"Two days is an eternity in the breaking news business — but that’s how long the New York Times has already gone without publishing a single word about Amnesty International’s landmark report calling Israel an apartheid state. What explains the paper’s inexcusable reticence? It has a large staff, including several reporters who are on the scene in Israel/Palestine. Is the Times hoping, maybe unconsciously, to let the Amnesty news continue to simmer down, thus lessening its impact?
Other U.S. mainstream media have at least reported something, even if their coverage has so far been mostly inadequate.
Let’s contrast the Times’s continued silence with how Israel’s most prestigious newspaper, Haaretz, is covering the Amnesty finding. So far, Haaretz has already prominently published 5 articles, with a range of views. Anshel Pfeffer, a regular columnist, is a liberal Zionist, but his thrust is that the Israeli government’s campaign to discredit Amnesty is 'hysterical,' particularly the charge that the report is 'antisemitic.' He says that Amnesty has 'long decades of credibility,' and adds: 'Whatever the legitimate claims that Israel has against the report, this all-out attack on Amnesty, rather than arguing about the report on its merits, is basically a declaration of war on the entire human rights community. It will convince no one but the already convinced.' "
-->The NYT revealed this week that the newspaper is little more than a pro-Israel propaganda tool, and part of the Hasbara (the attempt to make racism in Israel look better). The NYT still hasn't reported one of the biggest stories in years, that Amnesty has joined Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem in branding racism in Israel as "apartheid." So much for "all the news that's fit to print."
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Common Dreams:
"Economic sanctions have, in recent years, become one of the most important tools of US foreign policy. There are currently more than 20 countries subjected to various sanctions from the US government. But if more Americans knew how many innocent civilians actually die as a result of these sanctions, would the worst of them be permitted? We may be about to find out in Afghanistan. Sanctions currently imposed on the country are on track to take the lives of more civilians in the coming year than have been killed by 20 years of warfare. There's no hiding it any more.
Projections through the winter estimate that 22.8 million people will face 'high levels of acute food insecurity.' This is 55 percent of Afghanistan's population, the highest ever recorded in the country. An estimated one million children are suffering from 'severe acute malnutrition' this year. Children who are malnourished are more likely to die from other diseases, even when they can get enough calories and nutrients to survive. Already, 98 percent of the population is not getting enough food, according to the UN World Food Programme. The biggest and most destructive sanction currently facing Afghanistan is the seizure of more than $7 billion of the country's assets that are held at the US Federal Reserve."
-->But our US media is hiding this story of endless wars and empire. Sure, the NYT ran an op-ed piece three weeks ago. But why aren't the terrible human costs of these sanctions in the news section?
