CNN, Surely You Can Do Better Than This For Palestine Seventy Years After The Nakba
Regarding the story Al-Jazeera headlines headlines as:
Two Israeli soldiers killed in West Bank attack Incident in the West Bank comes amid ‘100 days of rage’ protests by Palestinians against Trump’s #Jerusalem embassy move.
CNN, which also broke the news (16 March 2018), could use the following pointers from a Palestinian reader to improve its presentation of the story to a world-wide audience.
FIRST, notice that the Palestinian driver who is the actor in this incident is mentioned in the passive voice, as if the story is not about him:
Two Israeli soldiers were killed and three more were injured in a car ramming attack on Friday afternoon in the northern West Bank.
SECOND, the story happened in the West Bank, but the source is not the Palestinian Authority, as it should be; it’s the Israeli military:
…according to the Israeli military and emergency services.
THIRD, the geography in your story is the illegal Jewish settlement of Reihan with no mention of its illegality under international law. the important geography of the incident is the Palestinian-owned land of Jenin and its environs:
The attack happened at 4:15 p.m. near the settlement of Reihan, about 25 kilometers west of Jenin, the military said.
FOURTH, here we come to “the Palestinian driver” already having assumed the Israeli military are the good policing element, “evacuating” the driver (from his own militarily occupied homeland) to a hospital seen as a humane act:
The Palestinian driver was evacuated to an Israeli hospital for treatment, said Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus.
FIFTH, you tack on an innocuous statement that evokes ordinary police questioning about a traffic incident, when what will actually happen is an interrogation, torture and punishment of the Palestinian resistor by the Israeli military system:
The driver is being questioned.
SIXTH, you don’t bother with the word “alleges”:
Conricus added that the ramming was a deliberate attack by the driver.
SEVENTH, still nothing about what Palestinians have to say on this, showing a clear bias for “the soldiers” and mention of the settlement (again) as if it ought to be there naturally:
The military said the soldiers were securing the routes around the settlement of Mevo Dotan in the northern West Bank.
EIGHTH. no hint that what this will mean now for Palestinians in the area is mass punishment in by “soldiers” who are so disproportionately armed compared to the people they are colonizing and subjugating, it’s a travesty:
IDF soldiers are searching the area.
CNN, surely, you can do better than this to save Palestine from the clutches of the settler-colonial Jewish state of Israel seventy years after the Nakba!
Photo Palestinian Ala Qabha, suspect in a mission that killed two Israeli soldiers in the West Bank (Courtesy)