They Took Down My Article, A Fight Against Being Silenced
Western Media’s Complicity in Genocide, [PII]
Instead of an “in Briefs” entry these last couple weeks, I’ve been focusing on the piecing-together my thoughts on the continued propagandized western media. Here I share a couple of the stories I experienced.
I encourage you to join in the conversation and hang with me, for the next year, this is a reader supported space. And your support means the world, and will open up more opportunities for us to connect. Thank you for being here.
An Editorial Fist-to-Cuffs
I scrambled to find the piece, I’d copy and pasted the link several times. I searched the news-site, and different browsers. I pulled up my screen grab to make sure I had the right stock photo. I couldn’t find it anywhere.
The piece was missing. Finally, I reached out to the editor. Where was it? What happened? Oh, and I hadn’t been paid yet.
What was going on?
We’d gone nearly three rounds of write-ups and edits. Other editors loved it, he hated it, I wrote it again. He edited it, claimed it wasn’t good, but he’d commissioned it after reviewing other work I’d done. I wrote it again. I pushed back. He’d been nervous about words and phrases. We’d dumbed it down. I insisted he edit and not rewrite again, he was using some of my words anyway. It was exhausting. We came to an agreement.
Then my payment was allegedly sent to the wrong bank and it was a fight to get it reversed and sent correctly.
And in the middle of all of this, 2-weeks, after it finally went live, published, Deutsche Welle erased the piece, erased my work, erased the pain-staking efforts to finally get it up.
“Ruffled a few feathers” he said.
He was putting it lightly. I did some digging, called a few people I knew close to the situation. Apparently, it caused an uproar with impassioned Zionists in the newsroom, a few Israeli influences close to DW.
The Story?
It was 2014 and the rise of Daesh was in full force. Foreign fighters, i.e. young white and westernized men seemed to be flocking to Syria or at least that’s how headlines painted it. But so were New York and California born Jewish kids, coming of age, making Aliyah (essentially, moving to Israel to officially take adapt Israeli identity), joining the Israel’s militancy, even signing up for assignments in the occupied West Bank.
I started asking questions. The rhetoric was too similar.
I’d got myself onto a training kibbutz, I talked to Americans who were eager to have a deployment in the Occupied West Bank, who saw Palestinians as Arabs who didn’t belong, who were young enough to be true believers, for them, divine right mattered. I spoke to a reformed jihadi, about his radicalization in and his path out before he ever got to the fight.
I heard young men grappling for identity with no other outlet, other than the violence of power covered in super-heroism roles, raging underneath perceived passion (sound familiar…ahem Manosphere?).
Even one of my anonymous Israeli sources, told me “Jihadis remind me of Zionists going to Israel.”
I delivered the story. It pissed people off.
And DW not only tried to silence me, they tried to throw me under the bus by giving-out my information, without my permission, to a Jerusalem Post reporter, so he could make efforts to bait me.
I delayed the call for a day or so and decided to see what he really wanted to ask or say to me. He asked the infamous question, “does Israel have a right to defend itself.” Back then, I simply didn’t answer.
It’s not what the piece is about, I reminded him. Did he read it? He pushed another way, what were they supposed to about Hamas?
It’s not what the story is really about, I told him again, it’s about those coming from the U.S. to fight for Israel, why are their reasons better than those fighting for Daesh?
He fumbled. He tried again, doesn’t Israel have a right do defend itself?
You’re trying to get me to say something I’m not going to give you, I told him. I wasn’t about to go on the record while I was inside Palestine.
I was still re-orientng myself, fresh out of Gaza’s 50 day resistance, weeks before. I know what I saw. I was gaining the language, unlearning preconceived notions, and studying international law more closely.
He was stumped. This interview didn’t go as planned. He wasn’t getting good bites in what was supposed to be an off the record chat, but I knew he wanted to turn it. He was fishing and rather confused as to why I would cover such a story.
DW was not the first time I’d faced off with the Zionist control over a story or a newsroom, it would not be the last. And still, it had one of the most blunt outcomes.
His subtleties weren’t so much. Mr. Weinthal has long promoted Zionist agenda for the J-Post, scavenging for any story which he could cry anti-semitism. A word losing its salt when a terrorist nation-state spends decades marrying nationalism to faith, while destroying indigenous people.
The whole scenario was frustrating and I was powerless to change it at the time, I knew I wasn’t wrong in my assessment and now, as we watch Israeli militants proudly post their war crimes on social media, it’s evident, their terrorism was always part of the training.
At the time, of course, the only real opinion I cared about was my German Grandfather. He read the piece with great interest and wrote back,
“Young men joining a foreign military to attain a sense of community or being a part of something bigger than themselves does not seem to me to be a path to personal fulfillment, especially since it involves going to war where people get killed.”
Translation? “It sounds ridiculous.”
My Grandfather did a couple of years in the American Army, was sent to Germany and thankfully he wasn’t deployed to a front-line during Korea. He appreciated a more peaceful existence and had more liberalized ideas than some knew. We discussed it on a phone call later and he was glad I’d brought attention to the story.
Then I moved on, back to Beirut and back to the Syrian border.
Over a decade on, sometimes I want to know what happened to those younger Israeli men: are they commanders now? What war crimes have they committed? And could I turn them in to the Hind Rajab Foundation, who are chasing legal cases? Did they grow a conscience?
Perhaps, in some ways, I wrote the warning.
CAPTION ON VIDEO: I filmed this May 2024, two years ago, and 8 months into Genocide, the irony is I was carefully examining resistance at this point, which later leads me to the piece below, grappling with how we talk about Violence. What I wanted to convey here, predictably what I witnessed and covered over a decade ago was coming to pass again, and more clearly in a broadcast genocide.
The live streamed genocide isn’t an accident. Israelis posting their murderous crimes is to show dominance, they want us to know, they are controlling the narrative.
As a friend told me, concerning Daesh (video above), whether we’re for them or against them, the videos are for all of us. From Daesh to Israel (and yes, the Israel has funded a Gaza Daesh group ironically), we are seeing what they want us to see and they’ve been preparing us for this moment.
Blood Crafted Headlines.
The headlines have become a battleground. For many reporters, the headlines rarely reflects the heart of the story. It’s rare a reporter gets to choose the headline. It’s edited and debated and ultimately, it’s a line editor who fashions it before publishing.
It’s where the agenda of most news organizations is subtly displayed. It’s the linguistic statements of how intense the story is or isn’t, how it gets prioritized, where it goes in the broadcast, the page in a newspaper or section online. The headline helps control the coverage and the message.
The headline adds “breaking news” for the extreme cases and “developing” when it’s an important story they promise to follow up on —with meaningful updates. They are the call to attention for an audience trying to get a quick fix before getting on with their day. The 24-hour cycle contributes to the addiction of consumer led information, no one has to wait until dinner anymore for a half-hour summary, they can pop onto a website and see the story as it rises and falls.
And when it comes to Palestine, or Israel, the words become weapons.
The Intercept investigated, gathered the numbers and the intel from the last few years. The decided to review the bias toward Israelis and of course confirmed what so many already knew.
The author, Adam Johnson said he,
“examined over 12,000 articles from the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN.com, Politico, Axios, USA Today, and The Associated Press, along with 5,000 TV segments that aired on CNN and MSNBC.”
The task is daunting. But what he found was important:
“The right to self-defense for Israel 94 times more than they did for Palestinians. In print media, Israel was afforded this right over 100 times more frequently than Palestinians in Gaza”
The phrase and use of “human shields” was used in most media coverage to justify significant attacks, but is not used for Israelis. (My thoughts on the phrase here)
Each of these outlets frequently uses the phrase “massacre” or “slaughter” when referring to the deaths of Israelis, but then favors the Israeli attacks on Palestinians by deflecting to a negative on Hamas, (and I can tell you the word “clash” and “conflict” are used to dismiss the severity of Israel’s bombardments as well)
Which then, leads to using the phrase “Hamas-run” as a simple way to “downplay” Palestinian voice or authority (“Hamas run-health ministry” for example, etc)
There are other findings in using words like anti-Semitism vs. Islamaphobia or how the coverage of Ukrainian deaths was elevated in segments and headlines of coverage over Palestinian deaths.
It’s not easy to gather data points, numbers and analysis, but it’s important because when news media slants its direction toward Israel, it facilitates dehumanization of Palestinians.
For years, it’s been a custom to get “two sides” of a story, when often, what that means is Israel (or the governing body) gets to defend its attacks no matter how much evidence suggests they were in the wrong.
Media and Audiences have learned to trust government or uses of “military” statements as more legitimate, or as some measure of truth, when in fact their statements are shrouded in a version of the story which helps them maintain control or power, rather the humbly admitting “mistakes” and now, ironically, the Israeli government doesn’t even care if their statements are inflammatory.
They’re getting away with every word because they’ve worked the gaslight within western newsrooms so profoundly, with no accountability, there is no need to hold back.
Even when their own media reports it, or it floods social media spaces, openly, the American news ignores it as some sort of “inside baseball” for which white audiences don’t need to worry about.
One example includes Israel’s finance minister, Bazalel Smotrich was recorded in 2024 (which presented in a documentary called Arte),
It is written that the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus.
Since then he’s made numerous inflammatory statements as with the rise of Itamar Ben-Gvir, a documented terrorist according to Israeli law, under-reported in the west, his travels and presence have gone long ignored until now. The International Criminal Court is calling for warrants of both men, for their arrest. This after Ben-Gvir’s torture and mocking of western humanitarian flotilla members. Will anyone carry out the arrest? It’s doubtful.
All this compiled is what compels the public to either ignore the Holocaust against Palestinian people or blatantly support it. The truth is, the headlines, their networks, they all have blood on their hands.
I’ll share one more story here,
It was the last major dispatch story I covered in Jerusalem for Yahoo News at the time. It was DJT’s first term and his choice for Ambassador was a known Zionist, David Friedman. The aim was to officially move the Embassy from Tel Aviv, where most countries reside out of respect for the contested (and occupied) city. But Israelis had long wanted a united Jerusalem under their jurisdiction.
At the time, a prevalent Palestinian activist was calling out against it, I interviewed him, spoke to Palestinians in Easter Jerusalem and even Jewish advocates from If Not Now who were standing against the move as well.
My editor reviewed the piece and insisted I include a quote from the Palestinian activist, he claimed incited death to Jews. He sent me a link, it was from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). But there was a problem, it was posted on their blog, it was not an official press release. I did my due diligence to investigate and could not corroborate it with one single independent source. For two days I looked, researched, went back to him for a statement.
He never said it. The ADL made it up. I told my editor I wouldn’t include it without confirmation and there was none. The editor blew up, said ADL was a reliable source, I said they were not. He demanded I put it in or he’d pull my piece.
I went over his head, to the leading editor. I insisted I would not put my name against the information of an opinionated organization which made up an entire statement no one else heard or reported. I did my job. The piece published without the statement.
The fight was hard, the tit for tat, and visceral and emotional demand of a Zionist editor who couldn’t handle his beloved organization….lied. But that’s how propaganda is built.
Later that year, DJT recognized an embassy in Jerusalem. Netanyahu was elated. Another insult to injury for Palestinians.
American media sources made it a footnote.
To Be Continued…
Not ready to join up yet? Consider supporting the work through a one-time support link below and I’ll offer 2-month full access.
Ash is a writer, a Veteran War Correspondent, analyst, and producer. To connect, work with, consult or interview LIVE, connect here.
