In praise of Ms Jennifer Lowenstein [Archives:2005/870/Opinion]
For all those dogmatic chauvinistic Zionist freaks of the world, who wish to insist that anti-Zionism is to be equated with anti-Semitism (itself a historical misnomer of profound implications, the observer cannot but come to a point of elation at screaming out praise and applaud to the many thousands of Jews and even Israelis, who say hay there is something wrong here. In fact, one is bound to say that people like Jennifer Lowenstein, who recently wrote a masterpiece of journalistic appraisal of the Charade that took place in Gaza are the real heroes encountering this ugly mess that a few ideologues have made of the Holy Land. Led by Ariel Sharon and backed by the all powerful neo-con establishment, which at present holds sway in he United States, it is unthinkable k that any Jew or even gentile would dare stand up to a monstrous media machine that has turned right into wrong, good into evil and pain and bloodshed into an inalienable right meted to the ugly forces of the world to serve the narrow interests of cold blooded murderers who have lost all sense of humanity.
For this reason one is bound to claim that indeed there is a spiteful of good here and there in the world that stands as a shining beacon to those who think that all hope is lost because the evil have got all the factors going for them: the military muscle, the media, the money and the timidity and weakness of the victims, who helplessly stand in their way. In Counterpunch, Ms Lowenstein lent us her journalistic talent to portray the fallacy of a media controlled by the ugly forces that are working night and day to overwhelm the international public with a facade of humanity, sadness and sorrow in a staged systematic effort to depict the Israeli evacuation of Gaza as a “great moment of history”. In an article, “The Shame of It All” (http://www.counterpunch.org/loewenstein08172005.html), Ms Lowenstein brings out the true tragedy in the Holy Land with contempt not only for the real aggressor in the Holy land, but for the media as well. She notes with passionate disbelief how this media can turn fact into fiction, the victims into the aggressors and the aggressor into a suffering hero, who deserves all the sympathy of the world.
This observer would like to share some of the thoughts that went through the mind of Ms Lowenstein and several enlightened Jews, Gentiles and Moslems as they saw this staged drama of historic proportions. This is in terms of the immense melodrama inputted into the charade and the outrageous exaggerated coverage accorded to the masterpiece of deception intended for the unknowing to take in as fact:
“A great charade is taking place in front of the world media in the Gaza Strip. It is the staged evacuation of 8000 Jewish settlers from their illegal settlement homes, and it has been carefully designed to create imagery to support Israel's US-backed takeover of the West Bank and cantonization of the Palestinians.
There was never the slightest reason for Israel to send in the army to remove these settlers. The entire operation could have been managed, without the melodrama necessary for a media frenzy, by providing them with a fixed date on which the IDF would withdraw from inside the Gaza Strip. A week before, all the settlers will quietly have left with no TV cameras, no weeping girls, no anguished soldiers, no commentators asking cloying questions of how Jews could remove other Jews from their homes, and no more trauma about their terrible suffering, the world's victims, who therefore have to be helped to kick the Palestinians out of the West Bank.”
On the other side, Ms Lowenstein records the obvious absence of the media in covering objectively the sad plight of the Palestinians over the last five years in Gaza and the West Bank as the Zionist hate machine unleashes its thirst for hatred and blood against a helpless population that has been forcefully systematically evacuated from their homes for the greater part of a century to make way for these settler “heroes”, who now must contend with their own “brothers and sisters” kicking them out from their illegal settlements:
“The settlers will relocate to other parts of Israel and in some cases to other illegal settlements in the West Bank handsomely compensated for their inconvenience. Indeed, each Jewish family leaving the Gaza Strip will receive between $140,000 and $400,000 just for the cost of the home they leave behind. But these details are rarely mentioned in the tempest of reporting on the 'great confrontation' and 'historical moment' brought to us by Sharon and the thieving, murderous settler-culture he helped create.”
The hypocrisy of the media is further revealed by Ms. Lownestein:
“On Tuesday, 16 August, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that more than 900 journalists from Israel and around the world are covering the events in Gaza, and that hundreds of others are in cities and towns in Israel to cover local reactions. Were there ever that many journalists in one place during the past 5 years to cover the Palestinian Intifada?
“Where were the 900 international journalists in April 2002 after the Jenin refugee camp was laid to waste in the matter of a week in a show of pure Israeli hubris and sadism? Where were the 900 international journalists last fall when the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza lay under an Israeli siege and more than 100 civilians were killed? Where were they for five years while the entire physical infrastructure of the Gaza Strip was being destroyed? Which one of them reported that every crime of the Israeli occupation from home demolitions, targeted assassinations and total closures to the murder of civilians and the wanton destruction of commercial and public property- increased significantly in Gaza after Sharon's “Disengagement” Plan – that great step toward peace – was announced?
Where are the hundreds of journalists who should be covering the many non-violent protests by Palestinians and Israelis against the Apartheid Wall? Non-violent protesters met with violence and humiliation by Israeli armed forces? Where are the hundreds of journalists who should be reporting on the economic and geographic encirclement of Palestinian East Jerusalem and of the bisection of the West Bank and the subdivision of each region into dozens of isolated mini-prisons? Why aren't we being barraged by outraged reports about the Jewish-only bypass roads? About the hundreds of pointless internal checkpoints? About the countless untried executions and maimings? About the torture and abuse of Palestinians in Israeli prisons?”
Thank you, Ms. Lowenstein! Your courage and understanding really deserve all the honors one can bestow on a great journalist.
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[archive-e:870-v:13-y:2005-d:2005-08-22-p:opinion]
