US media’s silent complicity in Israeli massacre

Major American media outlets, led by the New York Times, are treating the Israeli military’s mass killing and wounding of unarmed, peaceful Palestinian protesters in Gaza as a non-event.

On Friday, March 30, 2018, as tens of thousands of Palestinians gathered near the militarized border with the occupied territory called ‘Israel’ to protest Israeli expropriation of Palestinian land and demand the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland, Israeli troops and sharpshooters opened fire, martyring at least 16 people and wounding some 1,400 more.

Millions around the world reacted with shock and horror at the scenes of deliberate murder, using live ammunition. One video showed a young man running away from the border fence who was shot in the back and martyred by the Zionist occupation forces. Another showed that at least two of those martyred were unarmed as they walked slowly towards the occupied Israeli border. The Israeli forces deployed troops and more than 100 snipers to shoot unarmed protestors demonstrating in the towns and cities of the tiny enclave as well as the thousands who gathered at the border. Jean Shaoul, professor of public accountability at the University of Manchester, UK, has jointly written an article by Barry Grey, a British writer on social issues, concerning the US-supported Israeli barbarism in the occupied lands.

According to the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, the group that controls the Palestinian enclave, only five of those martyred on Friday belonged to Hamas’s military wing, the rest being civilians.

The US intervened at the United Nations Security Council to block a resolution put forward by Kuwait calling for an independent investigation into the mass shooting, and Israeli spokesmen flatly rejected any such probe, congratulating the Israeli soldiers for what they referred to as “defending Israeli sovereignty.”

Israel’s chief military spokesman, Brigadier General Ronen Manelis, warned that the Zionist regime forces would step up its violence on the Gaza border. He added that the war troops had restricted its actions thus far to the border fence, but it was prepared to “act against these terror organizations in other places too,” that is, within Gaza. Israel’s violent crackdown on Land Day protests in the Gaza Strip left at least 15 dead, and large numbers of people wounded. There are a lot of expressions of concern, but one thing there won’t be is an investigation, by anyone.

A resolution in the UN Security Council sought an inquiry and also issuing a statement of support for the right to peaceful protest. The US, however, quickly vetoed the bill. This is unsurprising, as the US generally vetoes anything that has anything to do with the child-killer regime of Israel. US officials have so far refused to comment, because clearly vetoing a call to respect human rights, and not kill peaceful protesters, is something of an embarrassment.

So there’s no possibility of an international inquiry under UN auspices. While NGOs are likely to offer critical accounts of what happened, this is just the latest in a long line of instances of the Zionists killing Arabs with impunity.

And while that isn’t necessarily surprising, it could be a very bad thing not just for international standing, but for popular sentiment within Palestine. The killings drew thousands to the funerals of the slain, and while Israel threatens to kill more next time, the casual use of lethal force against demonstrators has a constant threat of blowback against the Israeli savage regime.

In line with the full support for the Israeli slaughter from the US government and both major parties, the New York Times published a perfunctory news story on the massacre in its Saturday edition and completely dropped the issue in its Sunday edition and on its website. This is despite the fact that the Israeli forces emboldened by the muted response from Western governments and the media, continued the attack Saturday on a smaller turnout of demonstrators, wounding scores of protesters.

The same Sunday edition of the so-called “newspaper of record” featured a long article on alleged atrocities by the Syrian government and another article bemoaning the illegal poaching of abalone in South Africa.

The Israeli massacre was barely mentioned on the Sunday television interview programs and has evoked no editorial statements by major media outlets. Friday’s demonstration was announced as the beginning of six weeks of peaceful protests, called the “March of Return,” to conclude on May 15, the 70th anniversary of the illegal establishment of Israel, which the Palestinians commemorate as Nakba (Catastrophe Day), when the US is set to open its embassy in Jerusalem al-Quds. The transfer of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem al-Quds, announced last year by President Donald Trump, is a massive provocation.

The massacre on Friday was the deadliest day of violence since Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza, which claimed the lives of 2,250 Palestinians, the certain majority of whom were civilians. This followed criminal assaults on the besieged and impoverished enclave in 2008-2009 and 2012, killing 1,217 and 147 people, respectively. All these war crimes were backed by Washington, which always put forth claims of defending human rights; however, all for the sake of its own vested interests here and there.

The usurper regime of Israel has enforced a blockade on Gaza since 2007, joined by Egypt, which, along with the destruction of infrastructure by the Israeli military, has devastated the territory and its 1.9 million inhabitants. Power cuts have led to water shortages and untreated sewage, wages for thousands of public-sector workers have been cut or eliminated, and the Trump administration has withheld funding for food aid and for the United Nations Relief and Work Agency, which supports some people in Gaza.

One can only imagine the outraged editorials, commentaries and news exclusives that would flood the print and broadcast media if anything were found against the Syrian or Russian forces. When Alexei Navalny, the far-right, anti-immigrant opponent of Vladimir Putin, is arrested, it immediately becomes front-page news.

For weeks, a scandal over the alleged poisoning of former Russian spy and British double agent Sergei Skripal and his adult daughter has been used as the pretext for a massive escalation of the diplomatic and military offensive led by Washington against Moscow. But the same media outlets take as a matter of course that Palestinians are shot down and murdered, as if they were not human beings.

The social media corporations, in line with their crackdown on freedom of speech on the Internet, are doing their part. Under Israeli and US pressure, Facebook shut down the page of a major Palestinian news outlet, the Safa Palestinian Press Agency, which has 1.3 million followers. Facebook defended its action as a move against “hate speech” and “incitement.”

Israel’s criminal and provocative actions against Gaza, with its promise of stepped-up action in the run-up to May 15, must be seen in the context of Tel Aviv's determination for more suppression, with the blessings or direct participation of Washington. The illegal regime’s premier Benjamin Netanyahu, by igniting a broader response from the Palestinians and workers throughout the region, is set on creating the necessary conditions for a massive intervention by the US and its cohorts.
The silence of the US media is an act of complicity in war crimes. It speaks for the international bourgeoisie, which stands aside in either open or tacit support for the homicidal policies of a gangster regime.

EA/ME