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 4 - An ethical veneer
Similarly, The Los Angeles Times declared that "Israel has every right to use military force to prevent" attacks like the ones that Hamas carried out on 7 October and that Israel "must stay true to its values by doing everything possible to minimize the suffering of innocent Palestinian residents of Gaza."
The piece applauds Biden for saying he will ask Congress for "an unprecedented support package for Israel's defense" and for vaguely suggesting that Israel reflect on whether killing thousands of Palestinians will help it "achieve [its] objectives".
The editorial then asserts: "That Israel does not target civilians is small comfort for the families of those killed or wounded."
Perhaps the authors think it magnanimous to mention the 3,000-some Palestinian lives Israel has snuffed out in 11 days. But such sympathies are worse than useless when they are packaged with a lie that rationalises all the killing and creates alibies for all the killing to come: for instance, two days before the editorial, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) noted:
Perhaps the authors think it magnanimous to mention the 3,000-some Palestinian lives Israel has snuffed out in 11 days. But such sympathies are worse than useless when they are packaged with a lie that rationalises all the killing and creates alibies for all the killing to come: for instance, two days before the editorial, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) noted:
"Multiple residential buildings in densely populated areas have been targeted and destroyed” by Israel, including a “residential building in Jabalia, northern Gaza, where ten Palestinians were killed; a residential building in the Musabah area of Rafah, where at least 11 Palestinians, including women and children, were killed; and a charity organization’s building in Rafah, where 11 Palestinians were killed, and several others were injured. On 16 October, in the morning, Israeli forces reportedly targeted a residential building in Khan Yunis, killing 22 Palestinians."
Furthermore, on 15 October, the World Health Organisation (WHO) stated: "Four hospitals in northern Gaza are no longer functioning as a result of damaging and targeting. 21 hospitals in the Gaza Strip have received instructions from Israeli forces to evacuate. The WHO reiterates that all precautions must be taken to protect health workers and health facilities, including patients and civilians sheltering in them."
These fantasies about Israel's supposed non-targeting of civilians and its allegedly humane "values" present all of its cruelty - the merciless killing, the gruesome physical and psychic wounds, the sadism of the siege - as well-meaning mishaps en route to a just cause; it is rhetoric intended to mask Israeli brutality with an ethical veneer.
These fantasies about Israel's supposed non-targeting of civilians and its allegedly humane "values" present all of its cruelty - the merciless killing, the gruesome physical and psychic wounds, the sadism of the siege - as well-meaning mishaps en route to a just cause; it is rhetoric intended to mask Israeli brutality with an ethical veneer.
But colonial violence is Israel's cause. The violence of dispossession, torture, and massacre after massacre after massacre. Because no ethno-state in which Palestinians remain a persecuted minority in their homeland is possible without ruthless, incessant violence.
By presenting all that barbarism as if it were defensible, the US media are doing their part to help it continue.
By presenting all that barbarism as if it were defensible, the US media are doing their part to help it continue.
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