Friday, February 03, 2017

How one lazy sentence in a 'pro-Israel' report propagates anti-Israel lies

This appeared on Page 2 of the Daily Express on 2 Feb in an article headlined "Farage brands Khan 'hypocrite over travel ban" that described how Nigel Farage called out the London Mayor for hosting ambassadors from Muslim countries that ban Israelis, while condemning Trump for 'banning' people from Muslim countries.

While far more offensive stuff against Israel is written and said every day by the BBC, Guardian, NY Times, etc this is troubling because of its sheer banality and that it shows the extent to which the anti-Israel narrative - based on a tissue of lies - has become so engrained in popular language that it is just casually trotted out even by people who are nominally 'on our side'. The incessantly repeated  lie "Israel mistreats the Palestinians", much like the lie "Jerusalem and the West Bank is Palestinian land illegally occupied by Israel", have become tautological 'facts' simply because not enough people called out the lie.

But it is quite an achievement to unintentionally squeeze so much bullshit  into such a short sentence. The highlighted text implies that these countries - which have some of the worst human rights records in the world - ban Israelis as some kind of 'humanitarian protest' on behalf of 'Palestinians'. That is as lazy and ignorant journalism as you could imagine. The word ‘Palestinian’ was not even used to refer to Arabs until 1965 - 17 years after these countries started their racist ban.

Even when writing reports that are nominally sympathetic to Israel, main stream media reporters accept without question the standard anti-Israel lies and propaganda, while totally ignoring the real crimes of Arab countries - including the horrific abuse of their Palestinian residents.


See: Arab countries' abuse of Palestinians


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