US Media Losing Control of the Middle East Narrative?

[Riaz Haq]

Citizen journalists armed with ubiquitous smartphones and access to social media platforms have challenged the western media reporting of the latest Israeli brutal assault on Gaza. While the established western media outfits have stuck to "Israel's right to defend itself" narrative, this new breed of young journalists has posted unfiltered images and videos of the Israeli war crimes against Palestinians. Some of these powerful posts have gone viral with many young people, including Jews, sharing them broadly on social media. People, particularly Americans, who share these posts see the Palestinian struggle as a civil rights struggle not unlike the recent Black Lives Matter movement in America. 

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on CNN

The western media, particularly the mainstream American media, are quick to accuse Israel's critics of being anti-semitic, a familiar tactic to distract from the Israeli crimes against humanity. A recent example is the CNN anchor Bianna Golodryga who labelled Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi's criticism of western media as anti-semitic, a charge that even President Jimmy Carter could not escape when he criticized Israel's Apartheid.  Here's what Mr. Qureshi  told the CNN anchor: 

“Israel is losing out (in spite of their) deep pockets, they are losing the media war despite their connections.. ..Well they are very influential people. I mean, they control media.....point is they have a lot of influence, and they get a lot of coverage. Now what has balanced that is the citizen journalist who has been reporting, sharing video clips and that has jolted people and that has woken up people, and people who were sitting on the fence are today speaking up.”

Golodryga interjected and said, “I would call that an antisemitic remark". I am not sure if Qureshi knows but it seems to me that phrases like "control media" and "deep pockets" hit close to home for Golodryga. She and her husband Peter Orszag are both Jewish. Golodryga is an influential media person while Orszag is an investment banking executive on Wall Street. 

The power of Jews in American media and finance is undeniable. Goldman Sachs is the most influential investment bank in the United States. It was founded by Jews in the nineteenth century. Most of its partners since then, almost all of its leaders, and its current CEO (Lloyd Blankfein) are Jews. Similarly, most of the top media executives and best-known US journalists are Jews. 

The role of money and media is particularly important for domestic politics in the United States. What Mr. Qureshi said is especially true of the powerful Israel lobby group American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that lobbies for Israeli interests in the United States. AIPAC is flush with cash contributed by rich American Jews. AIPAC has lots of friends in mainstream US media. 

Western media not only fail to accurately report current events in Palestine but they also do not contextualize such events. For example, the current crisis in the region started with attempts by some Israeli Jews to steal Palestinian homes in Jerusalem. A viral video shared on social media illustrates what is happening there. It shows a young Palestinian woman in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah saying to a Jewish man named Yakov, “You are stealing my house!” “If I don’t steal it, someone else will steal it,” he responds. 

Popular comedian John Oliver has called out the western media for promoting "both sides" narrative in the Middle East. Here's what he said:

“There’s a real tendency, particularly in America, to ‘both sides’ this situation, and I’m not saying that there aren’t some areas where that’s warranted. But it’s important to recognize there are also areas where it’s simply not...Both sides are firing rockets, but one side has one of the most advanced militaries in the world. Both sides are suffering heartbreaking casualties, but one side is suffering them exponentially.... Falling back on, convenient sanitized terms like ‘real estate disputes’ and ‘airstrikes on militants’ feels a little disingenuous when what you’re describing is forcing people from the homes they’ve lived in for decades and killing civilians, and children...And again, none of this frees Hamas from responsibility. But Hamas doesn’t represent all Palestinians just as what Israel is doing right now doesn’t represent all Israelis, or indeed Jewish people...Lots is complicated here, but some things are pretty simple...One side is suffering much more.”

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

South Asia Investor Review

Nakbah, The Catastrophe Day

Jewish Power in US Congress

Pictorial Review of Young Gaza Victims 

Israel's Gaza Attack is Criminal, Not Defensive 

Warsaw's Nazi Concentration Camp 

Israel: An Apartheid State 

Gaza Flotilla Massacre and US Media Coverage

Riaz Haq's YouTube Channel

PakAlumni Social Network

[Riaz Haq]

Opinion | Ukraine news coverage exposes racist biases in Western media - The Washington Post


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/28/ukraine-coverage...


By H.A. Hellyer
February 28, 2022 at 12:42 p.m. EST

H.A. Hellyer, a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace scholar, is a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and Cambridge University.


“This double standard is so evident in how we as Westerners engage in intl relations…we dehumanize non-White populations, diminishing their importance, and that leads to one thing: the degrading of their right to live in dignity.”

------------------


“This isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades,” Charlie D’Agata, a CBS correspondent in Kyiv, told his colleagues back in the studio. “You know, this is a relatively civilized, relatively European — I have to choose those words carefully, too — city where you wouldn’t expect that or hope that it’s going to happen.”

Putin’s criminal invasion of Ukraine has generated an inspiring wave of solidarity around the world, but for many — especially non-White observers — it has been impossible to tune out the racist biases in Western media and politics.

D’Agata’s comments generated a swift backlash — and he was quick to apologize — but he was hardly the only one. A commentator on a French news program said, “We’re not talking about Syrians fleeing bombs of the Syrian regime backed by Putin; we’re talking about Europeans leaving in cars that look like ours to save their lives.” On the BBC, a former deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine declared, “It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blond hair ... being killed every day.” Even an Al Jazeera anchor said, “These are not obviously refugees trying to get away from areas in the Middle East,” while an ITV News reporter said, “Now the unthinkable has happened to them, and this is not a developing, Third World nation; this is Europe.”

British pundit Daniel Hannan joined the chorus in the Telegraph. “They seem so like us. That is what makes it so shocking. War is no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations. It can happen to anyone,” he wrote.

The implication for anyone reading or watching — particularly anyone with ties to a nation that has also seen foreign intervention, conflict, sanctions and mass migration — is clear: It’s much worse when White Europeans suffer than when it’s Arabs or other non-White people. Yemenis, Iraqis, Nigerians, Libyans, Afghans, Palestinians, Syrians, Hondurans — well, they are used to it.

The insults went beyond media coverage. A French politician said Ukrainian refugees represent “high-quality immigration.” The Bulgarian prime minister said Ukrainian refugees are “intelligent, they are educated. ... This is not the refugee wave we have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists.”

It’s as if, in our anger and horror at the scenes of Russia’s aggression, we are incapable of recognizing a simple fact: We’ve seen this before.

A Vanity Fair special correspondent denied precisely that in a tweet: “This is arguably the first war we’ve seen (actually seen in real-time) take place in the age of social media, and all of these heart-wrenching images make Russia look utterly terrible.”

The tweet was erased — like the experiences of many who have documented the horrors of war in recent decades on social media and beyond.

Putin’s military also intervened ferociously in Syria, backing a murderous regime. That war unleashed a level of mass death, suffering, destruction and displacement not yet seen in Ukraine — but the West’s response was far less empathetic. The same can be said of the U.S. invasions and military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq; the catastrophic Saudi-led war in Yemen; the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians.

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistani-#American delegation, including former minister, lands in #Israel. Ex Minister & Pak #cricket board head Nasim Ashraf said that he was “delighted and honored” to take part in a delegation intended “to promote peace and interfaith dialogue.” https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/2022-09-20/ty-article/.pre...

The Pakistani delegation, which also includes members of Muslim-American peace groups, is currently in Israel despite a lack of formal diplomatic ties between the two countries

A delegation of Pakistani-Americans, including a former government minister, arrived in Israel on Tuesday, less than a year after a prominent Pakistani journalist was fired following his visit to Jerusalem and meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

The delegation consists of members of the American Muslim and Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council (AMMWEC) and Sharaka, an NGO founded in the wake of the Abraham Accords to embed people-to-people normalization between Israel and Muslim-majority states.

Among those visiting is Dr. Nassim Ashraf, the ex-head of the Pakistan Cricket Board and a former Pakistani Minister of State for Human Development.

In a statement reported by the Pakistani news site propakistani.pk, Ashraf said that he was “delighted and honored” to take part in a delegation intended “to promote peace and interfaith dialogue.”

A delegation of Pakistani-Americans, including a former government minister, arrived in Israel on Tuesday, less than a year after a prominent Pakistani journalist was fired following his visit to Jerusalem and meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

The delegation consists of members of the American Muslim and Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council (AMMWEC) and Sharaka, an NGO founded in the wake of the Abraham Accords to embed people-to-people normalization between Israel and Muslim-majority states.

Among those visiting is Dr. Nassim Ashraf, the ex-head of the Pakistan Cricket Board and a former Pakistani Minister of State for Human Development.

In a statement reported by the Pakistani news site propakistani.pk, Ashraf said that he was “delighted and honored” to take part in a delegation intended “to promote peace and interfaith dialogue.”

“Such people-to-people contacts,” he said, “are very important to develop understanding and harmony between Abrahamic Faiths to which we belong.”

Anila Ali, the president of AMMWEC and a Sharaka board member, told the site that “we must continue our work to build peace on a people-to-people connection to promote the Abraham Accords in Muslim countries,” including between Israelis and Pakistanis.

“The aim of the trip is to allow the participants to see and explore Israel for themselves, and to transmit what they learn and experience to audiences in Pakistan to help provide information for the important debate underway on whether Pakistan should join the Abraham Accords,” she said, adding that “due to the tragic flooding in Pakistan, much of the visit will focus on life-saving technologies developed in Israel relating to water and food security and to mitigating climate and environmental disasters.”

[Riaz Haq]

Barbara Walters, Celebrated Jewish TV Persona, Dies at 93 - World News - Haaretz.com

https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/2022-12-31/ty-article/barbara-wa...


Walters made history for women and Jewish anchors on mainstream television and was known for 'inventing intimacy on television'

[Riaz Haq]

Bernie Sanders Campaign Manager Briahna Joy Gray: “I’m not talking about China, but Israel. In a leaked recording, ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt admitted that Israel had a ‘TikTok problem.’ Suddenly, a divided congress agrees on one thing: A social media ban.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O0-Rjkr5Ws


https://x.com/briebriejoy/status/1767987059279507636

----------------------

“We really have a TikTok problem, a Gen Z problem,” Anti-Defamation League (ADL) director Jonathan Greenblatt said in a recording. He notes that Israel is facing a “major generational problem” in the United States and that “the numbers of young people who think that Hamas’, you know, massacre was justified is shockingly and terrifyingly high.”

[Riaz Haq]

Amsterdam riots: what really happened | Media Watch

https://youtu.be/qQ0MJr6v0bI?si=VUv56E8pPGaIobBu

What really happened in Amsterdam’s soccer riots between supporters of Ajax Amsterdam and Maccabi Tel Aviv? We look at how the truth got lost in the rush to judgement.

————————-


The Mayor of Amsterdam has said she regrets using the word 'pogrom' to describe the attacks on Israeli football fans in the Dutch capital following the match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and AFC Ajax.

https://www.euronews.com/2024/11/19/amsterdam-mayor-says-she-regret...

She also condemned Israel for its swift portrayal of the incident as an attack on Israelis, despite prior behaviour by Maccabi supporters in which they chanted anti-Arab slogans and tore down Palestinian flags.

"We were completely caught off guard by Israel. At 3am, (Israeli) Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu was already giving a lecture about what happened in Amsterdam, while we were still gathering the facts," she said in Sunday's interview.

The football match violence has rocked the Dutch government, with country's finance secretary announcing her resignation on Friday following comments by Hard-right Dutch political leader Geert Wilders.

Wilders last Wednesday blamed Moroccans for the attacks on Israeli football fans, claiming that "we saw Muslims hunting Jews" and added it was fuelled by "Moroccans who want to destroy Jews." He said those convicted of involvement should be deported if they have dual nationality.

Announcing her resignation, Morocco-born Nora Achahbar of centrist New Social Contract party said that "the polarising manners have had such an impact on me that I could, or would, no longer fulfil my role as state secretary."

"Polarisation in society is dangerous because it undermines the bond between people. Because of that, we start seeing each other as opponent instead of fellow citizens," she said in a statement.