Western media pro Israel bias stands out as Ghilad Shalit is swapped for Palestinian prisoners

The media bias when it comes to the Israel/Palestinian issue must drive the Palestinians nuts. All the hype about the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit being released after being held five years by Hamas the elected government of occupied Gaza is yet another example. I say “occupied” as a piece by Frida Ghitis  special to CNN international edition reminds me of this bias along with the entire coverage in the US media.

Ms Ghitis writes  that the “militant Islamic organization Hamas….took power from the Palestinian Authority in a brief but vicious civil war in 2006, the year after Israel decided to end its occupation and remove all its citizens from Gaza.”

This in itself is infuriating enough.  The Palestinian authority as anyone who pays any attention to the situation in that part of the world knows, has been riddled with corruption and graft and lost much of its support due to its close ties to the US, a staunch and uncritical defender of the Zionist regime. Not only that, the Palestinian Authority it has come to light, was approached by the Zionist regime prior to the invasion of Gaza (operation cast lead), along with another stooge of US capitalism, the now deposed Hosni Mubarak, in order to ensure that the PA would take power after the Israeli’s defeated Hamas. It has been its role as a stooge for Israel and the US that weakened support for the PA and increased it for Hamas.

Hamas is always referred to as that “militant Islamic” organization. But what is the most disgusting about Ms Ghitis’s statement above is the impression she gives that Gaza is some sort independent and sel- reliant country.  The Israeli’s control Gaza’s water. Power and food supply.  The US handed over $2 billion or so every year to Hosni Mubarak and his family to ensure that the Egyptian crossing in to Gaza was secure giving the Israeli’s less to worry about from that entrance.  Gaza is an open-air prison.  The people of Gaza’s existence is much like the population of Mars in the movie Total Recall except that there is no super hero to come to the rescue.

Ghitis’ writing is simply pro-Israel propaganda.  There are pictures of Ghilad Shalit all over the papers. I don’t have anything against Mr. Shalit personally and wish him luck and hope he might consider the brutality and violence of the regime he serves after this, but hearing of the hundreds of Palestinians that have been released in the swap, many of them “brutal killers”,  and what a sacrifice this is for Israel makes me quite mad.  Violence is not a good thing, but there is the violence of the oppressor and violence of the oppressed---there are sides here.  I remember when two British soldiers in Northern Ireland turned a corner in their vehicle and drove smack bang in to an IRA funeral.  The car was surrounded and people were standing alongside and on top of it firing point blank in to the vehicle.  It was a disturbing scene.  But we have to recognize the role of these people as occupiers.  The day to day violence and terrorism of the British state in Ireland was not given the same coverage.

The same with South Africa’s Apartheid regime.  Snitches were punished by necklacing, putting a tire filled with gasoline around the guilty party and setting fire to it. Again, a horrible thing, but it has to be seen in the context of a violent and oppressive regime and the resistance to it.  There are sides again.  Were the consequences not so tragic it’s almost hard not to laugh when President Obama or the equally thuggish Hilary Clinton call for “restraint on all sides” when there are flare-ups between Israeli’s and their Palestinian victims. One side, Israel, has one of the world’s largest militaries receiving the most sophisticated military hardware from its patron, the US along with planes and the heavy equipment used to bulldoze Palestinian homes and farms, not to mention hundreds of nuclear weapons.

The Palestinians have no nation state, no military, no planes or ships and very little money.  Over one million of them are confined to Gaza, a prison camp which is under siege by the Israeli forces. They have not quite as much to “show restraint” about.

The Israeli’s have confined or killed thousands of thousand of Palestinians over the years.  According to the UN, “figures released by the Israeli Prison Service and DCI-Palestine, on 1 October there were 164 Palestinian children (aged 12-17) in Israeli detention facilities, including 35 aged 12-15. Seventy-six of these children have been sentenced, while 88 children are being held in pre-trial detention.”  The UN adds that “DCI estimates each year about 700 Palestinian children aged 12-17 from the West Bank are prosecuted in Israeli military courts after being arrested, interrogated and detained by the Israeli army, police or security agents. According to UNICEF, over 7,000 Palestinian children were arrested and detained by Israeli authorities over the past 10 years.(DCI: Defence for Children International-Palestine Section)

I was involved some years ago in a campaign for the release of an Arab Israeli who was imprisoned as a “terrorist” by the notorious Israeli secret police, the Shin Bet.  He had led a strike of both Israeli and Palestinian workers and was arrested en route to London for a conference.  Thanks to the campaign he was released after 10 years but without these campaigns Palestinians by the thousands languish in Israeli custody; Israel is believed to have some 5000 Palestinians in prison.

Ms Ghitis writes: “For Israelis, the idea of releasing Palestinian prisoners convicted of participating in terrorist attacks that killed Israeli civilians has always created wrenching choices. Previously freed prisoners have gone on to kill more Israeli civilians.

No one likes it when innocent civilians die. The US has killed more than a million Iraqi’s and who knows how many Afghan civilians in with its unmanned drone attacks and this is very upsetting.  But not all civilians are innocent.  The half a million or so settlers, mostly religious fanatics, all different nationalities and who are in the forefront of the Zionist’s efforts to take Palestinian land are not innocent.  Their justification for the theft of Palestinian land is that god gave it to them. We American’s wouldn’t take too kindly to the native population who were the first occupants here if they took our homes using the same justification.

Listen to them in this video

The woman is completely wrong regarding the formation of the state of Israel which was a result of British imperialism seeking a foothold in the Middle East after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.  The first British governor of Jerusalem referred to the idea as "our loyal little Ulster in the Middle East.

The woman and the other American in the video chosen that god chose to go live on someone elses land are nuts of course.  How can you argue against god.  But they are useful nuts, the front line of the Zionist efforts to rid the land entirely of the Palestinian population.

As far as Gilad Shalit goes we might consider what his role as an Israeli soldier is in all of this.  I am republishing part of an earlier blog about an Israeli soldier who published (he had to find a publisher outside Israel to do so) a piece called Checkpoint Syndome about his life as a soldier in occupied Palestine and the effect it had on him:

"He described how they would order children to clean the checkpoint before inspection time; how a soldier named Shahar invented a game: "He checks  someone's identity card, and instead of handing it back to him, just tosses it in  the air. He got a kick out of seeing the Arab have to get out of his car to pick up his identity card ... It's a game for him and he can pass a whole shift this  way"; how they humiliated a dwarf who came to the checkpoint every day on  his wagon: "They forced him to have his picture taken on the horse, hit himand degraded him for a good half hour and let him go only when cars arrived at the checkpoint. The poor guy, he really didn't deserve it"; how they had a  souvenir picture taken with bloodied, bound Arabs whom they'd beaten up;  how Shahar pissed on the head of an Arab because the man had the nerve to  smile at a soldier; how Dado forced an Arab to stand on four legs and bark  like a dog; and how they stole prayer beads and cigarettes - "Miro wanted  them to give him their cigarettes, the Arabs didn't want to give so Miro broke  someone's hand, and Boaz slashed their tires."

Chilling confession

The most chilling of all the personal confessions: "I ran toward them and punched an Arab right in the face. I'd never punched anyone that way. He collapsed on the road. The officers said that we had to search him for his papers. We pulled his hands behind his back and I bound them with plastic handcuffs. Then we blindfolded him so he wouldn't see what was in the Jeep.  I picked him up from the road.

Blood was trickling from his lip onto his chin. I led him up behind the Jeep and threw him in, his knees banged against the trunk and he landed inside. We sat in the back, stepping on the Arab ... Our Arab lay there pretty quietly, just crying softly to himself. His face was right on my flak jacket and he was bleeding and making a kind of puddle of blood and saliva, and it disgusted and angered me, so I grabbed him by the hair and turned his head to the side. He cried out loud and to get him to stop, we stepped harder and harder on his back. That quieted him down for a while and then he started up again. We concluded that he was either retarded or crazy.

"The company commander informed us over the radio that we had to bring him to the base. `Good work, tigers,' he said, teasing us. All the other soldiers were waiting there to see what we'd caught. When we came in with the Jeep, they whistled and applauded wildly. We put the Arab next to the guard. He didn't stop crying and someone who understood Arabic said that his hands were hurting from the handcuffs. One of the soldiers went up to him and kicked him in the stomach. The Arab doubled over and grunted, and we all  laughed. It was funny ... I kicked him really hard in the ass and he flew forward just as I'd expected. They shouted that I was a totally crazy, and they laughed  ... and I felt happy. Our Arab was just a 16-year-old mentally retarded boy."

As I have said many times before, the roots of terrorism and anti-American feeling lie in US foreign policy.