{"id":7033,"date":"2024-08-21T13:47:29","date_gmt":"2024-08-21T13:47:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/?p=7033"},"modified":"2024-08-21T13:47:30","modified_gmt":"2024-08-21T13:47:30","slug":"mainstream-media-is-ignoring-israels-sexual-torture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/?p=7033","title":{"rendered":"Mainstream Media Is Ignoring Israel\u2019s Sexual Torture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For the past two weeks, a sickening scandal around Israeli torture of Palestinians has roiled the country\u2019s politics. Many Americans likely have no idea about it, because mainstream media is all but ignoring it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
People walk past the New York Times building on July 27, 2017, in New York City. (Spencer Platt \/ Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For the past few weeks, Israel has been caught up in a scandal around torture at its Sde Teiman detention camp involving an act so nauseatingly heinous, that you should only keep reading if you have a strong stomach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In late July, ten Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers at the facility were arrested for raping a male inmate, specifically by inserting something into his anus that damaged his internal organs and necessitated surgery to save his life. The arrests sparked a riot by far-right politicians and other extremists outraged at the punishment, who stormed<\/a> the prison and another military base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, at the start of August, respected Israeli human rights organization B\u2019Tselem released a report detailing the unspeakable torture at the facility, titled \u201cWelcome to Hell<\/a>.\u201d Roughly a week later, as the soldiers went on trial, both the United States and the European Union felt the need to publicly express horror at the torture and call for an investigation. At about this same time,\u00a0video footage<\/a>\u00a0of the rape was unearthed and publicly released.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re a devoted New York Times<\/em> reader, you likely have no idea almost any of this happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s because the paper of record, which has come under fire over the past ten months for its coverage of the war, has hardly covered the scandal, and when it has, has tended to entomb the news far beyond its front page, where most readers are likely to see it. This is despite the paper\u2019s extensive coverage of the sexual violence carried out by Hamas fighters on October 7, which it has\u00a0received<\/a>\u00a0widespread<\/a>\u00a0calls<\/a>\u00a0for review and potentially even retraction after independent reporters found serious issues with its sourcing and accuracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Times <\/em>is far from alone. The IDF rape scandal has fared little better across some of the United States\u2019 top newspapers and cable news websites, where it has similarly either been entirely ignored or tucked away from most readers\u2019 eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the appalling conduct of the Israeli military \u2014 to which US taxpayers have paid at least $12.5 billion<\/a> in aid over the past ten months, more than the budget<\/a> of many US government programs and whole federal departments  \u2014 is highly relevant to the public that consumes these news outlets. And the dearth of coverage of the IDF\u2019s rape of Palestinians it has kidnapped stands in stark contrast to the lurid, monthslong US media focus on Hamas\u2019s sexual violence against civilians and its kidnapped hostages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

News Unfit to Print<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

The Times<\/em> did cover the IDF\u2019s rape of a prisoner on July 29, the day that the Israeli military reservists responsible were arrested, in a story<\/a> headlined \u201cIsraeli Troops Held for Questioning in Prisoner Abuse Investigation.\u201d Though framed around the political fallout from the troops\u2019 arrest, not around the widespread abuse alleged at the Sde Teiman base where the rape happened, the piece did take care to immediately note they were accused of \u201csevere sexual abuse of a Palestinian prisoner\u201d who \u201chad been hospitalized with a serious injury to his anus.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet despite the story\u2019s importance, it\u2019s unlikely many readers ever saw it. The story only briefly made it to the front page of the paper\u2019s web edition, on the\u00a0evening of July 29<\/a>, where it was buried way down below the latest presidential race intrigue, the Venezuelan election, Olympics news, and the story of a man who lost his retirement savings to internet scammers. Even then, in the \u201cMiddle East Crisis\u201d section, it took second billing to a report on the Israeli cabinet approving retaliation against a rocket strike that had killed twelve children in the occupied Golan Heights. By the\u00a0next morning<\/a>, it was gone again. The appalling conduct of the Israeli military \u2014 to which US taxpayers have paid at least $12.5 billion in military aid over the past ten months \u2014 is highly relevant to the public.<\/q><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vast majority<\/a> of Americans get their news from digital devices, websites, and apps at least some of the time. But it was no better when it came to the Times<\/em>\u2019s print edition. The story, which was published<\/a> on page A5 of the July 30 edition of the paper, wasn\u2019t featured on the front page, nor was it featured there in the list of stories to look out for in the following pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s it. Apart from one story<\/a> a day later \u2014 again framed around the internal political fallout from the arrests, and how the crisis had \u201crevived a deeper and older battle over the nature of the Israeli state and who should shape its future\u201d \u2014 the Times<\/em> has not touched the matter again: not when B\u2019Tselem released its report, revealing<\/a> the shocking scope of torture and abuse in Israeli prisons; not when the Israeli doctor who had reported the abuse revealed<\/a> further, sickening details about what soldiers did to the prisoner; not when the footage of the rape was publicly released a week ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Wider Absence<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

The Times\u2019s <\/em>top newspaper rivals were marginally better \u2014 with an emphasis on \u201cmarginally.\u201d The Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s story<\/a>, which briefly referenced the Sde Teiman rape as part of a report on Palestinian prisoner mistreatment more broadly, appeared way down on its front page on July 29, eventually bumped<\/a> from it in favor of a story on Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s Golan Heights response. The Post <\/em>also never covered B\u2019Tselem\u2019s report (though it was briefly mentioned<\/a> in an op-ed column for the paper this week), but it did report<\/a> on the leaked video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The right-leaning Wall Street Journal<\/em> did a little bit better. The Journal<\/em> has covered the story three times over the past two weeks, though the reports only appeared on the front page twice, and one of those times, it was included way, <\/a>way<\/a> down<\/a> under the \u201cworld\u201d section only the morning after the story was published on July 29, disappearing by the afternoon of the next day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To its credit, the Journal<\/em> did obliquely reference the B\u2019Tselem report in a later story<\/a> about how the United Nations and human rights groups had compiled instances of the IDF sexually abusing Palestinian detainees, which it featured prominently on its front page<\/a> that day, accompanying it with a clearer description of what the scandal actually was than any other major paper: \u201cSexual-Abuse Case Rocking Israel\u2019s Military Broke After Doctors Sounded Alarm,\u201d read the headline, with a subhead noting that the detainee\u2019s wounds \u201cwere so severe they needed surgery.\u201d The paper has yet to cover the leaked video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cCrisis of conscience\u201d: 20 years after the Abu Ghraib report, The New York Times published their investigation into the Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel, where the Israeli military has detained thousands of Palestinians, and describes the abuse taking place there. pic.twitter.com\/GrqnrPhuS5<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) June 8, 2024<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em>\u00a0has been a mixed bag. The paper has published four stories on or involving the unfolding incident, all republished from the Associated Press, on\u00a0July 29<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0July 30<\/a>, and on\u00a0August 7<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0August 12. Only two have ended up on the paper\u2019s front page, both far down under the \u201cMore News\u201d section: the\u00a0July 29<\/a>\u00a0story, which lacked details of the torture beyond being able to call it \u201csubstantial abuse,\u201d and which was\u00a0gone<\/a>\u00a0by the afternoon; and the August 12 piece, a more general story on abuse of Palestinian prisoners that made it onto the front page\u00a0that afternoon<\/a>\u00a0with the headline, \u201cReleased Palestinians describe worsening abuses in Israeli prisons.\u201d The\u00a0LA<\/em>\u00a0Times\u00a0<\/em>did cover the video, albeit in a\u00a0story<\/a>\u00a0that left its crucial existence off the somewhat generic headline and didn\u2019t cover the B\u2019Tselem report, though it did allude to \u201creports by rights groups\u201d exposing Sde Teiman\u2019s \u201cabysmal conditions and abuses\u201d shortly before its release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of these papers did far better than USA Today<\/em>, among the country\u2019s top papers by both circulation and online readership, which has yet to do a single story on this major scandal currently roiling Israeli politics and society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Brazen Double Standard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

It should go without saying that this would never be accepted if this degree and scale of sexual violence had, instead, been carried out by Palestinians against Israelis. We can say that, because we have objective proof: every single one of these newspapers prominently featured reporting on sexual violence inflicted by Hamas on Israelis on their front pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most prominent was the New York Times<\/em>, which made its problematic \u201cScreams Without Words\u201d report the leading story on the front page of its December 31 print edition<\/a>. It was also the second-most prominent story on the front page of its Web edition on <\/a>December<\/a> 29<\/a>, the day after it was officially published on the paper\u2019s site, and where it remained<\/a> even after being bumped lower down by the afternoon. Recall that the paper\u2019s report on the IDF prison rape controversy late last month only briefly appeared way down its front page and was not so much as referenced on page A1 of its corresponding print edition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the Times<\/em>\u2019s rivals did not rereport that particular story, they did run various pieces on news about sexual violence on October 7 \u2014 like a widely covered March 2024 United Nations report that declared there were \u201creasonable grounds\u201d to believe Hamas soldiers sexually assaulted Israelis on the day, which the Washington Post<\/em> and LA Times <\/em>both covered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consistent with the LA Times<\/em>\u2019s coverage of the IDF scandal, the story\u2019s position on its front page was not very prominent<\/a>, nor was an earlier report<\/a> compiling allegations of sexual violence by Hamas that appeared on its front page on December 7<\/a> (though both are still featured more prominently than its stories on the IDF prison rape scandal). The Post<\/em>, by contrast, made and kept its story<\/a> on that subject the second-highest story on its front page<\/a> into the late evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same day that \u201cScreams Without Words\u201d went to physical press, the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0published its own piece of\u00a0reporting<\/a>\u00a0on the same subject, headlined \u201cIsrael\u2019s \u2018Black Sabbath\u2019: Murder, Sexual Violence and Torture on Oct. 7.\u201d That piece was arguably the most prominent story\u00a0on its front page<\/a>\u00a0that day, featured at the very top and accompanied by an image, where it remained\u00a0until the early evening<\/a> when it was bumped to a slightly less prominent position at the top of the front page. Palestinian lives and suffering simply do not matter as much to US political institutions as Israeli ones.<\/q><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the starkest contrast was at USA Today<\/em>, which despite not covering the IDF prison rape story whatsoever, ran and prominently featured its\u00a0December 20 report<\/a>\u00a0on the sexual violence endured by returned Israeli hostages for many days. That story was not only at the top of\u00a0its front page<\/a>\u00a0that day but remained among its \u201cTop Headlines\u201d there\u00a0the next day<\/a>, and continued to sit lower down on the front page until the 29th. The paper\u2019s silence on the same type of abuse being inflicted on Palestinian captives is deafening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The View from Cable<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

As disappointing as all this is, it has been absolutely abysmal when it comes to cable news outlets, which most of the voting public<\/a> relies on and trusts to get their news, either by watching them on TV or by visiting their websites. Those websites are among<\/a> the very top US news sites in terms of traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two most explicitly partisan major cable networks, MSNBC and Fox News, have simply not covered the IDF scandal at all. The closest to it is a\u00a0June 7 segment<\/a>\u00a0on Chris Hayes\u2019s show long before this latest incident and based on an earlier\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0report on abuse at Sde Teiman, in which he implored his viewers to \u201cnot look away.\u201d By contrast, both networks have run story after segment after story on the sexual violence carried out on October 7, often taking people to task for playing down or ignoring the alleged attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CNN has at least covered the story, albeit sequestering it way down<\/a> its website\u2019s front page the day that it broke. And while it did not cover the B\u2019Tselem report, it has, to its credit, reported on both the video footage<\/a> of the abuse and the US response<\/a> to it, as well as publishing<\/a> one of the earliest reports on IDF torture in the Sde Teiman center, back in May this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some Lives Matter More<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

What all of this amounts to is a depressing fact that has been laid bare again and again throughout this war: Palestinian lives and suffering simply do not matter as much to US political institutions as Israeli ones. They don\u2019t mean as much to elected officials, who have enthus<\/a>i<\/a>astically<\/a> used the murder of hundreds<\/a> of Israeli civilians on October 7 to cheer on and facilitate the murder of, at minimum<\/a>, tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. And they don\u2019t mean as much to the mainstream US press, which has consistently<\/a> displayed<\/a> more<\/a> care, attention, and sympathy for the suffering of Israelis in the tenor, focus, and even language<\/a> used in its coverage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the US public does not share this double standard. But the media\u2019s relative lack of interest in informing them about Israeli violence means many of them never learn about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reference Link:- https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2024\/08\/media-bias-sde-teiman-torture\/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=DrMQ%2Fmagazine%2FIsrael%27s+Genocides+<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the past two weeks, a sickening scandal around Israeli torture of Palestinians has roiled the country\u2019s politics. Many Americans likely have no idea about it, because mainstream media is all but ignoring it. For the past few weeks, Israel has been caught up in a scandal around torture at its Sde Teiman detention camp […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[58,893,1477,52,2776,1011,933,51,40,1475],"class_list":["post-7033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sample-category","tag-america","tag-gaza","tag-holocaust-in-palestine","tag-israel","tag-israel-brutalities","tag-israeli-atrocities","tag-middle-east-2","tag-palestine","tag-us","tag-genocide-in-gaza-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7035,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7033\/revisions\/7035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}