LETTERS: The recent attacks on Al-Aqsa mosque, where Israeli forces stormed the compound during Ramadan and brutally assaulted and arrested Palestinian worshippers, are yet another example of the oppressive and violent tactics used by the Israeli government to suppress the Palestinian people.
While the world is quick to condemn such attacks, the Western media's framing of the situation often perpetuates a misleading narrative that erases the systemic injustices of the Israeli occupation and silences the Palestinian struggle for freedom.
For too long, the Western media has perpetuated a biased narrative, describing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a "complex historical dispute" or "cycle of violence" between two equal sides.
Such framing ignores the power dynamics at play: where Israel is an occupying force with immense military and economic power, the Palestinian people live under a constant state of oppression and dispossession.This narrative obscures the root causes of the conflict and absolves Israel of its responsibility for the ongoing violence and human rights abuses against Palestinians.
The coverage of the multiple attacks on Al-Aqsa mosque last week is a case in point.
While most outlets covered the incident, the language used failed to contextualise the broader issues at play.
For instance, the New York Times (April 5, 2023) reported the Israeli police's ruthless beatings of Palestinian worshippers using the butts of their rifles and the arrest of hundreds inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque as a mere reaction to Palestinians who "barricaded themselves inside the mosque".
The term "barricaded" suggests that the worshippers were engaging in aggressive behaviour, when in fact they were peacefully practising i'tikaf, a common practice of staying in a mosque for a certain number of days, devoting oneself to ibadah during Ramadan.
By putting the situation in this way, the responsibility of aggression is shifted to the Palestinian worshippers rather than the Israeli forces, who initiated the aggressive and premeditated act.
The rest of the report linguistically obscures the power dynamics at play and reinforces a false narrative that both sides are equally responsible for the violence, rather than acknowledging Israel's responsibility as an occupying power.
Moreover, the media's focus on the "religious conflict" between Jews and Muslims obfuscates the political and economic factors driving the Israeli occupation, and it is about time we recognised that it is not the root cause of the ongoing violence and oppression against the Palestinian people.
By framing the conflict as a religious one, the media reinforces the false narrative that the conflict is an age-old dispute between two religious groups, rather than a political struggle for self-determination and human rights.
We cannot continue to allow the media's misleading language to erase the realities of the situation and perpetuate a false narrative that absolves Israel of its responsibility for the violence and oppression against Palestinians.
DR NADILLA JAMIL
Department of English Language and Literature, AHAS Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences, International Islamic University Malaysia
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times