This morning, former IDF soldier @ronenbergman of the @nytimes published a whitewashed puff piece on the Nuseirat refugee camp massacre. He helps justify the mass slaughter of 274 Palestinians & selectively erases critical details. 🧵
It’s standard practice for the @nytimes, but we should note how wild it is for a veteran of a foreign army to write a puff piece about their former army slaughtering hundreds of people—and for his background and obvious bias to not be noted anywhere in the article.
We will also note, again, that imagery is critical to dehumanization. 274 Palestinians murdered and the cover image of this article is two smiling Israelis.
The framing of this article, typical of @nytimes coverage of the massacre, foregrounds four (alive) Israelis over hundreds of dead Palestinians, and presents the IDF as swashbuckling heroes. This prefigures the reader to accept the justification for IDF butchery.
Here’s the justification—invading, occupying forces came under fire from the resistance, so naturally the military had to carpet bomb a refugee camp. It’s hard to imagine this logic being applied if, for instance, resistance fighters were freeing prisoners from Israeli jails.
Here’s the first factual distortion. Bergman calls the IDF’s vehicles “local trucks,” while erasing that the IDF likely hid in humanitarian aid trucks. Israel constantly accuses Hamas of hiding amongst civilians and uses that to excuse mass murder. More selectively applied logic.
Then, Bergman cites an example of the IDF disguising themselves as civilians. When Hamas is accused of this by the @nytimes, there is almost always an addendum, something like: “it is a war crime for militaries to hide in civilian areas.” This context is not added here.
“The escape” as a headline reminds us that four Israelis are the focus of this narrative, not the dead Palestinians they left in their wake.
And Bergman skews the truth again, neglecting to write that the “extraction point” refers to the US-built “humanitarian” aid pier.
And Bergman skews the truth again, neglecting to write that the “extraction point” refers to the US-built “humanitarian” aid pier.
It’s an IDF puff piece, written by a former IDF soldier. What else do we expect from the @nytimes? Boycott, divest, unsubscribe.
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