In a sudden turn that surprised no one, another Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire fell through earlier this week, leading to renewed attacks by both sides.
If you follow the news in the U.S. you’ve almost certainly already heard about the rockets fired by Hamas from the Gaza strip into Israeli hospitals, the suicide bombers targeting Israeli civilians and about the slew of Israeli soldiers killed defending their country from hostile attacks.
What you probably haven’t heard as much about are the Israeli airstrikes against densely populated Palestinian neighborhoods, Israeli soldiers gunning down fleeing civilians in the streets of Gaza or the walls Israel has erected around the Gaza Strip with the express intention of trapping more than a million Palestinians in an area smaller than New York City.
The people of Gaza are packed in like sardines…in a barrel.
All too often, the U.S. news media paints Israel as the innocent victim of unprovoked terrorist attacks. It’s a tradition as old as the modern state of Israel, which you may remember from your American textbooks as entirely peaceful process on behalf of the Israeli government up until they were attacked by their neighbors, but which in reality involved an especially bellicose form of Zionism and the expulsion of almost a million Islamic Palestinians from their homeland, among other grievances.
U.S. media coverage slanted in favor of Israel is to the proverbial chicken as D.C.’s unwavering support of Israel is to the proverbial egg, we may never be able to determine which came first and caused the other.
However, such a distinction is entirely unnecessary as the results are the same; the U.S. has poured massive amounts of resources into Israel.
With more than $100 billion in military aide in his pocket (courtesy of his Uncle Sam), David has swapped his historical sling for an assortment of American made war machines. For the first time in thousands of years, David is the heavy favorite over a Goliath still sporting second hand Soviet equipment.
For quantitative evidence of the disparity in military capability just look at the casualties suffered by both sides. The Palestinian Health Ministry reports that more than 2,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, with Israel reporting that it has killed hundreds of militants (implying that the remainder of thousand or more casualties were civilians.) Israel, by its own numbers, has lost 62 soldiers and a whopping three civilians.
If the U.S. wants to be the neutral party that can broker a lasting ceasefire, we as a nation must first remove the white-and-blue washing lens from the majority of U.S. media and accept that both sides are simultaneously victims and perpetrators. Then we can break the cycle of unconditional support for the Israel (which Israel no longer actually needs) and be the neutral judge of peace that both sides will find acceptable.