According to the International Federation of Journalists, over ninety of their number and media people were murdered worldwide last year. Fortunately for Western hacks, this happens mostly in other parts of the world, not just because we are more “civilised” than Africa, Asia or China, but because the enemies of freedom have developed other, less sinister but often equally effective methods for keeping reporters in check.
One is the co-opting of members of the press by the government and other state agencies. In the UK, reporters working for the BBC, THE TIMES, so-called independent television...often uncover quite major scandals, but there is a line they dare not cross, failing which their sources will dry up.
In the United States, the election of Donald Trump has revealed just how in bed with the Deep State most major media outlets are. Apart from Fox News, one or two smaller, independent outlets, and a host of commentators on YouTube, the media gratuitously promoted lies about Trump and his team colluding with Russia, and when that failed, obstructing justice by his railing at an illegitimate investigation while on the other hand the crimes of Hillary Clinton and her gang have simply been ignored.
The American media never misses an opportunity to promote the narrative of right wing violence while excusing the far worse excesses of the left, including against the police. Probably no more shocking example of this was the attack on video-journalist Andy Ngo in Portland, Oregon on June 29 by members of the domestic terrorist group Antifa. The most outrageous aspect of this attack was the apparent disregard of the police. Ngo suffered bleeding on the brain — a potentially crippling or even life-threatening condition.
When he went on camera shortly afterwards, his speech was slurred, yet rather than receiving sympathy and his attackers being condemned, Ngo was branded a provocateur by Salon and others. It was stated openly that he deserved it for “hanging out” with “hate groups”. A hate group being any outfit slightly to the right of Leon Trotsky.
In the UK, another journalist has been attacked in a less barbaric fashion. Asa Winstanley writes for The Electronic Intifada, a website founded early in 2001 that monitors the ongoing saga of Israel/Palestine. He was recently banned from attending the forthcoming Labour Party conference. Winstanley is also a member of the Labour Party and has been suspended for some unspecified reason, hence the ban from attending the conference. This one is complicated and involves not simply the banning of one journalist but organised campaigns of defamation and at times harassment of pro-Palestinian individuals and groups.
The suffering of the Palestinian people since and before the Nakba is now widely known, but that wasn’t always the case. Up until the 1982 massacre of Sabra & Shatilla, Israel and its sympathisers were able to portray it successfully as the only democracy in the Middle East, one surrounded by a sea of Arab tyranny. The First Intifada in which Israeli soldiers were shown breaking the arms of Palestinian youths in a merciless and inhuman fashion further dented that image, and the far more recent massacres in Gaza have utterly destroyed it.
Up until then, there were basically two Jewish lobbies in the West: the anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox who view Zionism as a heresy, and the Jewish establishments which were uncritically pro-Zionist. Today the situation is a lot more complicated. There are the über-Zionists who seek to establish a Greater Israel — from the River to the Sea, to purloin a phrase. Anti-Zionist Jews have been joined by large numbers of so-called anti-racists who demand a single state. Finally, there are the realists — J Street and similar organisations, Jewish and other — who believe a proper two-state solution is the only way forward.
In May 2016, a Zionist pressure group succeeded in foisting a ludicrous definition of anti-Semitism on Europe. Instead of simply “hating Jews because they are Jewish”, we are now led to believe that anti-Semitism includes criticising the Zionist historical victim narrative and almost any criticism of the state of Israel. Organisations like Canary Mission and the misnamed Campaign Against Antisemitism use this definition to smear perceived opponents of Zionism with gay abandon. This includes Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, a man who has as much sympathy with anti-Semitism as the Chief Rabbi.
Having said that, it may be that so much pressure has been put on Corbyn by Zionists like Margaret Hodge that he feels obliged to buckle to some of their demands. Secret blacklists are nothing new and are not confined to those involved in Middle East politics. The Economic League founded in 1919 tracked people with suspected communist sympathies excluding them from certain professions.
Whatever the case, there is now so much documentation on the activities of this lobby in the public domain that these kind of smear campaigns can no longer be ignored. Having said that, some Palestinian supporters do themselves no favours, and that includes the BDS Movement. The simple fact is that Israel is a fact of life, giving it back to the Palestinians is now almost as absurd as those who claim America should be given back to Native Americans. Palestinians are not only living under an occupation but many are kept in extreme poverty; what they need is not disinvestment but investment. This requires both sides to give ground, and to quit the smears.
As for the situation on the streets of Portland, Oregon and other areas in the United States, this is purely a law and order issue. Journalists have as much right as anyone else to go about their business without being attacked by thugs, least of all thugs to whom the authorities turn a blind eye.
[The above article was published originally on Medium, September 12, 2019.]
No comments:
Post a Comment