A searing indictment of Western media that lays bare how a so-called free press, long tasked with speaking truth to power, instead became a vital part of the machinery that enabled the genocide in Palestine If you're not writing the truth about crimes against humanity, you're culpable in them. Human rights activist and Middle East scholar Assal Rad is known online as the "headline fixer"--with a special focus on exposing double standards in Western media, especially about Palestine. Israelis are described as "children" and "civilians," while Palestinians are "people under 18" and "collateral damage"; Israelis are
killed; Palestinians
die. Even in the wake of the ceasefire, major Western media continually obfuscates Israeli violence in Palestine, with the Associated Press reporting, for example, that "Gaza's living conditions worsen as strong winds and hypothermia kill 5."
No, Rad corrects:
Gaza's living conditions worsen as Israel blocks aid. And all of this is in stark contrast, Rad points out, with the highly sympathetic mainstream coverage of the Russian invasion in Ukraine, a conflict that Western media has been quick to condemn.
This pattern of dehumanizing language, DON'T SAY PALESTINE reveals, has been so consistent throughout the Palestinian genocide that it amounts to a policy. Over the past three years, headlines in outlets from CNN to Reuters to the
New York Times have consistently downplayed Israeli responsibility, "othered" Palestinians, and called into question inviolable tenets of international law like the sanctity of hospitals and journalists in warzones. Highlighting the linguistic moves and framing devices at play and surfacing stories Western media decided not to report, Rad maps with devastating clarity mainstream media's instrumental role in sanitizing, white-washing, and downplaying a human rights crisis.
DON'T SAY PALESTINE offers both a moral reckoning and an urgent call to action. When these years are studied, this will be the book people read to understand how "this" was allowed to happen, and the one people turn to when looking to rebuild their faith in the media.
