Our Wednesday News Analysis | The Deir Yassin massacre: Why it still matters 75 years later

Bullet-riddled cacti are seen in Deir Yassin, where more than 100 Palestinians, mostly women, children and the elderly, were massacred by Irgun-Stern raiders, April 1948 [AP Photo]

Source: Al Jazeera
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/9/the-deir-yassin-massacre-why-it-still-matters-75-years-later?sf176644700=1

By Al Jazeera staff
Published April 9, 2023

The brutality of the Deir Yassin prompted thousands of Palestinians to flee, just weeks before Israel was created.

Seventy-five years ago, Zionist militias tore through Palestinian villages, massacring the villagers and expelling those who remained alive, to clear the way for the creation of the state of Israel.

In Deir Yassin hundreds of innocent men, women and children were massacred …

Let the village remain uninhabited for the time being, and let its desolation be a terrible and tragic symbol of war, and a warning to our people that no practical military needs may ever justify such acts of murder.”

Prominent Jewish intellectual Martin Buber stated shortly after the atrocity and high crimes against humanity

An estimated 15,000 Palestinians were killed and some 750,000 fled their homes to live as refugees in other parts of Palestine or neighbouring countries, an event known by Palestinians as the Nakba – “the catastrophe”.

This year, the United Nations will host its first-ever high-level event to commemorate this forced displacement that resulted in the establishment of the state of Israel on May 15, 1948.

But Palestinians have never ceased to commemorate the loss of each village that was once part of their homeland.

Among them was Deir Yassin, a village perched on a hill west of Jerusalem, which has become emblematic of the suffering Israel would inflict on the Palestinians...

Read more: The Deir Yassin massacre: Why it still matters 75 years later

AL-AQSA RAID: HOW BBC COVERAGE IS ENABLING ISRAELI VIOLENCE

Israeli police violently cracks down on peaceful Muslim worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan on 5 April 2023 (AP)

Source: Middle East Eye
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/aqsa-mosque-raid-israel-bbc-enabling-violence-how

By Jonathan Cook
Published April 6, 2023

Once again, the British state broadcaster is using a bogus ‘neutrality’ to trick its audience into siding with Israeli state oppression

The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel laureate

and tireless campaigner against South African apartheid, once observed:
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice,
you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

For decades, the BBC’s editorial policy in reporting on Israel and Palestine has consistently chosen the side of the oppressor - and all too often, not even by adopting the impartiality the corporation claims as the bedrock of its journalism.

Instead, the British state broadcaster regularly chooses language and terminology whose effect is to deceive its audience. And it compounds such journalistic malpractice by omitting vital pieces of context when that extra information would present Israel in a bad light.

BBC bias - which entails knee-jerk echoing of the British establishment’s support for Israel as a highly militarised ally projecting western interests into the oil-rich Middle East - was starkly on show once again this week as the broadcaster reported on the violence at Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Social media was full of videos showing heavily armed Israeli police storming the mosque complex during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Police could be seen pushing peaceful Muslim worshippers, including elderly men, off their prayer mats and forcing them to leave the site. In other scenes, police were filmed beating worshippers inside a darkened Al-Aqsa, while women could be heard screaming in protest.

What is wrong with the British state broadcaster’s approach - and much of the rest of the western media’s - is distilled in one short BBC headline: “Clashes erupt at contested holy site.”

Into a sentence of just six words, the BBC manages to cram three bogusly “neutral” words, whose function is not to illuminate or even to report, but to trick the audience, as Tutu warned, into siding with the oppressor...

Read more: Al-Aqsa raid: How BBC coverage is enabling Israeli violence

DEMOCRACY OR APARTHEID: YOU CAN’T HAVE BOTH

This is a fight to maintain and protect the status quo for Israelis, not Palestinians who have been denied all basic democratic rights under Israel since 1948. For Palestinians, there is no democracy.

Source: Peoples Dispatch
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/04/09/democracy-or-apartheid-you-cant-have-both/

By Nour
Published April 09, 2023

The idea that Israeli “democracy” can be protected by blocking the judicial overhaul is a myth. Any plans Israel had for democracy were destroyed when they began the Nakba in 1948.

"This is a fight to maintain and protect the status quo for Israelis, not Palestinians who have been denied all basic democratic rights under Israel since 1948.

For Palestinians, there is no democracy."

For two consecutive nights this week, during the holy month of Ramadan, the Israeli military stormed Al-Aqsa mosque. They entered the mosque before prayer was over, firing rubber bullets, stun grenades, and tear gas at Palestinian worshipers. These events left at least 12 Palestinians injured, and over 400 were arrested on the first night. Following the raid, Israeli violence spread across the West Bank. Dozens have been hurt by inhaling poisonous gas fired by Israeli forces, and a settler in occupied East Jerusalem shot a Palestinian child.

Following the raid on Al-Aqsa on Wednesday night, Israeli settlers were escorted to Al-Aqsa by Israeli forces on Thursday morning. Prior to their arrival, Palestinian worshipers were forced out so that it could be secured for the settlers for the first day of the Jewish Passover holiday. This double standard is not uncommon for Israel as it is inherent to the structure of the settler-colonial state. Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem (80% of the Palestinian population) under Israeli control are not citizens and cannot become citizens of the state in which they live, nor can they vote for the government which controls their lives. The other 20% of Palestinians, who have Israeli citizenship, have a 2nd class status.

Recently the world has witnessed Israeli settlers come together in an ongoing protest to protect their “democracy.” Since January 7, a crowd of over 100,000 have protested every Saturday in response to a judicial overhaul that was proposed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government. The protestors consider the reform plan, which has now been suspended, a threat to democracy.

But we must ask ourselves, what are these protestors really fighting to maintain? How can there be democracy in an apartheid state? Whose democracy is this?...

Read more: Democracy or apartheid: You can’t have both