Abeer AlNajjar

professor media criticism, accountability, critical media literacies, MENA @LSEMiddleEast @UniWestminster. Ed board @journstudies & Internl Journ. of Comm.

[Abeer AlNajjar @abeernaji]

https://t.co/BBcV1f226e

[Abeer AlNajjar @abeernaji]

1/5 My new paper is out: I analyze the Western legacy media's coverage of the war on Gaza. Outlets like the BBC, NYT, & Guardian, despite their reputations for independence, have sidelined core journalistic values. A thread on their failure: 🧵

#Media #Journalism #Gaza #Press

[Laila Al-Arian @LailaAlarian]

With the world’s attention on Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya after his appearance in court challenging his torture and detention without charge, watch our @PeabodyAwards winning film “The Disappearance of Dr. Abu Safiya” which tells his story.

https://t.co/E4QcVxvxwI

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

Israel is the world’s greatest killer and I can’t find a single Western headline about it.

[sarah @sahouraxo]

BREAKING:

Israeli settlers are burning Taybeh in occupied Palestine.

A village that has stood for thousands of years.

A place where Jesus once walked.

Home to the oldest living Christian community in the world.

And not a peep from Western mainstream media.

[Laila Al-Arian @LailaAlarian]

Bari Weiss has publicly stated that advocating for Israel was her entry point into journalism

[Zachary Foster @_ZachFoster]

The point of journalism is to check power and their abuses. The point of Bari Weiss is to excuse, downplay and justify power and their abuses.

[Sana Saeed @SanaSaeed]

Journalists in this country are unable to be completely honest about what role Bari Weiss is actually playing and why she specifically is being chosen to do this, even when they share their most intense critiques of her. Her role is simple: to protect and uphold pro Israel narratives and propaganda.

Nothing has been as transparent in intention of the explicit reconfiguring of Zionism’s paramount position in our news media than the placement of Weiss at the top.

Our news media can’t say that, the big name journalists can’t say that, because they are complicit in the slaughter of Palestinians and for most of them, Israel, Jewishness and Zionism are still too sacred of a cow.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

The Israeli government has said explicitly that they see social media control as their most important war -- especially in the US -- and will use a combination of censorship and buying up platforms and influencers (like they did with TikTok and CBS) to re-propganized Americans:

[The Washington Post @washingtonpost]

Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil died after being trapped in a building hit by Israeli airstrikes.

A Post reconstruction of Khalil’s final hours found that Israel denied rescuers access to her during a key period when she was still alive. https://t.co/J3ZM6wZTp4

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

Compare these two headlines. You think @nytimes left out those details on accident?

[Abeer AlNajjar @abeernaji]

Wow a totally new low in censorship and systematic institutional distortions

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

A professor in the U.S. was suspended for mentioning Palestinians, just days after Hasan Piker was barred from the UK for condemning a genocide.

Your rights are being stripped away in service of Israel’s impunity.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

This is why there's a massive and more-blatant-than-ever global campaign by Israel and its loyalists in all countries to censor and criminalize Israel criticism by re-defining it as hate speech.

It's also why Larry Ellison bought CBS, Paramount, TikTok, trying to buy WB, etc.

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

🇵🇸 “The term ceasefire has been used as a surrender cudgel against the Palestinians in Gaza,” Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill explained on Sky News.

Jeremy noted that Israel signed a ceasefire agreement with Hamas, then violated it repeatedly by killing more than a thousand Palestinians and advancing deeper into Gaza, while the international conversation shifted to demands that Hamas disarm, despite it never agreeing to do so in the signed agreement.

Israel “signed a ceasefire with Hamas, not with the children in tents that they continue to burn alive,” Jeremy said.

His remarks came as an entire family of five was burned alive in new Israeli strikes on residential apartments in Gaza City tonight. (See linked post below.)

@jeremyscahill | @SkyYaldaHakim

[Jad Melki @jmelki]

My interview with the capable Rania Khalek and Zoe Alexandra of BreakThrough News, on the Israeli war on Lebanon and my latest survey of Lebanese political attitudes toward it.
https://t.co/lnBTpqdkri

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

⭕️ NYT Called Every Major Gaza City a “Hamas Stronghold,” New Book Documents

A new book by media critic Adam Johnson, How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza, documents how the New York Times used the term “Hamas stronghold” 154 times between October 2023 and October 2024, almost always while reporting on war crimes or pending war crimes.

Johnson shows the paper applied the label to all five of Gaza’s most populated cities, including refugee camps like Jabaliya, where an Israeli strike killed upwards of 120 people in an October 2023 attack. The NYT headline read: “Israel Strike Targets Hamas Stronghold in Dense Gaza Area.”

The book argues the framing militarized civilian areas in the public imagination to justify their destruction.

[CJ Werleman @cjwerleman]

🚨 New study shows the New York Times, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, CNN, Politico, USA Today and Axios collectively used the term "savage" 16 times for the killing of Israelis, but never for the killing of Palestinians.

Likewise, "slaughter" appeared 120 times in relation to the killing of Israelis, but only once for Palestinians.

"Massacre" was used 344 times in relation to Palestinians killing Israelis, but never for Israelis killing Palestinians.

"Barbaric" was used 14 times to describe the killing of Israelis, but zero times in relation to the deaths of Palestinians.

The cable coverage displayed a similar pattern.

MSNBC, presenters and guests used
"massacre" 177 times, "barbaric" 46 times, "savage" 23 times and "slaughter" 102 times in relation to Israeli deaths.

They never called the killing of Palestinians "barbaric" or "savage". In relation to Palestinians, they only used “massacre" eight times and "slaughter" four times.

References to "savagery" and "barbarism" echo the logic of settler colonialism, identifying the uncivilised natives as a problem to be solved.

Credit: ‘How to Sell a Genocide: Media’s Complicity in Genocide’ by Adam Johnson.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

The western story of Israel's creation was a lie from start to finish. As this short film shows, Israel's founders knew the story was a lie because they were the ones who invented it.

Understanding what happened then makes perfect sense of what is happening now, in Gaza.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

How did the person at Fox News who wrote (and then another person who edited) this article on UK's banning of Hasan Piker not realize that the second paragraph completely negates the truth of the first?

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

What a weird way of saying “Israel has killed over 100 first responders in Lebanon”

[Double Down News @DoubleDownNews]

Israeli soldiers caught on vid raping Palestinian

Victim suffered ruptured intestine, severe injury to anus, lungs & broken ribs

Israelis rioted for right to rape, ministers defended rapist, 1 rapist became celebrity

All charges dropped

This isn't just Ben Gvir this is Israel