US media say Israel is retaliating. The facts show the opposite

A woman taking part in the women's march near Israel's fence imprisoning Gazans on July 3, 2018 is carried on a stretcher. Hundreds of Palestinian women and girls protested for the right of return and to end the Israeli blockade – mothers, wives, daughters and sisters of those killed and injured during the Great March of Return, as well as female journalists and students. (134 Palestinians, including 16 children, had been killed by Israeli forces by that time, and 15,200 others, including 2,536 children and 1,160 women, had been injured since the protests began.) (photo)

Time after time, US news coverage begins when Palestinians have committed violence, without noting that this violence was preceded by lethal Israeli violence… including against thousands of nonviolent protesters gathering week after week inside the Gaza ghetto

By Alison Weir

US media reports virtually always say that Israeli violence against Palestinians is “retaliation”. The chronology, however, shows the opposite.

Time after time, US news coverage of the issue begins when Palestinians have committed violence, without noting that this violence was preceded by Israeli violence.

Most recently, US news reports make it appear that the current violence began on October 7th, while failing to mention that Israeli forces had been killing Palestinians regularly in the days, weeks, months, and years before that.

This was the chart before October 7th, 2023.

The recent deaths dwarf the already large numbers from previous years. (source)

Current news reports also fail to note that October 7th was basically a prison break from what many have accurately described as the world’s largest open air prison, imprisoning over 2 million men, women, and children.

Media reports also neglect to inform Americans that the communities surrounding Gaza are built on stolen Palestinian land, many of the former owners imprisoned in the Gaza ghetto, destitute and desperate.

Media reports also fail to inform Americans that before the October operation, thousands of Gazans had gathered every week for over a year and a half to protest their imprisonment and dispossession – and Israeli forces had shot them, week after week.

Media also fail to inform Americans that it is Israel that regularly initiates the violence after periods of calm, according to an MIT professor’s study on the subject.

This type of news coverage is not new, and has often been found in alternative media as well as legacy media companies.

While the pro-Israel lobby in the US is arguably the most powerful special interest group in the country (it appears that $18 billion may go to Israel this year alone), and while media coverage of the issue is demonstrably slanted toward Israel, there are growing numbers of Americans who are demanding a stop to US support for Israeli crimes.

Until Americans learn the many facts on this issue being obscured by US media, the tragic violence in the region, and the wars fought on Israel’s behalf, will continue, and Americans, too, will continue to die.

Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, president of the Council for the National Interest, and author of Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel.

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