[News] Israel Isn't 'Clashing' With Palestinians—It's Assaulting Them

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://discourseblog.com/israel-clashes-jerusalem-palestinians/ Israel
Isn't 'Clashing' With Palestinians—It's Assaulting Them
Jack Mirkinson - May 10, 2021
------------------------------

See if you can spot the similarity in these headlines:

“Hundreds Hurt in Clashes at Aqsa Mosque as Tension Rises in Jerusalem”
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/10/world/middleeast/jerusalem-protests-aqsa-palestinians.html>

“Israeli-Palestinian clashes erupt on contentious ‘Jerusalem Day’
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/jerusalem-alaqsa-templemount-haramalsharif/2021/05/10/17f29614-b161-11eb-bc96-fdf55de43bef_story.html?itid=hp-top-table-main-0430b>
“

“Jerusalem violence: More clashes ahead of nationalist march”
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-57053074>

“Palestinians and Israeli police clash at al-Aqsa mosque, over 300 hurt”
<https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/violence-erupts-al-aqsa-mosque-israel-marks-jerusalem-day-2021-05-10/>

“Israeli police and Palestinians clash at Jerusalem holy site”
<https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-israel-jerusalem-076a9ec7e2bd9c065882c64a4ab820a1>

The headlines come from the *New York Times,* *Washington Post*, BBC,
Reuters, and the Associated Press, respectively. They are all attempting to
convey what is happening in Jerusalem right now, and they are all wildly
misleading, thanks especially to that one word you see over and over and
over again: “clash.”
Recommended

“Clash” is the default language that so many news organizations turn to in
situations like these. There are two sides, they are set against each
other, there’s some unrest on one side, some unrest on the other, voila,
the “clash” has happened.

But that is not what is happening right now. This is not a “clash” between
two equal sides. This is a straightforward attack by Israel on
Palestinians. For days, the Israeli government has been systematically
assaulting
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/8/jerusalem-tensions-high-as-palestinians-head-to-al-aqsa-live>
Palestinians worshipping at one of the holiest sites in Islam, during
Ramadan, all while enforcing
<https://twitter.com/NathanThrall/status/1390938028990947328> a move
to ethnically
cleanse
<https://www.democracynow.org/2021/5/10/jerusalem_sheikh_jarrah_evictions>
a Jerusalem neighborhood of its Palestinian residents. Israeli forces have
fired rubber bullets and stun grenades, injuring hundreds of people. The
deputy mayor of Jerusalem has been filmed lamenting that Palestinian
activists weren’t shot in the head
<https://www.972mag.com/aryeh-king-jerusalem-sheikh-jarrah/>.

I have prayed inside Al Aqsa mosque many times throughout my life. Its
significance to Palestinians and to Muslims the world over can’t be
overstated. Seeing Israeli forces attack it so ruthlessly is beyond
distressing and must be condemned in the strongest terms.
https://t.co/gHczYkYQM7
— Dena Takruri (@Dena) May 10, 2021
<https://twitter.com/Dena/status/1391650286947602432?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

Israeli forces are throwing stun grenades and shooting rubber bullets at
Palestinians inside Al Aqsa mosque, effectively trapping them inside.
Dozens are wounded, but medics are not being allowed through to treat the
injured. pic.twitter.com/ww565EldBF <https://t.co/ww565EldBF>
— IMEU (@theIMEU) May 7, 2021
<https://twitter.com/theIMEU/status/1390765408186212353?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

Israel is one of the most militarily advanced countries in the world,
thanks to the United States. It is the government in charge. It is the
occupying power. It is the one taking active steps to displace
Palestinians, to attack worshipers at a mosque. The asymmetry at play is
beyond overwhelming. A notably honest report from Sky News makes it clear
what is going on:

This would seem to be the kind of thing that it is easy to sum up, even if
not every person being attacked by the government was “peaceful” every
second of the day—even if some police wound up being injured after they
decided to launch an offensive attack on people at a mosque. In other
situations, news outlets appear to be able to sift through such chaos and
come up with a far different frame. Take this *Times* headline from July of
last year, which describes a protest in which there was some
not-so-peaceful reaction to police violence: “Hong Kong Police Fire Tear
Gas as Protesters Resist China’s Grip.
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/24/world/asia/hong-kong-protest-coronavirus-china.html>”
Quite a different message is being sent there.
------------------------------

But Israel has a way of fogging the news brain, just as police violence in
America has a way of making seemingly intelligent journalists contort
language beyond all comprehension
<https://discourseblog.com/rubber-bullets-dont-fire-themselves/> rather
than accurately describe what is happening in this country. So the language
of the “clash” dominates, and the language of “both sides are equal here”
can never be fully dispensed with.

The opening paragraphs of this Reuters report
<https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/10/violence-erupts-at-al-aqsa-mosque-as-israel-marks-jerusalem-day.html>,
for instance, are completely bewildering:

Palestinian protesters threw rocks and Israeli police fired stun grenades
and rubber bullets in clashes outside the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem on
Monday as Israel marked the anniversary of its capture of parts of the city
in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said more than 180 Palestinians were
injured in the violence, of whom more than 80, including one person in
critical condition, were transferred to hospitals.

It’s all here: the report *starts* with Palestinians throwing rocks, as if
that is at all comparable to Israeli police who are armed to the teeth and
are firing rubber bullets, which cause untold harm to people
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/using-israeli-data-study-finds-rubber-bullets-cause-significant-fatalities/>.
And somehow, these “clashes” between two equal sides wound up with hundreds
of Palestinians injured or hospitalized. Funny how that works out.

Other reports are clearly so nervous about veering from the script that
even when they start strong, they descend into near-gibberish, like this
one from the *Guardian*
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/10/dozens-injured-in-clashes-over-israeli-settlements-ahead-of-jerusalem-day-march>
:

Israeli police have stormed the sacred Jerusalem compound that holds the
Dome of the Rock amid mounting international concern over the worsening
violence in the city.

Following the most serious clashes in the city since 2017, the Palestine
Red Crescent reported 305 people had been injured after officers in riot
gear clashed with Palestinian demonstrators in East Jerusalem.

A decent opening paragraph, but then, suddenly, the clash takes over—twice.
Just read that sentence again: “Following the most serious clashes in the
city since 2017, the Palestine Red Crescent reported 305 people had been
injured after officers in riot gear clashed with Palestinian demonstrators
in East Jerusalem.” It’s as if the *Guardian* thinks any other word could
send the globe spinning off its axis.

The paper is a model of clarity, though, compared to the BBC’s attempt to
describe what happened (emphasis theirs)
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-57053074>:

*There have been clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police outside
the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, ahead of a planned Jewish nationalist
march.*

More than 300 people were injured, as crowds threw stones and officers
fired stun grenades and rubber bullets.

It comes amid soaring tensions in the city, which has seen weeks of unrest.

Ah yes, “soaring tensions,” “crowds” and “officers” firing randomly, it’s
all so vague and ephemeral. What is causing the tension to soar? The
weather? Scroll down and you get this semi-explanation:

The latest violence follows days of clashes between Palestinians and
Israeli police in the nearby Sheikh Jarrah district of East Jerusalem, with
the possible eviction of Palestinian families from their homes there by
Jewish settlers a focal point for Palestinian anger.

So the current clash (read: Israelis assaulting Palestinians) is connected
to…other clashes (that arose because Israelis are systematically trying to
remove Palestinians from their homes so a neighborhood can be more Jewish).

But the winner might just be this Associated Press report
<https://www.cbsnews.com/news/al-aqsa-clashes-palestinians-israeli-police/>
from Saturday (emphasis mine):

A night of heavy clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police at the
Al-Aqsa mosque compound and elsewhere in Jerusalem left more than 200
Palestinians wounded, medics said Saturday, as the city braced for even
more violence after weeks of unrest.

Nightly protests broke out at the start of the holy month of Ramadan over
police restrictions at a popular gathering place and have reignited in
recent days over threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinians from their
homes in east Jerusalem, which is claimed by both sides in the decades-old
conflict.

*It was unclear what set off the violence at Al-Aqsa, which erupted when
Israeli police in riot gear deployed in large numbers as thousands of
Muslim worshippers were holding evening prayers at the sprawling hilltop
esplanade.*

Again “heavy clashes” somehow leave hundreds of Palestinians injured, and
then the piece de resistance: it’s unclear what set off the violence that
happened when *Israeli cops in riot gear descended on a mosque during
prayers*! Hey, AP, I think that might be a clue???

This is not complicated: if an occupying force launches sustained assaults
on an oppressed people, you should say that that is what is happening, and
you should avoid language that upholds the fiction that there are two equal
sides squaring off against each other. There aren’t.

*Update, 12:24 p.m. ET: *Hamas has now fired rockets into Israel
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/10/israeli-forces-raid-al-aqsa-compound-live>
in retaliation for the Israeli assaults in Jerusalem, so we can expect this
dynamic to exponentially increase. The *New York Times* news alert about
the latest developments is very instructive.

Number of news alerts I received from the *Times* about the Israeli
violence in recent days? Zero. The Israeli assaults on Palestinians were
not deemed significant enough, I guess, but now that Israel is “on
edge”—and the violence can be universalized enough to be given the vague,
all-purpose description of “a sudden crescendo”—the paper is jumping on it.

*Update, 1:37 p.m. ET: 🙃*
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