“Half of the Israeli public is no longer in favor of the war,” one friend told me Saturday night as we witnessed thousands of Israelis take to the streets to protest the Israeli government under the slogan, “Elections Now.” “Yes, but the other half is all-in, and REALLY in favor,” responded his wife. “And they are the more powerful group.”
She, of course, is right. For months, reports of torture and rape have emerged from Israel’s military base turned torture camp, Sde Teiman, where Israel has imprisoned thousands of Palestinians without charge. I wrote about it in a previous diary earlier this month. Palestinians who have emerged from this torture camp refer to it as the “slaughterhouse” with horrendous tales of torture, rape, abuse, and sleep deprivation being meted out by Israeli prison guards. Nearly 30 Palestinians have died while in Sde Teiman and other prisons, according to the information provided to date.
And while the precise chain of events is unclear, what we do know is that the Israeli military advocate general decided to dispatch the military police to question nine Israeli soldiers on suspicion of gang-raping and sodomizing a Palestinian man from Gaza at Sde Teiman. The man was rushed to the hospital where he exhibited signs of rape, including a ruptured bowel and broken ribs. It would be a mistake to simply think that Israel’s actions in prisons like Sde Teiman came only after October. Since becoming Israel’s national security minister in 2022, ultranationalist Itamar Ben Gvir has made prisons his target, with him authorizing abuse against Palestinians. He has also called for the death penalty to solve problems of overcrowding.
I disagree – I think there is definitely room for this more impassioned/personal style of reporting as long as the facts being reported are accurate, especially with this conflict in particular. After all, the headline is not misleading – people literally attacked military bases in defense of the right of IDF soldiers to rape and torture Palestinian detainees with impunity. That happened.
If you prefer the more dispassionate, passive-voice-using, equivocating language about what is going on in Israel/Palestine right now, you have almost the entire rest of the Western news media to choose from.
you are thinking of propaganda.
thre isn’t room for passion in news, because passion clouds judgement and that stands in a way of accuracy.
you can be passionate about a subject, but it can’t affect your choice of facts or adjectives you use to emotionally manipulate the reader - because then you are simply not trustworthy and its even counterproductive to your goal, which is to share information about the subject of your passion.
The idea that propaganda cannot be propaganda if it is delivered in a dry, objective tone is nonsensical.
The Israel/Palestine conflict is a great example of this - especially in the US. Anyone who has closely watched the mainstream news media cover the situation in Gaza, or the college protests that sprung up as a result, has witnessed consent for Israel’s war being manufactured in front of their very eyes, along with the vilification of anyone who stands opposed to it. The fact that it is delivered by seemingly professional journalists in a somber, even tone has no bearing whatsoever on how accurately it describes reality.
i am talking about exact opposite problem.
i am talking about when you deliver mix of information in highly emotional and manipulative tone, but claim it to be news.
dry, objective tone is indeed not the assurance of being good news, but it is one of the qualifying conditions.
this is propaganda - notice how “the stick” became “the explosive”, which is pretty ludicrous manipulation.
and that is why i would never read the zeteo article behind the headline, haven’t i got into this discussion.
zeteo:
“Is inserting an explosive into the rectum of a person legitimate?” Likud Knesset member Hanoch Milvetsky responded with what has been the position of the right (more than 50% of the Knesset, remember): “If he is a Nukhba [Hamas commando], everything is legitimate.”
cbs:
Lawmaker Hanoch Milwidsky was asked as he defended the alleged abuse whether it was legitimate, “to insert a stick into a person’s rectum?”
“Yes!” he shouted in reply to his fellow parliamentarian. “If he is a Nukhba [Hamas militant], everything is legitimate to do! Everything!”
lmao. Dude is so offended by people denouncing rape.
Removed by mod
You have a completely imaginary concept of how news works. It’s always biased. It’s always propaganda. Your “neutral tone” is just a propaganda tool of hegemony.
The best we can hope for is that the news is biased against rape, genocide, etc. Even though most often it is not.