Semantics of Zionist Occupation
Media Uses Misleading Language Regarding Palestinian Conflict
Current media reports about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict compare apples to oranges. Its time to be fair and compare apples to apples using comparable rhetoric.
It happens time and time again. You sit down to the evening news and hear about Israel defending itself from the extremist Muslims. Automatically a picture is put in the minds of those who hear it - as Tarzan would put it: Israel good. Muslim bad.
While the focus of this article is on the rhetoric of the Zionist Occupation of Palestine, the reader may find it helpful to refer to the article, Finding a Cure for Terrorism as it will give a short background of provoking factors to violence in this arena as well as its cyclical nature.
First impressions are important. In this era of sound-bytes, people like their news quick. Take a look at CNN. As if it weren’t enough for news junkies, they had to come up with CNN Headline News for those who were too impatient or too busy to listen to in-depth reports. Were people satisfied with that? The fact that there is a continuous news ticker running across the bottom of the screen says no.
Government officials and the media are very familiar with maximizing sound-bytes in order to affect a particular emotion that suits their ends. Let’s hone in on Zionist rhetoric which is echoed so frequently in the western media outlets. Zionist propaganda machines go the extra mile to convince the world that they are battling Islam, while using rhetoric that describes themselves as Israelis rather than Jewish.
Why is the press so reluctant to refer to them as Jews when they are not reluctant to use the term Muslim in place of Palestinian? Not only does this give the false impression that all Palestinians are Muslim, but it keeps people from recognizing the fact that they are a Jewish state, by their own admission. It is only fair that like terms are used.
History shows that what the Zionist Occupiers did to the Palestinians had nothing to do with what religion they were, rather it was for the religion they were not and the land that they lived on. Before you ask, not all Jews are Zionists either and it was Zionists behind the movement that led to the de facto state of Israel, which is a political movement and not a religoius one. The Zionist state would have the world believe , in their rhetoric, that Palestinians hate Jews, when in fact their struggle is against Zionism.
If the media are to be fair, apples should be compared to apples - meaning when referring to this particular conflict, if the focus is meant to be Muslims, then they must insert the word Jews instead of Israelis. In the same manner, if they say Israelis, then they must say Palestinians. This would also require specific mention of Christians of all sects living in Palestine – to not mention them is equivalent to denying their existence. In the same token, many times the word Israel is used when what is meant is Zionists. There are Palestinian Jews and there are plenty of Jews who are not Zionists and who are staunch opponents of it.
The same problem existed during the Bosnian war, which makes one wonder if this is just something the media reserves for subjects involving Muslims only. During that time, the media would use terms like Serbian versus Muslim, when the fair wording should have been one of two: Serbian versus Bosnian and Croation or Orthodox Christian versus Muslim and Catholic. The fact in that conflict was that the Greek Orthodox of Serbia instigated an ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Catholics.
We are so used to biased rhetoric that we have become desensitized and blind to it. Maybe we would have a better understanding of the world if we at least demanded fair accounts of history and took a little time to compare apples to apples. Isn't that something we were supposed to learn from Sesame Street in Kindergarten?
It could be that a select few do not want the truth to be known. After all, if you know the truth, it is humanized in a way that speaks to you and just maybe you will have to do something about it.
