O Zionist media! Palestinian lives matter too.

İfeoluwa Siddia Oyelami

It is over a year now that the world has been in somewhat political and social turmoil. Despite the pandemic, there are political protests and chaos everywhere. The media has brought disorders in various countries to our screens. People around the world create hashtags to support causes in the most remote places, several miles away. In some cases, we could follow the increase in the number of casualties and call out governments who owe us nothing. Thanks to conventional and social media!

The whole show somewhat portrays the conventional media as the voice of the oppressed and social media as the voice of the voiceless. However, the case of Palestine and Palestinians says otherwise. In this case, there is always minimal coverage that is only spearheaded by very few local and international media in the Muslim world, even though Palestine and Palestinians’ case has graduated from being a Muslim problem but that of any sane person who supports justice.

In their usual Rambo style, Israeli forces laid an assault against worshippers at the Masjid Al-Aqsa, the Muslims’ third noble mosque, on the last Friday of the month of Ramadan. This incident came after several confrontations with Palestinian protesters over the past week in Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian neighbourhood in East Jerusalem.

In recent weeks, the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood has been symbolic of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem. An act that continued even though the UN has reiterated that it (Israel) does not have any right to confiscate private properties in the occupied territory.

The recent onslaught has caused the death and incapacitation of yet many Palestinians. But then, it is just another event that has not gotten the required media attention. Before the fiery confrontations, there have been releases of several videos showing Israelis looting Palestinians’ homes. In a video that went viral, a lady named Mona al-Kurd, confronted an Israeli, saying in the English language, “Yakub, you are stealing my house”, then “Yakub, you know that is not your house”. The Israeli man would reply to her with the most flimsy and disheartening excuse, “Yes, but if I go, you don’t go back, so what’s the problem? Why are you yelling at me?”. He went further to say, “If I don’t steal your home, someone else will steal it”.

The words of Israeli Yakub only reflect the Zionist occupation policy, which media giants have been playing ostrich too. Undoubtedly, were the video a conversation that talks about some other sensitive issues around the world? Not only will it go viral globally, but these media houses would even invite experts to discuss it in roundtables. But then, it shows Zionism’s injustice, and since he who pays the piper calls the tune, they never find the need to take it seriously. Perhaps it only went viral among some Muslims because Israeli forces could not kill or apprehend the person who filmed it.

The biased coverage of Israel occupation is a broad problem that has injustice at its centre. There exists disproportionate media attention. Most times, what hits the screens of westerners, especially Americans, whose taxes fund these assaults, are pictures of “violent Palestinians” throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. They turn blind eyes at provocative and indiscriminate shootings by these soldiers with venomous hearts against the Palestinians. 

The giant western media, which many local news outlets depend on for news, has continued to protect Israel’s reputation worldwide. Therefore, cases like Israel’s objection to ICC investigation and its HRW apartheid reports are quickly brought down from trends. They failed to let the world know that it’s only the biased UN structure that has protected Israel from sanctions. They have also made it a duty to let western politicians and (recently) Muslim politicians lie to their people about what Israel represents by promoting everything that will put it in the positive limelight. Laughable but, in some quarters, it is called the only democracy in the middle east.

Whenever the conventional media failed people, they take solace in social media, making their voice heard by themselves. However, it seems Zionists are not giving a chance to protest Israel’s acts of desecration of Muslim’s lives and holy sites and usurpation of their properties. Facebook Inc, which owns Facebook and Instagram, was accused of disabling posts and hashtags about the recent Israeli assaults when it was at its peak. These also came with Twitter’s suspension of some Palestinian activists’ accounts. Of course, this is not a new trend from these otherwise media imperialists. These companies have been accused several times of systematic censorship and discriminations in different matters.

In 2018, Aljazeera published an article that discussed the cooperative complicity of these social media giants and the apartheid state of Israel. The article quotes Israel’s Justice minister saying to a Facebook delegation in 2016 that Facebook, Google and YouTube were complying with up to 95 percent of Israeli requests to delete contents.

Given all these, one will realise the danger the media giants pose to all forms of human rights. With most of them being owned by Zionists or sponsored by Zionist lobbies, these media have not, and may not be, stand for justice in the case of Palestine and Palestinians. They can only be trusted at one’s own peril because they bank on self-interest and care less about what you and I think. Thus, it is hightime we seeked alternatives.