Hi, It’s Xochitl again. The other day I was on the morning walk with my humans and they were talking about their expectations for the New Year. To me one day is pretty much the same as the next, so I don’t think much about the New Year except that’s when they do all those explosions that drive me nuts! As long as I get my two square meals and rollie chew sticks, I’m a happy camper. But no explosions, please!
Anyway, my humans heard me cursing about the news media’s coverage of the Gaza war. This is something that has been irking me for some time. “Well, Xochitl,” my Alpha says to me, “If you’re so upset about the asymmetrical news coverage of the war, why don’t you blog about it? Get it off your chest?” I thought about it and I think he’s right. So here goes.
What has this Shepard/Lab/Pit mix riled up is the way in which the news media has been covering the war in the Mideast. We all know that the immediate cause of the war was the terrible attack on innocent Israeli civilians by the Hamas group that left more than 1200 people dead and 150 or more held hostage. And all the networks have carried the reports of Hamas soldiers wantonly killing, raping and torturing Israel civilians.
It is terrible, horrific and inhumane.
In the first few weeks of the war we saw extensive news coverage, and rightfully so, of the Israelis killed and those being held hostage. There were extensive interviews with relatives of those Israelis being held hostage and in-depth reports of the atrocities perpetrated on innocent Israeli civilians. Important reports that, however horrific, we all needed to hear.
Israel forces sought to eliminate Hamas forces hiding in an underground tunnel network by launching aerial bombardments of schools, hospitals and residential buildings in Gaza.
But, meanwhile, as Israel forces sought to eliminate Hamas forces hiding in an underground tunnel network that reportedly permeates Gaza, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), launched unprecedented non-stop aerial bombardments of schools, hospitals and residential buildings in Gaza with apparent little regard for the civilian casualties they were inflicting. The civilian total throughout the Gaza strip has now reached more than 20,000 human beings.
But the news media coverage of these events paled in comparison to the atrocities upon Israelis. Compare a five minute report on the death of three Israeli hostages accidentally killed by Israeli forces with a twenty second report on the deaths of hundreds a day by Israeli aerial bombardment. American audiences saw numerous on-camera reporters broadcasting from Tel Aviv and the Gaza front, but very few reporting from within Gaza. Only occasionally, when we saw the gut-wrenching footage of bodies of babies left in a hospital by staff that were told by the IDF that they would care for the babies, did the impact of the war on innocent children sink in. All life is precious, at least report it that way.
The numbers tell it all. To date more than 21,000 Palestinian dead. More than half of them children.
More than half of them…CHILDREN! That’s over ten thousand children dead! Terrible, horrific and inhumane.
While the Israeli government claims to be doing all that it can to safeguard Palestinian lives, the facts seem to tell a different story.
The IDF instructed civilians in the North of Gaza to move south as best they could. Yet when they arrived in the South of Gaza, they found themselves the targets of more IDF bombardment. They had no place to run or hide. In the southern city of Rafah, tens of thousands of Palestinians, huddling in tent cities, are on the brink of starvation because the Israeli government is allowing only limited entry of badly needed food and medicine. According to the UN one out of four people in Gaza are starving because of the war.
What was been the White House’s response to this? From the beginning President Biden has pledged unilateral support for Israel. While critical in some respects to the IDF’s apparent disregard for Palestinian collateral damage, the Biden administration has refused to exercise any limitations to its funding of the Israeli war effort. The UN’s efforts to pass a Security Council resolution for a permanent cease-fire was blocked by the United States.
Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu has declared that the IDF will continue its campaign against Hamas regardless of the civilian collateral damage and that the war will continue for months.
Fortunately, we now have begun to see the major news networks do extensive reporting on the toll the war is taking on Palestinian civilian populations as well as that of Israelis. Perhaps telling the true brutal facts of this horrific war, the impact on both sides, will help highlight the fact that all life is precious, whether Israeli or Palestinian. And especially that of children who deserve a chance to survive to adulthood.
My humans asked me if I had a wish for the New Year. I told them that my wish is that humans would act more like us dogs. Yeah, we’ll get into a fight, now and then, but we don’t do wholesale slaughter of our own kind. Only humans do that. Yep, humans could learn a lot from us.
Xochitl