The devaluing of Palestinian life is not a supposition, it is a statistical fact. According to a new study of coverage in major US newspapers, for every Israeli death Israelis are mentioned eight times – or at a rate 16 times more per death than that of Palestinians. An analysis of BBC coverage by data specialists Dana Najjar and Jan Lietava found a similarly devastating disparity, and that humanising terms such as “mother” or “husband” were used far less often to describe Palestinians, while emotive terms such as “massacre” or “slaughter’” were almost only ever applied to the Israeli victims of Hamas’ atrocities.
Irish lawyer Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, while laying out South Africa’s case against Israel in the international court of justice, described this as “the first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time in the desperate, so far vain hope that the world might do something.” For younger generations exposed to numerous video clips of screaming mothers clutching the lifeless corpses of their newborns, this whole episode has proven instructive.
What do these young people then make of media coverage, or the statements of politicians, that don’t seem to treat Palestinian life as having any worth at all? What conclusions are being drawn about the growing minority populations of western countries whose media and political elites are making so little effort to disguise their contempt for Palestinian life as it is extinguished on such a biblical scale?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
If the world’s powerful nations had not so brazenly shrugged off three-quarters of a million Palestinians being driven from their homes 76 years ago, accompanied by an estimated 15,000 suffering violent deaths, the seeds of today’s bitter harvest would not have been planted.
Surely endless stories of aid workers, journalists or medics being slaughtered along with multiple relatives – or even their entire family – because of an Israeli missile would eventually trigger an overwhelming chorus in western society: this is deranged, a despicable madness, it must stop?
Much of the world already regarded such self-righteousness with contempt, as simply the latest ruse to advance the strategic interests of countries that became rich at the expense of the rest of the globe: centuries of often genocidal colonisation bred lasting cynicism, as did more recent bloodbaths such as the Iraq war, or active support for pliable tyrannies across multiple continents.
They are avid users of social media, where they witness footage of the seemingly endless atrocities in Gaza, and Israeli soldiers gleefully serving up war crimes as fodder for public amusement.
Irish lawyer Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, while laying out South Africa’s case against Israel in the international court of justice, described this as “the first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time in the desperate, so far vain hope that the world might do something.” For younger generations exposed to numerous video clips of screaming mothers clutching the lifeless corpses of their newborns, this whole episode has proven instructive.
What conclusions are being drawn about the growing minority populations of western countries whose media and political elites are making so little effort to disguise their contempt for Palestinian life as it is extinguished on such a biblical scale?
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