There are some 4,000 foreign reporters accredited in Israel to cover the war. They stay in luxury hotels. They go on dog and pony shows orchestrated by the Israeli military. They can, on rare occasions, be escorted by Israeli soldiers on lightning visits to Gaza, where they are shown alleged weapons caches or tunnels the military says are used by Hamas. They dutifully attend daily press conferences. They are given off-the-record briefings by senior Israeli officials who feed them information that often turns out to be untrue.
I'm quoting from The Chris Hedges Report on Substack. I have no expertise or particular knowledge of how this works, but I do know that when it comes to anything climate change and the various associated conferences that can involved tens of thousands of people, it is much the same. Reporters are flown in, put up at luxury hotels, attend banquets and given press releases that contain information that is mostly untrue.
Then there are those who attempt to find out what is really going on. When it comes to climate change issues, we are mostly just ignored and there is no war zone as such. But I'm sorry for the eleven journalists killed in Lebanon over the last few weeks, I would think at least some of them were attempting to report the facts, on a subject they know something about. I know there are always a few, across generations, across cultures who will put themselves in harms way because they need to speak truth to power.
According to Hedges:
Israel bombed a building on Friday in southern Lebanon housing seven media organizations, killing three journalists from Al Mayadeen and Al Manar and injuring 15 others. Since Oct. 7, Israel has killed 11 journalists in Lebanon.
Al Jazeera cameraman Fadi al-Wahidi, who was shot in the neck in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza by an Israeli sniper earlier this month, is in a coma. Israel has refused permission for him to seek medical care outside of Gaza. Like most of the targeted journalists, including his murdered colleague Shireen Abu Akleh, he was wearing a helmet and flak jacket that identified him as press.
The Israeli military has branded as “terrorists” six Palestinian journalists in Gaza who work for Al Jazeera.
“These 6 Palestinians are among the last journalists surviving Israel's onslaught in Gaza,” United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, said. “Declaring them ‘terrorists’ sounds like a death sentence.”
The scale and savagery of the Israeli assault on the media is unlike anything I witnessed during my two decades as a war correspondent, including in Sarajevo where Serb snipers regularly took aim at reporters. Twenty-three journalists were killed in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Yugoslav Wars between 1991 and 1995. Twenty-two were killed when I covered the war in El Salvador. Sixty-eight journalists were killed in World War II and 63were killed in Vietnam. But unlike in Gaza, Bosnia and El Salvador, journalists were usually not targeted.
Israel’s assault on press freedom is unlike anything we have experienced since William Howard Russell, the godfather of modern war reporting, sent back dispatches from the Crimean War. Its onslaught against journalists is in a category by itself.
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I have no way of verifying any of the information provided in this article, and I have no way of verifying the photograph featured at the top of this post and credited to Mohammed Al-Zaatari.
This is one of the most well written science-focused sites on the internet.
Jennifer, your post has managed to dredge up some of the worst of Australian opinion, which is not difficult to achieve in this country where the media is completely dominated by American/Western ideologies whose bias is clear for all to see.
The origins of this conflict go back more than 100 years to the time of WWI and the Balfour Declaration issued by Britain. The declaration was meant to ensure that the land adjacent to the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan was to provide a safe homeland for all peoples including non-Jewish communities in Palestine.
It's a long and ugly story but this has never, never happened and for the last 75 years the Palestinians have been systematically dispossessed of their land to the point where today they are confined to a space of land about 40km x 10km adj to the sea and fenced in by 4m high fencing.
And so they attempted on October 7th to break-out and yes a lot of Israelis were killed.
But the response by Israel has been extreme by any measure and since that time they have mercilessly bombed Gaza and killed many 10's of thousands of Palestinians including innocent women and children.
In my opinion and that of the UN this can only be described as a genocide.
It's not a war, it's a genocide.
And the nations of the West have stood by and supplied Israel with planes and missiles and 2000lb American bombs to carry out these horrors.
I am sorry to have ti say this, but I am ashamed to call myself Australian . .
There is much, much more that I could say, but I think you understand my feelings.
Maybe it is foolish but I think that there is a silent majority of Muslims that are hurt by political Islam and know things must change. Removing anti-semitism from the Koran has started, but is a dangerous endeavour. These sea changes take time and wisdom.
I'd like to take this forward on another venue and let Jennifer carry on her good swim on the reef.
The "Holy Handbook" is extremely unlikely to be "expunged / toned don" at any time soon.
The whole idea is ,in fact, foolish.
"Islam" LITERALLY means "BUBMISSION; a "Muslim" is one who has "sbmitted"
It is "an offer you cannot refuse".
"Submit and convert"
Become a slave, or
DIE".
There is probably a good reason that "la Cosa Nostra" , from Sicily, adopted this as "SOP after the moorish occupation of Sicily.
Islam is a political doctrine of conquest, unlike most "real" religions.
Most folk choose to deny or ignore this.
Agreed, and it's the responibility of Islam's religious leaders to expunge the antisemitism of the Koran and lead Islam to peace. It's only their response that can bring peace.
This is a tough, heartbreaking issue. The war, started by Iran through its puppets Hamas, was designed to kill as many Jewish non-combatants as possible. And as Hamas leaders cynically admitted, as many Gazans as possible as well. The role of pro-Hamas journalists has been documented to include active participation as combatants while dressed as journalists. Pro-Hamas journalists have at the least also promoted visual images and stories of Gazan civilian deaths and injuries that later proved to be fabrications. The bottom line is that Hamas decided to start a war, refused to protect their civilians, used civilians as shields, and now uses the tragic results to further stretch out a war they lost a long time ago. The journalists who have helped continue this war by deceitful reporting on behalf of Iran and Hamas and even directly assisting Hamas have put themselves in harm's way. They decreased the level of honest information and increased suffering and death.
Menzies; "I did but see her passing by – and I will love her 'til I die"....
Yes, of course you can test your atom bombs in South Australia....