The Media When IDF Soldiers Get Killed Vs When A Hospital Patient Is Burned Alive In Gaza

Nothing illustrates the malfeasance of the mass media like the vast disparity between how they’re covering the killing of four 19 year-old IDF soldiers by Hezbollah versus their complete lack of interest in a 19 year-old hospital patient who was burned alive by the IDF in Gaza.

A shockingly horrible headline appeared in Sky News on Monday reading, “Israel names teenage soldiers killed in Hezbollah drone attack — as ‘23 die’ in Gaza school strike.” It opens with the even more horrid paragraph “Israel has named the four teenage victims of a Hezbollah drone strike on a military base — as at least 23 people were reportedly killed in an attack on a central Gaza school.”

Notice the scare quotes and passive language in Sky’s use of “23 die”, and the way these active duty combatants are being framed as innocent little children who were the “victims” of an unprovoked attack which “killed” them. The killings in Gaza are always framed by the mainstream press as “deaths” which passively happen, always couched in doubtful language like “reportedly” and “according to the Hamas-run health ministry,” whereas Israelis are always “victims” who are “killed”.

The western media’s propagandistic use of language to frame Israel in a sympathetic light and Palestinians in an unsympathetic light is widespread, and has been extensively documented. All the way back in January The Intercept published a study showing that outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times used wildly different language to describe the killings of Israelis on October 7 than the killings of Palestinians in the months since, with inflammatory words like “slaughter”, “horrific” and “massacre” used consistently with the former and never with the latter. Another report by The Intercept this past April revealed that this is not an accident; a leaked internal memo from The New York Times reveals the outlet’s staff receiving explicit instructions to avoid specific language that harms Israeli information interests.

Look at the way Sky News names the armed Israeli soldiers killed in battle while framing them as innocent little babies who were slaughtered by monsters, and contrast this with the fact that you’re not seeing the name Sha’ban al-Dalou anywhere in the mainstream press.

Sha’ban al-Dalou was also 19 years old when he died, but unlike those Israeli soldiers, he was a civilian lying in a hospital bed, and he died a much more painful and horrific death than them.

If you’ve been on social media at all recently, you may have seen the gut-wrenching footage of al-Dalou burning to death in a hospital bed while still connected to his IV after an Israeli airstrike on the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, desperately crying out for help in a blazing inferno.

As of this writing, al-Dalou’s name appears exactly one time in any article I can find on Google News, and it’s from Middle East Eye.

The Middle East Eye write-up reads as follows:

“Sha’ban al-Dalou, a 19-year-old software engineering student at Al-Azhar University in Gaza and a memoriser of the Quran, was burned alive after an Israeli air strike hit Al-Aqsa Hospital which killed three others.

“Sha’ban, who was forcefully displaced last year after Israeli forces destroyed his home, had just started his university studies in September 2023.

“Last week, Sha’ban miraculously survived an Israeli strike on a mosque that claimed 20 lives.

“Sha’ban and his mother perished in a fire after Israel attacked the hospital engulfing the tent camp for displaced civilians in Gaza.”

Any mentions I can find of al-Dalou’s death in the mainstream press do not name him, referring to him only as a “man” or a “person” (not a “teenager”) who died in a fire.

“Videos from the scene appeared to show one man being burned alive as bystanders could do little but watch,” The Washington Post reports.

“In multiple videos shared on social media and verified by NBC News, at least one person could be seen reaching their hands out from the flames as they were burned alive,” reports NBC News.

Contrast this with the solemn, reverent way Sky News reads out the names of the four IDF soldiers in its segment on their deaths, repeatedly emphasizing the fact that “all four were just 19 years old.”

Over the last year the narrative being pushed by our media has become ever more blatant. Some lives matter more than others. pic.twitter.com/INIwXkcQfJ

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) October 14, 2024

Sky News, which Rupert Murdoch sold to Comcast in 2018, has been working overtime to spin Israel’s surging criminality in a positive light these last couple of days. Its Sunday evening report on the Hezbollah attack which killed the four soldiers made not one single mention of the fact that the attack was on a military base throughout the entire segment, leaving the audience with the impression that Hezbollah had attacked an Israeli shopping center or something. A Sky News write-up on London’s response to Iran’s missile strikes on Israel came under fire for using a photo of the burning medical center in Gaza where al-Dalou was killed as its feature image, implying that the burning building was caused by Iran and not Israel.

The massive disparity between the way the mainstream press report on Israeli deaths versus Palestinian deaths is evidence that the mainstream press are propaganda services for the US-centralized power alliance. But it is also evidence that Palestinians are not viewed as human beings by the western political-media class.

As Lebanese writer Lina Mounzer recently wrote, “Ask any Arab what the most painful realization of the last year has been and it is this: that we have discovered the extent of our dehumanization to such a degree that it’s impossible to function in the world in the same way.”

The 19-year-old we all saw burn to death in the hospital compound, after an Israeli strike.

Sha’ban Al Dalou. https://t.co/zsb12P3bi3 pic.twitter.com/HezgUnE1R1

— Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed) October 14, 2024

As Aaron Bushnell said before he himself burned to death, “This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-media-when-idf-soldiers-get-killed