsubstantiated, contradictory, or false narratives, has had real humanitarian consequences on the ground.
Reasons for bias despite the clarity of the crimes
Throughout the conflict, Western media, including state-funded broadcasters such as the BBC and Germany's DW, and international media such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Times of London, CNN, and Fox News, have been criticized for Widespread because it repeats Israeli propaganda and ignores the massacres against the Palestinians.
Perhaps one of the most prominent reasons that explain the cause of this immoral bias is the influence and control of Zionism and its followers over the West’s most important media edifices, which was recently confirmed by Alan Dershowitz, the Israeli lawyer charged with defending Israel in the case brought against it by South Africa in the International Court of Justice, when he said “The Jews are very powerful, we are very rich, we control the media, we will never apologize for using our power and influence, and peace for the Jewish people and the Jewish nation will only be achieved by force.”
While Israel's war crimes are justified under the pretext of the "right to self-defense," there is not even a word of protest over the killing of more than 100 Palestinian journalists in the relentless bombardment that has reduced Gaza to rubble. Speaking to Anadolu , British journalist Harry Vere accused Western media of showing bias in its coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying that the “comprehensive narrative” is based only on the Israeli narrative.
"On alert" Houthi leader: Washington's attacks are ineffective and we are preparing for an open battle
A member of the Houthi political bureau, Ali Al-Qahum, said that the American-British aggression against Yemen has not and will not be effective, stressing that the responses to the aggression were and will be more painful, revealing that operations in the Red Sea are continuing.
The prominent leader of the Yemeni "Houthi" group, Ali Al-Qahhoum, confirmed that the United States' attacks against the group's targets are "ineffective," stressing that his group is on "alert" to wage an open battle with the United States in response to the "aggression."
Al-Qahhoum said: “From Yemen, we say to the Americans: All your movements and aggression towards Yemen will fail, and we will confront your aggression with all our strength, and you will leave the region humiliated, and you will see from the Yemeni might what will deter you, break your arrogance, and bring down your alleged prestige.”
He warned Washington that Yemen "will be your graveyard, and with this aggression you have opened for yourselves the gates of hell, hell, and calamities that will drown you, God willing."
Al-Qahum revealed, "The state, the leadership, the Yemeni armed forces, and the people are on alert and prepared to fight the open battle with you, and it is a great honor to be directly confronting the Great Satan represented by America, Britain, and Israel for the sake of Palestine and the nation's issues."
In "solidarity with the Gaza Strip", which has been subjected to a devastating Israeli war with American support since October 7, 2023, the Houthis are targeting, with missiles and drones, cargo ships in the Red Sea that are owned or operated by Israeli companies or that transport goods to and from Israel.
The White House announced, in a joint statement from 10 countries, that the American and British armed forces carried out joint attacks against targets in areas controlled by the Houthis, resulting in five deaths and six injuries. The group then announced that all American and British interests had become “legitimate targets” for its forces.
On Saturday, the United States renewed its launch of a number of raids on the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, and the US Central Command (Centcom) announced on Sunday morning that it had shot down an anti-ship missile near the coast of Hodeidah in the Red Sea (western Yemen), launched from areas controlled by the “Houthi” Yemeni group.
In its first statement, Washington described its strikes against Houthi targets as "precise" and said that they aimed to "disrupt and weaken the capabilities that the Houthis use to threaten global trade and the lives of international sailors in one of the most important waterways in the world."
While Al-Qahhoum explained, “The American-British aggression against Yemen has not and will not be effective. It is an aggression and crime that violated sovereignty and international laws.”
He revealed that "the targets were in sites that had been previously bombed, and this is not new. Thus, they have declared an open war on Yemen, and they must bear the strikes and the Yemeni strategic deterrence."
Al-Qahum stressed that "targeting Israeli ships or ships heading to occupied Palestine will not stop until the Israeli aggression against Gaza-Palestine stops and the siege is lifted."
Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli occupation army has been waging a devastating war on Gaza, which as of Monday left “24,100 martyrs and 60,832 injured, most of them children and women, and caused the displacement of more than 85% of the Strip’s population (equivalent to 1.9 million.” person), according to the Gaza Strip authorities and the United Nations.
It is emphasizing the urgent need for balanced reporting.
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