The Portrayal of Palestine in American Media
Content warning: This article will include mentions of violence and death — including that of children.
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On Oct. 7, Hamas attacked a music festival, killing around 1,400 people and taking 242 people hostage, which is against international law. Since then, Israel has attacked churches, hospitals, refugee camps, schools, and universities, which is also against international law. Israel is committing collective punishment: constantly carpet-bombing the densely, mainly-child populated Gaza strip, where it is believed the hostages are being held. At the time of writing, the list of reported Palestinians deaths between Oct.7 and Nov. 10 is abnormally high — 11,180 people including at least 4,125 children, according to Associated Press. Over 20,000 Palestinians have been injured and over 850,000 have been displaced.
Since the attack by Hamas — the armed group that governs Gaza, one of the two Palestinian territories alongside the West Bank — on Oct. 7, the news has been in a frenzy to cover developments on Israel and the ethnic cleansing — defined by the United Nations as forcefully rendering an area ethnically homogenous through violent and terror-inspiring means — of Palestine. Looking at the way the Western media portrays the conflict, one can see that it fails to acknowledge the historical context and paints the situation in a black-and-white view: depicting Israel’s actions as just and all Palestinians as terrorists.
In the past, the coverage on this has been slim to none, only available to those who know what to search for. Currently, American news outlets and social media have taken a pro-Zionist beliefs approach: declaring any criticism of Israel as antisemitic, equating Hamas with all Palestinians, and shadowbanning pro-Palestinian accounts or even content depicting the Palestinian flag. The heavily propagandized coverage takes advantage of the countless deaths of Palestinian civilians, claiming it is a necessary cost of war, retribution for their allegedly “unprovoked” attack.
From 1516 to the end of World War I, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. During World War I, Britain promised Palestinians independence if they revolted against the Ottomans. When the Ottoman Empire lost World War I, most of the land was divided between Britain and other such nations under the mandate system, another form of imperialism, resulting in Palestine “belonging” to Britain. Meanwhile, Zionism, the idea of Jewish people having their own independent nation in Palestine, was catching on in Europe, but not all Jewish people agreed. The same is true for today: anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, and the vast majority of practicing Jews are not Zionists. The British were incredibly willing to oblige with the Zionist Movement, setting up a large fund to buy land, and granting them their own schools, factories, and militia — the Haganah — on Palestinian land. The Palestinian people, who had not been consulted for any of this, were reasonably upset they were not getting the independence Britain promised. Since the first official strike in 1936, there have been many attempts by Palestinians to gain independence, some of which were peaceful, all of which failed and resulted in the loss of Palestinian lives and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced from their homes between 1948 and 2022.
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For the past 75 years, after the creation of Israel, Palestinians have been systematically and violently oppressed: living under an apartheid rule and treated as second-class citizens. As reported by Amnesty International, “as well as controlling where Palestinians can go and who they see,” through hundreds of military checkpoints, “Israel also controls and arbitrarily restricts their access to safe, clean water.” Additionally, each year, hundreds of Palestinians as young as 11 years old are arrested, interrogated, and jailed without trial or a lawyer present and subjected to horrific abuses including beatings, intense solitary confinement, starvation, strip searches, suffocation, and more. Between Oct. 7 and Oct. 22, the amount of Palestinian prisoners has nearly doubled from around 5,200 to over 10,000 people from both Gaza and the West Bank.
The media chooses to gloss over the decades of suffering that culminated in the Israeli-supported creation of Hamas and their attack on Oct. 7. It’s used to justify the inhumane blockade — no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel — put on Gaza and the thousands of deaths in both Gaza and the West Bank which have since occurred. The media ignores the fact that many Palestinians do not even support Hamas yet still suffer for Hamas’ actions.
Take a look at how the media frames the hostage exchange. The Palestinian prisoners are labeled as criminals despite the fact that, according to the National Broadcasting Company, “roughly 80% of those on the list were not convicted of any crimes. They were either charged with crimes that had not yet been prosecuted, or were detained under a practice known as administrative detention, whereby Israel holds Palestinians in the occupied territories with no formal charges or evidence presented against them.” This is due to the fact that all Palestinians are prosecuted in military courts while Israeli settlers are prosecuted in civilian courts where they enjoy many more liberties such as the right to trial.
I am aware there is violence on both sides and what happened on Oct. 7 was truly horrible. It goes without saying that violence of any sort should be abhorred, still with further examination of historical context, it becomes clear that the Israeli government is to blame for creating this situation and driving Hamas into existence in the first place through their uncurbed attempts to slowly ethnically cleanse Palestinians. The portrayal of Palestine in American media is incredibly dehumanizing and lacks the nuance the people deserve. Many people including myself and are worried this will escalate into a full on genocide of the Palestinian people due to Israel’s history of disregard for international law and violence against Palestinians.
For more information on this issue, visit Al Jazeera and Amnesty International or follow journalists in Palestine such as Motasem Mortaja, Motaz Azaiza, and Plestia Alaqad on Instagram.
Further resources:
Everything you need to know about Israel-Palestine - A Comprehensive Guide from Vox
Life in Occupied PALESTINE by Anna Baltzer - A Documentary from 2014
The Israel-Palestine conflict: a brief, simple history from Vox
Palestine Remix from Al Jazeera
