One side of the picture
RACISM is “the belief that one ‘racial group’ is inferior to another and the practices of the dominant group to maintain the inferior position of the dominated group. Often defined as a combination of power, prejudice and discrimination.” This is how the British Library wished to define racism on its web site.
The above definition hardly deviates from the essence of almost all definitions of the ominous concept. And indeed, the concept is being fully utilised as I write these words in the Gaza Strip, with Israel’s onslaught against the Palestinians and the international community and media’s mild, if not accommodating response to the onslaught.
The capture of Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit is a clear act of self-defence. One of America’s top and most courageous international law professors wrote to me this week: “Insist on calling Gilad Shalit a prisoner of war, for he is one.” Well, maybe according to international law and the Geneva Conventions, but not CNN, Fox News and the increasingly spineless BBC, that insist on presenting the solider (with an overt emphasis on his young age) is a victim, who was “kidnapped” by Palestinian “militants”, who are “affiliated” with the Hamas government, and that Israel is doing its outmost to free him, insisting that there can be “no negotiations with terrorists.”
If reporters stationed with the invading Israeli soldiers, amassed in and around the Gaza Strip fail to communicate these assertions themselves, then they will do all they can to ensure that they are communicated by Israeli military spokespersons or ‘experts’, both seem to convey the same ideas.
By not challenging the Israeli narrative in any meaningful way, and dumping it on hapless viewers all around the world, the uncritical media has become a tool in the hands of Israel’s war strategists and their eternal concoctions. Consider this for example, an Israeli military commander tells a BBC correspondent dispatched to the border area between Israel and Gaza, that Israel intends on opening the border for “as long as it takes” to offset the humanitarian crisis developing in Gaza. The Israeli army representative in a barefaced lie declares that the border has always been open, despite the perpetual Palestinian ‘threat’ to the state of Israel. The BBC correspondent thanks him sincerely and signs off. I, in turn, throw my remote control at the television.
khaleejtimes.com