Three Stories—One Lesson
by Jonathan Kuttab
Over the past week, three significant stories from Palestine/Israel appeared on social media but were completely ignored by conventional media outlets:
First, an 80 year old Palestinian man from Beit Hanoun in Gaza was forced to don an Israeli uniform and wear an explosive band that was placed around his neck. He was used as a human shield to enter buildings ahead of Israeli soldiers, draw any hostile fire, and risk having his “collar” exploded if he failed to do as ordered. This ordeal went on for 8 hours before he, together with his wife, was released and ordered to leave, only to be shot dead shortly thereafter by another Israeli unit who were not informed of the services he had been forced to perform. This use of Palestinians as human shields is a well known phenomenon and even has a name in Hebrew, “The mosquito protocol”. A picture of the old man wearing the explosive collar appeared on social media.
Israelis continued to violate their ceasefire agreement, and the hostage release terms. Al Jazeera reported that Israel violated the agreement 266 times, killing 132 Palestinians; they failed to allow in the agreed number of tents (they only allowed 20,000 out of the 200,000 tents agreed upon); and they refused to allow in the prefab homes and the 500 pieces of heavy equipment for rubble removal. Hamas’ attempt to enforce the agreement by delaying the release of 3 hostages was duly reported by the US media, and roundly condemned with President Trump threatening to “open the gates of hell” if the prisoners are not all released by Saturday noon. Eventually Hamas agreed and the three hostages/prisoners were released, but no mention was made of the Israeli violations. Incidentally, the Lebanese also complained of Israeli violations to their ceasefire agreement but no mention of this was made in most Western media.
An Ashkenazi (European) Israeli fired into a car with Arab-looking (Mizrahi) Israeli tourists in Miami Florida. Later, he proudly told the police that he had killed 2 Palestinians. The two Jewish Israeli tourists (who survived, but were wounded) claimed this was an antisemitic attack, and posted “Death to Arabs” in a Facebook post about the attack. The incident was either totally ignored or reported without mentioning that the perpetrator was an Israeli Jew, implying it was an attack by antisemitic people.
The unifying theme of all three stories was the total black-out on all three stories which were basically not reported or commented upon in the conventional media in this country, while they were reported in Israel, and some social media sources mentioned them. This was partially due to the known bias of these media outlets, but more importantly, these three stories (and many others like them every week) do not fit into the prevailing narratives, and therefore have to be ignored, dismissed, or mutilated beyond recognition. The issue is not lack of newsworthiness, but whether they fit in and advance the narrative being promoted to the viewers.
If you, my readers, have not heard of one or all of these stories, that is not surprising. It shows we still have work to do on the level of education and information sharing. More importantly, we need to work to change the narrative which allows Palestinians to be vilified or ignored, and their narrative not presented. Intelligent citizens need to be informed of all different perspectives, but there is another value that goes beyond bias or double standards. Regardless of our own political perspectives, as concerned Christians, we need our own perspective: a perspective that cares for all God’s children, that is inclined towards peace and justice, and one that sees the divine in every human being. We need to keep in mind that God loves all his children, and that as his followers, we need to do the same.