[News] In America's news headlines, Palestinians die mysterious deaths

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/16/israel-palestine-us-news-headlines-mysterious-deaths 



  In America's news headlines, Palestinians die mysterious deaths

Moustafa Bayoumi - May 16, 2018
------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is the peculiar fate of oppressed people everywhere that when they 
are killed, they are killed twice: first by bullet or bomb, and next by 
the language used to describe their deaths. A common condition of 
oppression, after all, is to be blamed for being the victim, and that 
blame gets meted out in language designed to rob the oppressed of their 
very struggle.

Such a situation has for decades been the tragic destiny of the 
Palestinians, who are themselves so routinely assigned the blame when 
they are killed by Israel <https://www.theguardian.com/world/israel> – 
and not just by the Israeli government but by the American media and 
political establishment – that we have now basically come to expect it.

But we don’t have to accept it. By paying close attention to the 
language of the media, we can see how this double death of the oppressed 
occurs, and we can learn how to resist such an insidious way of framing 
the Palestinian struggle.

Consider the headlines. On Monday, the Israeli military killed more than 
60 protesters in Gaza <https://www.theguardian.com/world/gaza>. The 
deadly violence was one-sided – no Israelis were killed – and 
disproportionate. In the midst of the carnage, the New York Times sent 
out a tweet about its story on the bloody events. “Dozens of 
Palestinians have died in protests as the US prepares to open its 
Jerusalem Embassy,” read the tweet.

Have died? Really? We should note how the passive voice in this tweet 
hides the one performing the action, which is exactly what passive voice 
constructions can do. In this tweet, Israel is assigned no 
responsibility for killing protesters. On the contrary, Palestinians 
appear, simply and almost mysteriously, to “have died”.

The tweet was too egregious for many, including the director Judd 
Apatow. “Shame on you,” he tweeted 
<https://twitter.com/JuddApatow/status/996030778260602880>. “This is 
like calling Trump’s lies ‘factual inaccuracies’. Please tell me an 
intern is running your Twitter feed.” Good for him.

To be fair to the New York Times, the headline 
<https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/05/15/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf> in 
Tuesday’s physical paper (still a thing) was much clearer. “Israelis 
Kill Dozens in Gaza,” it read, though one is still left wondering who 
these “Israelis” are. Wouldn’t “Israel” be a more accurate noun? The 
military represents the state, after all, and not individual citizens.

But the Times is hardly alone in these obfuscating headlines. The 
Washington Post’s lead story 
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/toll-for-gaza-protests-rises-to-59-as-baby-dies-from-tear-gas-with-more-protests-expected/2018/05/15/ee4156f8-57c6-11e8-9889-07bcc1327f4b_story.html> 
on the massacre is headlined “Gaza buries its dead as death toll from 
protests at fence with Israel rises to at least 60.” Again, the headline 
leaves us wondering who killed the people of Gaza? Are we to assume that 
the protests – and not the Israeli military – killed these people?

The Wall Street Journal has a video 
<https://www.wsj.com/video/clashes-over-new-us-embassy-in-jerusalem-leave-dozens-dead/803AEB54-131C-4108-8943-CB34A7F13F13.html> 
on its website with the headline “Clashes Over New US Embassy in 
Jerusalem Leave Dozens Dead”. Frankly, this headline is even worse than 
the others. To label this massacre as “clashes” is not only disingenuous 
but also grossly misleading, as is the idea that the Palestinians were 
only protesting against the new US embassy in Jerusalem. Gaza’s Great 
Return March was organized in significant measure to draw attention to 
the plight of Palestinian refugees, who make up around 70% of the 
population <https://www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/gaza-strip> of the Gaza 
Strip.

And then there’s the ever-present “leave dozens dead” in the headline, 
which again tells us nothing about who shot whom, suggesting instead 
that “clashes” rather than people kill while insinuating that 
Palestinians are, once again, basically responsible for their own slaughter.

It’s almost as if bullets just hang in the air, waiting for Palestinians 
to walk deliberately into them.

Headlines like these are the journalistic equivalent of US ambassador 
Nikki Haley telling the UN’s security council that “no country in this 
chamber would act with more restraint than Israel has”. Such language 
works not only to buffer Israel from criticism but also and more 
fundamentally to shield Israel from accountability.

Over 70 years ago, George Orwell wrote that modern political language 
“is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable”. It 
saddens me to see how nothing has changed. And nothing will change until 
we demand more from the purveyors of today’s political language. 
Palestinians deserve better. We all deserve better. And no one should 
have to die more than once.

  * /Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of the award-winning books How Does
    It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America /


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