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Hostages versus Prisoners: Israel war on Gaza is as much a war on weaponizing words
The biased American news media is using the lexicon handed to it by Israel’s propaganda efforts, portraying the Israeli “hostages” in what the media and Israel describes falsely as an exchange for Palestinian “prisoners.” The majority of so-called Palestinian prisoners are hostages who have been incarcerated without judicial process, charges or court appearances. Palestinians are arrested under the old British system of Administrative Detention in which they are held without charges, without trial, and without access to lawyers for up to six months, indefinitely renewed without the ability of the individual or family to challenge Israel’s action. Most are arrested for dissidence, protesting, waving Palestinian flags, standing up to Israel settlers and military. The majority are women and children. Only a small portion of the prisoners have faced judicial process.
By Ray Hanania
Ray Hanania
The war in Gaza is taking thousands of civilian lives, both Arab and Jewish, but it is the war of words about Gaza that has the potential to cause more grief, suffering and violence.
You can hardly blame Americans for being so ignorant about the fundamental facts. They have been subjected to a one-sided tsunami of pro-Israel propaganda for 75 years that inaccurately paints all Arabs as terrorists, haters, anti-Semites, and war mongers who oppose peace but embrace horrendous cruelty.
There is no justification for the horrendous brutality and carnage waged against Israeli men, women and children on October 7 by Hamas. What was done was unimaginable and inhuman.
That brutality has been meticulously portrayed to the American public by the mainstream Western news media, which has been very sympathetic to Israel and unsympathetic, no, hostile to Palestinians.
The plight of the Israeli hostages, for example, has dominated mainstream news media coverage. Some 1,400 Israelis were killed or taken hostage, according to Israeli government press releases and statements reported as fact by the mainstream news media. Statements made by Palestinians about Israeli brutality are treated with extreme skepticism by the same media undermining their impact.
No doubt much of the details of the carnage is true and condemnable on both sides. But we don’t know because Israel’s government restricts media access to its military campaigns only to media that are sympathetic to Israel’s government.
More than 15,000 Palestinians, including some 5,000 “children” under the age of 17 have been killed in the carnage according to Arab media reporting in Gaza.
Israel has not only challenged the reporting of journalists based in Gaza where Israel has committed many gruesome war crimes, they are also killing those journalists.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released a report showing 57 journalists, including several working for mainstream media, have been killed by Israeli fire power. The number continues to increase by the day. Another 19 journalists have been arrested by Israel.
https://cpj.org/2023/11/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict/
Israel’s war against Hamas is as much about military assaults as it is about controlling the words which help Israel control how their actions are defined. Israel’s actions are portrayed in a positive light and are therefore justified, while Palestinian actions are portrayed as negative and unjustified.
This manipulation of words is done on many levels, including in how Israel’s government describes the trading of captive Israelis for captive Palestinians.
Israelis are described as “hostages,” the victim of a crime. Palestinians are described as “prisoners,” criminals who have committed crimes. “Hostages” are humanized in the media while “prisoners” are demonized.
The imbalance in portrayal of “hostages” versus “prisoners,” humanizes the Israeli victims while it demonizes Palestinians. The word “hostages” evokes strong empathy while “prisoners” implies conclusively that the Palestinians are criminals who don’t deserve to be released.
This allows Israel to step-up its brutality against Palestinians, an unsympathetic target population, without concern for public protest or outrage. The outrage is for the “hostages.”
Defining Palestinians as “prisoners” also assumes a falsehood, that they were all convicted of crimes in a system of justice. It allows pro-Israel activists and the media to call them “terrorists.”
During the past several years, about half of Palestinians were actually serving out criminal sentences, although many were convicted outside of an impartial judicial system.
The remainder are civilians whose only crimes have been to protest against the brutality of the Israeli’ government occupation, the theft of Palestinian lands and their transfer to illegal settlers, and the killing of Palestinians who have been labeled as “terrorists” but have never been processed through a legal system of justice.
https://www.btselem.org/topic/administrative_detention
According to B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights, many Palestinians in Israeli prisons are detained for participating in protests against Israeli injustices. A large percentage of the prisoners are women and children as young as 12 years old.
These “prisoners” are incarcerated under an ancient system of injustice called “Administrative Detention” used during the British Mandate to suppress Jewish activism after World War I and before Israel’s creation in 1948.
At the time, Jews denounced “administrative detention” as a violation of human rights, today Israel’s government uses it to control the non-Jewish populations not only in the occupied territories but in some area of Israel.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-royals-israel-palestinians-me/palestinians-and-israelis-remember-life-under-british-rule-idUSKBN1JI1R4/
The term “Administrative Detention” is defined by B’Tselem as “incarceration without trial or charge, alleging that a person plans to commit a future offense. It has no time limit, and the evidence on which it is based is not disclosed. Israel employs this measure extensively and routinely, and has used it to hold thousands of Palestinians for lengthy periods of time. While detention orders are formally reviewed, this is merely a semblance of judicial oversight, as detainees cannot reasonably mount a defense against undisclosed allegations. Nevertheless, courts uphold the vast majority of orders.”
In reality, these so-called Palestinian “prisoners” are in fact hostages held by Israel as a means of quelling resistance to the government’s abusive policies and as a form of suppression to quell demands for their rights.
The contradiction fuels intense animosity against the Palestinians while strengthening sympathy for Israelis.
Even if Israel’s suspends its assault on Gaza, the larger assault on Palestinian rights continues everyday unabated by false pro-Israel media manipulations.
Israel hopes managing the words and phrases will be enough to prevent the American public from seeing the truth. And it allows Israel to apply an extreme form of violence without moral or judicial accountability.
Nowhere is the phrase “the pen is mightier than the sword” more applicable than in Israel’s hands.
(Ray Hanania is an award winning former Chicago City Hall reporter. A political analyst and CEO of Urban Strategies Group, Hanania’s opinion columns on mainstream issues are published in the Southwest News Newspaper Group in the Des Plaines Valley News, Southwest News-Herald, The Regional News, The Reporter Newspapers. His Middle East columns are published in the Arab News. For more information on Ray Hanania visit www.Hanania.com or email him at [email protected].)
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