The group Airwars just released the report “Patterns of harm analysis Gaza, October 2023,” concluding: “By almost every metric, the harm to civilians from the first month of the Israeli campaign in Gaza is incomparable with any 21st century air campaign. It is by far the most intense, destructive, and fatal conflict for civilians that Airwars has ever documented.”
Findings include: “Over the course of 25 days, Airwars recorded a minimum of 1,900 children killed by Israeli military action in Gaza. This is nearly seven times higher than even the most deadly month for children previously recorded by Airwars.”
BELÉN FERNÁNDEZ, belengarciabernal@gmail.com, @MariaBelen_Fdez
Fernández just wrote the piece “What We Talk About When We Don’t Talk About Genocide” for the media watch group FAIR.
She writes: “Imagine for a moment that a magnitude 8 earthquake occurred somewhere in the world, and the Western corporate media refused to use the word ‘earthquake’ in reporting it, instead talking ambiguously of a ‘tectonic incident’ that had caused buildings to collapse and people to die.
“Obviously, reporters would be called out for deliberate linguistic ineptness and a bizarre obfuscation of truth. And yet just such a verbal sleight of hand has been on display for more than 14 months in the Gaza Strip, where corporate media outlets continue to dance around the word ‘genocide’ while the Israeli military carries out the systematic mass killing of Palestinians.
“Since October 2023, nearly 45,000 people have officially been killed in Gaza — although as a letter to the Lancet medical journal (7/20/24) pointed out back in July, the true death toll at that time was likely to exceed 186,000. A new report (BBC, 11/8/24) from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights indicates that almost 70 percent of the over 8,000 Palestinian fatalities verified by the UN over a six-month period were women and children; a survey of medical volunteers in Gaza found that ’44 doctors, nurses and paramedics saw multiple cases of preteen children who had been shot in the head or chest in Gaza’ (New York Times, 10/9/24). … “Israeli leaders again and again have effectively admitted genocidal intent. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (Times of Israel, 10/9/23), at the beginning of Israel’s assault, declared: ‘I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed…. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.’ …
“Or take the New York Times, where a memo (Intercept, 4/15/24) leaked earlier this year explicitly instructed journalists to avoid using words like ‘genocide,’ ‘ethnic cleansing,’ and ‘occupied territory’ when discussing ‘Palestine’ — another word whose use was highly discouraged. …
“That said, the media have been increasingly unable to abide by a de facto blanket ban on the word ‘genocide,’ given, inter alia, Amnesty International’s recent determination (12/5/24) that Israel is committing just that in the Gaza Strip. In such cases, then, the term inevitably finds its way into news reports — but only as an allegation.”
Fernández also recently wrote the piece “No surprise Americans are ‘rooting for’ the UnitedHealthcare CEO’s killer.” Her latest book is Inside Siglo XXI: Locked Up in Mexico’s Largest Immigration Detention Center.