Apartheid

277
militants on September 5-6, 1972. The anniversary story received blanket coverage by
American media, whereas the twentieth anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacres, in
which at least many hundreds, and probably thousands of Palestinians were murdered due to
intervention by the then Defense Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, was quietly passed over.
That anniversary fell ten days after the Munich one, but it was almost completely ignored by
the US media, although the number of victims was more than a hundred times more, although
it was closer in time to the present, and although one of the main perpetrators still, or again,
held considerable power in world politics. He was now the commander-in-chief of the fifth (or
so) largest military power in the world. The few short mentions that the twentieth anniversary
of the Sabra and Shatila massacres received in the US mass media all left out the inconvenient
facts that the top responsible Israeli official, then defense minister Sharon, was now prime
minister of Israel and thus, apparently, that the closest US ally, the head of government who
receives the most military aid and the most overall aid from the US, was a war criminal. 688
Possibly due to its by now traditionally uncritical, i.e. cowardly, stance towards US
foreign policy and also because of its own history of pro-Jewish bias in matters relating to
Palestine since World War I, including its crucial role in the formation of the Jewish state,
Britain’s public broadcasting also appears shamelessly biased in favor of Israel, as the
following analysis by Paul de Rooij on the BBC’s reporting of the Second Intifada claims:
Unquestionably, Israeli deaths are deemed more important than
Palestinian deaths; much more extended coverage is devoted to the
suicide bombing casualties than to incidents where greater numbers of
Palestinians are killed. Also, BBC TeleText and Online news refer to
Israelis as having been ‘killed’, thus denoting intent, whereas
Palestinians invariably ‘die’; these media always enclose massacres
and assassinations with quotation marks. Israeli killings and violent
acts are always labeled ‘retaliation’, thus justified. Increasingly,
Palestinian violence has been labeled ‘terrorism’ – it has never been
labeled ‘resistance’. Although the term ‘terrorism’ is often applied to
Palestinian violence, the term ‘state terrorism’ is never applied to
Israeli acts of aggression. . . . The more mundane aspects of the
violence engendered by occupation are never reported. The BBC has
never reported that Palestinian residents of Jerusalem are subject to
arbitrary ID paper confiscation, thereby losing the right to residence in
Jerusalem and losing their homes. Similarly, house demolitions,
torture, or arbitrary imprisonment without charge, trial, appeal or
representation are not the BBC’s going fare. 689
The privately owned British mass media are, in effect, no better, although some rather
marginalized exceptions do exist (as is the case in the USA). Research undertaken by the
Glasgow University Media Group even indicates that Britons belong to the most misinformed
and brainwashed people in the world with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and
perhaps also on other subjects. Britain, of course, is today a key ally to, or key instrument for,
the USA and among other things a potential instrument for Zionists to manipulate and
neutralize the European Union with regard to the conflict:
Of all the statistics accompanying the violence in occupied Palestine
and Israel - 1600 Palestinians killed and 20,000 injured, up to $10
688 Abunimah: How the US Media Forget and Remember an Anniversary, 2002
689 De Rooij: Worse than CNN? BBC News and the Mideast, 2002. The author also points out, however, that
some reporting critical of Israel that would never have been shown by US broadcasters has nevertheless appeared
on BBC. See also Deans: Flood of Complaints as BBC Postpones Israel Investigation, 2003; Fisk October 22,
2002. On direct British military aid to Israel, government-sponsored yet illegal, since it is being used for state
terrorist purposes to kill civilians, see Pilger 2003 (2002): 144-147.