MEDIA EUPHEMISMS TO HIDE WIDESPREAD ISRAELI TORTURE CAMPAIGN: Making The Inhumane Anodyne
Words are tools. They can be used to build truth, beauty, insight and peace. They can also be used to fuel hate, ignorance, lies and brutality.
Understand, all the blather about a “free press” is nothing more than a euphemism for a “managed press”.
A “manipulated” press.
A “corporate” press.
By Mark Taylor
DeMCOKracy.ink (3/9/24)
Words are tools. They can be used to build truth, beauty, insight and peace. They can also be used to fuel hate, ignorance, lies and brutality. The majority of reporting on the US/Israel genocide by the western media has been of the latter.
The examples are numerous in the daily rip tide of “news” coverage out of Gaza and the West Bank. The name for such linguistic manipulation is propaganda, which is a primary weapon of abuse and conformity in all genocidal wars. As a former journalist of 18 years and psychotherapist, examples of the well-financed, coordinated corporate state disinformation campaign to minimize US/Israeli war crimes pop up every day.
Massaged and misused
A recent example from Reuters provides a classic example of how language is massaged and misused to further war crimes. I have posted the beginning of the Reuters story with a link to the full story below.
Briefly, the story reports how the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has issued an 11-page report asserting some employees were subject to torture — not “coercion” — to say they had been involved in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. Those allegations of participation led to nations cutting support for UNRWA humanitarian aid to over 2 million beleaguered Gazans, resulting in widespread surge of starvation, disease and unknown numbers of deaths of infants and children.
First, let’s be clear on what UNRWA reported, then how that was massaged:
“The document said several UNRWA Palestinian staffers had been detained by the Israeli army, and added that the ill-treatment and abuse they said they had experienced included severe physical beatings, waterboarding, and threats of harm to family members.” — Reuters (4/8/24)
To be clear “severe physical beatings, waterboarding, and threats of harm to family members” are clear examples of torture. These human beings were tortured, not “coerced’ as the Reuters headline disingenuously reported.
The softer, truth-evading euphemisms for Israeli torture techniques sprinkled throughout the Reuters story include:
“mistreatment”
”ill-treatment’
”abuse”
”subject to threats”
”interrogation”
”pressured to make false statements”
”coerced false confessions”
”accounts of coercion of UNRWA staff and mistreatment of detainees”
”inappropriate behaviour”
In addition to the acts of torture in the UNRWA document noted above, there was also mention of:
“…Palestinian detainees more broadly described allegations of abuse, including beatings, humiliation, threats, dog attacks, sexual violence, and deaths of detainees denied medical treatment…”
“In some cases there were clearly some physical impact on people's bodies. And also psychological impact. So this is what's also been documented."
“…three men who said they and fellow detainees had been beaten, stripped to their underwear, and burnt with cigarettes.”
In other words, the same torture techniques the CIA and U.S, military has routinely subjected innocent Iraqis, Afghanis, Iraqi and other citizens around the world to for decades.
The term most used by Reuters in the story to describe such allegations of torture is “coercion”, a term more appropriately used to describe a salesman getting a customer to buy an unnecessary extended warranty or someone getting a friend to pick up the bar tab. It is not a term to be used for a defenseless human being being stripped and repeatedly slammed into a wall, scorched with cigarettes or brutally waterboarded to within an inch of death.
How would those accusations be reported if the allegations were made against such resistance groups as Hamas, Hezbollah or the Houthis? We already know. We see it every day. (Note: The corporate media would refer to the mentioned groups as “terrorist”.)
Given the consistency of the duplicitous language, you can bet Reuters writers have a separate section of their journalist style book for reporting US/Israel war crimes.
Understand, all the blather about a “free press” is nothing more than a euphemism for a “managed press”. A “manipulated” press. In other words, a “corporate” press.
You may not be all that moved by this, but understand, in all collapsing empires the tools of colonization are eventually targeted at the homeland to quell dissent of the citizens drained empty to fund the empire. That is what is happening now, here.
The Reuters story below is a textbook example of how news, knowledge and — most importantly — our emotions are daily manipulated and marinated in a toxic sludge of propaganda to have us conform to the interests of the international corporate state…
UNRWA report says Israel “coerced” “some” agency employees to falsely admit Hamas links
Rueters (4/8/24)
March 8 (Reuters) - The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said some employees released into Gaza from Israeli detention reported having been pressured by Israeli authorities into falsely stating that the agency has Hamas links and that staff took part in the Oct. 7 attacks.
The assertions are contained in a report by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) reviewed by Reuters and dated February 2024 which detailed allegations of mistreatment in Israeli detention made by unidentified Palestinians, including several working for UNRWA. …
Here Is An Example Of How The Media Manipulates Language
“…A lot of the US media has this curious habit of using straightforward English when it comes to talking about most things, but retreating into the verbal equivalent of interpretative dance when describing violence perpetrated by Israel. Headlines are often so vague they read like a murder mystery. See, for example, this headline from the New York Times about the Flour Massacre: “Deaths of Gazans Desperate for Food Prompt Fresh Calls for Cease-Fire.” One gets the impression that these Palestinians just mysteriously flopped to the ground.
“Another hallmark of US coverage of Israel-Palestine is to ensure the reader knows, at every point, that even if an Israeli soldier fired a bullet, a Palestinian was almost certainly to blame. See, for example, this paragraph from an analysis of the Flour Massacre in the New York Times: “More than 100 were killed and 700 injured, Gazan health officials said, after thousands of hungry civilians rushed at a convoy of aid trucks, leading to a stampede and prompting Israeli soldiers to fire at the crowd.”
“That framing is insidious: it casts the blame squarely on Palestinians. They started it, the framing insinuates, Israel just retaliated in self-defence. Those crazy Palestinians! They’re always finding new ways to massacre themselves!”
— From The Guardian columnist Awa Mahdawi’d March 9, 2024 column “Opposing oppression is a feminist act – don’t look away from Gaza”.
Mark, thanks for making and illustrating this crucial point that we all need to understand. It amazes me that some people are buying what the mainstream media tells them hook, line and sinker.