The case against 'clashes': Misreporting Israel's massacre in Gaza

Middle East Eye

Everyone has heard the saying: "It's like shooting fish in a barrel."

These days, it seems the expression was perhaps expressly designed to describe events in the Gaza Strip, where on 14 May the Israeli army slaughtered no fewer than 60 Palestinians, among them paramedics, disabled persons, and a baby. The occasion: Palestinian protests against 70 years of vast injustice and a continuing panorama of brutal Israeli oppression and blockade, topped off by the recent inauguration of Donald Trump's US embassy in Jerusalem.

Israel has, of course, assigned blame to the Palestinians themselves - as no good assault on Gaza is complete without an attendant assault on logic. According to the official Twitter account of the Israeli military spokesperson, the episode unfolded as follows: "Throughout the day, the Hamas terror organisation led massive and violent attacks, which IDF troops operated to thwart."

Never mind that there's no detectable violence in the photograph accompanying the tweet, which instead appears to depict young and old Palestinians standing and walking in the charming prison-esque landscape to which Israel has reduced the Gaza Strip.

Journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous, reporting from the Gaza protests for Democracy Now, surveyed the terrible weaponry at the disposal of the Palestinians, including rocks, kites, balloons, and some Molotov cocktails - none of which, he specified, could reach the Israeli soldiers, "who are sitting behind these ramparts and picking people off with sniper rifles".

In addition to "high-velocity sniper bullet", Abdel Kouddous noted that doctors in Gaza had reported Israel's use of fragmentation bullets, as well, and had "seen injuries with fist-sized holes in the exit wounds". New and exciting tear gas-dispersing drones were also on the scene in the besieged Palestinian coastal enclave, which has previously played host to Israeli white phosphorus munitions, missiles and numerous other projectiles.

Facts on the ground notwithstanding, Western mainstream media has long had a knack for converting the fish-in-a-barrel scenario into a drastically different one. Think headlines along the lines of: "Fish in barrel clash with shooter", or "Fish die in barrel as shooter retaliates against aggression". 

Or "Fish drawn to surface of water, and into centre of earthly turmoil" - a possible equivalent of the New York Times' take on Israel's deadly air strike on four boys playing football in 2014: "Boys drawn to Gaza beach, and into centre of Mideast strife". READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.

Islamophobia without borders: The case of Brigitte Gabriel

Middle East Eye

"I am the Anne Frank who lived to tell about it, and I'm trying to warn the world."

These rather intense words were spoken not by a survivor of the Holocaust but by Brigitte Gabriel, a well-known Lebanese-American Islamophobe and self-styled "national security expert" who in 2017 discussed her "childhood under brutal terrorism" with US talk-show host Dave Rubin.

The author of such predictable (and bestselling) titles as Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America and They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, Gabriel is the founder of the ACT for America organisation, which specialises in the profitable dissemination of anti-Muslim propaganda (see, for example, this advisory: "If you live in a warm state such as Florida or Arizona and see someone dressed in an overcoat or unusual clothing for the season and the location, they may be hiding or packing explosives or a suicide belt").

But while Gabriel's tale of personal victimisation by "Islamic terror" may be an easy sell in a post-9/11 era of intensified bigotry - particularly given apparent Trumpian efforts to Make Fascism Great Again - her version of history isn't exactly reconcilable with reality.

As Gabriel tells it, she was born in the "once peaceful, idyllic Christian town" of Marjayoun in southern Lebanon - a country whose capital, Beirut, was "commonly called the Paris of the Middle East". A lengthy Buzzfeed report by journalist David Noriega points out that Gabriel was in fact born Hanan Qahwaji, but perhaps this name was too Middle East and not enough Paris. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.

A Nicaraguan Spring or imperial spring cleaning?

Al Jazeera English

In April, Nicaragua saw intense clashes between protesters and government forces that reportedly left dozens dead.

The protests were initially set off by proposed adjustments to the national social security system, which have now been cancelled by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

Journalist and former teleSUR English director Pablo Vivanco remarked to me in an email that, while the violence was no doubt "deplorable", it is difficult to view the events in Nicaragua outside a current context in which "left-leaning governments in Latin America have faced increasingly violent opposition coupled with mounting hostility from Washington". 

And while the proposed social security reforms "can certainly be criticised", Vivanco said, "it is also necessary to point out that some of the leading organisations in the protests were actually calling for harsher cuts and privatisations". Predictably, the right-wing crowd in the United States has commenced accelerated salivation at the prospect of the demise of one of the remaining leftish entities in the Americas. 

The US media has been helpfully dramatic, with the Wall Street Journal, for example, editorialising that "Ortega Has to Go". 

To be sure, Ortega & Co are nasty characters indeed .- but that doesn't mean the US should be involved in their departure. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.