The New York Times instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept.
The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by internally displaced Palestinians, who fled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees.
While the document is presented as an outline for maintaining objective journalistic principles in reporting on the Gaza war, several Times staffers told The Intercept that some of its contents show evidence of the paper’s deference to Israeli narratives.
Almost immediately after the October 7 attacks and the launch of Israel’s scorched-earth war against Gaza, tensions began to boil within the newsroom over the Times coverage. Some staffers said they believed the paper was going out of its way to defer to Israel’s narrative on the events and was not applying even standards in its coverage. Arguments began fomenting on internal Slack and other chat groups.
So does Palestine consider themselves under attack by Israel?
That’s a very important question that I haven’t seen covered in news.
All we have to go on is no news of military action, but is that just poor media coverage? Or maybe I just need to look for it
The West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem have been considered Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) since 1967, the occupation was a deliberate decision by Israel.
Israel is an Apartheid State by every international definition, with systematic discrimination and oppression of Palestinians. Divide and Conquer has been a tactic to separate Gaza from the West Bank, and also divide the West Bank into isolated enclaves.
On 1967:
Israel Claimed Its 1967 Land Conquests Weren’t Planned. Declassified Documents Reveal Otherwise: Haaretz and Forward
On Apartheid:
Amnesty International Report, Human Rights Watch Report, B’TSelem Report / Explainer
On Divide and Conquer tactics:
“Divide and Rule”: How Israel Helped Start Hamas to Weaken Palestinian Hopes for Statehood -DemocracyNow, History of Hamas -CFR, Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas -NYT
Palestinian Enclaves