“As I said then, I say today, Israel had a right—has a right to defend itself.”
This is militarism set in stone. The words are those of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, of course, in her extensive CNN interview last week—quick words that lead the charge and spew the glory, no matter how blatantly false they are.
Oh, and by the way: “Far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.”
She had to add some vague, paradoxical empathy, apparently, just because the nation she hopes to lead—USA! USA!—is kind of growing up, at least a little bit, and a certain (inconvenient) segment of its voters now maintain skepticism about the effectiveness, not to mention the moral sanity, of militarism. Harris, alas, had no intention of addressing the issue with intelligence, nor does the media push her to: What, in fact, does self-defense mean? Does it always, unquestionably, require violence?
The violence in Palestine—in Gaza and also the West Bank—goes on and on, to what end? Nothing I write here is new, but what I want to do is push the matter beyond the realm of glorious, media-certified abstraction. Israel has the right to defend itself. What does that actually look like? Here’s a brief, recent example from the Drop Site:
And the Palestine Red Crescent noted that “Israeli troops have ‘directly targeted’ ambulances, injuring two medical workers and a volunteer doctor. ‘Our teams have been prevented from transporting various casualties, patients, and elderly suffering from chronic diseases, and women in labor. The further marginalization of already vulnerable communities renders the area uninhabitable.’”
But Israel has the right to defend itself! Just imagine if the mainstream media refused to report on war—on “self-defense”—as an abstraction, especially when hospitals are being targeted, ambulances are being targeted, refugee camps are being bombed. Even if there’s a justification of some sort for any particular action, this is what self-defense looks like. Real journalism will not quietly look away from it.
Nor will it take events out of context for the purpose of creating a “good guy/bad guy” narrative.........