In Occupied Palestine
Zionism in practice
Israel’s Daily Toll on Palestinian Life, Limb, Liberty and Land
08:00, 11 January 2025 until 08:00, 12 January 2025
[Source of statistics: Palestinian Monitoring Group]
Gaza Strip
Attacks: There are no safe places for the militarily-dominated population in Gaza, who find themselves subjected to airstrikes and other missile attacks on buildings, homes and many essentialfacilities, as well as constant gunfire and invasions by Israeli forces. The Israeli Navy continues to fire missiles, targeting facilities and buildings along the entire Gaza shoreline.
Victims: 28 more people have been killed within the past 48 hours, bringing the total number killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023 to at least 46,565. Another 89 have been wounded, bringing that total to 109,660. The daily average number of men, women and children killed in Gaza is at least 100 and that of those injured is now more than 236.
When Israel Bombs, America Yawns
and Gatekeepers Silence the Truth
In a world where press freedom is under siege, journalists in Gaza risk their lives to report the truth while the global media remains complicit in silencing their voices.
By Dr. M. Reza Behnam | 12 January 2025
As gatekeepers of the corporate information bazaar, you have served Israel well. Echoing the propaganda of Tel Aviv and Washington has become mainstream fare, with omission at the heart of the campaign. Thomas Jefferson, America’s third president, judiciously wrote in 1789: “Whenever the people are well informed, they may be trusted with their own government.”
Unfortunately, today’s media mind managers have forgotten that. The public’s right to know the truth about Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians, supported by the United States, has been subordinated to currying the favour of special interest groups and moneyed interests. You have been tranquilised by your intimate relationship with the national security state, ever willing to espouse the pro-Israel views of the White House, State Department, the Pentagon, and most, if not all, members of the American political class.
British novelist George Orwell, in a passage from his prophetic novel 1984, aptly described the relationship that has evolved between the establishment media and Israel; he wrote: “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.” There is a tendency among journalists to believe in their individual autonomy, although most work in large, hierarchical, corporate media organisations. Many have convinced themselves that they are engaged in watchdog journalism when they are, in fact, acting as stenographers for the powerful. In the case of Israel, journalists quickly learn compliance: what can and cannot be said to protect careers. While pro-Israel reporting and editorialising are rewarded, exact narratives and historical perspectives suffer repercussions.
Censors have become unnecessary because an ideology of self-censorship has formed and congealed. Many journalists can recall instances when they were told not to antagonise powerful interests and advertisers, and can name principled journalists, like the late Helen Thomas and John Pilger, who were banished for saying the “unacceptable.” Years of unexamined logic, unrevealed truths, and self-deception in the coverage of Palestine-Israel and America’s defense of the Zionist colony have contributed to a laboured understanding of 7 October 2023, and its aftermath.
It was apparent soon after the October insurrection that you intended to focus on Israel’s story. The Islamic Resistance Movement’s (Hamas) act of resistance on that day has never been put into the context of Israel’s terror against the Palestinians. And you have never made it explicit that international law (Fourth Geneva Convention, 1949) affirms the right of national liberation movements—like Hamas—to resist, to use force against military occupation and colonisation. Astonishingly, fifteen months into the genocide, you continue to describe Israel’s war on an imprisoned stateless people under occupation as “defensive.” What you shamelessly leave out is that it is a war against all Palestinians, sponsored by the United States. Also missing from your coverage and analysis is Tel Aviv’s plan to grab more land to further its design for a “Greater Israel,” and to capture the water and other vital resources of its neighbours, Lebanon and Syria.
Israel has banned foreign journalists from Gaza. It has been Palestinian journalists who speak of the horrors that Israel has inflicted on Palestinians, and it has been they who have paid a heavy price. Since the beginning of the insurrection (October 2023–December 2024), Israel has killed 222 Palestinian journalists and media personnel. That is a war crime. Article 79 of the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions clearly states: all journalists “engaged in dangerous professional missions in zones of armed conflict shall be considered civilians…[and] shall be protected.” There are an estimated 85,000 news and editorial personnel in the profession in the United States. Although some have raised alarms over Israel’s targeting of them, persistent calls for fair coverage have gone essentially unheeded.
In November 2023, for example, 1,484 journalists signed a letter to leaders in Western newsrooms condemning the killing of reporters and their family members. They also encouraged newsroom editors to be “clear-eyed in coverage of Israel’s repeated atrocities against Palestinians.” An earlier attempt was made in June 2021. Then, 514 journalists signed an open letter stating: “For the sake of our readers and viewers—and the truth—we have a duty to change course immediately and end this decades-long journalistic malpractice. The evidence of Israel’s systematic oppression of Palestinians is overwhelming and must no longer be sanitised.”
The continuing erosion of press freedom and independence is reflected in the Reporters Without Borders 2024 World Press Freedom Index. It ranked the United States at 55 out of 180 countries indexed. Editorial intimidation has not stopped some reporters from trying to end the whitewashing of Israel. In November and December 2024, for example, journalists at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) endeavoured to expose the blatant pro-Israel bias that dominates its reporting on Gaza and the Occupied West Bank. BBC staffers stated that coverage consistently devalued Palestinian lives, ignored Israeli atrocities, and created a false equivalence between Israel and Hamas. They also called for an end to the practice of presenting Israel’s version of events as facts, and requested that more be done to provide regular historical context about Israel’s apartheid occupation that predates October 2023. Journalists at CNN have also expressed frustrations over systematic and institutionalised bias toward Israel and the silencing of Palestinian perspectives in their newsrooms.
Written language is the craft of journalists and journalism. Unfortunately, in the case of Israel, it has been distorted to normalise the abnormal, make the apocryphal real, and the fraudulent legal. The culture of silence on Gaza has made genocide—the most severe crime against humanity—the “accepted” backdrop of daily life. Examples abound of how language has been misused to sell the public on the idea that the genocide of Palestinians will make Israel secure. I bristle each time I hear journalists use the word “war” or “conflict,” used repeatedly, to describe the horrors Israel has inflicted on the Palestinians.
You have been driven to accept the Israeli regime’s narrative that its crime of extermination in Gaza is a “war,” while recognising that it is not. Responding to an Israeli airstrike on December 21, 2024, that killed 25 Palestinians in Jabaliya, including 12 members of one family, seven of them children, Pope Francis did not equivocate: “Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war.” Merriam-Webster tells us that war is “a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations.” The Gaza Strip is not a state. It is illegally occupied land, and its inhabitants have been under occupation and siege since 2007. War also implies a battle between equals or near-equals. The total asymmetry in power between Israel and Hamas continues to be unreported.
Dr. M. Reza Behnam is a political scientist specialising in the history, politics and governments of the Middle East. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
West Bank
[Palestinian Monitoring Group]
Since midnight on 07 October 2023, Occupation forces have been imposing a complete closure around the whole of the West Bank, preventing people (including even permit– holders) from entering both the city of Jerusalem as well as Israel, otherwise than for especially–negotiated exceptions. Permanent military checkpoints impose severe travel restrictions within the Occupied West Bank.
Israeli Army attack – 3 wounded: Ramallah – 15:50, armed, stone-throwing Israeli Occupation settlers, firing live ammunition as well as rubber-coated bullets, wounded three people near the Turmusaya road junction: Safi Awad, Mashhour Ahmed Mashhour and Ahmed Basem Al-Hindi.
Israeli Army attack – 1 wounded: Qalqiliya – 21:10, Israeli forces, on the annexation Wall near the town of Hablat, opened fire on a man, Muhammad Kayed Suwailem, wounding and hospitalising him.
Israeli Army attack to support raiding settlers – youngster wounded: Nablus – 12:15, the Israeli Army opened fire on people trying to resist an invasion by Occupation settlers in Yatma village, wounding a 17-year-old youth: Moaz Nader Damra.
Israeli Army attack – 1 wounded: Nablus – 13:00, Israeli troops, firing live ammunition and stun grenades, wounded a resident, Muhammad Iyad Sanakra, as they stormed the city, firing live and rubber-coated metal bullets and stun grenades.
Israeli Army attack – 1 wounded: Hebron – 18:00, the Israeli military, firing live ammunition and stun grenades, stormed the town of Dura, wounding a resident: Musheer Bassam Al-Zeer.
Israeli Army attack – 1 wounded: Hebron – 20:40, Israeli soldiers, near the entrance to al-Samou, opened fire on, wounded and hospitalised a man: Mahmoud Ahmed Issa Masalma.
Home invasion: Nablus – 13:00, Israeli Occupation forces raided the village of al-Badhan and invaded a home.
Home invasions: Nablus – 01:20–06:55, Israeli forces raided the village of Kafr Qallil and searched a number of houses.
Home invasions – population–control: Salfit – 22:25–00:50, the Israeli Army raided Deir Istiya, invading homes and forcing the shops to close.
Home invasions in refugee camp: Jericho – 00:25–02:30, the Israeli military raided the Aqbat Jabir refugee camp and searched several homes.
Home invasions: Bethlehem – afternoon, Israeli soldiers raided the village of Artas and searched a number of houses.
Home invasions: Hebron – dawn, raided Occupation forces raided and searched homes in the town of Carmel.
Israeli Army population–control: Ramallah – entrance to Ein Yabrud village leading to Route 60: closed – main entrance to Deir Abu Mash’al village, closed.
Israeli Army population–control: Tulkarem – western and southern entrances to the village of Shufa: closed – gate on the Jbara road, south of the city: closed.
Israeli Army population–control: Bethlehem – entrance to the town of Beit Fajjar: closed – western entrance to the town of Tuqu’: closed – entrance to the town of Janata: closed
Israeli Army population–control: Hebron – Occupation forces continued closures of the entrance to the Fahs area, south of the city, the southern entrance to Sa’ir, the eastern entrance to Dura, the northern entrance to Yatta and the entrances to Idhna, al-Dhahiriya and the al-Fawar refugee camp.
Occupation settler pepper–spray assaults: Jerusalem – 20:30, Israeli Occupation settlers pepper-sprayed people in passing vehicles, near the Mikhmas village roundabout, causing three peopleto fall ill: Mahmoud Abdel-Moati Jad Allah, Amir Adel Yousef Infi’at and Muhammad Imad Hamdi Hanani.
Occupation settler agricultural sabotage: Ramallah – morning, an Israeli settler grazed his sheep among crops on al-Mughayir village farmland.
Occupation settler stoning: Qalqiliya – 22:35, Israelis, from the Karnei Shomron settlement, stoned passing vehicles at its entrance.
Occupation settler stoning: Nablus – 11:35, Occupation settlers stoned vehicles on Mount Sabih, in the town of Beita.
Occupation settler stoning: Nablus – 11:35, Israeli settlers invaded the southern outskirts of the village of Madama and stoned people’s homes.
Occupation settler stoning: Salfit – 15:30, Occupation settlers stoned passing vehicles, on the Wadi Qana Road.
Occupation settler arson and physical violence: Bethlehem – evening, Israeli Occupation settlers assaulted farmers and shepherds, in the Deir Alla area of Kisan village, beating them up and setting fire to tent–dwellings and livestock shelters.
Raid – on refugee camp: Ramallah – 08:20-11:25, Israeli Occupation forces raided and patrolled al-Bireh and al-Amari refugee camp.
Raid – again on refugee camp: Ramallah – 10:35-12:05, Israeli forces again raided and patrolled the al-Amari refugee camp.
Raid – 2 taken prisoner: Ramallah – 23:55–00:40, the Israeli Army raided the village of Deir Abu Mash’al, taking prisoner two people.
Raid: Ramallah – evening, Israeli troops raided and patrolled the town of Beitunya.
Raid – population–control: Jenin – 15:40, the Israeli military took prisoner a man, Mahdi Muhammad Hassan Zakarneh, when he reported, as ordered, to Israeli Military Intelligence for interrogation.
Raid – abduction: Tulkarem – 04:45–07:35, Israeli soldiers raided the town of Anabta and abducted a 16-year-old youth: Laith Mu’ayyad Abu al-Asal.
Raid: Nablus – 10:55, Israeli Occupation forces raided and patrolled the village of Beit Imrin.
Raid – 3 injured, then taken prisoner: Nablus – 13:00, Israeli forces raided the city, injuring and then taking prisoner three residents.
Raid – 1 injured: Hebron – 18:00, the Israeli Army raided the town of Dura, injuring a resident.
Raid – 3 minors abducted: Hebron – 05:55, Israeli troops raided Beit Ummar and abducted three minors: two 15-year-olds Musab Khaled Qawqas Akhlil and Qais Muhammad Mahmoud Al-Tait, as well as 16-year-old Ahmad Raed Mufleh Adi.
Raid – 3 taken prisoner: Hebron – dawn, the Israeli military raided the city, taking prisoner three people.
Raid – 1 taken prisoner: Hebron – dawn, Israeli soldiers raided the al-Fawar refugee camp, taking prisoner one person.