{"id":23803,"date":"2014-07-11T08:15:59","date_gmt":"2014-07-11T16:15:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=23803"},"modified":"2014-07-11T08:17:26","modified_gmt":"2014-07-11T16:17:26","slug":"exchange-of-projectiles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/11\/exchange-of-projectiles\/","title":{"rendered":"Exchange of Projectiles?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Numerous headlines in mainstream American coverage of Israel’s assault on\u00a0the Gaza Strip feature language about Israelis and Palestinians “exchanging rocket fire,” which conveys to the American public the sense that it is a matter of a “battle” between two neighboring “powers,” instead of the bombardment of an occupied territory; as if there was any kind of equivalence between the 400 tons<\/a> of explosives that have rained down from\u00a0Israeli jet planes, and the primitive, unguided rockets being lobbed from Gaza. The former has, in just a few days already killed<\/a> over 100 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and including at least 13 children. The latter has resulted in zero\u00a0Israeli deaths, and only 7 injuries.<\/p>\n

It’s rather like a scrum of cops assaulting a prostrate man with batons and tasers, and the media calling that a “fight” instead of a beating, because the man, as he flailed about under the blows raining down on him, kicked the leg one of the cops.<\/p>\n

The Palestinians aren’t allowed to leave; the Gaza Strip is a giant open-air prison camp. They have no air raid shelters or sirens.\u00a0They are\u00a0like fish in a barrel, being blasted by\u00a0a shotgun\u00a0from above. It’s like\u00a0some\u00a0of the fish in the barrel pathetically spitting water at the gunman, and calling that\u00a0a “shooting battle.” Indeed one has to wonder, if the economic blockade and the destruction wrought upon\u00a0the Palestinians were to reduce them to such penury that they no longer had\u00a0enough materials for rockets, and were reduced to only throwing rocks while continuing to have\u00a01-ton smart-bombs dropped on their houses, would the American mainstream media call the affair\u00a0an “exchange of projectiles”?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Numerous headlines in mainstream American coverage of Israel’s assault on\u00a0the Gaza Strip feature language about Israelis and Palestinians “exchanging rocket fire,” which conveys to the American public the sense that it is a matter of a “battle” between two neighboring “powers,” instead of the bombardment of an occupied territory; as if there was any kind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":193,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,21,41],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-23803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gaza-palestine-mideast","category-israel","category-palestine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23803"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23806,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23803\/revisions\/23806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23803"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=23803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}