Three years ago, Peter Beinart wrote that anti-Palestinian bigotry was so prevalent in establishment discourse that it went by without notice, and that if it was ever actually named and talked about, almost everyone with power and influence in American society would be guilty of it. It’s like oxygen in the air, around us all the time but something we almost never notice.
The past year of watching how media and politicians talk about the war in Gaza has proven this true. Explicit calls for violence and even literal genocide (“We should kill them all,” Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee said earlier this year) against Palestinians go by with no comment, let alone condemnation. People lose jobs for simply expressing basic humanity toward and solidarity with Palestinians. Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian pundits are profiled and interrogated before media appearances, if they’re even allowed on. Disgusting racism is aimed at a prominent Palestinian figure, and instead of getting sympathy and apologies, she is slandered and defamed. The sometimes deliberate murder of Palestinian journalists with American weapons has been met with a collective yawn from a US press that screamed bloody murder over Donald Trump suspending a CNN anchor’s press pass. No one has even thought about so much as passing a resolution condemning Islamophobia in Congress.
We’ve also seen it in the mushrooming media furor over Ta-Nehisi Coates’s recent book and accompanying press tour, specifically his appearance on CBS Mornings last week.
After a yearslong hiatus, Coates has expanded his criticism of American racism with The Message, this time, in one of the book’s essays, taking on what has been declared by both human rights groups and officials in Israel as the country’s system of apartheid. For many, the book and its comparison of Israeli apartheid to American Jim Crow will be an eye-opening exposure of how a friendly country — on which many Americans are told…
La suite est à lire sur: jacobin.com
Auteur: Branko Marcetic
