September 26, 2023 • 45 mins
Unfortunately, media bias when it comes to Palestine and Israel is truly an evergreen topic. For today's re-run episode from June 2022, we're reminded of how irresponsible journalism unfairly frames the public perception of Palestine.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, welcome to Could Happen Here. We are taking a
week off and I've chosen a rerun episode from June
of twenty twenty two. It was my episode about the
media bias in covering Palestine and Israel. Unfortunately, this is
an evergreen topic, so I think it's worth re listening
to just a reminder of how unfair and irresponsible journalism
(00:25):
can be when it comes to Palestine in particular.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
So enjoy, Hi everybody.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Wow, you served Jesus Charene.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Oh, I thought that's what Sophie said I should do.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
I should I know you did the right thing. I'm
the one being an asshole here.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Okay, well this is Scharene. This is also it can
Happen Here. It's a podcast that happens every day that
I am now on you did? What is it about again?
It's about everything happening here.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Yes, it's about everything happening here. And this week's episode
is about my neighbor Dave, who appears to be gardening. No,
that's not what this show is about.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
No, what society is crumbling and how maybe we could
put it back to here?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
There it is? That's what. Yeah, that's what that's what
it is about.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
Wanninis is going to take lead today, but we also
have Christopher Long, Robert Evans, and it is me Sophie.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yes, that's good. See that. This is what I'm going
to keep in mind next time if you ever have
to do this again. Like what intruing this show means?
I mean, it is a daily show, so I have
a lot of opportunities to get this right.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
I wanted to do something a little different today, So
hopefully the listeners are okay with it. Uh, be easy
on me.
Speaker 5 (01:48):
Well, and if they're not, we will simply club them
into submission.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. I live for violence.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
That that is why we've spent half of our year's
podcasting budget ones.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
But I wanted to take a couple episodes to talk
about something very important that I don't think it's a
lot like enough news coverage, and I want to talk
about Palestine, and this first episode I wanted to focus
on how bias news coverages as far as depicting what's
happening in Palestine and Israel. So that's what we're going
(02:26):
to talk about today. So are you ready? Are you
all strapped in? I'm gonna start talking at you guys
for a long time.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Well yeah, motherfucker.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Okay. At the height of the twenty fourteen war between
the Israeli military and Palestinian factions and the Gaza Strip,
New York Times ran an article headlined Israel says that
Hamas uses children's shields, reviving debate. It was a reference
to the hundreds of Palestinian civilians who had been killed
in the Israeli attacks by that point in the war,
and there was no question about who had killed them,
(02:57):
yet the language shifted the subject to a debate about
who was really responsible. A few weeks earlier, after an
Israeli airstrike had killed several Palestinian soccer fans, the Times
ran another absurd title titled missile at beachside Gaza Cafe
finds patrons poise for the World Cup.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
And they later found them Huh wow.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yeah, they found them poise just sitting there.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
It's amazing. People talk about the exonerative case in like journalism,
and it appears to apply to the Israeli military and
American cops.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yes, exactly. And they did later amend this title because
they had like a widespread like backlash and discuss that
was expressed on social media. It only changed after that.
But the whole point is that headlines matter, and it's
the first and sometimes only exposure the general public has
two world events, and especially like now, I believe that
(03:52):
in our current time, the words at the top of
that page, or like sometimes the only words that show
up in a hyperlink, are more important the articles themselves,
because sometimes does all people see before they keep on scrolling,
and in the case of Israel and Palestine, inappropriate, misleading
and biased headlines like those that appeared in the New
York Times that I just mentioned have been all too
(04:12):
common accepted and treated as accurate reporting and quote unquote journalism.
In twenty nineteen, there is a study titled fifty Years
of Occupation that was published by four one six Labs,
which is the research in data analytics firm based in Canada.
This firm analyzed nearly one hundred thousand news headlines about
the conflict and the American press over the past five
(04:34):
decades and found that the Israeli point of view surprise Surprise,
was featured much more prominently than the Palestinian one, and
that references to Palestinian's experiences of being refugees or living
under occupation. That word especially that has steadily declined over time.
So one of the studies authors, Oya sahir He, told
The Intercept that the findings demonstrate a persistent and bias
(04:57):
in coverage of the Israeli Palestinian issue, one where Israeli
narratives are privileged, and where despite the continued entrenchment of
the occupation, the very topics Germaine to the Palestinians date
today reality have disappeared. It calls to attention the need
to more critically evaluate the scope of coverage of the
Israeli occupation and recognize that readers are getting, at best,
a heavily filtered rendering of the issue. So this study
(05:21):
analyzed fifty years of news headlines on the Israeli Palestine conflict.
I put that in quotes. I feel like conflict is
suggests an equal.
Speaker 6 (05:31):
Also like understating it, yes, exactly, come on, yeah, it's
very Uh, it's understating what's actually it's happening, And it
just depicts a somehow neutral playing field.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
But it's not for sure. But the study analyzed fifty
years of headlines from five major American publications. The Chicago Tribune,
The LA Times, The New York Times, the Washington Post,
and The Wall Street Journal. It employed this thing called
natural language processing, or NLP, and these techniques are used
to analyzed massive databases of headlines published over this period.
(06:04):
NLP is a big data analysis approach used to identify
statistical trends and patterns and large cachets of text. In
this case, researchers analyzed nearly one hundred thousand headlines and
identified dozens of frequently recurring terms and word sequences and
stories about the Israel and Palestine. While studies of media
coverage Israel and Palestine have been conducted before, this one
(06:26):
by the four one six Labs analysis is the largest
and most comprehensive look at headline coverage since the occupation
began in nineteen forty eight, and their findings show a
clear slant towards the Israeli perspective. Headlines like the one
that I mentioned earlier from New York Times about civilian
deaths in Gaza that use the term Israel says We're
two and a half times more likely to appear than
(06:48):
headlines citing Palestinian equivalents. Headline centering Israel were published four
times more than those centering Palestinians, and words connoting violence
such as terror appeared three times more than the word occupation.
And since nineteen sixty seven, that's the year that the
Israeli military took control of the West Bank, there has
been an eighty five percent overall decrease in the mention
(07:10):
of the term occupation and headlines about Israel, despite the
fact that the Israeli military's occupation of the Palestine territory
has in fact intensified over this time, and the mention
of the term Palestinian refugees meanwhile has declined a massive
ninety three percent. And while this is maybe subtle from
the outside, it's just a consistent disproportion of article headlines
(07:31):
which by default gives a greater airtime to one side
and avoid certain key issues, and this obviously can impact
public perception.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Yeah, I mean it's very noticeable ones you realize what
the bias is looking, especially on like social media and stuff,
when you see just just the headline of an artisticalis
it's obvious.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Yeah, it's just I don't know, Like, what you have
is a conflict where one side is treated like a
military force and the other side is treated like almost
like weather. Like that's that's almost how they write about
when the Israeli military does something, it's like like a
like a thunderstorm came in, right, Like it's nobody's fault.
(08:15):
This is just what happened, you know. Yeah, like the
Palace that you know, the Humas or whatever, that's like
a military force, and so we talk about them the
way that we talk about, you know, a military force
carrying out a strike or something. But but the Israeli
military is like it's like with a weather, right, there's
nothing to be there's no blame to go around. It
just rained, you know.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yeah. And also like legitimizes Israel and like delegitimizes any
kind of force that Palestine exerts because it's like shown
in this like yeah, like a militant terrorist lens when
it's just acting in self defense.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
It's interesting because the US media actually does a better
job of discussing the US military as if it actually
can be like guilty of crimes. Like the New York
Times in particular has done some like not that there's
not still problems with it, but they it's like there's
there's something unique about the way they write about Israel
that I guess not quite unique because they do often
(09:06):
write about police in a similar way, but it's it's
very peculiar that it's like, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, there's definitely a lot of crossover with US police
in Israel in more ways than one. Oh, yes, they
trained them first of all, but also just like the
way and I'll talk more about this later, but the
fact that there are so many videos like blatantly showing
like brutal acts against like humanity or like just brutalism
and brit in general, and like they still get away
(09:31):
with it just shows that they know there's no punishment,
They know that there's a certain amount of immunity because
they have big brother America to always fucking get their back.
But yeah, despite this ongoing American involvement, the total volume
of US media coverage about the conflict has been in
an overall decline since the nineteen ninety three Oslo Peace Accords.
(09:53):
This was a negotiate agreement between the then Palestine leader
Yaser Arafat and then Israeli Prime Minister It's Die Rabine,
and it was intended to establish conditions for peace in
the region. The decline in use coverage says little about
the conditions on the ground because they didn't get better,
But the hopes that were briefly raised by this Oslo
(10:14):
piece accord effectively died in nineteen ninety five. After an
Israeli extremist assassinated Rabine and a new hardline Israeli leader,
Benjamin and Yahoo. He took power in nineteen ninety six,
and since then, the Israeli military their occupation of the
West Bank has only expanded, with new settlements eating away
at the remaining areas of Palestine control, even while global
(10:37):
media attention has declined. And it's not just American media
that shows a clear bias that favors Israel. British media
coverage on the violence in Palestine is also very biased
against Palestinians, which in turn exkews public perception internationally. In
twenty twenty one, the Muslim Council of Britain's Center for
Media Marketing the CFMM, published a forty four page report
(10:58):
that was titled Media Reporting Palestine twenty twenty one, and
this report came after two weeks of violence in which
Israeli police cracked down on protests against the eminent evictions
of Palestinians in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of schechter Rah.
This report came after two weeks of violence and in
which Israeli police cracked down on protests against the eminent
eviction of Palestinians in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of
(11:21):
schechter Rah, and this subsequently attacked Palestinian worshippers at the
Alukxam Mosque and that wounded hundreds. I don't know if
you guys remember, but in twenty twenty one last year,
there was a lot of violence occurring in Palestine. There
was more covers than usual, especially covering Schechterrarah, and obviously
news headlines didn't always come out in an even handed way.
(11:44):
But the brutal escalation of violence that followed as rockets
were fired from Gaza and Israeli air strikes on the
besieged enclave, it killed at least two hundred and forty
eight Palestinians, including sixty six children. The occupied West Bank
and East Rusale, twenty nine Palestinians were killed, and the
rockets fired from Gaza killed twelve people. In Israel. The
(12:06):
CFMM stated that between May seventh and May twentieth and
twenty twenty one. May twentieth is when a ceasefire was announced.
There were sixty two thousand, four hundred online print articles
in nearly eight thousand television broadcasts reporting on the events,
and this report found that the narrative was extremely unbalanced
due to quote skewed language, misleading headlines, and problematic framing.
(12:30):
Rizwana Hamid, the director of CFMM and the co author
of this report, told The Middle East I that the
overwhelming amount of complaints that was received by the monitoring
organization about the biased media coverage in Britain covering the
events in Palestine, it aligned with the analysis and evidence
that this is all skewed and it makes sense to
get defensive when being rightfully called out, just to kind
(12:53):
of talk a little bit about scheker Rach and a
luxA really quick. This report cited several examples of media
referring to the situation in which the situation was Palestinians
being forcibly removed from their homes. They called this end
eviction or a real estate dispute, which implies a legal
basis for these force displacements, when in reality it was
(13:14):
a violation of international law. So that's minimizing it to
an extreme. It also found that fifty percent of broadcast
media eclips between May seventh and May tenth refer to
quote unquote evictions or similar terms to describe illegal sediment
plans in Schrah, and that also kind of just conflates
(13:35):
that this is there's nothing you can do. This is
like a legal dispute, not your problem, you know, like
let them let the mess be over there, and we're
just sitting here all pretty in America.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
Yeah, they make it seem like it's like, oh, landlord,
this is like yeah, go ahead, yeah yeah.
Speaker 5 (13:51):
There's also this this way in which the actual thing
that is happening is a bunch of people are showing
up with guns and stealing people's houses, and this is
getting treated as like, oh, this is like this is
you know this this is some kind of sort of
like it's.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Like a rental dispute.
Speaker 5 (14:06):
It's like yeah, yeah, it turns into this this like
completely bloodless legal thing, and then you know, you look
at what's actually happening, and it's like, yeah, there's dealing
people's houses at gunpoints. They are like blowing up children
with high explosives.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
It's just like yeah, it's definitely not presented in an
accurate way, and especially if you don't know what's actually happening,
like you do, and you just see these like random
headlines and whatever, you don't think it's anything but what
it is what they're telling you, Like, why would you
deep dipe any further if you're not affected by it?
You know.
Speaker 5 (14:39):
And one of the one of the things I noticed,
like when I was reading some of the coverage that
this is like the the reporters would like, go try
to find some kind of legal basis for this, and
they'd start like they do these like like five paragraph
long things about like weird legal stuff from like nineteen
fifty three, and it's like, this has nothing to do
with what's happening.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Yeah, you take your taking the Yeah.
Speaker 5 (15:01):
Yeah. It's it's like like they they've they've taken the
exonerative case from from the title and then gone and
just done exonerative journalism.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
M M yeah. I do have to say that is
I we are we keep using the term exonerative case.
Somebody came up with that, and I keep forgetting who
it was. But it's a one of the better, one
of the better developments and discussing the way the media
talks about Palestine.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Yeah, no, for sure, Yeah, yeah, it's uh yeah. I
just hate the word. I hate that even the word
journalism has like a it's not I don't even like
calling this journalism, you know what I mean. I don't
like that New York Times doesn't use any anything. But
it is what it is. That's what we've got.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Well, and it's you know, as is always the frustration
with the New York Times. They have also done some
really good journalism on fucked up shit done by it,
particularly like on the I think it was the New
York Times. We did one of the articles on Charene's murder,
but I know that was ceing in. I think this time, Yeah,
CNN did a really good article, yeah, really good into
(16:01):
And it's like all of these, like these problems are systemic.
All of these news agencies have people who do care
and who have like been over there and know how
fucked up things are. So it's not like there aren't
people within the system trying to wrench it. It's just
like a sign of kind of how powerful the fucking
how much inertia there is built up in Israel's favor
(16:22):
here I guess, but maybe that's maybe that's too exonerative
for what's actually happening.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I think it's also like I'll get into this a
little bit later, but New York Times, for example, it
like there are some writers that are clearly they clearly
have a bias in favor of Israel, whether it's like
they've described themselves as being like right wing or whatever.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Obviously yes, So it's like it's.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
There's no, there's not even an option for balanced journalism
if you're giving someone that kind of voice. And there
I mean, even if you are, if you have an opinion,
you would think as a journalist, you would understand what
journalism means when it comes to like reporting accurate and
fair information. But I think bias always wins.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Yeah, well because not like if you're even if you're
like because I think honestly, if you know what's going
on there, if you've actually spent time in the area
and not just like hung out with the Israeli military,
the honest take is a tremendous amount of sympathy for
the Palestinian cause and Palestinian people. But even so, if
(17:24):
you're an honest journalist, you're going to try to be careful,
like you do have to report on stuff like you know,
of course, but because you've got that side, and then
you've got the people who are overwhelmingly in Israel's corner
and refuse to report on the other side of things,
the coverage de facto is always going to tilt towards
(17:45):
Israel because the side that would be kind of reflexively
and purely on kind of the Palestinian side just has
no visibility here. You know, I don't know like what
you do with that, because this is again a broader
as with all these things, is you're broader problems in media.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
But yeah, you know what else is a broader.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Problem in media. It is the fact. It is the
fact that me that that news and journalism is heavily
advertising supported, which leads to deep amounts of bias uh
in journalism, and and also problematic traffic seeking behaviors and
a wide variety of things that are careening us all
towards an unsurvivable outcome.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
And we're back, hopefully that was and if not, well
that's what you get. But I want to bring up
something about so go ahead.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
No, I just was apologizing for calling the audience motherfuckers. Oh,
I've never apologized for that.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I never apologized for that.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Go to hell, you sons of bitches. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah, thank you so much. Also be nice to me.
But I want to bring something that I hear all
the time as far as like people that have been
to Israel on birthright, I want to say that birthright
does not count unless you have like critical thinking and
you understand how biased that trip even is and the
fact that like you don't even have to be from
(19:17):
that land to go back there. Meanwhile, Palestinians are not
allowed to even step foot in that land. So that's
another episode entirely. I won't get into it, but it
does really make me mad, and I'll stop there before
I rage talk any further. But let's go back to
Israeli violence and police. So with regards to the violence
(19:42):
at the Aloxemosque, it resulted in hundreds of Palestinians being wounded,
and the report, the British report that we're talking about,
documented widespread instances of media outlets using terms like clashes, conflict, scuffles,
and skirmishes, which kind of implies equal blame, which is
obviously not true because one side is armed in swagear,
(20:05):
and it also cited several news reports speaking of an intofada,
which it's said played into fear mongering and framing Palestinians
as violent aggressors. I want to point out that the
word intofada is just an Arabic word that means rebelliding
or uprising and or a resistance, a resistance movement. It's
a key concept in contemporary Arabic usage. It refers to
(20:27):
a legitimate uprising against oppression. And I feel like, like
so many Arabic words, it's been skewed into something to fear,
like even the words a lahuek bud, which literally just
means like thank you God or like dear God. You
know what I mean. Like, I think the fact that
those words are invoking fear, like it's really breaks my
(20:47):
heart to hear like my native language being used to
incite fear. Like trust me, I've been on airports in
my parents who we've gone really strange looks just for
speaking in Arabic. So again another episode being distracted. There
are so many things that make me bad, but I
just wanted to bring up that if you're afraid of
the word in thefal the don't be because that's also
(21:09):
public media skewing your brain. Don't believe it. And Hamid,
the director of this organization and the co author of
this report. She said that as far as language is concerned,
terms like evictions max they mask the illegal force removals
and expulsion of Palestinians from their homes, references to conflict
(21:32):
and clashes. They try to equalize what's in effect a
battle between David and Goliath. And it also, as I
said earlier, masking ethnic cleansing as rental disagreements is absurd,
but it's uh. It also like implies that there's like
a legal basis for everything, but it's not surprising at
this point.
Speaker 5 (21:52):
Like I feel like clashes also is it's just any
time you see a writer using the word clashes, it
like clashes is just like is it's it's just a
coward tense. It's a clashes. Yeah, Clashes is what you
say when you are incredibly desperate not to at any
point talk about who started the violence is happening and
(22:12):
why because classes lets you just write it off, well, okay,
there's two people.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Funny, I mean, a clash is fine, like if you're
just if you're discussing like Ukrainian and Russian troops like
fighting in a village, Like, yeah, you can call that
a clash. Both sides showed up with tanks and weaponry
to like fight a war. And if you're talking about
the band the clash, you can talk about the clash.
But otherwise maybe don't use the term clash. Yeah, if
(22:38):
you're talking unless you're talking about someone who's not dressed
well or who's dressed really well, one of the two,
I forget what.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
No, but you're right, I think, especially if you're talking
about literal an army coming to an unarmed families home
and kicking them out, that's not a fucking clash.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Yeah that is. Yeah, it's yeah.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
Or it's like you're tear guessing someone in a moss
It's like, this is not a clash.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
No, this is a chemical weapons attack. Like what Yeah,
it's a chemical weapons attack on a house of worship,
which is what we and the biz call not cool.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
What's really ironic, too, is that that mosque and that region,
like that point in particular, is sacred to Muslims, Jewish people,
and Christians alike. So the fact that they're desecrating it
at all in any way is really ironic to me
because it's they don't care about anything. But Another area
(23:34):
of concerns surrounding this reporting on Jerusalem was an over
emphasis on religion. That's a good segue. Look at that,
an accidental segue. I'll take it.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
It's pronounced sega okay.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
The report found that nearly two thirds of ninety nearly
two thirds of ninety clips in this timeframe referred to
Palestinian's religion, in some cases explicitly just saying that they're Muslim.
One ITV report from a tenth reference Sirens, which to
quote Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall to flee and
run for cover, and Palestinians using the quote third Holy
(24:06):
Yest Saitian Islam as a base to throw stones at
Israeli police. And while religious significance may be important to
note at times, journalists I believe should avoid implying this
religious motivation unless it's necessary, because it portrays the history
of Israel versus Palestine as anything other than Setlar colonialism.
If it's a religious dispute, then it's just like a
(24:28):
far away, decades, centuries long fight that there's nothing we
can do about it. Our hands are in the air.
But really it's really simple. It's just settler colonialism and
skewing you as anything. Any kind of religious conflict is
very purposeful to get people not to care and get
people not to think that there's a solution. And as
(24:52):
I said, not only that's this false religious narrative, that it
ignores the existence of persecution also of Palestinian Christians, because
not all Palestinians are most like there are Palasinian Christians
and Palestinian Jews, but it ignores their existence and in
their persecution by Israel, and it furthers the narrative that
there is a centuries long religious war that is too complex.
(25:14):
That word is always used in this conflict. Conflict again,
I hate that word, but it's always used to describe
what's happening. It's too complex to talk about or understand
when instead it's opposite. It's the opposite. It's simple. It's
an oppressor and there's an oppressed Israel as an apartheid
state that has been ethnic cleansing Palestinians and stealing their
land ever since it was established. And I'd even say
(25:35):
that war and conflict, it's not a fair fight. It's
not an even word. And we've been witnessing in genocide
that has been occurring in Israel since it was established,
and there's a clear oppressor and a clear oppressed. Any
kind of wording that implies otherwise is a lie. Let's
go on to Gaza for a moment, and the headlines
(25:57):
that describe what's happening in Gaza. There are multiple examples
the problematic language and framing regarding violence in Gaza. An
article in the Sun on May twelfth of twenty twenty
one was titled fifteen kids massacred in Israel Hamas conflict
as nan Yahoo warns, we will inflict blows you couldn't
dream of. This headline failed to mention that fourteen of
(26:18):
the fifteen children that were killed were Palestinian because reading
it and implies that those children are all Israeli and
Palestinians are monsters. That's not the case. And then on
the seventeenth of May of twenty twenty one, i Knews
reported that forty two Palestinians died over the weekend.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
They died over the worst that's said, like heart failure, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
You would like fuck you. It failed to mention is
that all of those deaths were Palestinians and Gaza that
were killed. Because died does not give the same impression
as murder. If you swap out the truthful word at
any of these headlines, it makes a huge difference for
people that only see these headline like forty two Palestinians
(27:02):
died is not the same as forty two Palestinians were murdered.
There's a huge connotation difference for the people that just
read something and move on, and popular headlines tell us
time and time again, just like this, that Palestinians have
died while stating that Israeli's, on the other hand, were killed.
Israelis don't die, They're always killed. Palestinians they always die,
(27:24):
though they're never killed. There's a huge misproportion of those
two words being used for those sides. Christopher brought up
earlier about like passive voice in journalism and saying Palestinians
died is another example of that. And biased media outlets
use this passive voice and they avoid specifying in its
headlines who was killed and who was responsible if it
(27:46):
portrays Israel as the aggressor. The use of passive voice
that deemphasizes or hides those perpetrating such negative action on Palestinians,
and this has the rhetorical effect of minimizing the responsibility
of Israelian agressors and causing Palestinian suffering. A lot of
headlines also refer to the Israeli military while referring to
(28:07):
Palestinian groups as militants or Islamists, which implies differences in legitimacy.
Like we mentioned earlier, there are also headlines describing Israeli
air strikes of having come quote after hamas rocket attacks,
but this ignores that the violence from Israeli settlers and
police in Jerusalem preceded those rocket attacks. It's like starting
in the middle of a fight where you punch in
(28:28):
self defense, and that's where the artica starts, like you
punch someone, not the person that punch you first. Maybe
that's a bad example, but it's just thinking of it
that way. You're starting in the middle of a timeline
versus the beginning. And Hamid told the Middle East Eye
that the media narrative erases history, contexts, and legitimacy of
(28:49):
the Palestinian cause by presenting Palestinians as the aggressors and
israel as acting in self defense when it is quite
the opposite, and I can't talk about Palestine or is
Reel without mentioning the anti semitism claims that a lot
of people bring up every time you mentioned Palestine. Other
instances of skewed media coverage, they included articles that conflated
(29:11):
pro Palestine activism with anti Semitism. There was an article
in The Telegraph that said that demonstrators in London that
were in support of Hamas were therefore anti Semitic because
the group was committed to the elimination of Jews, which
is not correct. I don't agree obviously with everything that
Hamas does, but you have to keep in mind that
no one else is fighting for Palestinians, and desperate times
(29:35):
desperate measures, and there's no there's never a reason to
excuse any kind of murder of any anyone that's unarmed
or innocent. But against David and Goliath, what choic does
Palestine have if no one in the international community is
coming to the rescue.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
And UH and everyone who anyone who supports any military
action anywhere supports the kind of collateral damage that Hamas does,
they just support it under different circumstances and with different
weapons systems. Doesn't make it okay to fire rockets blindly
into a city, but the United States Air Force fires
way more rockets just as blindly into way more cities.
(30:15):
It's like, yeah, war is horrible, it's fucked up and bad.
It doesn't say anything about the broader cause. Like, sure,
certainly you can have you know, whatever. There's moral condemnation
to be had for military leaders with Hamas, as there
is for the military leaders with any militant force, and
for you know, some of the soldiers doing some of
those things. But at the end of the day, it
(30:35):
says nothing about the overall righteousness of the cause, because
there's not a discrepancy in the willingness to accept civilian
casualties between Hamas and Israel. They're both very willing to
accept civilian casualties in pursuit of their goals. So you
have to set that aside when you're trying to determine
is what is happening here and where is righteousness? And
I think righteousness overall lies on the side being ethnically cleansed.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Yeah, very well said. I think it's a good place
to take an ad break.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
And that's you know, who also condones heavy civilian casualties
in pursuit of their goals the good people.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
But that works too.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
That does also work. Honestly, has gotten a lot more
people killed than Hamas right, Like, I can't to be fair,
they may have gotten more people killed than the Israeli military.
Guy has cost a lot of bloodshed over the years.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Sikes.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Anyway, here's our sponsors that.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Okay, we're back for the break. We're talking about Propellestinian
activism being complained with anti Semitism, and I want to
bring up this quote from a Daily Mail column commentator
rich little John stated that anti Semitism, like COVID, comes
in waves. This is the Palestinian variant. Excuse me.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Wow, Sometimes I just have to like read that.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
And really just remember what planet I'm on. But this
research also mentions examples of insufficient challenge to views in
broadcast interviews. This included a Sky News interview with Sizzippy
hote Levi Hotevelli, the Israeli ambassador to the UK, failing
to sufficiently answer or be challenged on questions about ethnic
(32:33):
cleansing and schech Rah. She has previously described herself as
a religious right winger and has referred to the nineteen
forty eight displacement of seven hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians
as a place no listen. She describes it as a
quote strong and popular era lie. This is the Israeli
(32:54):
ambassador to the UK.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
And it's like, there's a lot that's frustrating here. What
is that? Like, you do have to take some care
when you particularly when you talk about the media complicity
in like pushing the Israeli narrative and all of the
different things like apak that like fund US politicians and whatnot,
because like it is, you do have to be careful
to not like vere end its conspiracy territory, and you
(33:19):
have to be careful with the sources that you pick,
because since a lot of mainstream news doesn't cover it,
you find some of this written about by people who
are definitely not the folks you want to have on
your side. But that doesn't make talking about this anti semitic.
It just means that the entire discourse is poisoned because
of the way the internet functions.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah and yeah, no, good point. I'm not going to
expand because I will restate it in a worse way.
But that quote just really baffles my mind. Especially because
this person has a lot of power as an ambassador,
but she's also been accused of holding racist and Islamophobic
views and has express support for the annexation of the
entire illegallyccupied West Bank.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Mmmm.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Yeah, really great stuff there.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Something No, it seems like nobody's calling that racist.
Speaker 5 (34:06):
Though, huh no exactly, Like like you think about the reaction
to like to like, hey, yeah, we're we like we
want you literally take over all of this landing, Like
you can compare that to the reaction to like someone
saying from the river to the sea, which like everyone
immediately loses their minds and it's just like, yeah, this
is the ambassador saying this stuff and nothing happens.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, it's really unsettling. And having someone like that in power,
as I'll mention later with an Yahoo, uh, someone that
is so right wing or like, uh extremist, It just
like it encourages people like that that in the in
(34:47):
the population, encourages the kind of belief system to like
expand just like Donald Trump did, Just like Donald Trump
did with his fan base or fan.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Base, his base but around here.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Yeah, the British report that mentioning or also it reported
that Palestinians were regularly asked to answer for the actions
of Hamas and recommended that spokespeople for the group should
instead be given a platform to respond to allegations. Meanwhile,
you don't see like random Israeli's being asked to answer
for murders committed by the idea if it's always very
one sided. In twenty twenty one, there was also another
(35:20):
study that was conducted by MIT titled The New York
Times Distorts the Palestinian Struggle. It was written by Holly M. Jackson,
and it was tracking changes in news coverage bias, showing
how anti Palestinian bias has persisted in The Times coverage
by analyzing its articles during the first and second Palestinian Tafadas,
both periods in which Israeli violence far exceeded that committed
(35:44):
by Palestinians. Deploying machine learning methods to analyze over thirty
three thousand articles, Jackson focused on bias in the language
of the Times reporting through two linguistic features. First was
to identify whether actions by Israeli and Palestinian groups were
being described in the active and passive voice, and the
second was to classify the objectivity and tone of the
(36:05):
language used. And this content analysis conducted across sixteen thousand
articles during the first in Theifada, which was from nineteen
eighty seven to September nineteen ninety three, it revealed some
revealing results. Nearly ninety three percent of these articles reference Israelis,
while only forty percent reference Palestinians, and about twelve percent
of all references to Palestinians used violent language, as opposed
(36:28):
to only five point nine percent for Israelis Palestinians. Meanwhile,
we're referred to in the passive voice nearly sixteen percent
of the time, while the passive voice was used only
about six percent of the time to describe Israelis. And like,
I know this is just like all numbers and percentages
because we obviously know how bias it is, but I
think it's helpful to like scientifically mathematically see that this
(36:51):
is like actually accurate and there's not just like us
talking about it. This is actually true. So I do
believe these studies are very important in show people that
might be I don't know, skeptical that this is actually
the reality. And then Jackson also highlighted that during this period,
the times stable of reporters were filled with those, No,
(37:15):
with those with known prejudices like Thomas L. Friedman and
John who framed their articles by elevating Israeli perspectives alongside
blatant anti Palestinian sentiment. So, like we said, they're giving
platforms of people with really clear biases.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Yeah. Oh, also to Thomas Friedman, famously super fucking bullish
on the Iraq War and also very famously said when
he was trying to rally support for the Iraq War
that the Iraq War was about telling Muslims to quote,
suck on this good guy, Tom Friedman, real cool dude, unbiased.
Speaker 5 (37:57):
They gave this man a pulitzer. I think they gave
him multiple of I.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
Would give him a pulitzer very quickly and thrown overhand. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Uh, that makes me sick. Thank you for sharing that.
I'm glad I know that.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Now it's cool. Shit he doesn't talk about that anymore yet,
that Nate shuts the absolute fuck up.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
I mean, realizing that was the Iraq War and now
he's he's still obviously given a platform to talking about Palestine.
There's no there's no repercussion or even like red flags
about this kind of language because it's accepted, and it's
very really normalized.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
It sucks.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Yes, headlines surveyed for bias dredged up editorials like quote
Israel and Arab neighbors must bend a little no more
Palestine end quote, and Israel has controlled little of Palestine,
so they're really clearly trying.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Jesus frame this in incorrect way, as if, as if
Israel's Arab neighbors haven't basically just in Palestine by this point, right,
Like it has been pretty much like even this, like
people fucking idiot tankies talk about how like Hassad supports them,
but he put them into fucking camps. He's like arrested
and tortured and killed Palestinian activity.
Speaker 5 (39:12):
It like it like you know, one of the the
thing none of these people ever want you to do
is is google Google what Hafas al Asad was fucking
doing and why why why he didn't bring in the
air force at a certain very critical moment that.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
Like famed buddy of Henry K my friend.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Yeah, everyone's friends, everybody's friends, that's what makes politics fun. Yeah. Additionally,
there is a systematic attempt to highlight petty disputes between
Palestinian groups or contradictions and their leader strategy to frame
Palestinians as irrational or disorganized. And I will say that
(39:55):
there has been significant changes in US media coverage of
a confic, especially in the last couple years, and this
is driven in part by popular pressure coming from social media.
There are also signs that Israel is becoming a partisan
issue that divides liberals and conservatives in the US, with
polls showing that growing numbers of Americans would like their
government to take a more even handed stance on the conflict. However,
(40:18):
hardline supporters of the Israeli government have seemingly shifted their
approach from winning quote hearts and minds to punishing opponents.
They've published blacklists of Palestinian activists, they've censored public figures
that are vocal about the conflict, they've speared them as
anti Semitics, and they've advocated for laws to restrict boycotts
of Israeli goods. I want to just take a really
(40:41):
quick sidebar to mention that boycotting works. I'll do another
episode probably one day about the BDS movement. But BDS
stands for boycott, divestment in sanctions, and it works to
end international support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians and pressure
Israel to comply with international law just by boycotting products
(41:02):
and companies that are either based in Israel or have
products from Israel. And it works because Israel doesn't like it,
and I think it's fair Like that's telling that if
Israel's has a problem with boycotting shit, you should keep
doing it. And it's now a vibrant global movement. It's
made up of unions, academic associations, churches, and grassroots movements
across the world. BDS launch in two thousand and five
(41:25):
and it has a major impact and effectively challenging international
support for Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism. That's my sidebar
about BDS. But nonetheless, people that have followed the US
debate on the quote unquote conflict for decades say that
there are serious tectonic changes occurring at the level of
the American public, both in media and in popular sentiment.
(41:47):
Phyllis Bennis, the director of the New Internationalism Project at
the Institute for Policy Studies, a DC based progressive think tank,
said although news coverage is not even handed and is
still generally skewed toward the Israeli perspective. There has been
a massive shift over the past five years and how
this issue is both reported and discussed in the United States.
(42:09):
We are seeing a shift in the types of stories
that are being covered by major outlets as well as
the stances that public figures are willing to take. There
are still huge problems, but things are changing. The discourse
on Israel Palestine is nothing like it was in decades past,
which is very true and for me personally, seeing the
public discourse change firsthand has been like very surreal and amazing,
(42:33):
but really surreal because I think a lot of Palestinians
and Palestinian supporters never thought it would happen, seeing public
figures talk so actively about being pro Palestine, and even
though this occupation this problem seems insurmountable, outing these quote
unquote journalists and news outlets is extremely important because if
(42:57):
public opinion and pressure is strong enough, things have to change.
And the proof of this is seeing the headline that
I mentioned at the very top, where the Times change
their headline because of widespread discussed express on social media
and speaking up and sharing the truth on social media
is extremely important, especially if you aren't Palestinian. And especially
if you live somewhere that is skewing all these news
(43:19):
headlines against Palestinians. There's nothing else but your voice left
and Palestickian voices have been and are continuing to be silenced.
And this is not simply a Palestinian issue. It's a
human issue that calls for humans to stand up when
they are witnessing extreme injustice take place and boycotting works
or else Israel wouldn't be so afraid of it. Choosing
(43:39):
to remain silent is choosing the side of the oppressor.
You've heard it before, It's true, and I am hopeful
with the chains that we've seen in the last few years,
with public figures using their platforms to speak out and
defend Palestine. I think it's honestly the best use of
their platform, and I respect them for that. And I
know that the concept of celebrity is ridiculous and stupid,
(44:02):
but I think if you have the platform and you
have millions of people watching you, using your voice in
a way to support people that are in danger, and
like stand up for the oppressed is one of the
only things you should do. And people that I respect,
this includes Bella Hadid Susan Sarandit, Natalie Portman, Selena Gomez,
Dualipa The Weekend, just to name a few. These people
(44:23):
are huge names, they have millions of people watching them,
and they're not afraid to speak up, especially Bella Hadid recently,
like every other story she posts on Instagram, is about
the Israeli occupation, which I really respect. I really respect
that she has taken such a clear stance and utilizing
their platform. It does make a difference of public perception
(44:44):
because fans that follow her might not follow news or
anything else. There's just a lot of crossover that I
think is really valuable. And ultimately, I think using your
voice is the only right thing to do in any
alternative or PSI lens is simply cowardice and that's my time.
(45:06):
That's what I got today.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
All right, Well, thank you, Sharene. This was pretty bleak
but important and.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
I tried to uplift you at the very end.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
All of you go go okay.
Speaker 4 (45:26):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or Wherever you listen to podcasts,
you can find sources for it could happen here. Updated
monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Hello, welcome to Could Happen Here. We are taking a
week off and I've chosen a rerun episode from June
of twenty twenty two. It was my episode about the
media bias in covering Palestine and Israel. Unfortunately, this is
an evergreen topic, so I think it's worth re listening
to just a reminder of how unfair and irresponsible journalism
(00:25):
can be when it comes to Palestine in particular.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
So enjoy, Hi everybody.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Wow, you served Jesus Charene.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Oh, I thought that's what Sophie said I should do.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
I should I know you did the right thing. I'm
the one being an asshole here.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Okay, well this is Scharene. This is also it can
Happen Here. It's a podcast that happens every day that
I am now on you did? What is it about again?
It's about everything happening here.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Yes, it's about everything happening here. And this week's episode
is about my neighbor Dave, who appears to be gardening. No,
that's not what this show is about.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
No, what society is crumbling and how maybe we could
put it back to here?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
There it is? That's what. Yeah, that's what that's what
it is about.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
Wanninis is going to take lead today, but we also
have Christopher Long, Robert Evans, and it is me Sophie.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yes, that's good. See that. This is what I'm going
to keep in mind next time if you ever have
to do this again. Like what intruing this show means?
I mean, it is a daily show, so I have
a lot of opportunities to get this right.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
I wanted to do something a little different today, So
hopefully the listeners are okay with it. Uh, be easy
on me.
Speaker 5 (01:48):
Well, and if they're not, we will simply club them
into submission.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. I live for violence.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
That that is why we've spent half of our year's
podcasting budget ones.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
But I wanted to take a couple episodes to talk
about something very important that I don't think it's a
lot like enough news coverage, and I want to talk
about Palestine, and this first episode I wanted to focus
on how bias news coverages as far as depicting what's
happening in Palestine and Israel. So that's what we're going
(02:26):
to talk about today. So are you ready? Are you
all strapped in? I'm gonna start talking at you guys
for a long time.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Well yeah, motherfucker.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Okay. At the height of the twenty fourteen war between
the Israeli military and Palestinian factions and the Gaza Strip,
New York Times ran an article headlined Israel says that
Hamas uses children's shields, reviving debate. It was a reference
to the hundreds of Palestinian civilians who had been killed
in the Israeli attacks by that point in the war,
and there was no question about who had killed them,
(02:57):
yet the language shifted the subject to a debate about
who was really responsible. A few weeks earlier, after an
Israeli airstrike had killed several Palestinian soccer fans, the Times
ran another absurd title titled missile at beachside Gaza Cafe
finds patrons poise for the World Cup.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
And they later found them Huh wow.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yeah, they found them poise just sitting there.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
It's amazing. People talk about the exonerative case in like journalism,
and it appears to apply to the Israeli military and
American cops.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yes, exactly. And they did later amend this title because
they had like a widespread like backlash and discuss that
was expressed on social media. It only changed after that.
But the whole point is that headlines matter, and it's
the first and sometimes only exposure the general public has
two world events, and especially like now, I believe that
(03:52):
in our current time, the words at the top of
that page, or like sometimes the only words that show
up in a hyperlink, are more important the articles themselves,
because sometimes does all people see before they keep on scrolling,
and in the case of Israel and Palestine, inappropriate, misleading
and biased headlines like those that appeared in the New
York Times that I just mentioned have been all too
(04:12):
common accepted and treated as accurate reporting and quote unquote journalism.
In twenty nineteen, there is a study titled fifty Years
of Occupation that was published by four one six Labs,
which is the research in data analytics firm based in Canada.
This firm analyzed nearly one hundred thousand news headlines about
the conflict and the American press over the past five
(04:34):
decades and found that the Israeli point of view surprise Surprise,
was featured much more prominently than the Palestinian one, and
that references to Palestinian's experiences of being refugees or living
under occupation. That word especially that has steadily declined over time.
So one of the studies authors, Oya sahir He, told
The Intercept that the findings demonstrate a persistent and bias
(04:57):
in coverage of the Israeli Palestinian issue, one where Israeli
narratives are privileged, and where despite the continued entrenchment of
the occupation, the very topics Germaine to the Palestinians date
today reality have disappeared. It calls to attention the need
to more critically evaluate the scope of coverage of the
Israeli occupation and recognize that readers are getting, at best,
a heavily filtered rendering of the issue. So this study
(05:21):
analyzed fifty years of news headlines on the Israeli Palestine conflict.
I put that in quotes. I feel like conflict is
suggests an equal.
Speaker 6 (05:31):
Also like understating it, yes, exactly, come on, yeah, it's
very Uh, it's understating what's actually it's happening, And it
just depicts a somehow neutral playing field.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
But it's not for sure. But the study analyzed fifty
years of headlines from five major American publications. The Chicago Tribune,
The LA Times, The New York Times, the Washington Post,
and The Wall Street Journal. It employed this thing called
natural language processing, or NLP, and these techniques are used
to analyzed massive databases of headlines published over this period.
(06:04):
NLP is a big data analysis approach used to identify
statistical trends and patterns and large cachets of text. In
this case, researchers analyzed nearly one hundred thousand headlines and
identified dozens of frequently recurring terms and word sequences and
stories about the Israel and Palestine. While studies of media
coverage Israel and Palestine have been conducted before, this one
(06:26):
by the four one six Labs analysis is the largest
and most comprehensive look at headline coverage since the occupation
began in nineteen forty eight, and their findings show a
clear slant towards the Israeli perspective. Headlines like the one
that I mentioned earlier from New York Times about civilian
deaths in Gaza that use the term Israel says We're
two and a half times more likely to appear than
(06:48):
headlines citing Palestinian equivalents. Headline centering Israel were published four
times more than those centering Palestinians, and words connoting violence
such as terror appeared three times more than the word occupation.
And since nineteen sixty seven, that's the year that the
Israeli military took control of the West Bank, there has
been an eighty five percent overall decrease in the mention
(07:10):
of the term occupation and headlines about Israel, despite the
fact that the Israeli military's occupation of the Palestine territory
has in fact intensified over this time, and the mention
of the term Palestinian refugees meanwhile has declined a massive
ninety three percent. And while this is maybe subtle from
the outside, it's just a consistent disproportion of article headlines
(07:31):
which by default gives a greater airtime to one side
and avoid certain key issues, and this obviously can impact
public perception.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Yeah, I mean it's very noticeable ones you realize what
the bias is looking, especially on like social media and stuff,
when you see just just the headline of an artisticalis
it's obvious.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Yeah, it's just I don't know, Like, what you have
is a conflict where one side is treated like a
military force and the other side is treated like almost
like weather. Like that's that's almost how they write about
when the Israeli military does something, it's like like a
like a thunderstorm came in, right, Like it's nobody's fault.
(08:15):
This is just what happened, you know. Yeah, like the
Palace that you know, the Humas or whatever, that's like
a military force, and so we talk about them the
way that we talk about, you know, a military force
carrying out a strike or something. But but the Israeli
military is like it's like with a weather, right, there's
nothing to be there's no blame to go around. It
just rained, you know.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yeah. And also like legitimizes Israel and like delegitimizes any
kind of force that Palestine exerts because it's like shown
in this like yeah, like a militant terrorist lens when
it's just acting in self defense.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
It's interesting because the US media actually does a better
job of discussing the US military as if it actually
can be like guilty of crimes. Like the New York
Times in particular has done some like not that there's
not still problems with it, but they it's like there's
there's something unique about the way they write about Israel
that I guess not quite unique because they do often
(09:06):
write about police in a similar way, but it's it's
very peculiar that it's like, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, there's definitely a lot of crossover with US police
in Israel in more ways than one. Oh, yes, they
trained them first of all, but also just like the
way and I'll talk more about this later, but the
fact that there are so many videos like blatantly showing
like brutal acts against like humanity or like just brutalism
and brit in general, and like they still get away
(09:31):
with it just shows that they know there's no punishment,
They know that there's a certain amount of immunity because
they have big brother America to always fucking get their back.
But yeah, despite this ongoing American involvement, the total volume
of US media coverage about the conflict has been in
an overall decline since the nineteen ninety three Oslo Peace Accords.
(09:53):
This was a negotiate agreement between the then Palestine leader
Yaser Arafat and then Israeli Prime Minister It's Die Rabine,
and it was intended to establish conditions for peace in
the region. The decline in use coverage says little about
the conditions on the ground because they didn't get better,
But the hopes that were briefly raised by this Oslo
(10:14):
piece accord effectively died in nineteen ninety five. After an
Israeli extremist assassinated Rabine and a new hardline Israeli leader,
Benjamin and Yahoo. He took power in nineteen ninety six,
and since then, the Israeli military their occupation of the
West Bank has only expanded, with new settlements eating away
at the remaining areas of Palestine control, even while global
(10:37):
media attention has declined. And it's not just American media
that shows a clear bias that favors Israel. British media
coverage on the violence in Palestine is also very biased
against Palestinians, which in turn exkews public perception internationally. In
twenty twenty one, the Muslim Council of Britain's Center for
Media Marketing the CFMM, published a forty four page report
(10:58):
that was titled Media Reporting Palestine twenty twenty one, and
this report came after two weeks of violence in which
Israeli police cracked down on protests against the eminent evictions
of Palestinians in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of schechter Rah.
This report came after two weeks of violence and in
which Israeli police cracked down on protests against the eminent
eviction of Palestinians in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of
(11:21):
schechter Rah, and this subsequently attacked Palestinian worshippers at the
Alukxam Mosque and that wounded hundreds. I don't know if
you guys remember, but in twenty twenty one last year,
there was a lot of violence occurring in Palestine. There
was more covers than usual, especially covering Schechterrarah, and obviously
news headlines didn't always come out in an even handed way.
(11:44):
But the brutal escalation of violence that followed as rockets
were fired from Gaza and Israeli air strikes on the
besieged enclave, it killed at least two hundred and forty
eight Palestinians, including sixty six children. The occupied West Bank
and East Rusale, twenty nine Palestinians were killed, and the
rockets fired from Gaza killed twelve people. In Israel. The
(12:06):
CFMM stated that between May seventh and May twentieth and
twenty twenty one. May twentieth is when a ceasefire was announced.
There were sixty two thousand, four hundred online print articles
in nearly eight thousand television broadcasts reporting on the events,
and this report found that the narrative was extremely unbalanced
due to quote skewed language, misleading headlines, and problematic framing.
(12:30):
Rizwana Hamid, the director of CFMM and the co author
of this report, told The Middle East I that the
overwhelming amount of complaints that was received by the monitoring
organization about the biased media coverage in Britain covering the
events in Palestine, it aligned with the analysis and evidence
that this is all skewed and it makes sense to
get defensive when being rightfully called out, just to kind
(12:53):
of talk a little bit about scheker Rach and a
luxA really quick. This report cited several examples of media
referring to the situation in which the situation was Palestinians
being forcibly removed from their homes. They called this end
eviction or a real estate dispute, which implies a legal
basis for these force displacements, when in reality it was
(13:14):
a violation of international law. So that's minimizing it to
an extreme. It also found that fifty percent of broadcast
media eclips between May seventh and May tenth refer to
quote unquote evictions or similar terms to describe illegal sediment
plans in Schrah, and that also kind of just conflates
(13:35):
that this is there's nothing you can do. This is
like a legal dispute, not your problem, you know, like
let them let the mess be over there, and we're
just sitting here all pretty in America.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
Yeah, they make it seem like it's like, oh, landlord,
this is like yeah, go ahead, yeah yeah.
Speaker 5 (13:51):
There's also this this way in which the actual thing
that is happening is a bunch of people are showing
up with guns and stealing people's houses, and this is
getting treated as like, oh, this is like this is
you know this this is some kind of sort of
like it's.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Like a rental dispute.
Speaker 5 (14:06):
It's like yeah, yeah, it turns into this this like
completely bloodless legal thing, and then you know, you look
at what's actually happening, and it's like, yeah, there's dealing
people's houses at gunpoints. They are like blowing up children
with high explosives.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
It's just like yeah, it's definitely not presented in an
accurate way, and especially if you don't know what's actually happening,
like you do, and you just see these like random
headlines and whatever, you don't think it's anything but what
it is what they're telling you, Like, why would you
deep dipe any further if you're not affected by it?
You know.
Speaker 5 (14:39):
And one of the one of the things I noticed,
like when I was reading some of the coverage that
this is like the the reporters would like, go try
to find some kind of legal basis for this, and
they'd start like they do these like like five paragraph
long things about like weird legal stuff from like nineteen
fifty three, and it's like, this has nothing to do
with what's happening.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Yeah, you take your taking the Yeah.
Speaker 5 (15:01):
Yeah. It's it's like like they they've they've taken the
exonerative case from from the title and then gone and
just done exonerative journalism.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
M M yeah. I do have to say that is
I we are we keep using the term exonerative case.
Somebody came up with that, and I keep forgetting who
it was. But it's a one of the better, one
of the better developments and discussing the way the media
talks about Palestine.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Yeah, no, for sure, Yeah, yeah, it's uh yeah. I
just hate the word. I hate that even the word
journalism has like a it's not I don't even like
calling this journalism, you know what I mean. I don't
like that New York Times doesn't use any anything. But
it is what it is. That's what we've got.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Well, and it's you know, as is always the frustration
with the New York Times. They have also done some
really good journalism on fucked up shit done by it,
particularly like on the I think it was the New
York Times. We did one of the articles on Charene's murder,
but I know that was ceing in. I think this time, Yeah,
CNN did a really good article, yeah, really good into
(16:01):
And it's like all of these, like these problems are systemic.
All of these news agencies have people who do care
and who have like been over there and know how
fucked up things are. So it's not like there aren't
people within the system trying to wrench it. It's just
like a sign of kind of how powerful the fucking
how much inertia there is built up in Israel's favor
(16:22):
here I guess, but maybe that's maybe that's too exonerative
for what's actually happening.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I think it's also like I'll get into this a
little bit later, but New York Times, for example, it
like there are some writers that are clearly they clearly
have a bias in favor of Israel, whether it's like
they've described themselves as being like right wing or whatever.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Obviously yes, So it's like it's.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
There's no, there's not even an option for balanced journalism
if you're giving someone that kind of voice. And there
I mean, even if you are, if you have an opinion,
you would think as a journalist, you would understand what
journalism means when it comes to like reporting accurate and
fair information. But I think bias always wins.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Yeah, well because not like if you're even if you're
like because I think honestly, if you know what's going
on there, if you've actually spent time in the area
and not just like hung out with the Israeli military,
the honest take is a tremendous amount of sympathy for
the Palestinian cause and Palestinian people. But even so, if
(17:24):
you're an honest journalist, you're going to try to be careful,
like you do have to report on stuff like you know,
of course, but because you've got that side, and then
you've got the people who are overwhelmingly in Israel's corner
and refuse to report on the other side of things,
the coverage de facto is always going to tilt towards
(17:45):
Israel because the side that would be kind of reflexively
and purely on kind of the Palestinian side just has
no visibility here. You know, I don't know like what
you do with that, because this is again a broader
as with all these things, is you're broader problems in media.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
But yeah, you know what else is a broader.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Problem in media. It is the fact. It is the
fact that me that that news and journalism is heavily
advertising supported, which leads to deep amounts of bias uh
in journalism, and and also problematic traffic seeking behaviors and
a wide variety of things that are careening us all
towards an unsurvivable outcome.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
And we're back, hopefully that was and if not, well
that's what you get. But I want to bring up
something about so go ahead.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
No, I just was apologizing for calling the audience motherfuckers. Oh,
I've never apologized for that.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I never apologized for that.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Go to hell, you sons of bitches. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah, thank you so much. Also be nice to me.
But I want to bring something that I hear all
the time as far as like people that have been
to Israel on birthright, I want to say that birthright
does not count unless you have like critical thinking and
you understand how biased that trip even is and the
fact that like you don't even have to be from
(19:17):
that land to go back there. Meanwhile, Palestinians are not
allowed to even step foot in that land. So that's
another episode entirely. I won't get into it, but it
does really make me mad, and I'll stop there before
I rage talk any further. But let's go back to
Israeli violence and police. So with regards to the violence
(19:42):
at the Aloxemosque, it resulted in hundreds of Palestinians being wounded,
and the report, the British report that we're talking about,
documented widespread instances of media outlets using terms like clashes, conflict, scuffles,
and skirmishes, which kind of implies equal blame, which is
obviously not true because one side is armed in swagear,
(20:05):
and it also cited several news reports speaking of an intofada,
which it's said played into fear mongering and framing Palestinians
as violent aggressors. I want to point out that the
word intofada is just an Arabic word that means rebelliding
or uprising and or a resistance, a resistance movement. It's
a key concept in contemporary Arabic usage. It refers to
(20:27):
a legitimate uprising against oppression. And I feel like, like
so many Arabic words, it's been skewed into something to fear,
like even the words a lahuek bud, which literally just
means like thank you God or like dear God. You
know what I mean. Like, I think the fact that
those words are invoking fear, like it's really breaks my
(20:47):
heart to hear like my native language being used to
incite fear. Like trust me, I've been on airports in
my parents who we've gone really strange looks just for
speaking in Arabic. So again another episode being distracted. There
are so many things that make me bad, but I
just wanted to bring up that if you're afraid of
the word in thefal the don't be because that's also
(21:09):
public media skewing your brain. Don't believe it. And Hamid,
the director of this organization and the co author of
this report. She said that as far as language is concerned,
terms like evictions max they mask the illegal force removals
and expulsion of Palestinians from their homes, references to conflict
(21:32):
and clashes. They try to equalize what's in effect a
battle between David and Goliath. And it also, as I
said earlier, masking ethnic cleansing as rental disagreements is absurd,
but it's uh. It also like implies that there's like
a legal basis for everything, but it's not surprising at
this point.
Speaker 5 (21:52):
Like I feel like clashes also is it's just any
time you see a writer using the word clashes, it
like clashes is just like is it's it's just a
coward tense. It's a clashes. Yeah, Clashes is what you
say when you are incredibly desperate not to at any
point talk about who started the violence is happening and
(22:12):
why because classes lets you just write it off, well, okay,
there's two people.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Funny, I mean, a clash is fine, like if you're
just if you're discussing like Ukrainian and Russian troops like
fighting in a village, Like, yeah, you can call that
a clash. Both sides showed up with tanks and weaponry
to like fight a war. And if you're talking about
the band the clash, you can talk about the clash.
But otherwise maybe don't use the term clash. Yeah, if
(22:38):
you're talking unless you're talking about someone who's not dressed
well or who's dressed really well, one of the two,
I forget what.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
No, but you're right, I think, especially if you're talking
about literal an army coming to an unarmed families home
and kicking them out, that's not a fucking clash.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Yeah that is. Yeah, it's yeah.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
Or it's like you're tear guessing someone in a moss
It's like, this is not a clash.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
No, this is a chemical weapons attack. Like what Yeah,
it's a chemical weapons attack on a house of worship,
which is what we and the biz call not cool.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
What's really ironic, too, is that that mosque and that region,
like that point in particular, is sacred to Muslims, Jewish people,
and Christians alike. So the fact that they're desecrating it
at all in any way is really ironic to me
because it's they don't care about anything. But Another area
(23:34):
of concerns surrounding this reporting on Jerusalem was an over
emphasis on religion. That's a good segue. Look at that,
an accidental segue. I'll take it.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
It's pronounced sega okay.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
The report found that nearly two thirds of ninety nearly
two thirds of ninety clips in this timeframe referred to
Palestinian's religion, in some cases explicitly just saying that they're Muslim.
One ITV report from a tenth reference Sirens, which to
quote Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall to flee and
run for cover, and Palestinians using the quote third Holy
(24:06):
Yest Saitian Islam as a base to throw stones at
Israeli police. And while religious significance may be important to
note at times, journalists I believe should avoid implying this
religious motivation unless it's necessary, because it portrays the history
of Israel versus Palestine as anything other than Setlar colonialism.
If it's a religious dispute, then it's just like a
(24:28):
far away, decades, centuries long fight that there's nothing we
can do about it. Our hands are in the air.
But really it's really simple. It's just settler colonialism and
skewing you as anything. Any kind of religious conflict is
very purposeful to get people not to care and get
people not to think that there's a solution. And as
(24:52):
I said, not only that's this false religious narrative, that it
ignores the existence of persecution also of Palestinian Christians, because
not all Palestinians are most like there are Palasinian Christians
and Palestinian Jews, but it ignores their existence and in
their persecution by Israel, and it furthers the narrative that
there is a centuries long religious war that is too complex.
(25:14):
That word is always used in this conflict. Conflict again,
I hate that word, but it's always used to describe
what's happening. It's too complex to talk about or understand
when instead it's opposite. It's the opposite. It's simple. It's
an oppressor and there's an oppressed Israel as an apartheid
state that has been ethnic cleansing Palestinians and stealing their
land ever since it was established. And I'd even say
(25:35):
that war and conflict, it's not a fair fight. It's
not an even word. And we've been witnessing in genocide
that has been occurring in Israel since it was established,
and there's a clear oppressor and a clear oppressed. Any
kind of wording that implies otherwise is a lie. Let's
go on to Gaza for a moment, and the headlines
(25:57):
that describe what's happening in Gaza. There are multiple examples
the problematic language and framing regarding violence in Gaza. An
article in the Sun on May twelfth of twenty twenty
one was titled fifteen kids massacred in Israel Hamas conflict
as nan Yahoo warns, we will inflict blows you couldn't
dream of. This headline failed to mention that fourteen of
(26:18):
the fifteen children that were killed were Palestinian because reading
it and implies that those children are all Israeli and
Palestinians are monsters. That's not the case. And then on
the seventeenth of May of twenty twenty one, i Knews
reported that forty two Palestinians died over the weekend.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
They died over the worst that's said, like heart failure, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
You would like fuck you. It failed to mention is
that all of those deaths were Palestinians and Gaza that
were killed. Because died does not give the same impression
as murder. If you swap out the truthful word at
any of these headlines, it makes a huge difference for
people that only see these headline like forty two Palestinians
(27:02):
died is not the same as forty two Palestinians were murdered.
There's a huge connotation difference for the people that just
read something and move on, and popular headlines tell us
time and time again, just like this, that Palestinians have
died while stating that Israeli's, on the other hand, were killed.
Israelis don't die, They're always killed. Palestinians they always die,
(27:24):
though they're never killed. There's a huge misproportion of those
two words being used for those sides. Christopher brought up
earlier about like passive voice in journalism and saying Palestinians
died is another example of that. And biased media outlets
use this passive voice and they avoid specifying in its
headlines who was killed and who was responsible if it
(27:46):
portrays Israel as the aggressor. The use of passive voice
that deemphasizes or hides those perpetrating such negative action on Palestinians,
and this has the rhetorical effect of minimizing the responsibility
of Israelian agressors and causing Palestinian suffering. A lot of
headlines also refer to the Israeli military while referring to
(28:07):
Palestinian groups as militants or Islamists, which implies differences in legitimacy.
Like we mentioned earlier, there are also headlines describing Israeli
air strikes of having come quote after hamas rocket attacks,
but this ignores that the violence from Israeli settlers and
police in Jerusalem preceded those rocket attacks. It's like starting
in the middle of a fight where you punch in
(28:28):
self defense, and that's where the artica starts, like you
punch someone, not the person that punch you first. Maybe
that's a bad example, but it's just thinking of it
that way. You're starting in the middle of a timeline
versus the beginning. And Hamid told the Middle East Eye
that the media narrative erases history, contexts, and legitimacy of
(28:49):
the Palestinian cause by presenting Palestinians as the aggressors and
israel as acting in self defense when it is quite
the opposite, and I can't talk about Palestine or is
Reel without mentioning the anti semitism claims that a lot
of people bring up every time you mentioned Palestine. Other
instances of skewed media coverage, they included articles that conflated
(29:11):
pro Palestine activism with anti Semitism. There was an article
in The Telegraph that said that demonstrators in London that
were in support of Hamas were therefore anti Semitic because
the group was committed to the elimination of Jews, which
is not correct. I don't agree obviously with everything that
Hamas does, but you have to keep in mind that
no one else is fighting for Palestinians, and desperate times
(29:35):
desperate measures, and there's no there's never a reason to
excuse any kind of murder of any anyone that's unarmed
or innocent. But against David and Goliath, what choic does
Palestine have if no one in the international community is
coming to the rescue.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
And UH and everyone who anyone who supports any military
action anywhere supports the kind of collateral damage that Hamas does,
they just support it under different circumstances and with different
weapons systems. Doesn't make it okay to fire rockets blindly
into a city, but the United States Air Force fires
way more rockets just as blindly into way more cities.
(30:15):
It's like, yeah, war is horrible, it's fucked up and bad.
It doesn't say anything about the broader cause. Like, sure,
certainly you can have you know, whatever. There's moral condemnation
to be had for military leaders with Hamas, as there
is for the military leaders with any militant force, and
for you know, some of the soldiers doing some of
those things. But at the end of the day, it
(30:35):
says nothing about the overall righteousness of the cause, because
there's not a discrepancy in the willingness to accept civilian
casualties between Hamas and Israel. They're both very willing to
accept civilian casualties in pursuit of their goals. So you
have to set that aside when you're trying to determine
is what is happening here and where is righteousness? And
I think righteousness overall lies on the side being ethnically cleansed.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Yeah, very well said. I think it's a good place
to take an ad break.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
And that's you know, who also condones heavy civilian casualties
in pursuit of their goals the good people.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
But that works too.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
That does also work. Honestly, has gotten a lot more
people killed than Hamas right, Like, I can't to be fair,
they may have gotten more people killed than the Israeli military.
Guy has cost a lot of bloodshed over the years.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Sikes.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Anyway, here's our sponsors that.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Okay, we're back for the break. We're talking about Propellestinian
activism being complained with anti Semitism, and I want to
bring up this quote from a Daily Mail column commentator
rich little John stated that anti Semitism, like COVID, comes
in waves. This is the Palestinian variant. Excuse me.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Wow, Sometimes I just have to like read that.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
And really just remember what planet I'm on. But this
research also mentions examples of insufficient challenge to views in
broadcast interviews. This included a Sky News interview with Sizzippy
hote Levi Hotevelli, the Israeli ambassador to the UK, failing
to sufficiently answer or be challenged on questions about ethnic
(32:33):
cleansing and schech Rah. She has previously described herself as
a religious right winger and has referred to the nineteen
forty eight displacement of seven hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians
as a place no listen. She describes it as a
quote strong and popular era lie. This is the Israeli
(32:54):
ambassador to the UK.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
And it's like, there's a lot that's frustrating here. What
is that? Like, you do have to take some care
when you particularly when you talk about the media complicity
in like pushing the Israeli narrative and all of the
different things like apak that like fund US politicians and whatnot,
because like it is, you do have to be careful
to not like vere end its conspiracy territory, and you
(33:19):
have to be careful with the sources that you pick,
because since a lot of mainstream news doesn't cover it,
you find some of this written about by people who
are definitely not the folks you want to have on
your side. But that doesn't make talking about this anti semitic.
It just means that the entire discourse is poisoned because
of the way the internet functions.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah and yeah, no, good point. I'm not going to
expand because I will restate it in a worse way.
But that quote just really baffles my mind. Especially because
this person has a lot of power as an ambassador,
but she's also been accused of holding racist and Islamophobic
views and has express support for the annexation of the
entire illegallyccupied West Bank.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Mmmm.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Yeah, really great stuff there.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Something No, it seems like nobody's calling that racist.
Speaker 5 (34:06):
Though, huh no exactly, Like like you think about the reaction
to like to like, hey, yeah, we're we like we
want you literally take over all of this landing, Like
you can compare that to the reaction to like someone
saying from the river to the sea, which like everyone
immediately loses their minds and it's just like, yeah, this
is the ambassador saying this stuff and nothing happens.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, it's really unsettling. And having someone like that in power,
as I'll mention later with an Yahoo, uh, someone that
is so right wing or like, uh extremist, It just
like it encourages people like that that in the in
(34:47):
the population, encourages the kind of belief system to like
expand just like Donald Trump did, Just like Donald Trump
did with his fan base or fan.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Base, his base but around here.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Yeah, the British report that mentioning or also it reported
that Palestinians were regularly asked to answer for the actions
of Hamas and recommended that spokespeople for the group should
instead be given a platform to respond to allegations. Meanwhile,
you don't see like random Israeli's being asked to answer
for murders committed by the idea if it's always very
one sided. In twenty twenty one, there was also another
(35:20):
study that was conducted by MIT titled The New York
Times Distorts the Palestinian Struggle. It was written by Holly M. Jackson,
and it was tracking changes in news coverage bias, showing
how anti Palestinian bias has persisted in The Times coverage
by analyzing its articles during the first and second Palestinian Tafadas,
both periods in which Israeli violence far exceeded that committed
(35:44):
by Palestinians. Deploying machine learning methods to analyze over thirty
three thousand articles, Jackson focused on bias in the language
of the Times reporting through two linguistic features. First was
to identify whether actions by Israeli and Palestinian groups were
being described in the active and passive voice, and the
second was to classify the objectivity and tone of the
(36:05):
language used. And this content analysis conducted across sixteen thousand
articles during the first in Theifada, which was from nineteen
eighty seven to September nineteen ninety three, it revealed some
revealing results. Nearly ninety three percent of these articles reference Israelis,
while only forty percent reference Palestinians, and about twelve percent
of all references to Palestinians used violent language, as opposed
(36:28):
to only five point nine percent for Israelis Palestinians. Meanwhile,
we're referred to in the passive voice nearly sixteen percent
of the time, while the passive voice was used only
about six percent of the time to describe Israelis. And like,
I know this is just like all numbers and percentages
because we obviously know how bias it is, but I
think it's helpful to like scientifically mathematically see that this
(36:51):
is like actually accurate and there's not just like us
talking about it. This is actually true. So I do
believe these studies are very important in show people that
might be I don't know, skeptical that this is actually
the reality. And then Jackson also highlighted that during this period,
the times stable of reporters were filled with those, No,
(37:15):
with those with known prejudices like Thomas L. Friedman and
John who framed their articles by elevating Israeli perspectives alongside
blatant anti Palestinian sentiment. So, like we said, they're giving
platforms of people with really clear biases.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Yeah. Oh, also to Thomas Friedman, famously super fucking bullish
on the Iraq War and also very famously said when
he was trying to rally support for the Iraq War
that the Iraq War was about telling Muslims to quote,
suck on this good guy, Tom Friedman, real cool dude, unbiased.
Speaker 5 (37:57):
They gave this man a pulitzer. I think they gave
him multiple of I.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
Would give him a pulitzer very quickly and thrown overhand. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Uh, that makes me sick. Thank you for sharing that.
I'm glad I know that.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Now it's cool. Shit he doesn't talk about that anymore yet,
that Nate shuts the absolute fuck up.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
I mean, realizing that was the Iraq War and now
he's he's still obviously given a platform to talking about Palestine.
There's no there's no repercussion or even like red flags
about this kind of language because it's accepted, and it's
very really normalized.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
It sucks.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Yes, headlines surveyed for bias dredged up editorials like quote
Israel and Arab neighbors must bend a little no more
Palestine end quote, and Israel has controlled little of Palestine,
so they're really clearly trying.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Jesus frame this in incorrect way, as if, as if
Israel's Arab neighbors haven't basically just in Palestine by this point, right,
Like it has been pretty much like even this, like
people fucking idiot tankies talk about how like Hassad supports them,
but he put them into fucking camps. He's like arrested
and tortured and killed Palestinian activity.
Speaker 5 (39:12):
It like it like you know, one of the the
thing none of these people ever want you to do
is is google Google what Hafas al Asad was fucking
doing and why why why he didn't bring in the
air force at a certain very critical moment that.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
Like famed buddy of Henry K my friend.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Yeah, everyone's friends, everybody's friends, that's what makes politics fun. Yeah. Additionally,
there is a systematic attempt to highlight petty disputes between
Palestinian groups or contradictions and their leader strategy to frame
Palestinians as irrational or disorganized. And I will say that
(39:55):
there has been significant changes in US media coverage of
a confic, especially in the last couple years, and this
is driven in part by popular pressure coming from social media.
There are also signs that Israel is becoming a partisan
issue that divides liberals and conservatives in the US, with
polls showing that growing numbers of Americans would like their
government to take a more even handed stance on the conflict. However,
(40:18):
hardline supporters of the Israeli government have seemingly shifted their
approach from winning quote hearts and minds to punishing opponents.
They've published blacklists of Palestinian activists, they've censored public figures
that are vocal about the conflict, they've speared them as
anti Semitics, and they've advocated for laws to restrict boycotts
of Israeli goods. I want to just take a really
(40:41):
quick sidebar to mention that boycotting works. I'll do another
episode probably one day about the BDS movement. But BDS
stands for boycott, divestment in sanctions, and it works to
end international support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians and pressure
Israel to comply with international law just by boycotting products
(41:02):
and companies that are either based in Israel or have
products from Israel. And it works because Israel doesn't like it,
and I think it's fair Like that's telling that if
Israel's has a problem with boycotting shit, you should keep
doing it. And it's now a vibrant global movement. It's
made up of unions, academic associations, churches, and grassroots movements
across the world. BDS launch in two thousand and five
(41:25):
and it has a major impact and effectively challenging international
support for Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism. That's my sidebar
about BDS. But nonetheless, people that have followed the US
debate on the quote unquote conflict for decades say that
there are serious tectonic changes occurring at the level of
the American public, both in media and in popular sentiment.
(41:47):
Phyllis Bennis, the director of the New Internationalism Project at
the Institute for Policy Studies, a DC based progressive think tank,
said although news coverage is not even handed and is
still generally skewed toward the Israeli perspective. There has been
a massive shift over the past five years and how
this issue is both reported and discussed in the United States.
(42:09):
We are seeing a shift in the types of stories
that are being covered by major outlets as well as
the stances that public figures are willing to take. There
are still huge problems, but things are changing. The discourse
on Israel Palestine is nothing like it was in decades past,
which is very true and for me personally, seeing the
public discourse change firsthand has been like very surreal and amazing,
(42:33):
but really surreal because I think a lot of Palestinians
and Palestinian supporters never thought it would happen, seeing public
figures talk so actively about being pro Palestine, and even
though this occupation this problem seems insurmountable, outing these quote
unquote journalists and news outlets is extremely important because if
(42:57):
public opinion and pressure is strong enough, things have to change.
And the proof of this is seeing the headline that
I mentioned at the very top, where the Times change
their headline because of widespread discussed express on social media
and speaking up and sharing the truth on social media
is extremely important, especially if you aren't Palestinian. And especially
if you live somewhere that is skewing all these news
(43:19):
headlines against Palestinians. There's nothing else but your voice left
and Palestickian voices have been and are continuing to be silenced.
And this is not simply a Palestinian issue. It's a
human issue that calls for humans to stand up when
they are witnessing extreme injustice take place and boycotting works
or else Israel wouldn't be so afraid of it. Choosing
(43:39):
to remain silent is choosing the side of the oppressor.
You've heard it before, It's true, and I am hopeful
with the chains that we've seen in the last few years,
with public figures using their platforms to speak out and
defend Palestine. I think it's honestly the best use of
their platform, and I respect them for that. And I
know that the concept of celebrity is ridiculous and stupid,
(44:02):
but I think if you have the platform and you
have millions of people watching you, using your voice in
a way to support people that are in danger, and
like stand up for the oppressed is one of the
only things you should do. And people that I respect,
this includes Bella Hadid Susan Sarandit, Natalie Portman, Selena Gomez,
Dualipa The Weekend, just to name a few. These people
(44:23):
are huge names, they have millions of people watching them,
and they're not afraid to speak up, especially Bella Hadid recently,
like every other story she posts on Instagram, is about
the Israeli occupation, which I really respect. I really respect
that she has taken such a clear stance and utilizing
their platform. It does make a difference of public perception
(44:44):
because fans that follow her might not follow news or
anything else. There's just a lot of crossover that I
think is really valuable. And ultimately, I think using your
voice is the only right thing to do in any
alternative or PSI lens is simply cowardice and that's my time.
(45:06):
That's what I got today.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
All right, Well, thank you, Sharene. This was pretty bleak
but important and.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
I tried to uplift you at the very end.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
All of you go go okay.
Speaker 4 (45:26):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or Wherever you listen to podcasts,
you can find sources for it could happen here. Updated
monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Host
Robert Evans
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