89-Year-Old Palestinian Woman, Witness and Victim of Israeli Genocide from the Nakba in 1948 to Gaza in 2024

Rayya, an 89-year-old Palestinian woman, is a survivor of the holocaust that has engulfed the Palestinian population since the Nakba of 1948.  She has now taken refuge in Rafah from the US-backed Gaza Genocide.  Her story is told briefly by her niece, Ghada Ageel, in Al-Jazeera under the headline “In Rafah, the final – and most deadly-stage of this genocide is upon us.”  Rayya’s biography reminds us vividly that history in historic Palestine did not begin on October 7.

There is another reason to read this brief piece on Rayya. The ongoing genocide in Gaza has been so widely reported in social media, over web outlets and in foreign media that it is hard for Western media to completely ignore the massive bombing and daily carnage.

Still the Western has done its best to slant the coverage against Palestinians and toward Israelis.  This is so obvious that it has been shown by quantitative analysis using a word count in the New York Times, Washington Post, and LA Times!  This analysis was reported in The Intercept by Adam Johnson and Othman Ali who conclude that these influential papers “showed a consistent bias against Palestinians,” “disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict” and “used highly emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis but not Palestinians.”

Professional propagandists are well aware that emotive accounts of the travails of individual human beings are the way to win people to a cause.  So, it is no surprise that the sufferings of Palestinians like Rayya are routinely glossed over in the Western media.

To this observer the Gaza genocide appears to be fading from the news in the Western media.  This is not the case in Al Jazeera and other outlets from the Global South.  My antidote is to look at the front page and headlines of Antiwar.com or Al Jazeera every day.  Compare this to the front page of Western outlets where the coverage is minimal.  From one point of view there should be more and better coverage of the genocide in the US media.  After all it is the American taxpayer who is footing the bill.

John V. Walsh writes about issues of war, peace, empire, and health care for Antiwar.com, Consortium News, DissidentVoice.org, The Unz Review, and other outlets. Now living in the East Bay, he was until recently Professor of Physiology and Cellular Neuroscience at a Massachusetts Medical School. John V. Walsh can be reached at john.endwar@gmail.com