Western reporting fails to include right to resist Israeli occupation

Journalists who, one can only assume, entered the profession inspired by a motivation to tell the truth are repeatedly failing in their duty — not even to pick sides, but to simply call things what they really are, writes Colin Sheridan

A relative mourns 15-year-old Basil Abu Al-Wafa, who was killed during an Israeli military raid on Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank in November last year. Picture: Majdi Mohammed/AP

On November 29 last year, the Israeli military executed what they described as "two high-ranking terrorists" during an assault in Jenin in the occupied West Bank. 

While they never identified the terrorists, CCTV footage later revealed live images of a small boy turning and starting to run before falling sharply to the ground — his body dragged from the road by a friend.

Adam al-Ghoul was eight years old when he was shot by the Israeli military in the head. The same day, his 14-year-old friend Basel Abu al-Wafa was killed after being shot in the chest. Two children murdered by an occupying army that — under every interpretation of international law — had no right to be there.

Adam and Basel are only two of the estimated 900 Palestinians who have been killed in the Occupied West Bank since Israel began its genocidal retaliation in Gaza on October 7.

Of that 900, almost 200 of them are children. With Israeli tanks entering the city of Jenin on Sunday for the first time since the Second Intifada in 2002, that number will inevitably rise. 

Despite the consistency of Israeli assaults in Jenin — along with escalating settler violence across the West Bank — there has been no international outcry from any government. Nor has there been sustained and accurate coverage from Western media organisations. 

Despite Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Amman, and Beirut hosting many foreign correspondents, few have made the two-hour trip to Jenin, Nablus, or Ramallah to enlighten the world as to the ongoing forced displacement, internment, and murder of Palestinian citizens there

This, despite the violence pre-dating October 7 by decades.

Amid daily violations of concurrent ceasefires in both Gaza and Lebanon, Israel has escalated its assaults within the occupied territories — launching a fresh offensive on January 21 it calls Operation Iron Wall.

Since then, more than 40,000 Palestinians living there have been displaced. Buildings and refugee camps have also been demolished, and dozens of people have been killed.

Israeli tanks deployed during an ongoing army operation in the West Bank Jenin refugee camp. Picture: Majdi Mohammed/AP

Reporting cites the usual verbiage of manufacturing consent. Jenin — like Dahiya in southern Beirut — is regularly described as a “stronghold", the inference being it is not a city of people — baristas, students, teachers, bankers, artists — but of crazed jihadis. 

Palestinians are not taken hostage by the occupying Israeli forces, they are taken "prisoner" — which again suggests their incarceration is legal and justified, despite most of them never being charged with any crime and many of them being children. 

The word "camp" elicits images of gang violence, of untamed militias roaming rows of tents, and of animals incarcerated behind barbed wire.

It’s working. Day after day, we see the same words used over and over. Journalists who, one can only assume, entered the profession inspired by a motivation to tell the truth are repeatedly failing in their duty — not even to pick sides, but to simply call things what they really are.

Is it laziness? The application of an erroneous and outdated industry standard? Or institutional racism?

While much of Western media continues to caveat its comment and reporting with mentions of the “Hamas-run health ministry” in Gaza, and Israeli military “raids” against “terrorists” like eight-year-old Adam al-Ghoul in Jenin, they — We — never once bookend our coverage by acknowledging that Palestinians have a recognised right under international law to resist Israeli occupation under Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions. 

This right is affirmed in the context of the right of self-determination of all peoples under foreign and colonial rule

That affirmation is not a controversial opinion, but a statement of fact.

Every conversation about Palestine should always have begun there. That they haven’t reflects our own failing as a society. That we can still rectify it — but choose not to — is a stain we will never wipe clean.