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How US media legitimise Israel's barbarism against the Palestinians

By presenting Israel's terror campaign against Palestinians as if it were defensible, the US media are doing their part to help it continue
 
by Gregory Shupak 

Part 3 - Outlandish assertions

Even as Israel eschews any commitment to protecting civilians in both word and deed, The New York Times repeatedly contrasts Israeli military policy favourably with that of the Palestinian forces, writing that "Israel is preparing to send its young men and women into battle, where they will face an enemy that does not respect the same rules of warfare that they have committed to."

Saying that Israeli state violence is morally superior to Palestinian resistance groups carries the clear message that the former is legitimate while the latter is not.

The Times made the outlandish assertion that "What Israel is fighting to defend is a society that values human life and the rule of law."

Since no such assertion is made about Palestinian "values", the message is that slaughtering Palestinians is legitimate: if Palestinian society (or significant portions thereof) values murderous criminality, then the implication is that it's desirable for them to be wiped out by a supposedly more civilised force.

Meanwhile, two days before the editorial went to press, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Israel had used white phosphorous - which, upon contact, can "burn people, thermally and chemically, down to the bone" - over both Gaza City's port and rural areas along the Israel-Lebanon armistice line.

HRW said that using white phosphorous in Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas in the world, "magnifies the risk to civilians and violates the international humanitarian law prohibition on putting civilians at unnecessary risk".

As HRW noted, Israel also used this weapon in Gaza in 2009 and, during the current round of fighting, Israel has "cut electricity, water, fuel and food into Gaza in violation of the international humanitarian law prohibition against collective punishment."

For "a society that values human life and the rule of law", Israel does an awful lot of human-life taking and law-breaking.

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