Western media coverage of the Ukraine war versus coverage of Israeli genocide in Gaza

Western media coverage of the Ukraine war versus coverage of Israeli genocide in Gaza

On today’s News Review program of Press TV, the Iranian English-language international broadcaster, I joined journalist and political analyst Julia Kassem in Beirut for a discussion that opened with Israeli attacks on health facilities in Gaza but moved on to the broader issue of Israel’s planned ‘final solution’ of their Palestinian problem through mass expulsions to Sinai. 

I was especially appreciative of the opportunity to compare Western media coverage of the Israeli atrocities in Gaza with their coverage  of (or total silence about) Ukrainian atrocities against Donbas civilians from 2014 right up to the present day.

See https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/128587

Note:  not available in every jurisdiction in the Collective West due to state censorship

Transcript below by a reader

Interviewer: 0:00
Now joining us for the program is Gilbert Doctorow, independent international affairs analyst, joining us from Brussels; and Julia Kassem, journalist and political analyst, joining us from Beirut. Hello. I’d like to welcome you both to the program here. I guess we’ll start there in Beirut with you, Julia. Attacking and laying siege on hospitals, killing and abducting hospital staff, destroying medical equipment when they finally raid these hospitals, and then when it comes to aid, denying medicine and medical supplies– so Julia, what kind of war policy is this?

Kassem: 0:37
It’s a genocidal war policy that Israel, the Israeli regime, has employed since its genocidal ground invasion into Gaza. We saw it use the same strategy to– very extensively at El Shifa Hospital, the Indonesian hospital, at Al Nasser Hospital. And now we’re seeing it at the Al Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis. So this is– time and time again Israel has, every time it has lost in a region, moved down to the next hospital to claim it’s gaining ground around the region. And then, of course, in absence of any tangible military victories, since all it’s accrued is losses upon losses, it decides to pull its guns on innocents in hospitals, instead of fighting who it’s supposed to be fighting, who it’s– the Palestinian resistance, which is victoriously beating it, it’s basically killed innocents in hospitals. It’s besieged them. It removes all of the electricity and deprives them of medical equipment and facilities. It bombs them and their vicinities. And it, even at the Al-Nasser Hospital in early November, it left five babies at the ICU, five children to die.

Kassem: 2:06
So this is just a policy it uses when it tries to claim ground in an area, wherever it’s losing in a region. As you can see, the withdrawals of Khan Yunis started a few weeks ago. And of course, it tries to save face and execute the Zionist regime’s next plan of just making Gaza uninhabitable. And terrorizing people into– forcing them from the enclave into the Sinai is the next objective when there is a complete absence of any real military goals achieved.

Interviewer: 2:43
Thank you, Julia. And Gilbert Doctorow, welcome to the program from Brussels. Mr Doctorow, your thoughts on why three dozen– I mean, the first handful of hospitals the Israeli regime went after, Hamas were using them as command centers, they told the world. They stopped that after their three dozen hospitals destroyed. Why is the regime so eager to go after the health system in Gaza?

Doctorow: 3:07
Well, I agree completely with the remarks of my fellow panelist about the genocidal nature of the Israeli behavior. Why hospitals in particular? That is a pressure point to achieve what was just mentioned, the objective of demonstrating that life is untenable in Gaza and to force the Palestinians now huddling in the southernmost part of the strip to burst through the Ra’afah crossing and to move into Sinai, thereby achieving the total ethnic cleansing which is the Israeli political objective. However, I’d like to step back for a moment and congratulate you for this extensive coverage that you have day by day of what is going on in Gaza.

3:59
It’s not to say that there is no coverage in western mainstream media. It is surprising, but it has to be said as a fact, that major broadcasters like the Euronews or BBC or CNN do have intermittent coverage of the very same crimes that you are describing today. However, I say intermittent, because though the crimes are so blatant and are of such violation of all humanitarian law that they are inescapable for coverage, nonetheless they are not in daily coverage. And when you have an event like yesterday, the death of Alexander Navalny, U.S. global dominance of media means that the whole world was talking about one subject which the United States wanted to present for its propagandistic purposes against Russia. I also point out that the Palestinian situation, dire as it is, and with the loss of 28,800 civilians, has to be put in the perspective of what’s going on in world communications and dominance of broadcasting. Over the period of 2014 to 2022, 14,000 Russian-speaking civilians in the Donbass were murdered by daily artillery barrages and rocket attacks of the Ukrainian army.

5:29
And that got almost no coverage, zero coverage in the whole global mainstream media. Today, the war’s going on, and you read here every day on BBC and Euronews about civilian deaths from Russian strikes in cities across Ukraine. You hear not a word about the Russian civilian casualties that are inflicted every day by the Ukrainian forces. So relatively speaking, horrible as it is, the situation in Gaza is more favorable to the Palestinians than the situation is to Russians in the Donbass.

Interviewer: 6:08
Thank you, Mr Doctorow. And Julia, now this– I’m glad Mr.
Doctorow mentioned Ra’afah. I was going to– bring me to my next question. It’s about the southern city of Ra’afah in Gaza, where 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering. The Israelis say there’s going to be an imminent ground incursion, invasion into Ra’afah. You’ve seen the pushback, even from Israeli allies, that “It’s going to be a civilian bloodbath. Don’t do it.”

6:34
The regime has had ample opportunity to find a way not to basically conduct this operation, knowing what it is going to result in. Why haven’t they seized the opportunity? Why are they hell-bent on going into Ra’afah?

Kassem: 6:49
As they’ve lost across Gaza, they’ve been forced to withdraw from regions of the north, up to Khan Yunis, as I mentioned. And right now, Ra’afah is, in Gaza, their last-ditch chance– and this seems to be definitely the plan from the beginning– to corner every civilian in Ra’afah to either force them to move into the Sinai or to die.

7:12
This has been the plan all along. We even saw from the beginning, from the first few weeks, when civilians were told by the Zionist entity to move south along the Salah al-Din roadway. Hamas initially also warned people that that was a, you know, a psychological trick, which it was. People were being slaughtered along the highway, and they were slaughtered in every so-called safe zone that the Zionist entity pushed them into. Now they pushed them into Ra’afah, the last corner, the area that they were calling a safe zone from the beginning, and they were bombing from the beginning.

7:49
People were, Palestinians were being slaughtered in Ra’afah, being killed by airstrikes in Ra’afah, in Khan Yunis, since the beginning. But now that they’ve cornered 1.5 million Palestinian civilians in Ra’afah, now they can execute their so-called final solution of making that final push into Egypt, forcing an invasion along the Philadelphia corridor that borders Egypt and Gaza. And, you know, this obviously has been the plan all along, from when we started to hear about their plans to evacuate, to push and to force Palestinians into the Sinai. This actually, the final, putting them in the final cauldron of this Southeastern empty field in Ra’afah was like a stage in that overall plan, despite you know them luring people by saying it was a safe zone this whole time. So this, of course– just pushing civilians into the Sinai and making Gaza uninhabitable– this is a way that the Zionist entity is trying to force an outcome in the face of its military defeat, military losses in the ground invasion in Gaza.

9:10
Of course, it’s not going to be successful. The Zionist entity cannot force this political outcome on the Palestinians. The Palestinian resistance has been victorious, but as a means of forcing intimidation and trying to force an outcome via ethnic cleansing and genocide, rather than owning up to its military losses, this is eventually what the Zionist entity is attempting to do, since it has been established via genocide and it wants to continue its objectives via genocide.

Interviewer: 9:43
Thank you, Julia. Mr Doctorow, I mean, when you’re the Israeli regime and your stated goal was that you’re going to go into Gaza and you’re going to beat Hamas and you’re going to beat the resistance; you weren’t able to do it in northern Gaza, you weren’t able to do it in central Gaza. And with this many innocent civilians in Ra’afah, what makes the regime think it’s going to have any of a different of an outcome in Ra’afa? And that’s really its objective: is to shed innocent civilian blood, which it’s done all along.

Doctorow: 10:13
Well, what I see going on in Gaza and Israeli behavior is very much the same as what I see in the European war in Ukraine. Each time that there seems to be a peace settlement in sight, the– one side escalates. And Israeli behavior now in Ra’afah is a case of escalation. The bombing of the southern part of Lebanon to force the Hezbollah north of Litani River, that is another ongoing course of escalation. It’s clear that Mr. Netanyahu hopes to hold onto power by turning this situation in Gaza into a regional-wide war and by his own preference, into a war with Iran. So the situation is so far contained, but there is the enormous risk [that] Mr. Netanyahu’s objective of escalation to a reginal war may yet be realized, despite all of the efforts of the neighboring countries in West Asia to show restraint and to not use the forces that they have available to them to destroy Israel.

interviewer: 11:34
All right. Well, thank you both for joining us on the program. Time has gotten better of us. Stay safe to both of you. Gilbert Doctorow there, joining us from Brussels, and Julia Kassem there, joining us from Beirut, Lebanon.

And viewers, that brings us to the conclusion of this segment of your Press TV News Review program. Thank you for tuning in, and goodbye for now.
11:52

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Westliche Medienberichterstattung über den Ukraine-Krieg im Vergleich zur Berichterstattung über den israelischen Völkermord in Gaza

In der heutigen Sendung “News Review” von Press TV, dem iranischen englischsprachigen internationalen Sender, diskutierte ich mit der Journalistin und politischen Analystin Julia Kassem in Beirut über die israelischen Angriffe auf Gesundheitseinrichtungen im Gazastreifen, aber auch über die von Israel geplante “Endlösung” des Palästinenserproblems durch Massenvertreibungen in den Sinai.

Ich war besonders dankbar für die Gelegenheit, die westliche Medienberichterstattung über die israelischen Gräueltaten im Gazastreifen mit der Berichterstattung über die ukrainischen Gräueltaten gegen die Zivilbevölkerung im Donbass von 2014 bis heute zu vergleichen (bzw. deren völliges Schweigen darüber).

Siehe https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/128587

Hinweis: aufgrund der staatlichen Zensur nicht in allen Ländern des kollektiven Westens verfügbar.