The last week in the Middle East has with pristine clarity illuminated the bias of the American media regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I observed for days as Israeli tanks indiscriminately destroyed homes and businesses in Palestinian settlements while killing dozens of Palestinians. In one case there was a man, while on his way to buy cigarettes, was maliciously gunned down by soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces because apparently the threat of a Palestinian man possessing tobacco and paper warrant a fusillade of bullets. While all of these untenable actions were being carried out by the Israeli government, the paucity of media coverage regarding these incidents in lieu of treating them with the same intensity and anathema as Palestinian suicide bombers incite is troubling.
Fast forward to Wednesday, September 18 when after six weeks of inactivity a Palestinian suicide bomber detonates himself at a bus stop in Northern Israel. This event interrupted regular programs on all the major news broadcasting networks and was met with the pretentious “Breaking News” banner that is used exclusively for matters of paramount implications. The blast killed an officer and wounded several people that were within the vicinity of the bomber. On Thursday, September 19, there was another suicide bomber in Israel this time in Tel Aviv. Again all of the resources that the media has to highlight news stories were utilized in disseminating the pictures and stories of the abhorrent acts. President Bush in his daily informal address from the Oval Office expressed his condolences to the victims of the suicide bombings and spoke out against these indefensible acts of terror.
Here we have two cases of inexcusable acts of terror and aggression, yet only one of them is explicitly characterized by our government and the media as being such. President Bush made no effort to reprimand Israel for its incursions into Palestinian settlements earlier in the week as a matter of fact the issue was seldom talked about. However, after the Palestinian suicide bombers killed civilians in Israel now the connotation is that we have instability and political unrest in the Middle East. Do the deaths of innocent Palestinians not warrant the same castigation as those of innocent Israelis?
I am in no means trying to palliate the gravity of the offenses made by these Palestinian suicide bombers. However, the repulsive actions of the IDF need be met with the same level of censure by the American news media and more importantly the Bush administration.
Mr. Girard Newkirk contributed above article to Media Monitors Network (MMN) from North Carolina, USA. He writes on most of the issues regarding the Middle East, religion and its tremendous impact on the world as a Political Theorist.
