Israel’s violence is open terrorism — stop calling it ‘clashes’

Here we go again. The State of Israel is committing unchecked barbarism against Palestinians and Western corporate media have decided it all boils down to “conflict.”

The latest round of so-called “conflicts” — which erupted when Israeli police decided to mark the Islamic holy month of Ramadan by repeatedly attacking Palestinian worshipers at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque — has predictably resulted in disproportionate casualties.

Hundreds of Palestinians have been arrested and wounded as Israeli troops have again demonstrated their dexterity with rubber bullets, batons, stun grenades and tear gas. In return, police received minimal injuries while also committing themselves to escorting illegal Israeli settlers to the mosque grounds.

And apparently not content with simply unleashing violence in Jerusalem, Israel has also launched a barrage of airstrikes against the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon after reported rocket fire.

As with all past examples of Israeli-Palestinian “conflicts,” the media’s choice to use such terminology serves to obscure Israel’s monopoly on violence and the fact that Israel is killing, maiming, and maiming at an astronomically higher rate than its supposed counterpart in “collision”. ”.

It also obscures the reality that Palestinian violence is a response to a now nearly 75-year-old Israeli policy defined by the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the occupation of Palestinian lands, and the periodic massacres — excuse me, “clashes.”

Choose from contemporary Israeli military strikes and you’ll see maneuvers like Operation Protective Edge, the euphemism for the 2014 massacre of 2,251 people in the Gaza Strip, including 551 children. Over a 22-day period beginning in December 2008, Operation Cast Lead claimed the lives of some 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza; three Israeli civilians were killed.

“Clashes” also abounded in 2018 when, in response to protests on the Gaza border, the Israeli army killed hundreds of Palestinians and injured thousands. And in May 2021, an 11-day Israeli rampage titled Operation Guardian of the Walls killed more than 260 Palestinians, about a quarter of whom were children. Coincidentally, this latest operation was initiated by – what else? – “clashes” at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

This piece of trivia has prompted certain news outlets to worry about what the current “spiral bloodshedbetween Israelis and Palestinians — another media slogan that ultimately whitewashes Israel’s predominant role in the shedding of blood.

It is, of course, difficult to find a linguistic or moral equivalent to the media’s obsession with reporting Israeli atrocities as “conflicts”. One would not see a moose “colliding” with a shotgun, just as one would not perceive a “colliding” between a human neck and a guillotine.

Nor would one describe the deadly United States bombing of a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, in 2015 as a “clash” between a medical facility and an AC-130 gunship.

But while clearly unethical, the Western media’s obsequiousness to the Israeli narrative is nothing new. Much of this has to do with the US’s staunch support, in particular, for the Israeli position, which sees victims as victims and massacres as self-defense.

Perhaps the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 — which slaughtered thousands of Palestinians and destroyed more than 500 Palestinian villages — was ultimately just one big “clash.” To be sure, Israel’s longstanding propaganda campaign to confuse Palestinians with terrorism continues to yield significant media dividends.

This is the case even with seemingly more progressive venues that are willing to denounce Israeli crimes but still fail to place Palestinians on the same level of humanity as Israelis. In February of this year, for example, Lawrence Wright of The New Yorker magazine tweeted a video of Israeli soldiers shoving and kicking Palestinian peace activist Issa Amro as Wright interviewed him in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron. The New Yorker writer’s takeaway: “I can’t stop thinking how dehumanizing the occupation is for the young soldiers charged with enforcing it”.

In other words, Israeli soldiers are victims of moral degradation and dehumanization, while Palestinians never really become human in the first place.

As the Israeli security forces continue to dehumanize and dehumanize Jerusalem and Gaza, the whole jargon of “clashes” only reinforces the idea that Israel is fundamentally justified in its violence, presented as just part of a fair, tit-for-profit regime. -tat competition between two equitable parties.

In August 2022, a three-day Israeli army assault on Gaza killed at least 44 Palestinians, including 16 children – the bloodiest since Operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021. Exactly zero Israelis were killed as a result of the August affair and yet the Western media stood breathless and dutiful reports of “collision”.

As I noted in an article for Al Jazeera at the time, the online version of the Cambridge Dictionary defines terrorism as “(threat of) violent action for political purposes.” And the more we remind ourselves that Israel is literally terrorizing the Palestinians, the sooner we may be able to end all this talk of “conflict.”

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial view of Al Jazeera.