On Israel-Palestine, Western media and its people stand on different sides

In October 2023, thousands of people gathered in the capitals of Western Balkan countries to rally in a show of support for Palestine amid its conflict with Israel.

People took part in demonstrations in Republic Square in the Serbian capital Belgrade carrying Palestinian and Serbian flags and chanting slogans such as "Free Palestine."

They also carried banners and signs saying "End the genocide in Palestine" and "Freedom for Palestine."

In Montenegro's capital Podgorica, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in front of the United Nations building.

They unfurled a Palestinian flag and shouted "You don't have to be a Muslim to stand with Palestine, just be a human!" and carried banners reading "Free Palestine."

Thousands of Bosnians gathered in the square opposite the historical Vijecnica Library, one of the symbols of the capital Sarajevo.

They carried banners saying "Yesterday Srebrenica, today Gaza." They also chanted "Stop the genocide" and "Freedom for Palestine."

According to the London Police, 1,00,000 people took to the streets for the "National March for Palestine" demonstration to denounce Israel's relentless bombing campaign and total blockade of Gaza in October. 

The protesters moved through London before massing at Downing Street, the official residence and office of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

"We are all united to deliver the same message: we want the violence to end. We're calling for an immediate ceasefire and for necessary humanitarian supplies to be safely delivered to the people of Gaza," Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said in a post on X.

Not just regular people, in the USA, a State Department official in the bureau that oversees arms transfers resigned in protest of the Biden administration's decision to continue sending weapons and ammunition to Israel. Josh Paul was the director of congressional and public affairs for the State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs for over 11 years. 

In his resignation letter, which he later shared on his LinkedIn page on October 18, he said that the Biden administration's "blind support for one side" was leading to policy decisions that were "shortsighted, destructive, unjust and contradictory to the very values we publicly espouse."

"The response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people," he wrote, adding, "I fear we are repeating the same mistakes we have made these past decades, and I decline to be a part of it for longer."

US Comedian Dave Chappelle in his latest show in Boston on October 19, began by criticising the Hamas attacks on 7 October that started the latest war, but then criticised Israel for isolating Gaza and heavily bombing the small, densely populated territory. While a part of the audience cheered, booed and cried "Free Palestine," another part left the show. 

While it seems that some people in Europe and USA are vocal about the Israel-Palestine issue, a poll by YouGov Eurotrack says a great many across the West care little or not at all about the conflict. 

The poll examined attitudes to the Israel-Palestine conflict in seven Western European countries as well as the USA. Matthew Smith, the head of data journalism at YouGov shared the numbers in his article. 

According to the poll, Germans are the most likely to say that the conflict doesn't matter much to them, or at all, at 73%. Italians are the least likely to say so, at 35%. In Britain, 56% say they aren't particularly interested. On top of this, a further 10-22% answered "don't know".

In the US and Italy 63-68% of each group say the conflict matters to them, while in Germany the figures are much lower, mattering to 36% of those who sympathise more with the Palestinians and 30% of those who sympathise more with the Israelis.

When asked who they think their national government sympathises with more, there is a notably greater sense in each country that it is Israel (except in Spain, where people split evenly between Israel and Palestine). Again, however, a large number of people are unsure (36-56%).

Public opinion, in theory, is influenced by mainstream media. There however appears to be a contrast between where the Western media stands on this issue and where people in the West stand. 

How western mainstream media is portraying the issue

Following the attack earlier this month, The Guardian led with an editorial referring to "the murderous rampage carried out by Hamas". Similarly, The Economist referred to "the bloodthirsty attack by Hamas.

When Israel is bombing houses, hospitals and schools in Gaza it has a "right to defend itself", according to the Western media, but any act of violence by a Palestinian is "terrorism". 

In April 2008 at least 22 people, including five Palestinian children, had been killed in another Israeli attack. The BBC reported on that incident where they explained it as Israeli 'incursions' into Gaza. The Israeli military 'operations' were 'sparked' by a Hamas ambush that had left three Israeli soldiers dead. The report further explained that Israel's state-of-the-art weaponry is deployed as 'retaliation' for 'militant' Palestinian attacks.

Professor Greg Philo, writer of the book 'Bad News from Israel' in an interview with Media Lens said, "The focus on Israeli victims, both in terms of the quantity of coverage and the language used to describe them, led some viewers to believe wrongly that the Israelis had the most casualties and these beliefs were attributed directly to what they had seen on television."

The 'mainstream media' of the West, in general, seems to be leaning towards Israel. 

In a 2012 paper titled 'Peace Journalism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the German press and the German public', published in the Open Edition Journals, the writer Wilhelm Kempf studied the news on Israel-Palestine published in the mainstream media and compared the coverage of the second Intifada and the Gaza War in the big five German national papers. 

The newspapers he studied were- Die Welt (DW), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), Frankfurter Rundschau (FR) and Die Tageszeitung (taz).

He found that although Israeli actions were more often criticised than those of the Palestinians, Israel's strength and confidence of victory, competitive logic, its confrontational behaviour and threats to it, were more often reported than the Palestinian side. 

In his report Wilhelm stated that Israel was more frequently portrayed in a defensive position than were the Palestinians, and the threat to Israel was more often thematised. 

Israeli actions were more often justified, Israel's rights were more often acknowledged, and not only Israel's cooperative behaviour, but also its readiness for cooperation were thematised more often.

He concluded his report saying, "Trying to provide balanced reportage, however, the German media neutralised this negative effect by displaying a measure of understanding for Israeli policies, so that on balance Israel came off looking better than the Palestinians."

In another study, titled 'Partisanship and Bias in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Comparative Study of Four International Media Outlets', Nevet Basker from  Israel Resource Center compared coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in four international media outlets—the New York Times, the Guardian (UK), the Jerusalem Post (Israel), and the English-language Web site of the pan-Arab cable TV network, Al Jazeera. 

A content analysis of a sample of 200 articles from each outlet over five years (2004-2008) demonstrated clear differences between the four outlets, while avoiding having to establish what would constitute a "correct" or "fair" treatment. 

The Jerusalem Post, clearly a partisan outlet, favoured the Israeli side of the conflict, while AlJazeera.net presented a pro-Palestinian viewpoint. The New York Times treated each side approximately equally, while the Guardian sympathised with civilians on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides, and harshly condemned violence against civilians, regardless of the identity of the perpetrator or the circumstances.