Thank you dear subscribers, we are overwhelmed with your response.
Your Turn is a unique section from ThePrint featuring points of view from its subscribers. If you are a subscriber, have a point of view, please send it to us. If not, do subscribe here: https://theprint.in/
The inspiration of this opinion piece came after watching your journalist Jyoti Malhotra’s The Print Debates on the Israel – Gaza armed conflict of May 2021 where she asked a Palestinian “Journalist” a simple question “Do you think Hamas is a Terrorist Organization?”
And the reply from the “journalist” was a sort of a direct support to Hamas and roughly called a globally designated terror organization “a bunch of freedom fighters”. To be honest it’s a dumb question to ask a Palestinian whether he considers Hamas a Terror organization, just like it’s a dumb question to ask a right – wing Jew if he considers Israel and apartheid state, it’s a dumb question to ask a right-wing Hindu if he considers RSS-BJP-VHP-Bajrang Dal as dangerous organizations.
Their answers are obvious and driven by a perspective, just like most media coverage n this issue has been driven by a perspective. The liberal media rightly covering about the disproportionate casualties in this conflict on both sides and the right-wing media also rightly covering a sovereign nation like Israel’s right to defend its own territory.
Why is it so that no media outlet including ThePrint has NOT given a fair coverage to both sides? Why is media getting driven into this perspective war? Why has media forgotten the fact that there are multiple sides to this “coin”?
Imagine some more perspectives, assume if Israel didn’t have an Iron Dome system and both sides would have been pelting rockets on each other like a Hollywood fictional flick, would the liberal media have complained about “disproportionate casualties” or if Hamas and Fatah (Hataf) want to be the rightful leaders of the Palestinian people, why they haven’t invested in uplifting the standards diplomacy and use this diplomacy to uplift standards of Palestinians and work for smooth solution under their “Illegal Israeli Occupation”.
The intellectual, liberal and conservative political breed and their affiliated media make one big mistake, they continue to interpret territorial conflicts as religious ones. This will never solve any conflict. I watched loads of coverage on global media – CNN, DW, BBC, Al Jazeera and barring DW (CNN started being more “liberal” post ceasefire) the coverage from BBC and Al Jazeera was quite biased. I barely heard or read any Israeli perspective in those two channels. Al Jazeera was also at times indulging in passive radicalization once their media office was wrongfully destroyed by IDF. Some outlets like Fox and some commando comic Indian right wing outlets started spreading anti-muslim rhetoric to support the IDF. Nethanyahu and his policies, the global “intellectuals” spreading anti-semitism and anti-Musilm hate has also caused problems in Israel among their Arabs and Jews.
Now that we have a fragile ceasefire, most media are calling it a Hamas victory (few calling it Palestinian victory), but I would call it an Israel victory based on a simple idea on who achieved their objectives.
What was Hamas’s objective? Actually none, they just wanted to avenge what happened at Al Aqsa mosque before Eid and they didn’t achieve much but lost a lot of people on their own territory and also some of their leadership according to IDF.
Israel is still continuing settlements, they still continue their blatant apartheid culture so nothing that Hamas has done so far has deterred the Israelis and so Israel has won this conflict. They have shown that they don’t give a damn about Palestinian civilian casualties. Also, this instance of the conflict has made the root issue more polarized than ever, Hamas wanting to end Israel as a state and Nethanyahu not willing to stop illegal settlements. Also, none of the Arab countries who recently normalized relations with Israel have backtracked, this is a big unfortunate Israeli victory on the cost of Human Rights
Also, another thing that has been proven is that United Nations, especially the UNSC should just be dissolved now. They are not capable to resolve any conflicts in the current structure. Some reforms may make a difference but this version of UN is just plain and simple dominated by one country (now by 2 adding in China). There has been no clear resolution from this “world body” on any conflicts since maybe it’s inception, also they haven’t been able to avoid any wars so what is their use anyways. The UN needs to become a more equal organization and not get dominated by a few “permanent members”, maybe that could be a major step to make this world a more equal place and maybe we can have an efficient conflict resolution.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.
COMMENTS