Despite the biased western media coverage of recent developments in Iraq that are tarnishing to the Bush administration’s image, including Haditha and Abu Sifa massacres, recent atrocities committed in Iraq indicate beyond doubt that the U.S. is adopting a new method of its menu of crimes against humanity, all with the aim of breaking the Iraqi resistance fighters and rebels, an editorial on Palestine Chronicle said.
We all saw the international silence over the recent scandals of the U.S. and Israeli occupying armies in Iraq and Palestine.
In Iraq, the latest release of Abu Ghraib photos uncovered the true inhuman extent of abuse and violations of human rights at the hands of the U.S. military personnel, charges that had been repeatedly rejected by the U.S. Army and Department of Defense as baseless.
Also the bloody U.S. massacre that took place in the Iraqi city of Haditha last November, where the American invaders killed 15 Iraqi civilians in their homes. Was this self-defense as the military claimed, or was it an accident or cold-blooded revenge?
And in Palestine, Israeli soldiers continue daily bloodshed and attacks claiming the lives of innocent civilians. On March 18, a 7-year old girl was murdered by Israeli soldiers in Al Yamun, a town in the northern West Bank. Akaber Abdul Rahman Zaid was killed by the Israeli murderers while on her way to a doctor's clinic to have stitches removed from her chin.
Instead of receiving the needed medical treatment, Akaber received a barrage of bullets to the head.
800 Palestinian children had been massacred since September 2000- Who shall take responsibility for those innocents’ death? Who shall be held accountable?
Among Western governments, silence prevails over those massacres’ victims are Arabs.
This should alarm people towards the horrifying spread of this phenomenon, while there’s a despicable aversion to calling it by its name.
But many in the West refuse to call those crimes by their true name, “massacre”, while they condemn the “massacre” of whales, dolphins or a few white men anywhere around the world.
“Modern” massacres like that which took place in Iraq in 2004, when the U.S. forces used phosphorus against Iraqi civilians in “unruly” cities like Fallujah and Qaim, have always been a standard U.S. and British tactic.
The language many Western media outlets use in describing such horrific acts leads to sanitizing such crimes, even to normalizing it as a nasty, yet unavoidable, part of “war,” the editorial adds.
The Guardian refused to call Haditha “event” a massacre, avoiding as well any terms usually used to describe similar “atrocities” particularly those involving white victims.
Also commenting on last month’s U.S. attack in Mustafa mosque in Iraq, which involved the killing of 37 people, The Guardian called the mosque massacre a “raid,” quoting U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson saying:
“In our observation of the place and the activities that were going on, it’s difficult for us to consider this a place of prayer,” adding, “It was not identified by us as a mosque... I think this is a matter of perception.”
Also the U.S. army concluded that “no mosques were entered or damaged.” Also the killing of humans was downplayed, for they were merely Iraqi who lost their lives.
Also The Independent, known for its relative courageous coverage of the Iraq war, reported the same incident as such: “U.S. forces killed 22 people and wounded eight at a mosque in east Baghdad.” Though it did call the mosque by its name, it failed to call the “incident” a massacre.
“The shooting,” “the killings,” but not a massacre.
A study conducted in 2003 and based on a series of seven U.S. polls conducted from January through September of the same year, revealed that before and after the Iraq war, the majority of Americans have had significant misperceptions and these are highly related to support for the war in Iraq.
According to the survey, carried out by the Program on International Policy (PIPA) at the University of Maryland and Knowledge Networks, the frequency of these misperceptions varies significantly according to individuals’ primary source of news. Those who watch Fox News are significantly more likely to have misperceptions, while those who primarily listen to NPR or watch PBS are significantly less likely.
The U.S. war in Iraq, the Israelis’ occupation in Palestine, how many Arab civilians must die for a massacre to be called by its real name in the hypocritical western media?
Al-Jazeera