There was a time when Israeli violations of Palestinians’ rights barely made a dent in the American press and media outside of a few progressive platforms on the margins. Mainstream media and legacy newspapers stationed reporters on the Israeli side of the conflict, heavily influencing the perspective they reported from.
Israelis were granted, to borrow an expression, the “permission to narrate,” a basic representation rarely accorded to Palestinians. Illegal settlements on stolen land were often referred to as merely Jewish neighborhoods or communities, the fact that Israel is an occupier was usually rebranded as an Israeli “presence” or “rule,” and most glaringly, Israeli lives lost in the conflict were mourned while Palestinians, even children, killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers were rarely mentioned.
The death of an Israeli soldier was sometimes covered twice: the incident and the funeral, with a humanizing portrayal. A dead Palestinian child may not even be mentioned in passing.
On July 14 [20170, three Palestinian assailants killed two Israeli policemen manning an entrance to Jerusalem’s Old City, starting a gun-battle that ended at the al-Haram al-Sharif. The New York Times promptly published an article, “2 Israeli Police Officers Killed in Attack in Old City of Jerusalem” on the website’s front page, which appeared in the print edition the following day. Only two days earlier, on July 12, Israeli occupation forces blinded the left eye of a 13-year-old Palestinian, Nour al-Din Mustafa. According to Defense of Children International-Palestine (DCIP), soldiers entered Nour al-Din’s Arab Jerusalem neighborhood and fired plastic bullets after locals threw stones. “Nour al-Din stood up to seek safety inside when he was hit.” That same day, Israeli soldiers also killed 16-year-old Yousef Salameh and 21-year-old Saad Salah in Jenin refugee camp during a nighttime raid. “Israeli military incursions into Palestinian communities often have fatal consequences for children,” DCIP reported.
One week, two days apart. Three unarmed Palestinian civilians injured and killed. Two armed Israeli security personnel killed. But, for the Times, stories about the death of Palestinian civilians are not “fit to print.”
The omissions illustrate how America’s “paper of record“ has normalized Israel’s violent occupation: Palestinian tragedy is ordinary and unworthy of print, but the death of an Israeli calls for headlines.
Of the eight Israelis killed by Palestinians this year–all of whom were security personnel–the Times has covered all but one of their deaths. However, the killing of 23 Palestinians by Israeli soldiers in the same period, including eight children, received next to no coverage in the Times. In the paper’s judgment, the only dead Palestinians “fit to print” are those who fit the violent stereotype the paper has for years propagated about Palestinians, and Arabs and Muslims more broadly.
Too often, readers of the Times do not learn about the families and lives of murdered Palestinian children; but when four Israeli soldiers were killed, the Times covered the January 8 attack and their funeral in two separate stories. The military occupiers in an asymmetrical conflict were afforded a humanity often denied to the occupation’s victims: “One loved horse riding; another was the oldest of four sisters…” There is a dehumanizing message here in line with Israeli hasbara: Because Palestinians glorify death, they do not mourn their dead, and thus their grief is not to be read about.
