Coverage of Palestinians’ suffering has certainly increased in recent months, including individual stories of the trauma Israel has inflicted on hundreds of thousands who’ve lost family members, homes, and so much more. In the past week, we’ve seen long-form pieces on: malnutrition in Gaza, homeless Palestinians enduring cold winter rains, Jewish settler terrorist raids on West Bank villages, and a pictorial on the enduring hope to return expressed by Palestinian refugees in several Arab countries.
This sensitivity to Palestinian humanity is new and important after long receiving short shrift.
While tens of thousands of Palestinians were being slaughtered, most US reporting struggled for ‘balance’ by allowing official Israeli sources to dissemble or obfuscate. After bombing a hospital or apartment building killing scores of Palestinian civilians, the Israelis would suggest that those killed were actually Hamas operatives or innocents being used as shields by Hamas, that body counts were inflated, or that reports were premature and should await the results of (never-completed) Israeli investigations.
Using this playbook, the Israelis created sufficient distraction until the next outrage. Their arguments that ‘we wouldn’t do anything like that’ or ‘Hamas started this war and are responsible for everything that has happened since October 7,’ maintained their supporters and shielded them from official condemnation or sanctions.
Pro-Israel advocates in Congress and media analysts used these arguments to defend Israel from charges of war crimes and to accuse countries, groups, or individuals making the charges of antisemitism.
Only well into the war’s second year did stories began to appear in which Palestinians were treated as victims. Importantly, these pieces often focused on individuals or families, allowing Palestinians to be seen as fully human, and not simply as numbers or an anonymous mass.
After a century of being reduced to a problem to be solved or obstacle to Israel’s security, individual Palestinian stories are now being told. Nevertheless, significant problems remain in media coverage of Israeli/Palestinian issues.
Too often stories about tragedies inflicted on innocent Palestinian are written in the passive voice, with Palestinian children dying from hypothermia, hunger, or lack of medical treatment, as if these were natural occurrences, as if no one is responsible for creating Palestinian homelessness, food shortages, destroyed hospitals, or lack of adequate medical supplies.
Another problem in US media coverage of Israel/Palestine is the disconnect between what we know Israel is doing to Palestinians and what is being done to address it. The almost delusional reporting on the Netanyahu/Trump meeting in Mar-a-Lago makes this evident.
Pre-summit coverage in the Washington Post and the New York Times clearly described Israeli actions in recent articles on: Israel’s continuing attacks on Palestinians in Gaza (more than 400 killed since the ‘ceasefire’); refusal to accelerate entry of food, shelter and medical supplies; plans by Trump officials to begin ‘reconstruction’ in the Gaza area under Israel’s control; and Israel’s rejection of any role for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza.
The logical conclusions are: there’s no real ceasefire and continued haggling about the ‘plans’, still-undefined terms, are merely a distraction. Meanwhile, Israel creates ‘established facts’ in the half of Gaza they control and makes life impossible for Palestinians in the remaining half.
But the papers didn’t cover the Trump/Netanyahu summit this way. Instead, both outlets presented the meeting as an opportunity for the leaders to project unity and ‘express their deep appreciation’ for each other.
They noted rumours of rifts between the men and concern that division would stall implementation of the ‘fragile’ (their word) Gaza ceasefire and peace plan.
Given recent articles detailing what Palestinians are enduring and Israelis’ clearly declared intentions in Gaza and the West Bank, the Post and Times must know that their coverage and analysis of the summit did not reflect reality. It also provides both leaders the opportunity to stall, allowing pursuit of their own agendas, while ignoring the continued unbearable suffering being imposed on innocent Palestinians.