The Enemy Without

international | arts and media | other press Saturday June 23, 2007 10:18 by David Manning & Miriam Cotton - MediaBite editors at mediabite dot org

The 'bought priesthood' strikes again

Free elections were held in Palestine in 2006 and the Hamas party were the Palestinian electorate's choice for government. The message was clear: if the UN, US, and Israel were to have any chance of negotiating a constructive outcome in the region, Hamas would have to be taken seriously. In a landslide victory, they had incontrovertibly become the legitimately elected voice of the Palestinian people.

But that is not what has happened. Palestine made the 'wrong' choice and mainstream media coverage has upended itself in its efforts to support the US's punishment of the Palestinians for not throwing up the 'right' result. Never mind that the ousted opposition party was both corrupt and incompetent. MediaBite's latest media shot examines the breathtaking media hypocrisy which has eviscerated the meaning of the term 'democracy' to help disguise what the US and Israel have done to destroy Palestine's legitimate democracy - a democracy that was more democratic than the US's own:

"The [day following the election] the Irish Times' Roula Khalaf and William Wallis wrote, as if to pre-empt Washington's ironic but inevitable dissatisfaction, to suggest a re-think on the behalf of the great democrats: 'Faced with these results", they said, "some Arab governments, and even liberal intellectuals, have been arguing that the US should now reconsider its approach to democracy in the Arab world.' "

The 'lberal intellectuals' have been dilligent in their work. Chillingly, The New York Times recently reported:

"Since the election victory of Hamas in January 2006, the United States and Israel have worked to isolate and damage Hamas and build up Fatah with recognition and weaponry." .

What this refers to is of course is the death and illness of many Palestinian people and the destruction of their society and infrastructure - culminating in civil war which now sees the democratically rejected and corrput Fatah party regaining control of parts of the territory - to the delight and relief of their US and Israeli sponsors. It could scarcely have been thought that life for the Palestinians could be made worse than it already was but that turns out not to be right. Their plight must now rank among the worst - if not the worst - of any oppressed group of people in the world.

Things are going well.

And the wiser heads who have chronicled these events from the west have made their own unique contribution to the accompanying media discourse as the murderous farce unfolded. The uncomfortable truth was made comfortable and it was accomplished very easily: committing genocide on defenceless people is now to be described as 'bringing democracy'. And so the intellectuals, the solemn faced-news presenters, pundits and reporters all get to sleep easily at night in places like Dublin and New York.

Link to media shot

http://www.mediabite.org/article_The-Enemy-Without--nda....html