HOW CORPORATE MEDIA WHITEWASH ISRAELI CRIMES: A PERSONAL NARRATIVE

JANUARY 5TH, 2024

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Mnar Adley

TRANSCRIPT  //  Like many of you, my heart is weighed down so heavily by the ongoing turmoil in Gaza. And every day, I witness in absolute horror what Israel is doing to Palestinians, as it commits war crime after war crime; it’s watching dismembered children with their limbs blown off or helpless fathers carrying their decapitated babies while collecting the body parts of their wives and children in plastic bags. Or mothers carrying the dead bodies of their children, crying and screaming for them just to wake up. Or the newlywed wife who embraces her deceased husband, her lover, and gives him her last kiss and hug goodbye. It almost feels like we’re watching a sadistic horror movie right on the screens of our smartphones, but we’re not — we are watching in real-time a genocide of my people unfold before our eyes.

And the death toll stands stark and horrific — over 20,000 Palestinians have been killed by merciless bombs, guided missiles, and white phosphorous — weapons handed directly to an out-of-control apartheid state by our government and paid for by our taxpayer money.

If anything good has come out of this horrific war, it’s that the moral depravity of the so-called “rules-based order” has been exposed to the masses. The mask has fallen from the Neoliberal class. For far too long, liberal Western politicians have tried to convince us that they live by the standards of human rights, freedom of speech, and democracy. These are the same individuals and countries that say Israel has a right to defend itself against the world’s largest concentration camp. Our so-called leaders in Washington, London, and Brussels have weaponized human rights to sell the world’s so-called humanitarian wars and to expand its settler colonial projects. But let’s not forget that this ruling class is what brought us the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Somalia and the brutal maximum pressure campaigns, sanctions, and regime change operations against sovereign nations like Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and so many more countries who are resisting Western imperialism. Israel’s war in Gaza is just an outward representation of what the Neoliberal class represents — a bloodthirst for war that fuels the military-industrial complex. Lockheed Martin and Raytheon applaud this genocide. Think tanks that are funded by these weapon manufacturers draft the war policies for our politicians to make these wars inevitable. We see dead children; they see their stock prices go up.

But it’s clear that no matter how many millions they spend to manufacture consent for their wars and support Israeli apartheid, Palestinians have won the hearts and minds of humanity. Never have I seen such global dissent and awakening to Israel’s war in Gaza. We’re seeing a global awakening. Millions have taken to the streets, mass sit-ins at our elected officials’ offices have been organized, and boycotts. The massive coffee company Starbucks lost 12 billion dollars in a matter of one month from our boycott campaign. We have to disrupt the money-making mechanisms that make these wars possible. The capitalist system is meant to make us feel powerless, but we have the power to stop this war. And Israel knows this.

That’s why Israel is spending millions on propaganda, but it’s also systematically targeting Palestinian journalists in Gaza. Over 100 journalists have been killed so far in less than 70 days. These courageous individuals, committed to unveiling the truth, have become direct targets of a regime desperate to cloak its genocidal actions from the world’s scrutiny. Israel doesn’t want the world to see the reality of its genocidal onslaught in Gaza, so it’s assassinating the messengers. In most parts of the world, wearing a flak jacket marked “press” gives you protection. But right now in Palestine, it may as well be a target, as Israel has turned Gaza into what the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has called a “cemetery for journalists.”

And you’d think mainstream corporate journalists would talk about the targeting of journalists in Gaza, but they’re not. If legacy media outlets like the New York Times or CNN cover Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza, they don’t have the basic journalistic integrity to say who killed them and fail to point out that Israel is systematically targeting them. Corporate media are whitewashing Israeli crimes and playing the fool, pretending not to understand where the missiles come from. They pretend not to hear the genocidal rhetoric emanating from Tel Aviv, who are openly calling Palestinians subhuman who need to be cleansed out of Gaza. Brave journalists have lost their lives trying to document the Israeli onslaught — we will not forget Palestinian journalist Ayat Khadoura, who was killed in her home by an Israeli airstrike. In her “last message to the world” posted on Instagram, she said: “We used to have big dreams, but now our dream is to be killed in one piece so they know who we are.”

Today, my dear friend and colleague journalist Motaz Azaiza has chronicled with full transparency the horrors of life under incessant bombs. And people around the world are flocking to his page to get live coverage of the war because it’s become evident that Western corporate media are biased towards Israeli apartheid, pushing atrocity propaganda about October 7th to justify Israel’s genocide… Western media leave out the context that Israel is occupying Palestinian land and fail to mention the many crimes against humanity Israel is committing every single day according to the Geneva Convention. It’s no coincidence. It’s because organizations like the New York Times Jerusalem bureau are built on a Palestinian house in al-Quds, which belongs to a noted Palestinian writer, Ghada Karmi, a survivor of the Nakba.

The NYT also cooperates with Israeli officials by receiving and obeying gag orders from the Israeli government. The New York Times Israel bureau chiefs Ethan Bronner, Isabel Kershner, and David Brooks had their adult children enlisted in the Israeli army while they were actively covering Israel and Palestine for the newspaper. The so-called paper of record never made this public to its readers, raising serious questions of bias and a conflict of interest. The New York Times also has a history of firing journalists like Gaza-based photographer Hosam Salem following an intervention from the Israel lobby group Honest Reporting. CNN and others who are embedded with the Israeli military have to get their footage approved by Israel before publishing it.

These are minor examples that don’t even scratch the surface of how other media outlets work directly with Israel to control the narrative on Palestine or even how BIG Tech works with NATO and Israeli-funded think tanks like the Atlantic Council and the ADL to crack down on alternative information on social media platforms. Consider this: In a matter of 60 days, Motaz amassed over 17.5 million followers. While the New York Times has 9.4 million digital subscribers…. We are winning the information war, and people are breaking through the propaganda. Journalists like Motaz Azaiza, Younis Tirawi, Muhammad Smiry, Motasem Mortaja, Wael Dahdouh, Hind Khoudary, and Bisan, to name a few, are showing us in real-time the courage it often takes to be a journalist.

As Israel continues to pound Gaza and we continue to see images of death, blood, and destruction, it’s easy to feel hopeless. It’s easy to be left speechless. But our story doesn’t end here… for every bomb dropped, every child left to survive but orphaned, limbs lost, every person pulled from under the rubble but left horrified… for every person left to survive… they survive to tell our story. We are the survivors — and our existence is our resistance. Israel thought it could bury us, but we turned out to be seeds. I was once that little girl who sat on her rooftop in Shufat–al–Quds and watched in horror Israeli jets drop bombs on homes in Ramallah. I was once that little girl who sat in her classroom only to look around to find my classmates missing each day because they were either killed or blocked from crossing a checkpoint to get to school…

I was once that little girl who was too afraid to look outside her window as Israeli soldiers pointed their rifles toward us during a militarized curfew… I was once that little girl who had her water cut off and had to hide in her barricaded home so that Israeli settlers wouldn’t come inside and attack her family. By 13 years old, I had already witnessed human rights abuses by a state that had convinced the world it was a civilized democracy. No child should have seen what I had seen, let alone what the children of Gaza are seeing today. By 13, I had already witnessed Palestinians subjected to discriminatory laws, having their travel controlled, and living behind a 30-foot-tall concrete apartheid wall separating them from the world. Every single day was a matter of survival while living under martial law and occupation. When I finally moved back to the US when I was 13 years old – to the pristine suburbs of Minneapolis, MN – where the lawns were perfectly mowed and perfect… life was calm… but my mind was racing with thoughts of children being killed by bombs, families left homeless from airstrikes, electricity and water cutoffs. I couldn’t stop thinking about the men and young boys who were abducted by Israeli police in the middle of the night raids and held in indefinite detention without trial and on no charge. I could not unsee what I had seen.

Little did I know moving overseas to Palestine as an American child would shape not only my perspective on the world but how the media operates. When we moved back to the US in 2001, it was just a few months before 9/11. I was absolutely traumatized. I suffered from what soldiers who fight in wars suffer from when they return home: PTSD, severe anxiety, and survivor’s guilt. I was just 13 years old and felt like no one understood what I had witnessed. While most teenagers in America were worried about football games, shopping, and partying, I turned to the media to stay up to date on the war I could not let go of. But what I got were images of Palestinian men covering their faces and bearing guns, stoking fear in the hearts of Americans while framing Palestinians as the aggressors. Media outlets like CNN and MSNBC gave Israeli leaders, and political figures paid millions of dollars by the Israeli lobby unlimited airtime on their networks to spew dehumanizing rhetoric about Palestinians and how much we hated ourselves, and that we wanted our children to die.

The media instilled fear in the hearts and minds of Americans to paint us as savages and barbaric to help justify Israel’s apartheid and fascist policies on a defenseless population. Why wouldn’t they? The US gives Israel over $10.4 Million a day to the apartheid regime. After 9/11 – the media propaganda machine went on steroids to dehumanize Muslims as barbaric and painted a caricature of jihad narrative about us to justify the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – that left 4 million people dead. It became clear that Americans’ lack of understanding about the world was because of the media… And it’s as if they are all given the same script to talk about wars overseas. It’s no wonder six corporations own 90% of what Americans see, hear, and read. Americans are the most propagandized people on the planet.

Now, despite feeling alone, traumatized, misunderstood, and at times almost losing hope when I was 13, having lived under Israeli occupation and now living in a post 9/11 America, watching in horror on my TV screen US bombs being dropped on Iraq and Afghanistan…. It was this rock bottom place where I found courage and catharsis in pursuing journalism to speak up not just for Palestinians but for all people around the world who are living under war. It was at 13 years old that I decided to become a journalist. And in 2009, against all odds, I became the first American woman to wear the hijab while anchoring and reporting the news in the US. While I thought this was a great accomplishment at the time, I soon realized that very little change could be made within corporate media that is directed by marketing strategies and not actual journalism. I would just become the face of diversity at these stations while pushing dumbed-down stories to the masses.

This is why I started MintPress soon after when I was 24 years old – and about ten years later, MintPress is now a leading independent investigative news outlet in this country and around the world that exposes the profiteers of the war machine. Our investigations have been cited by politicians, major news organizations, academic journals, books, and much more across the globe. Our reporting has been used in negotiations between the US and Russia that helped stop a full-blown US invasion of Syria. But this route hasn’t been an easy one – my name has been dragged through the mud, I’ve been labeled and smeared… I’ve appeared on the front pages of major media outlets with my face plastered next to Bashar al-Assad, calling me an agent of Iran, of Hamas – you name it. MintPress has been targeted financially by British intelligence, who ordered Paypal to ban us – we’ve been banned by Tiktok, and our Wikipedia page has been written and edited by Israel lobby groups. I’ve lost friends on the way and have had my own family turn against me for standing staunchly against war and not falling for sectarian division.

But this is by design – it’s a psychological war against the truth-tellers to intimidate us into stopping – to push us into a corner. No matter the information war waged against us, we will not back down because there are innocent lives at stake who need us to be their voice. Journalism became my outlet for the helplessness that I felt growing up when I suffered from PTSD, the trauma that I carry because of my life in a war zone and knowing that so many people I left behind in Palestine are still suffering, whether it be in Gaza or anywhere in the world living under war. Israel thought it could bury us, but we turned out to be seeds.

‘Our Vision for Liberation’: Book Launch Special with Baroud, Pappe and Karmi

June 9, 2022

Ramzy Baroud, Ilan Pappé and Ghada Karmi discuss the just-released book Our Vision for Liberation. (Photo: PDD)

In its latest live show, Palestine Deep Dive celebrates the book launch of Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders & Intellectuals Speak Out (Clarity Press).

Deep Dive’s host, Mark Seddon, is joined in the studio by the book’s co-editor Dr. Ramzy Baroud and one of its many Palestinian contributors, Dr. Ghada Karmi, joined via video link with co-editor Prof. Ilan Pappé.

Kicking off the show, Seddon asks Pappé what the idea was which inspired him and Baroud to put the book together:

“It was a sense that while there is a lot of information about the oppression, about the brutality of the Israeli policy, whether analyzing it in the past or understanding it in the present, there was a sense that the Palestinian agency in this is sometimes forgotten,” Pappé responds.

“I think also the obvious, disunity in the Palestinian leadership, a sense of disorientation that cannot be hidden is clearly there. Sometimes this obfuscates the very individual bravery and resilience that is taking place all over Palestine or wherever the Palestinians are in the globe. We thought that the first mission was to show, first of all, how this resilience, resistance, sometimes very personal, not as part of an organization, sometimes as part of a larger movement is a daily occurrence which gives us a lot of hope that there is still a Palestinian liberation movement, even if, from an institutional point of view, it seems sometimes that it does not exist.”

Asking Ghada Karmi for her thoughts on the title of the book, she responds:

“I must say it’s very brave, as you point out, to actually include the word ‘intellectual’ at a time and in a context in which there is an anti-intellectual movement. It’s very courageous, but it’s the truth. It’s the truth and it has to be said. Palestine, like many other nations, has its own class of people who think about things, which is what an intellectual is, and debate within themselves and with others what is the best way forward for whatever it is that they’re concerned about.”

Seddon probes further, asking, “When you talk about liberation as authors, what do you actually mean?”

Karmi responds: “… I think that there is this unity that Ilan Pappé spoke about in the idea, in the belief, that liberation means regaining Palestine. It’s very simple, no Palestinian ever really accepted the loss of the homeland. None of us ever believes or thinks that it’s gone forever.”

Dr. Ghada Karmi’s chapter in the book is titled: “An Equal Rights Campaign – Key to the End of Zionism” which she elaborates on in the show:

“We, that is not only the ‘we Palestinians’ who are living already in historic Palestine, but all the Palestinians who are living outside it or exiled or who are sitting in refugee camps, people like me, how can we accommodate this? How can we realistically do it? Quite clearly, there are no divisions. You can’t partition Palestine, the people have to live together. How are they going to live together? Ideally, of course, as one person, one vote in a democracy with equal rights.”

Returning to Seddon’s question on the title of the book, Baroud responds:

“We were thinking of liberation at two different levels, the actual act of liberation, the ending of the occupation, the dismantling of apartheid, and for Palestinians to be given basic human rights, to be treated as citizens in a territory that we can identify and the rest… but there is also a different kind of liberation that we were aiming for. This is why I think some of our 30 contributors may have discussed liberation from a different point of view, which is the liberation of the discourse itself, the liberation of the language itself, the liberation of how we locate ourselves as Palestinians.”

Baroud progresses by emphasizing the misrepresentation of Palestinians historically and how this book seeks to undo this injustice by giving Palestinians center-stage to articulate their own discourse:

“We’re always, in some ways, being perceived to be the aggressor, which makes absolutely no sense given that we are the ones who are colonized and aggressed upon and constantly trying to fight, not only for the freedom to move about, but for our own survival as we have seen in the case of Gaza.”

Currently in Gaza, where two million Palestinians endure a 15-year-long hermetic siege, 98% of water there is undrinkable, electricity is shut off daily due to power shortages and a mental health crisis afflicts the population who have lived through four deadly military assaults on the enclave by Israel since 2008.

“We wanted to say if we as Palestinians imagine a different narrative in which the story is told from our point of view, what would it look like? What would the story be if it’s based entirely on Palestinian priorities? Not in a cliché sentimental way, but rather in a very specific way, people with programs.

“Ghada was quite courageous in her chapter. Others also talk on various issues, whether in art and cinema, in embroidery, in science, in archeology, in diplomacy, and all of these issues talking about them; this is how we have been doing it, this is what we learned, these are the mistakes that have been committed, this is what we think is the proper way forward.”

Expanding on the idea of liberating the discourse, Baroud explains how Palestinians historically have been denied the right to speak freely:

“When Oslo was signed in 1993, we quite often talk about Oslo as a political doctrine, but we rarely discuss Oslo as a culture. Where Palestinians were told that in order for you to be accepted within the realm of good moderate nations, you have to behave in a certain way and you have to speak in a certain way as well.

“Certain terminologies like liberation, freedom fighting, resistance, muqawama, we were not allowed to use those terms anymore. The terms that we were supposed to use, ‘the peace process’ only ‘two-state solutions’, we can’t venture out of this stifling paradigm that was really never meant to actualize in the first place. There were the good Palestinians, the bad Palestinians, the terrorist sympathizers versus the moderate friendly one.”

Returning back to Pappé, Seddon puts to him an audience question, “Is this book a manifesto for change or a history of what has already been tried?”

Pappé responds: “Well, I think it’s both. First of all, it’s a record. It’s recording through individual stories. A humanizing story.”

“I would just mention one thing here that is very important, and this comes out in several of the contributions. The Palestinian society is one of the youngest in the world. 50% of the Palestinians, wherever they are, are under 18 years old.

“You talk to Palestinian teenagers all over, wherever they are, and you understand that this is an assertive generation that would continue the struggle of liberation. With the way Israel is going to evolve, it’s very clear what’s going on on the ground in Israel. The way it’s going to evolve, giving up on the democratic charade anyway, and really becoming an official apartheid state. I think that this is more than a manifesto.”

Keen to emphasize one of the book’s vital takeaways, Baroud mentions:

“There is an implicit message in the book about solidarity. In fact, if you notice that all the endorsements come from non-Palestinians, and all the contributions come from Palestinians. As if we are trying to say there’s a message there.

“Solidarity is not when you take my place, solidarity is when you stand by my side and try to create networks, support me, help me to communicate my message, but not to replace me. I think that becomes quite clear throughout the book.”

Turning to the question of the Palestinian leadership, Seddon asks with the abandonment of elections recently in Palestine, is it indeed possible to create a unified Palestinian leadership any time soon?

Baroud responds: “Now, according to a recent public opinion poll, a majority of Palestinians in the West Bank support a one-state solution. That critical mass is about to be reached in Gaza. That happened within relatively a very short period of time. If these indicators continue, at this level, it seems that sooner or later, Palestinians will back this particular solution, and we will then speak about an objective that is being championed by the Palestinian people.”

According to a poll conducted by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center (JMCC), published on November 22, 2021, there are more West Bank Palestinians who support the one-state solution than those still in favor of the two-state solution.

“Now, the question is, will we ever have that leadership that is going to support the people’s position? Edward Said famously said, ‘Palestinians are cursed by a bad leadership.’ Far from trying to correct Professor Said in any possible way, but I don’t think it’s really a matter of bad leadership per se, as much as we had no other alternative but to have that bad leadership, because our good leadership is either in prison, assassinated, marginalized, deported out of Palestine, and so forth.

“This is the very purpose of the book. How do we move beyond this? How do we create that legitimate leadership? Not necessarily via elections, because we know that Israel is not going to give Palestinians the space and the room to really create democratic representatives. Even though the elections have never even taken place, many Palestinian potential candidates were arrested anyway. We know that either way, we will never have that moment. We need to have alternative ways in which we can have a legitimate leadership. Within the framework of liberation movements, legitimate leadership does not necessarily have to be the outcome of the ballot box. There are other ways of achieving that.”

Order your copy now of Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders & Intellectuals Speak Out here. 

(Palestine Deep Dive)

WATCH: Ramzy Baroud & Ghada Karmi on ‘One Democratic State’

September 23, 2021

Ghada Karmi and Ramzy Baroud speak about the One Democratic State with Blake Alcott. (Photo: Video Grab)

Palestinian authors and activists Ghada Karmi and Ramzy Baroud tell about their support for One Democratic State (ODS) in Palestine.

Also, the video gives the ABCs of what exactly ODS is. Posted by One Democratic State in Palestine (UK), a non-profit founded in 2013 in England. Its purpose is to make the idea of one democratic state, or ODS, better-known, mainly in Western Europe, as part of an effort to get European governments to change course.

Ghada Karmi was born in Jerusalem and fled with her family, via Damascus, to London, where her father worked with the BBC Arabic Service. She received her degree as a medical doctor from the University of Bristol and became increasingly active in working for Palestinian liberation. In 1997, she wrote a seminal article on one democratic state for Chatham House, and in 2007 she published her book explicitly on the ODS solution – titled ‘Married to Another Man’. In 2009, she and Ilan Pappe founded the European Centre for Palestine Studies at Exeter University. Her two autobiographical books are the 2002 ‘In Search of Fatima’ and the 2015 ‘Return’. She writes for The Guardian, Middle East Eye, the London Review of Books, and other media.

Ramzy Baroud was born in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, where his family landed after being expelled from Beit Daras, a town about 30 kilometers from Gaza, in 1948. He started at a young age working as a journalist, in 1999 founding the Palestine Chronicle, now going strong in its 22nd year. He has often worked for the Middle East Eye and Al-Jazeera and has written 5 books. One appeared in 2010, the semi-autobiographical ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story’. Another is ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story ‘which came out in 2018. His latest is ‘These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons’. He is now editing with Ilan Pappe a collection of essays with the title ‘Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out’. Baroud received his Ph.D. from Exeter University in 2015.

(ODS, Palestine Chronicle)