Monday, December 29, 2008

Why don't I hear about war crimes on Canadian tv news?

BubbleShare: Share photos - Find great Clip Art Images.

from Bubble on Sabbah's blog

I don't bother watching the mainstream news in Canada. It is too biased, whether CBC or CTV. I just go online or watch and get translations from my husband who tells me what the Arabic media (via satellite) are reporting. It's when you move outside of mainstream boxes that you can see how narrow "the news" is. What bugs me the most is how it's framed and what is left out. It's just so blatantly biased that it riles me. Do they really think folks are as stupid as they want us to be? No wonder most people are online these days. You can access all sorts of reports and images directly from the people affected, not the mediators of the mainstream press who try to whitewash bloodbaths.

Ola Madhoun writes from Gaza:

"How can a victim describe its own death after she was deprived of her soul? This is my profession through which I try to express my crushed and slaughtered soul, touching the bodies of the dead in the streets. But I can't ignore this trust I carry in my hands under the eyes of the world which refused to admit our suffering, our poverty, our sorrow and our right to live."

Greg Mitchell writes that the even the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz voices a more critical perspective on the assault on Gaza than does mainstream US media, and he cites a number of Israeli journalists, including the quotation:

"A million and a half human beings, most of them downcast and desperate refugees, live in the conditions of a giant jail, fertile ground for another round of bloodletting. The fact that Hamas may have gone too far with its rockets is not the justification of the Israeli policy for the past few decades, for which it justly merits an Iraqi shoe to the face."

Even the Jerusalem Post reports on the question of the violation of human rights in Gaza that Jewish American law professor Richard Falk asserts.

Occupiers and colonizers are supposed to protect the people that have been subjected to their policing. That is the Geneva Convention. That is what the lessons from World War II supposedly brought in. So, what is happening now in Gaza? As Richard Falk and Ali Abunimah (and others) assert, these are "war crimes carried out against occupied people and refugees with impunity."

4 comments:

Merche Pallarés said...

Very interesting all these posts. I'll try and visit them. Did you live in Lebanon?? Hugs, M.

northshorewoman said...

no, Merche, I did not live in Lebanon. My husband left Lebanon in the late 70s to escape the killing fields of the Lebanese civil war. My husband and our 3 adult children were visiting in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 when Israel invaded Lebanon once again. I stayed behind to finish my PhD writing and while I was in comfort and safety here I was overcome by terrible fear and anxiety from the unpredictable and massive Israeli bombings. Truly my heart goes out to the Gazan people who are living inside terror these days. Imminent and massive destruction that one cannot escape. It is worse than any personal anxiety of some feelings of loneliness or failure or hurt or whatever. To live inside state sanctioned terrorism is...well, there are no words for it.

Merche Pallarés said...

So you're older than what I thought from seeing your picture a few posts ago. I thought, from the picture, that you were in your thirties and single... Anyway, it must have been horrific for you to have your husband and children in the middle of the bombings in Lebanon. Thank goodness nothing happened to them. And, yes, the Gaza situation is unforgivable. They're, literally, in a rat hole. Poor palestinians!! Love 'n hugs, M.

northshorewoman said...

yes, Merche, I pass for much younger. I have lots of funny stories about this.