How serious is the killing of US citizen outside US? It depends on who does the killing

How serious is the killing of US citizen outside US? It depends on who does the killing

    Friday, September 06, 2024   No comments

When US citizens are killed by Muslims, US administrations exact bloody revenge swiftly and decisively, and the media always finds the way to explicitly name the persons who killed them and emphasize their being Muslim. But not when American citizens are killed by Israeli forces. The reaction to the recent killing of a US citizen by Israeli forces in West Bank is one example in a series of many including the killing of American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and going back all the way to the gruesome killing of Rachel Corrie.

Here is how the media reported on the killing and how some Western officials, including UN officials reacted: generally, wanting the accused to investigate themselves.

US-Turkish activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, was shot dead by Israel in the West Bank during settlement protest.

Social media users, including Scotland’s first minister, Hamza Yousaf, have criticized the BBC for not including the perpetrators of Eygi’s death in their headline.

The pattern of shielding the killer is clear; NPR reported on Israeli troops shooting of American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in West Bank echo's BBC's:

Eygi was participating in a protest against illegal Israeli settlement expansion in the town of Beita, south of Nablus, the Palestinian Wafa agency reported.

An activist who was with Eygi at the time told Middle East Eye that she and other volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement had been attending the weekly demonstration at Beita.

"When she was shot, she was standing there doing absolutely nothing with one other woman - it was a deliberate shot because they shot from a very, very, very far distance," said the activist, who did not want to be identified.

US officials' reaction, mostly muted

The only voice in the US to demand serious action to address Israel's killing of a US citizen was US Senator Chris Van Hollen.

On Friday Van Hollen urged Biden administration to do more to hold Israel accountable for killing of American citizens.

"The Netanyahu Government - including racist extremist like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir - has fueled settler violence in the West Bank at the same time that it has announced new illegal settlements.

"The United States cannot turn a blind eye to these actions – including the killing of American citizens," Democrat senator said in a statement.

His remarks came after Turkish-American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was shot dead by Israeli forces on Friday during a protest against illegal Israeli settlements in the town of Beita in the Nablus district of the occupied West Bank.

Van Hollen said the US has not received "satisfactory responses" from the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Government about the two other Americans killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7, adding the Biden administration has "not been doing enough" to pursue justice and accountability on their behalf.

"The Biden Administration must do more to hold the Netanyahu Government accountable and use American influence to demand the prosecution of those responsible for harm against American citizens.

"If the Netanyahu Government will not pursue justice for Americans, the U.S. Department of Justice must," he added.

When UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric was asked about the killing of American citizen Aysenur Ezgi Eygi by Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank, he replied, "We would want to see a full investigation of the circumstances, and that people should be held accountable. And again, civilians must be protected at all times."

A long history of bias

In the case of Corrie, even after 21 years, US media, including NPR, continue to deny her justice, using headlines that says, "the death" instead of the killing, and living the name of the actor who did the killing out.

...

Update:

On September 9, US President Joe Biden appeared to embrace Israel's explanation, which claimed that IDF killing of American activist in West Bank was accidental. 

Biden described the killing of a 26-year-old American citizen in the Israeli-occupied West Bank last week as an apparent accident, echoing the Israel government's description.

Israel has claimed that Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was "hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire" on Friday. 

"We're finding more detail," Biden told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House Tuesday. "Apparently, it was an accident. It ricocheted off the ground and it – (she) got hit by accident, but we're working that out now."

On this Day in History, May 19, Malcolm X, an icon for resisting injustice by “any means necessary”, was born

On this Day in History, May 19, Malcolm X, an icon for resisting injustice by “any means necessary”, was born

    Monday, May 20, 2024   No comments

On May 19 of every year, many Americans celebrate “Malcolm Day,” the anniversary of his birth, to honor one of the most prominent defenders of black rights in the United States during the civil rights movement in the 1960s. This day is not a federal holiday, although some are. American states and cities have made it a holiday, so who is Malcolm X?

Malcolm was born on May 19, 1925 as Malcolm Stuart Little, the fourth of eight children, in Omaha, Nebraska, and died on February 21, 1965, in New York. He was a prominent figure in the Nation of Islam. After his assassination, his life story spread widely and he became a hero among black youth.

After his birth in Nebraska, baby Malcolm moved with his family to Lansing, Michigan. During his early childhood, he and his family were exposed to racist abuse from the Ku Klux Klan, and they had to move frequently to avoid harm from this violent racist group.

When Malcolm was six, his father, Reverend Earl Little, a supporter of black leader Marcus Garvey, died after being hit by a streetcar, sparking speculation that he had been the victim of white murder.

The family was so poor that Malcolm's mother, Louise Little, resorted to cooking dandelion greens from the street to feed her children. After being admitted to a mental institution in 1939, Malcolm and his siblings were sent to foster homes or to live with family members.

Malcolm excelled in school, but after one of his teachers told him in eighth grade that he should become a carpenter instead of a lawyer, he lost interest and soon finished his formal education.

Malcolm moved from a foster home in Michigan to live with his half-sister, Ella, in Boston. There he became involved in petty criminal activities in his teenage years, becoming a street hustler, drug dealer, and leader of a gang of thieves in Roxbury and Harlem (in New York City).

While in prison for robbery from 1946 to 1952, he underwent a conversion that eventually led him to join the Nation of Islam. His decision to join the Nation was also influenced by discussions with his brother Reginald, who had become a member and who was imprisoned with Malcolm in the Norfolk Colony. In Massachusetts in 1948.

Malcolm quit smoking, gambling, and eating pork in 1948. In order to educate himself, he spent long hours reading books in the prison library. In accordance with Nation of Islam tradition, he replaced his surname "Little" with an "X", a custom among Nation of Islam followers who considered their family names to have originated from slave-owning whites.

In the early twentieth century, some Muslim religious leaders in the United States asserted that Islam was the natural religion of blacks, relying largely on accounts of African Muslims being kidnapped centuries ago and sold into slavery in the Americas.

The Nation of Islam, a movement and organization of black Americans, was founded in 1930 by Elijah Muhammad and is famous for its teachings that combine elements of traditional Islam with black nationalist ideas.

The Nation of Islam also combines religious ideas with those that denounce the suffering suffered by blacks at the hands of whites.

Malcolm rose so quickly through the ranks of the Nation of Islam that Elijah Muhammad, who had a special affection for Malcolm, appointed him spokesman for the group, second only to Muhammad himself. Under Malcolm's leadership, the Nation of Islam claimed half a million members.

Malcolm was an articulate public speaker and charismatic figure who expressed the pent-up anger, frustration and bitterness of African Americans during the civil rights movement from 1955 to 1965.

He delivered speeches in the streets of Harlem and spoke at major universities such as Harvard and Oxford. His penetrating wit and passionate radicalism made him a formidable critic of American society. He also criticized prevailing civil rights movement concepts, challenging Martin Luther King's views on coexistence and nonviolence.

Malcolm argued that issues of black identity, integrity, and independence for black people were more important than the civil right to sit in a restaurant or even to vote. In contrast to King's strategy of nonviolence and civil disobedience, Malcolm urged his followers to defend themselves "by any means necessary."

He also disagreed with Martin Luther King's ambition for America to be a place where blacks and whites lived together, as Malcolm did not believe in this vision and wanted a separate nation for blacks only.

...

Racial segregation ended throughout the United States thanks to the efforts of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, of which Malcolm

Civil rights include the right to liberty, the right to education, the adult right to vote, and the right to a fair trial.

For a long time in the United States, African Americans were denied their civil rights.

Black Americans suffered from slavery and were bought and sold for money. Their life as a slave was very difficult and difficult to imagine now. Most of them were treated horribly by their white owners and had no rights at all. Many of them were forced to change their names, sometimes to the name of their owner.

Although slavery was abolished in England in 1833, and in America in 1865, blacks were still treated fairly due to segregation laws - or rules - that separated blacks from whites.

Racial segregation in the United States meant that, by law, non-white people were kept physically separated and treated poorly compared to white people.

Things like housing, hospitals, schools, transportation, and workplaces were segregated, based on the color of a person's skin.

For example, black children were not allowed to go to the same schools as white children, blacks had to sit separately on buses, and were not allowed in whites-only areas.

Media review: CNN faces pressure from its employees because of its bias towards Israel

Media review: CNN faces pressure from its employees because of its bias towards Israel

    Monday, February 05, 2024   No comments

The Guardian newspaper said that the American CNN network is facing violent reactions from its employees over editorial policies that they say adopt the Israeli narrative, while censoring the viewpoints of Palestinians in the network’s coverage of the war on Gaza.

Journalists in CNN newsrooms in the United States and abroad say the broadcast was skewed by administration rules and a topic approval process that resulted in very partial coverage of the October 7 attack and the Israeli war in Gaza.

“Most of the news since the war began, no matter how accurate the initial reporting, has been skewed by systemic and institutional bias within the network toward Israel,” a CNN employee said, adding that CNN’s coverage of the Israeli war on Gaza amounts to journalistic malpractice.

According to accounts from six network employees in multiple newsrooms, and more than a dozen internal memos and emails obtained by The Guardian, daily news decisions are shaped by a flow of direction from CNN headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, which sets strict guidelines on coverage.

They include severe restrictions on quoting the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and conveying Palestinian views, while Israeli government statements are taken at face value. In addition, every war story or news item coming from the Jerusalem office must be deleted.

The American network's journalists say that the tone of the coverage was set by its new editor-in-chief and CEO, Mark Thompson, as some employees are concerned about Thompson's willingness to tolerate external attempts to influence coverage, as Thompson previously served as director general of the British Broadcasting Corporation, and was accused of caving in to government pressure. In a number of positions, including calling for the dismissal of one of the network’s most prominent correspondents in Jerusalem in 2005.

In early November, David Lindsay, the network's director of news standards and practices, issued a directive banning the publication of most Hamas statements, describing them as "inflammatory speech and propaganda."

CNN sources admitted that no interviews had been conducted with Hamas and its leaders since the October 7 attack. CNN correspondent Sarah Synder faced criticism for repeating the alleged Israeli story that Hamas beheaded 40 children at the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation. The correspondent later apologized for the story.

One of the network's journalists told the Guardian that there are selected individuals who edit all reports with an institutional pro-Israel bias, and often use language and phrases to absolve the Israeli army of responsibility for its crimes in Gaza, and downplay the number of Palestinian deaths and Israeli attacks.

While other employees said that some journalists with experience covering war and news in the region are avoiding assignments related to Israel, as they believe that they will not be free to tell the whole story.

One employee said there is a lot of internal conflict and opposition within the network, and some employees are looking to leave.

Biden denounces anti-Arab rhetoric after an article described Dearborn as “the jihad capital of America”

Biden denounces anti-Arab rhetoric after an article described Dearborn as “the jihad capital of America”

    Sunday, February 04, 2024   No comments

US President Joe Biden on Sunday denounced anti-Arab rhetoric following an opinion article published by the Wall Street Journal that pointed the finger at the city of Dearborn, Michigan, and described its mayor as “fanatic” and “anti-Islam.”

The newspaper published the article on Friday entitled “Welcome to Dearborn, the jihad capital of America.”

The city's mayor and human rights advocates at the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee denounced this article as anti-Arab and racist because it suggests that city residents, including religious and political leaders, support the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and extremism.

Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud described the Wall Street Journal article, written by Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, as “reckless, fanatical, and anti-Islam.”

“New procedures will be effective immediately,” the mayor said. “Dearborn Police will intensify their presence in all places of worship and major infrastructure sites.” “This is a direct result of an inflammatory opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that has led to an alarming increase in bigoted and anti-Islamic rhetoric on social media targeting the city of Dearborn.”

Biden, without mentioning the newspaper or the author of the article by name, said on the X platform that it is wrong to blame “a group of individuals based on the words of a very few of them.”

He added, "This is exactly what can lead to Islamophobia and Arab hatred. This should not happen to the residents of Dearborn or any (other) American city."

Dearborn is one of the American cities in which a majority of people of Arab origin live, as census figures show that about 54 percent of its population are Arab Americans.

The Islamic Center of America, Dearborn. 

As a global superpower, US foreign policy can sink presidential elections, Should Biden worry given his stance on Gaza war?

As a global superpower, US foreign policy can sink presidential elections, Should Biden worry given his stance on Gaza war?

    Saturday, February 03, 2024   No comments

A 1-2% segment of the population might be insignificant in national elections. In the US however, there is no national elections even for the president. A candidate must win elections in each state, and each state they would win will provide the candidate with electors needed to secure a win which is 270. 

This structure gives power to the so-called battleground states more than it give power to most populous states that tend to be reliably for one party or another. For these reasons, the presence of Muslim and Arab Americans in the swing state of Michigan is bringing attention to community there ahead of the 2024 presidential elections. This article sheds some light on the attention given to the Muslim and Arab communities and their allies.

Read the article...

 

US government employees to stage one-day hunger strike on Thursday to denounce Joe Biden’s policy on Gaza

US government employees to stage one-day hunger strike on Thursday to denounce Joe Biden’s policy on Gaza

    Monday, January 29, 2024   No comments

The British daily, The Guardian reported that Feds United for Peace, group of workers from more than two dozen agencies, to stage one-day hunger strike on Thursday

US government employees are planning a “day of fasting for Gaza” this week to draw attention to the humanitarian crisis in the territory and to denounce Joe Biden’s policy toward Israel.

Representatives for Feds United for Peace, a group of several dozen government employees frustrated with the Gaza crisis who organized an office walkout earlier in the month, told the Guardian that on Thursday its members will stage a one-day hunger strike. Participating federal employees are expected to show up to their offices dressed in black or wearing keffiyeh scarves or other symbols of Palestinian solidarity.

A federal employee speaking on behalf of the group said the Day of Fasting is a response to Israel’s use of “starvation as a weapon of war by intentionally withholding food from entering Gaza”, citing UN reporting that up 2 million people in the territory are at risk of famine.

Media Review: How did major American newspapers cover the Gaza war?

Media Review: How did major American newspapers cover the Gaza war?

    Tuesday, January 09, 2024   No comments

 A quantitative analysis conducted by the American website "The Intercept" concluded that the coverage of major newspapers in America in the first six weeks of the attack on Gaza showed a strong bias in favor of Israel.

The website said that coverage of the Israeli war on Gaza by the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times was consistently biased against the Palestinians.

The website explained in its report that the print media, which plays an influential role in shaping American public opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, did not pay much attention to the unprecedented impact of the Israeli blockade and bombing campaign on both children and journalists in the Gaza Strip.

Disproportionate coverage

He said that major American newspapers disproportionately highlighted Israeli deaths in the conflict, used emotional language to describe the killing of Israelis, did not do so with Palestinian deaths, and provided unbalanced coverage of anti-Semitic actions in the United States, while largely ignoring anti-Muslim racism in the wake of the attack. October 7th in Israel.

Pro-Palestinian activists accused major newspapers of bias with Israel, with the New York Times witnessing protests in front of its Manhattan headquarters over its coverage of the Gaza war, an accusation supported by The Intercept's analysis.

The Intercept's open source analysis focuses on the first six weeks of the conflict, during which 14,800 Palestinians, including more than 6,000 children, were killed by Israel's bombing of Gaza.

The Intercept collected more than a thousand articles from the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times about Israel's war on Gaza, and recorded the uses of some key terms and the context in which they were used.

Serious defect

She said that the statistics reveal a serious flaw in the way Israeli and pro-Israel figures are covered versus Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices, with uses that favor Israeli narratives over Palestinian narratives.

She commented that this anti-Palestinian bias in the print media combined with a similar survey of US television news conducted by the analysis writers last month, found a wider disparity.

The risks of this routine devaluation of Palestinian lives cannot be small. With the death toll rising in Gaza, entire cities flattened and uninhabitable for years, and entire families wiped out, the US government wields enormous influence as Israel's main sponsor and arms supplier. The media's exposure to the conflict means that there are fewer political downsides to American support for Israel.

A bleak picture for the Palestinian side

Coverage from the first six weeks of the war paints a bleak picture of the Palestinian side, according to the analysis, one that makes humanizing the Palestinians, and thus eliciting US sympathy for the Palestinians, more difficult.

The site explained that it searched for all articles containing related words (such as “Palestinian,” “Gaza,” “Israeli,” etc.) in the three aforementioned newspapers. He analyzed every sentence in every article and counted the number of specific terms.

He said that the coverage survey he conducted contained 4 main results:

Disproportionate coverage of deaths

In all three newspapers, the phrase “Israeli” or “Israel” appears more often than “Palestinian” or variations thereof, even as Palestinian deaths exceed those of Israelis. For all deaths, Palestinians are mentioned once, and for every Israeli death, Israelis are mentioned 8 times, or an average of 16 times more for each Palestinian death.

"Slaughter" the Israelis, not the Palestinians

The Intercept reported that highly emotional terms for killing civilians such as “massacre,” “massacre,” and “horrific” were almost exclusively reserved for Israelis killed by Palestinians, and not the other way around.

He added that editors and reporters used the term "massacre" to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and used the word "massacre" to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. The word "horrific" was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4.

The Washington Post used the word “massacres” several times in its reporting to describe what happened in the October 7 attack. “President Biden faces mounting pressure from lawmakers in both parties to punish Iran after the Hamas massacre.”

In a Washington Post story published on November 13 about how the Israeli siege and bombing had claimed the lives of 1 in 200 Palestinians, the word “massacre” or “massacre” was not used once. Palestinians were simply “killed” or “died,” often in the passive voice.

For children and journalists

The website also noted that only two headlines out of more than 1,100 news articles in the study mentioned the word “children” related to the children of Gaza. In a notable exception, The New York Times ran front-page stories in late November about the historic pace of killing of Palestinian women and children, even though the headline did not mention children or women.

He added that although Israel's war on Gaza is perhaps the bloodiest for children, most of whom are Palestinian, in modern history, there is no mention of the word "children" and related terms in the titles of the articles included in the study.

Gaza and Ukraine

While the war on Gaza was one of the bloodiest wars in modern history for journalists, most of them Palestinian, the word “journalists” and its repetitions such as “reporters” and “photographers” appear in only 9 headlines out of more than 1,100 articles studied. Approximately 48 Palestinian journalists were killed due to Israeli bombing at the time of the truce, and today, the death toll of Palestinian journalists has exceeded 100. However, only 4 of 9 articles containing the words journalist and correspondent were about Arab correspondents.

The Intercept commented that the lack of coverage of the unprecedented killings of children and journalists, groups that usually elicit sympathy from Western media, is conspicuous. By comparison, more Palestinian children died in the first week of the Gaza bombing than in the entire first year of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, yet the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times all published sympathetic stories highlighting the Ukraine war.

The website commented that the asymmetry in how children are covered is both qualitative and quantitative. On October 13, the Los Angeles Times published an Associated Press report saying: “The Gaza Ministry of Health said on Friday that 1,799 people had been killed in the territory, including more than 580 under the age of 18 and 351 women. Last Saturday's Hamas attack led to the deaths of more than 1,300 people in Israel, including women, children, and young music festival-goers. Note that Israeli youth are referred to as children while Palestinian youth are described as under 18 years of age.

During discussions about prisoner exchanges, this repeated refusal to refer to Palestinians as children was most evident, with the New York Times in one instance referring to “Israeli women and children” being exchanged for “Palestinian women and minors.”

A Washington Post report published on November 21 announcing the truce agreement removed the phrase “Palestinian women and children” entirely: “President Joe Biden said in a statement Tuesday night that the deal to release 50 women and children held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, in exchange for 150 A Palestinian prisoner held by Israel. The brief did not mention Palestinian women and children at all.

Coverage of hate in the United States

Likewise, when it comes to how the conflict in Gaza contributes to hatred in the United States, major newspapers pay more attention to anti-Semitic attacks than to those directed against Muslims, The Intercept continued. Overall, there has been a disproportionate focus on racism toward Jewish people, versus racism targeting Muslims, Arabs, or those perceived as such.

During the period of the Intercept study, the three newspapers studied mentioned anti-Semitism more than Islamophobia (549 vs. 79), and this was before the “campus anti-Semitism” debate created by Republicans in Congress.

Despite many high-profile instances of both anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim racism during the survey period, 87% mentioned discrimination around anti-Semitism, compared to 13% mentioned Islamophobia, including related terms.

When major newspapers fail

In general, the killings of Palestinians in Gaza do not receive as much coverage in terms of scope or emotional weight as the killings of Israelis on October 7. These killings are often presented as arbitrarily high. Hamas' killings of Israeli civilians are consistently portrayed as part of the group's strategy, while killings of Palestinian civilians are covered almost as if they were a series of one-time mistakes committed thousands of times, despite many operations indicating Israel's intent to harm civilians and infrastructure. Civilian. The result is that the three major newspapers rarely gave the Palestinians humanitarian coverage.

Despite the biased coverage of Israel

Despite this disparity, opinion polls show a shift in sympathy toward the Palestinians and away from Israel among Democrats, with huge generational divisions driven in part by stark differences in news sources. In general, we find that young people get their information from TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter, while older Americans get their information from print media and news.

The Intercept said biased coverage in major newspapers and mainstream television news affects public perceptions of the war and directs viewers toward a distorted view of the conflict, and this has led pro-Israel critics to blame pro-Palestinian views on social media “misinformation.”

He concluded by saying that, however, an analysis of both print media and television news shows that if any group of media consumers gets a biased image it is because of the news broadcast by the established media outlets in the United States.