EDITORIAL: While politicians in Western countries with their undisguised bias in favour of Israel tend to paint Palestinians as violent lesser beings, the ‘Free World’s’ free media reinforce the same bias, telling only one side of the story.
A case in point is how the French news agency AFP has covered the fallout from last week’s confrontation in Amsterdam between Palestinians (and other Arabs) and Jewish fans of Tel Aviv Maccabi football team following its match with the local Ajax club.
Its latest report recounts in a sympathetic tone that the Dutch parliament clashed this past Wednesday in a heated debate to discuss the incident termed as “unadulterated anti-Semitism” by Prime Minister Dick Schoof, while the far-right MP Geert Wilders, leader of the biggest party in the coalition government, said perpetrators of the violence against Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were all Muslims, and called for the “attackers” to be prosecuted for terrorism.
None of this is surprising considering truth is the first casualty in all matters related to Israel. Unfortunately, the same applies to Western media outlets.
In its transparently coloured story, the present report portrays the Maccabi fans as the victims rather than perpetrators of violence, saying five of them were briefly hospitalised after being beaten up following the match, and that according to the police the “attackers” were mobilised by calls on social media.
Buried in the 14 paragraph is a diluted version of what actually sparked the entire episode, described as “tension heightening events, including anti-Arab chants by Maccabi fans, who also set fire to a Palestinian flag on the city’s central square (actually on residences) and vandalised a taxi.” Ignored is the fact that no one had provoked Israeli fans to take to the streets of Amsterdam chanting such provocative slogans as “no children left in Gaza” and tearing down Palestinian flags hoisted outside homes.
Nor is there any mention of the Arabs injured by Israeli hooligans. Instead, overlooking all crucial details, the report seeks to show Muslim protesters in a bad light, feeding into official narratives.
This, in fact, is reflective of a broader pattern of Western media denigrating Muslims and Arabs to cover up Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza and other crimes in the occupied West Bank so as to keep public opinion in the dark about the gravity of the issues and events being reported.
Journalists who want to do their job in honesty face risk of losing their jobs or simply seeing neutral and unbiased coverage of important stories get rubbished or dropped.
Interestingly, in one such case the Sky News presented an impartial account of how Israeli supporters of Maccabi tore down Palestinian flags from outside homes, and that later these far-right ultras “notorious for racism and physical violence” attacked Palestinians as they marched with their flag, and raised racist and anti-Arab slogans.
The Dutch, Israeli, and British leaders denounced retaliation by the protesters as anti-Semitic and even referred to it as a pogrom, noted the newscast, but that their statements failed to mention the Israeli hooligans assault against Dutch citizens.
However, the Sky News was soon forced to delete the report. So much for Western nations’ claims of being the flag-bearers of freedom of expression.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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