Unmasking Hypocrisy: The Western Media's War on Palestinian Truth

For a long time, I refrained from addressing this, but Dr. Ashik Bonofer's recent lecture on peace and conflict, with its sharp critique of the Western media's bias, finally compelled me to write. Since the events of October 7, 2023, the Israeli occupation has intensified its campaign against Palestinians, and, unsurprisingly, Western media coverage has followed the same pattern of distortion and dehumanization. What we are witnessing is not objective journalism; it is a propaganda machine mobilized to frame Israel as the perpetual "victim" while portraying the Palestinians as a faceless enemy.

Edward Said, the pioneering Palestinian-American scholar, warned decades ago in 'The Question of Palestine' that Palestinians have been denied even the basic right to narrate their history. His words still echo as we see today's news headlines, where the Israeli airstrikes on Gaza are continually framed as "self-defence" despite the countless civilians—mothers, children, entire families—who perish beneath the rubble. This erasure, which began with the Nakba in 1948, is now backed by the full force of Western media, sanitizing every atrocity as just another chapter in Israel's "security."

Even research backs this claim. In 2020, Dr. Maha Nassar, a professor at the University of Arizona, studied decades of Western media coverage and exposed its inherent racism and disdain for Palestinians. Her findings aren't shocking; they simply lay bare what's long been apparent—that the Western media's editorial lines and their columnists uphold a narrative of Palestinian "violence" while casting Israel as the eternal "victim." These publications refuse to hear Palestinian voices, let alone give them space to speak.

In fact, any attempt by Palestinians to discuss their struggle is systematically silenced. Last April, the University of California tried to host an online forum titled "Whose Narratives? Where is Free Speech for Palestinians?" It was immediately censored by Facebook and YouTube, which labelled it as "promoting terrorism." This wasn't about terrorism; it was about Palestinians daring to tell their story. But the Western media and its platforms won't tolerate that, not when they're so invested in upholding the Israeli state's sanitized image.

In recent days, we've seen the brutality intensify. Gaza is being bombed to oblivion, and yet every Western headline reduces this massacre to "Israel's right to defend itself." Raneem Hassan, a Palestinian writer, questioned this narrative: "How can you call the assault on an unarmed people' self-defence'?" The world is not witnessing self-defence; it is witnessing ethnic cleansing—plain and simple. Even Israeli historian Ilan Pappe called it what it is in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. But does this perspective reach Western headlines? Rarely, if ever.

Then there's the unforgettable 2021 interview between Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd and CNN, an interview that resurfaced during this ongoing conflict as a reminder of media bias in action. When CNN's anchor demanded to know, "Do you support violence against Israelis?" El-Kurd, in a moment that, 'cut to the core' of this hypocrisy, replied: "Do you support the violence against my family?" The anchor was left speechless. Afterwards, El-Kurd shared this interview on social media, commenting, "If this hadn't been live, they'd likely have edited my words to fit their agenda." His point was clear: if a Palestinian is killed, it's shrugged off as an "accident"; if an Israeli dies, it's mourned as "murder." This is how Western media defines life and death in this conflict—a double standard that underpins every story they tell.

And just when the pandemic brought the world to its knees, Israel pulled another stunt, revealing its contempt for Palestinians. Western media headlines read that "Palestinians reject COVID-19 vaccines from Israel," failing to mention that these vaccines had expired. This isn't journalism; it's calculated deception, crafted to paint Palestinians as unreasonable, even when their refusal was based on Israel's complete disregard for their safety. These are not isolated examples; they form a pattern of systemic lies and omissions designed to discredit Palestinian suffering and whitewash Israeli aggression.

Today, as Gaza endures unspeakable horrors, the same tactics of distortion are at play. We see the reports of Israel's "pain" and the Western world's sympathy for its "trauma," but where is the coverage of Gaza's humanity? If an Israeli dies, the headlines scream murder. If an entire Palestinian family is wiped out in a bombing, it barely registers as a statistic.

The Western media has chosen a side, and it's not one of justice. They stand with power, oppression, and occupation, consistently amplifying Israel's narrative while suffocating Palestine's. If you're swayed by this one-sided portrayal, the issue isn't with Palestinians fighting for survival. The problem is within those who continue to consume these lies, who refuse to look beyond their screens and question the truth behind the headlines.

This is not a conflict of equal sides; it's a struggle between humanity and inhumanity. History will bear witness to the Western media's complicity in these crimes, and when the veil of these lies is finally lifted, it will reveal who stood with the oppressed—and who stood on the side of oppression.

✍️ Athul Krishna

#Thank you Ashiq sir for editing this article