5 NOVEMBER 2023 Gaza Battle

 

Another noble 'liberal' armchair warrior at the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Editor-in-Chief Eric Gujer, took a break from editing copy to bring it into perfect alighment with hasbara, uttered his own opinion on the front page on Saturday 4 November. Like NZZ journalist Jonas Roth (see entry for 1 November) Gujer supports the death of Palestiian civilians: Israel has the right to defend itself, he says, in the way it's now doing in Gaza - this does not exclude months-long attacks from the air or ground operations. Then: "One bemoans the increasing numbers of Palestinian slayed and demands the protection of civilians - as if in such a densely populated area one could sharply distinguish between combatants and non-combatants." ['Man beklagt die steigenden Opferzahlen unter den Palästinensern und verlangt die Schonung der Zivilisten - als liessen sich in dem dicht bevölkerten Gebiet Kombattanten und Nichtkombattanten trennscharf auseinanderhalten.'] That is, the civilian deaths are unavoidable if Israel attacks Gaza from the air and on the ground, and Gujer supports Israel doing this; therefore he supports this killing of civilians. These well-educated, well-dressed, rich, cultivated writers call for Israel to keep killing innocents.

1 NOVEMBER 2023 Gaza Battle

 

On 27 October Jonas Roth wrote in the NZZ: "Since the brutal [this word is obligatory for Swiss HASBARA 'journalists'] terror [ditto] attack by Hamas on Israel... the Israeli air force has bombed the Gaza Strip day and night." To his credit he then writes that in the 2008-9 and 2014 Israeli attacks on Gaza 70 Israelis lost their lives, over against 3,500 Palestinians (a 50-to-1 ratio, most likely close to the ratio over the entire 75 years of Israeli colonisation of Palestine). That Palestinian civilians are thus murdered is OK with Roth, as he had written a few days earlier, on 21 October, after noting that this time Israel wants to destroy Hamas: "Hamas stores munition near hospitals, schools and mosques, and rockets in densely-populated areas [duh: the density is 63 people per hectare] ... But that doesn't make it any less tragic that again and again the bombardment kills innocent people. However, the civilian victims are a central part of the perfidious strategy of Hamas that virtually forces Israel to take these deaths into the bargain." ['Doch die zivilen Opfer sind nicht zuletzt ein zentraler Teil der perfiden Strategie der Hamas, die Israel faktisch zwingt, diese in Kauf zu nehmen.'] Israel is 'forced' to kill. As all Swiss papers have been emphasising, Hamas was not 'forced' to kill Israelis after 75 years of occupation, murder, hunger and humiliation; they are simply hateful brutal terrorists. On 31 October or 1 November Israeli bombs killed dozens of civilians in Jabaliya Refugee Camp [about 80% of Gazans are refugees from the 1948-occupied areas of Palestine]. Their blood is on Jonas Roth's und the NZZ's hands.

 

 

31 OCTOBER 2023 Gaza Battle

 

Stefanie Mahrer calls herself a historian, works at the University of Bern. In the Tages-Anzeiger on 28 October 2023 she was angry at a young social-democratic politician for saying Israel carries part of the responsibility for the Hamas attack on Israel. "As a historian," she intoned, "I am really very much for context. But here there is no need for context. One must simply condemn such an attack." ['Als Historikerin bin ich wirklich sehr für Kontext. Aber hier braucht es keinen Kontext. Einen solchen Anschlag muss man einfach verurteilen.'] Gone - irrelevant - are 75 years of Israeli colonialism, occupation and apartheid in Palestine. They play no role whatsoever in understanding - even in the non-normative sense of 'understanding' - what had happened. I wrote Mahrer asking what makes this case so different., wondering to myself if she 'simply condemns' Israel's bombardment of Gaza, with thousands of dead and tens of thousands of wounded and homeless - no need for context. By what criteria does she find it useless, in this particular case, to know the context? She hasn't written back. She won't. Her position is just too unprofessional.

29 OCTOBER 2023 Gaza Battle

 

The press where I live - Zürich, Switzerland - has failed both professionally and morally since 7 October 2023. The NZZ, the Tages-Anzeiger, the Weltwoche, 20 Minuten are all HASBARA organs whose coverage is one-sided and is based on the unstated premise that a Jewish-Israeli life is worth (much) more than a Palestinian-Arab life. Disgusting. They apply a double standard in judging the actions of Hamas and the actions of the colonial-apartheid state in effect ruling Gaza, namely Israel. Unfortunately the two rather 'left' papers - Republik and the WochenZeitung - are only marginally better. As Daniel Binswanger, editor of Republik, titled his main article: 'We are all Israelis.' This is repulsive.

Example 1: Tages-Anzeiger published a list of 17 books (10 non-fiction, 7 'Belletristik') to help people understand the background to Gaza 2023. Guess how many Palestinian authors there were? One and a half, both not non-fiction: 1) Ghassan Kanafani's 83-page novella of 1969, Return to Haifa. That author was murdered by Mossad in 1972. 2) Samir El Youssef, who collaborated with Etgar Keret for a book of short stories. And these 'culture' editors call themselves journalists. Ridiculous.

Example 2: Big articles when Yocheved Lifschitz, the 85-year-old Israeli hostage released by Hamas, talked to the press. The things she said about 'going through hell' and the tunnels' being 'like a spiderweb' were duly recorded, but not her clear statement that she was in all respects treated very well by her captors. And no mention of how she turned and thanked and shook the hand of a Hamas soldier behind her before being led away by her daughter. Any sacrifice of journalistic and human integrity for the sake of HASBARA.

Example 3: The NZZ's Oliver Camenzind 'reported' on the demonstration/march in Zürich on Sat. 28 October. I was there. I saw and heard nothing remotely anti-semitic. The article claimed anti-semitic stuff was chanted, with no proof. That claim dominated the article, which means: even if there were two people who said something anti-semitic, or carried such a banner, focussing on that is a distortion. And of course the definition of 'anti-semitism' used is the absurd, morally dastardly one of equating anti-Israel with anti-Jew.

For me NZZ, Tagi, Weltwoche, WoZ and Republik are Zionist rags most likely unreliable on other topics. On this topic, they are both immoral and uninformed.

28 OCTOBER 2023 Gaza Battle

 

I stand unequivocally on the side of the Palestinian people in their fight against the colonial, apartheid state of Israel. Congratulations to this group who in its 'Statement of Solidarity with Palestine' on 13 October wrote, "The Feminist Library stands unequivocally with the Palestinian people in their long-enduring resistance to settler colonialism, apartheid, and occupation." Yes, with no ifs and buts.