Hyderabad: Many major media outlets throughout the world and inside India have been using words like ‘clashes’, ’eviction’ and even ‘rise in tensions’ in an attempt to explain the violence that transpired over the past week inside the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. But Palestinians and unbiased media outlets have a problem with such vocabulary which undermines the genocidal tendencies of the Israeli occupations.
Mohammed Al Kurd, a Palestinian writer from Sheikh Jarrah whose family was forced out of their house on Wednesday, schooled the channel CNN in an interview, explaining to the international media, or whoever was listening, as to why using the word eviction is problematic. He also accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing”. Tweeting a clip from his interview with CNN, Mohammed Al Kurd said “Their framing was problematic and inaccurate, so I pitched in.”
In the interview Mohammed Al Kurd said that these are forced displacements not evictions. He said “eviction implies legal authority, while Israel has no legal authority over the illegally occupied parts of East Jerusalem under international law.”
Al Kurd added that the word ‘eviction’ also implies the presence of a landlord, “Israeli settlers have not built our homes, they do not own our land,” he said.
The resident of Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood also said that eviction doesn’t imply the hundreds and hundreds of heavily armed police, army and settlers colluding. “Blowing up your doors, throwing your children from your windows, using brute force to throw you out in the street and assaulting and arresting you should you resist,” he said.
He added that using the word ‘eviction’ also doesn’t imply grenades and rubber coated bullets, “It’s not an eviction. According to the UN and countless politicians and human rights organisations, it could amount to war crimes,” he said.
Calling out the “hypocrisy” of the US-based publication Washington Post, Mohammed Al Kurd tweeted saying “The @WashingtonPost podcast featuring me is highly edited. It’s amazing they used my quote saying ‘no one listens to Palestinians’ & then proceeded to remove “colonial” “fascist” “apartheid” from my vocabulary. They even took out the word “occupation.”
It did not stop there, well known journalist Mehdi Hasan also called out the biased approach of the international media towards the Israel-Palestine conflict. He said that “the fundamental unavoidable reality at the heart of the [Israel Palestine] conflict is that there is an asymmetry of power here.”
He said that one side is the occupier and the other side is occupied and that’s why we shouldn’t talk about “clashes”
He said “one side not the other is firing rubber coated steel bullets, one side not the other has hundreds of people injured and in hospitals, one side not the other is having its Holy site raided.”
Apartheid not rise in tensions
Netizens also took to Twitter to express rage over the biased approach of the media in covering the conflict. A Netizen, Arbaaz Jamaal tweeted “Can’t the media see how it’s not a ‘clash’ or just a ‘rise in tensions’ ! It’s full blown offensive against unarmed Palestinian civilians at their holy site, what is the media trying to hide? The apartheid or the genocidal tendencies of Israel ? We’re seeing everything!”