Citizen Power

Will the Middle East devolve into more and expanded wars now that Israel is relentlessly bombing Gaza? At this point, over a thousand are dead or wounded, and Gaza hospitals can’t keep up with the injured. Watching CNN International most of the day has been very frustrating because CNN has a definite pro-Israel bias, but its international news team is a little more fair. They even interviewed Diana Buttu tonight. She is the speaker in the video above, on her speaking tour, Separate Is Never Equal: Stories of Apartheid from South Africa to Palestine. This is a national speaking tour featuring a South African reverend and Palestinian lawyer.   The tour, sponsored by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (www.endtheoccupation.org), draws on the parallels between the South African and Israeli systems of apartheid.

Ms. Buttu is a political analyst and the former legal advisor to the PLO, and she was very harsh in her words for Israel when interviewed on CNN. She blamed the attacks on their politics and upcoming election, and she also said that the line from Israel, that this is in “self-defense, ” was “precisely a lie” and cover for their political goals. She also described the seige and that Gaza has been treated badly by Israel for a long time. Buttu didn’t have a chance to describe more or give out statistics, but she was given at least a few minutes to talk. (You can also see Butto on Democracy Now talking about Israel’s long blockade of Gaza here.)

The U.S. media has never been fair to Palestinians, and has always been pro-Israel. We were actually told over the last few days that Gaza broke the ceasefire with no supporting evidence of that, and that Gaza refused to extend it, also with no evidence or supporting testimony. This bias will probably not change any time soon, but everyone who has a website can help by publishing things on their sites the defend Palestinians when possible, when fair and when accurate. The inaccuracy about this in American news media is really criminal. CNN devoted most of its coverage to giving various Israel-friendly sources most of their speaking time.

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