Systemic misreporting on the Israeli occupation of Palestine and Palestinian resistance

Kia ora NZ media – please pause and read this as you continue reporting on the Hamas attack on Israel.

By
John Minto
-
69
2053

Yesterday’s Hamas attack on Israel has bought the usual round of systemic misreporting by New Zealand news outlets as they repost stories from the BBC, AP and Reuters which bend the truth in favour of Israel narratives of “terrorism” and “victimhood”.

The worst comes from the BBC which is dutifully reposted by Radio New Zealand.

As we said in a media release earlier this year the systemic anti-Palestinian in reporting from the Middle East includes:

  1. The BBC, AP and Reuters typically talk about the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem when they should be reported as the occupied West Bank, occupied Gaza and occupied East Jerusalem. “Occupied” is the status these territories have under international law, United Nations resolutions and NZ government policy and should be consistently reported as such.
  2. The BBC, AP and Reuters typically refer to Palestinians resisting Israel’s military occupation Palestinian “militants” or “terrorists” or similar derogatory and dismissive descriptions.

We wouldn’t call Ukrainians attacking Russian occupation forces as “militants” so why do our media think it’s OK to use this term to describe Palestinians attacking Israeli occupation forces?

Under international law Palestinians have the right to resist Israel’s military occupation, including armed resistance and should not be abused for doing so by our media. Palestinian resistance groups should be described as “resistance fighters” or “armed resistance organisations” while Israeli soldiers should be described as “Israeli occupation soldiers”.

- Sponsor Promotion -
  1. The BBC, AP and Reuters typically give sympathetic coverage to Israelis killed by Palestinians but do not give similar sympathetic coverage to Palestinians killed, on a near daily basis, by the Israeli occupation (over 240 killed so far this year, including dozens of children. The vast majority of these killings are simply ignored.

Palestinians are the victims of Israeli apartheid policies, ethnic cleansing, land theft, house demolitions, military occupation and unbridled brutality and yet our media ends up giving the impression it’s the other way round.

  1. Wide coverage is given to Israeli spokespeople in most stories with rudimentary reporting, if any, from Palestinian viewpoints.

For example, so far Radio New Zealand has reported on the views of New Zealand Jewish Council spokesperson Juliet Moses but has yet to interview any Palestinian New Zealanders who suffer great anxiety every time Palestinians are killed by Israel.

New Zealanders overwhelmingly support the Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination. They rightly reject Israel’s racist narratives and its apartheid policies towards Palestinians.

Our government policy needs to change.

We should not be calling for negotiations between the parties because Palestinians face both Israel and US at the negotiating table and this will never bring justice for Palestinians and will therefore never bring peace.

Instead we need a timeline for Israel to abide by international law and United Nations resolutions. This would mean:

  • Ending the Israeli military occupation of Palestine
  • Ending Israel’s apartheid policies against Palestinians
  • Allowing Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and land in Palestine

69 COMMENTS

    • Why would he? So-called peace talks in the past have favoured one side only. And already on our media we are getting stories of the sufferings of poor hard-done-by Israelis.. Sufferings of Palestinians ignored.
      It is as bad as the anti-Russian propaganda we are constantly fed about the Ukraine.
      Will we ever get any impartial reporting on NZ media again?

    • “We should not be calling for negotiations between the parties because Palestinians face both Israel and US at the negotiating table and this will never bring justice for Palestinians and will therefore never bring peace.”
      John is constantly in the media doing things that show he wants peace for Palestine & a few months ago brought a speaker to Christchurch to tell of the unfair conditions they are subject to. As the article states it is the Israeli government causing the problem & while I do not support violence it is a natural reaction of most people to respond to unjust treatment so the action by Hammas is not a surprise.

  2. “The only way to end this war is for the international community to place pressure on Israel to end it’s occupation.”
    – Professor of International Law, Ottawa University; about 3:30 pm NZ time via Al Jazeera.

    Excellent work, John. The mainstream media has been appalling.

    Solidarity with the victims – on both sides!

  3. Wondered how long it would take for the anti-semite Minto to find a way to blame anyone but the terrorists in Hamas for terrorism

  4. He is on the terrorist side, whole world is against Hamas (well except the aggressive Muslim countries of course)
    Iran at the bottom of the attack, supplying the rockets, Iran will pay the price eventually.

    • Iran is a military superpower it has the capacity to defend itself even after 4 decades of sanctions. Iran is one of the stanches supporter of Palestine so what if they allegedly supported Hamas logistic training, weaponry etc? Israel has been supported militarily by western nations especially the US so fuck you if you don’t like evening up the playing field.

  5. Like a lot of old Boomers you place far too much emphasis on the MSM.

    But for younger generations it’s been Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, Discord, Telegram and so forth, that have carried the news to us, often in the form of un-edited phone video and photos, and by both sides.

    So my visceral reaction comes not from watching the propaganda of the BBC and company (and only a True Far Lefter could describe them as pro-Israel) but from seeing the gleeful photos and video that has been uploaded by Hamas themselves to social media, in which they have gloried in the killing of unarmed men, woman and children and Allahu Akbarred over the dead corpses of men and woman dumped into the backs of trucks and on the street.

    No doubt Hamas consider this a successful propaganda mission for their side, but they don’t seem to have considered the effect on the other side.

  6. Yes, the bias and hypocritical coverage of what is no less what Ukraine does right now!

    There was a proper journalist at the RNZ up until recently who corrected false and inaccurate reports from Reuters but they sacked him for doing his job!!

    The sooner Biden gets done over by RFK, and a few more EU and NATO current leaders get dumped in upcoming elections across Europe. All this madness might settle down. The West has really lost it’s head.

    The BRIICS+ are looking the grown ups in the room.

  7. There’s going to be a lot of calling anti Zionism anti Semitism. They are not the same thing. Isreali propaganda will insist they are. The standard slander and lie they hide behind whilst committing their crimes.

    • It’s also not about either of those two things. It’s about the illegal occupation of Palestinian land! The Zionism and religion issues are a distraction from the cause. The Israeli government and it’s illegal occupation on the Palestinian land.

    • Aha NJ. So you are outing yourself as an anti-Semite. I suspected as such. No doubt you deny the holocaust as well.

  8. What was that about sowing the wind?and protesting about Israel’s activities carried out under the excuse of their right to self defense does not necessarily make one anti semitic.

    • “…. protesting about Israel’s activities carried out under the excuse of their right to self defense does not necessarily make one anti semitic. Kiwijoker

      The Russian Federation has used the very same excuse of “Self Defence”
      for their invasion and occupation in Ukraine.
      Counsel for the Russian Federation in their submission before the UN International Court of Justice explicitly repeated the Russian Federation excuse for the invasion of Ukraine and the shelling of its civilian population as “Self Defence”.
      This excuse rings hollow in both cases.

      https://www.currentaffairs.org/2023/07/if-you-support-ukrainian-resistance-to-occupation-you-must-also-support-palestinian-resistance-to-occupation

      Nathan J. Robinson

      If the seizure and occupation of territory is wrong when Russia does it, it is wrong when Israel does it. Why does the U.S. support the resistance in one case and th occupiers in the other?

      For that matter; Why does NZ support the resistance in one case and the occupiers in the other?

      The other excuse the Zionist colonisers and the Kremlin imperialists have in common to justify their aggression and land grab is to demonise the victims of their aggression as “fascists and Nazis”.
      Again in both cases this accusation rings hollow.

      https://apnews.com/61ead35a427a408e9d93d43f41cfa064

    • Remember apartheid Israel is the only democracy in the M.E. Its roots are from british imperialism thanks to an anti-Semite Arthur Balfour. This is karma and world war 3 is here.

    • However the Israeli’s have not been particularly nice to the Palestinian’s over the past 80 years IMHO.

  10. “New Zealanders overwhelmingly support the Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination.”

    An informed New Zealand might behave this way but we are not informed. We are either uninformed or misinformed thanks to “systemic misreporting”, typically by mainstream media. Money and powerful interests has kneecapped the media but our own apathy towards doing our own due diligence towards the news we choose has also helped in shaping the misinformed news that swamps the information waves. In this instance, the lack of protest and push back against government inaction on this issue just highlights how uninformed we really are.

    The world is what it is because of what we know, or think we know, as such, we really know stuff all…we gotta do better!

  11. How about pause for a moment and think about the horror and its impact on people, families, communities and wider humanity. Religion needs to be set aside. Utu is a religious and primative idea and behaviour.

  12. Totally correct John with regards to the usual western Israeli propaganda spewing forth since yesterday.

    Al Jazeera offers some alternative view points but the best news site is WAFA which is the Palestinian news service which I am sure you are aware of which gives a lot more perspective of what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank from the Palestinian people themselves not some western propaganda exercise for the Iraeli government and military.

    Also interesting is the Iranian perspective and a number of other middle eastern countries and their viewpoint including Lebanon which may be drawn in to a larger conflict.

    I’ve never thought of you as an anti Semite which is one of the criticisms made on this post , if that was the case then you would be labelled a racist against white people for your courageous stand in 1981 and the years following the Tour to highlight the plight of black South Africans who like the Palestinians suffered under an apartheid regime.

    I’ve never heard you described as racist John rather a advocate for the oppression of the Palestinian people and the sickening hypocrisy of the U.S and others who support the Israeli state , its crimes and the propaganda and deceit that western media insists on spreading.

    The Palestinian people continue to pay the price for the Wests middle eastern policy of containing its ally Israel against other Arab states and the influence of Iran.

    https://english.wafa.ps/

  14. Since Israel lurched further to the right ,,, and Nethanyaho got back into power leading a coalition of extremists including followers of Meir Kahane ,,,, it’s been open slather against the Palastinians ,,,,

    “Kahane was a Jewish supremacist who espoused violence and wanted to establish a theocratic Jewish state encompassing not just all of current Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories (the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza), but large parts of neighboring Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.” https://imeu.org/article/fact-sheet-meir-kahane-the-extremist-kahanist-movement

    The Palestinians have been under the hammer with things getting worse and worse for them,,,,, and now a whole lot of them,,, including women and children are going to be killed.

    This is the fruits and natural result of Zionism with the violence of Kahanists ,,,,

    Shame on our media for covering up the long and building lead up ….

  15. Fuck BDS just take your country back literally kick those settlers from your lands!! They don’t like it when the shoe is on the other foot!! Syria needs to take back the Golan Heights and kick those settlers off their lands.

  16. Your last point is justice, but beyond politics — see NZ. The other two can be done.

    Looked forward to your right reporting. I told off the ACT guy on Twitter.

    I learnt about the Palestinian rebellion from a crazy conspiracist customer. She gathered her wits and said ‘Gaza has had enough’. I responded with Elvis’s ‘caught in a trap’. This rebellion reminds me of the Vietnamese uprising in 1968, that put the Yanks off continuing.

    We Pakeha conquered NZ, if the Japanese had got here in 1942, as a lot of us expected, we would learn what it is to be second-class citizens. So I’ll go back to the ancestors of my heart, the Scots (yep, the ever on the make henchmen of the English), if Scotland, like Palestine, was conquered I’d kill every conqueror I saw without relent.

  17. You can’t be an idealist and support Israel. And that is the foundation of Israel. As we well knew into the 80s.

    You have to leave the idealism for the people to carry on with support for Israel and, also, Russia.

    And the Left lives and dies by idealism.

  18. “New Zealanders overwhelmingly support the Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination. They rightly reject Israel’s racist narratives and its apartheid policies towards Palestinians.” Really? You can speak for the whole country? How could you possibly know? An insight into the minds of NZers of Orwellian capacity?!

  19. Didn’t take long for the terrorist supporters to start brigading the site. Too bad about the civilian hostages so long as you all can show your support for the muslim death cult

    • The papal church murdered around 50 million people during the Dark Ages which allows other religions a bit of leeway for mistakes. What is wrong with other people having different views, caring for suffering people does not make you a terrorist supporter & having the freedom to choose what we believe is the most important freedom to have.

  21. I’m seeing another US clusterfuck developing here. The US is going in to evacuate their people held hostage. The IDF fights from a few thousand feet above.

    The US are talking up boots on the ground in Palestine. Russia may do the same as they too have people being held hostage.

    This is awesome! Whoever thought of this strategy to bring them superpowers altogether in Palestine is a clever bugga.

  22. The besieged/blockaded coastal strip of Gaza is 21 Kms long and a few Kms wide ( which is probably smaller than Wellingtons Hutt valley which comprises Petone, Lower Hutt and Upper Hut) ,,, 2.2 million people live in this small area of Gaza.

    Netenyahu has told the Gaza People to leave,, as Israel is going to carpet bomb and fire-bomb this small area…. But there is literally nowhere for them to go,,,, “Israel’s Netanyahu tells Gaza residents: “Leave now”” https://youtu.be/Kk3pZYA79zo

    It’s The Story Of A Jailbreak https://youtu.be/c9H9nA61GGA

  23. Thank you John! It is so hard to find correct information amidst NZ’s mainstream western narrative! I appreciate you!

  24. Hamas terrorists clearly have no problems shooting kids armed with nothing but glo sticks – problem for Hamas is those same kids all receive military training and are going to come back with more than glo sticks.
    You reap what you sow.

    • These “military trained”, “kids” would have known that they were literally dancing on the graves of Palestinians.

      People drink, snack and pose for selfies against a background of explosions as Palestinian death toll mounts in ongoing offensive…
      ….Despite reports that millions of Israelis are living in terror of Hamas rockets, they don’t deter these hilltop war watchers whose proximity to Gaza puts them within range of the most rudimentary missiles. Some bring their children…..
      …In the border town of Sderot, which has been struck by countless missiles from the Gaza Strip in recent years, one family gathers on a top-floor balcony, draped with an Israeli flag and banner of the army’s legendary Golani Brigade. A house with a war view may even command a premium price these days.

      ….Given the dramatic views, media crews are coming to the area to cover the fighting. On a nearby hilltop, an ugly scene develops as a group of Israeli men threaten a photographer, accusing him of being a “leftist”. We are warned against asking for interviews, as another cheer goes up.

      Harriet Sherwood in Sderot
      @harrietsherwood
      Sun 20 Jul 2014 14.38 BST

      https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/israelis-cheer-gaza-bombing

  25. As an example of the propaganda, censorship and extreme bias from western media ,,,,,all which lets people like James Brown Ignore Israeli crimes and their murders ,,, is the now disappeared factual link I posted above ,,,, on the GENOCIDAL WAR CRIMES that Kahanist Israel is planning to commit ….. Described here https://youtu.be/HcY2KlllgPo?t=353

    The disappeared link ….. “Israel’s Netanyahu tells Gaza residents: “Leave now”” https://youtu.be/Kk3pZYA79zo

    • Israel has the capability to destroy everything and everyone in Gaza and yet it doesn’t- the only reason Hama’s etc haven’t destroyed Tel Aviv is because they don’t have the means.
      Palestian civilians are killed in largely instances of ‘collateral damage’ etc – Isreali children are intentionally decapitated by Palestinian terrorists.
      Only difference between Hama’s and Taliban and Isis is geography.

      • Fact-check: Probability of children being beheaded being correct 4/10
        The original source was David Ben Zion, a right wing settler leader made to a local TV station i24.
        The Israeli Government has walked back the claim saying it “May” be correct.
        David Ben Zion is on record of making statements earlier this year calling for a Local Palestinian village to “Be wiped out”
        David Ben Zion posted several videos to FB after the interview grinning like a Cheshire cat.
        Hard to believe if he witnessed the alleged atrocity.

Comments are closed.