Israel waged 15 wars against Gaza in the last 75 years, and all failed to resolve the core issues, says former French diplomat Jean-Pierre Filiu, professor of Middle East Studies at Sciences Po.
Filiu tells host Steve Clemons that Gaza’s rich history as a trading post connecting Africa and Asia goes back 4,000 years. The way Israel has cut it off from the world “goes against its history and the nature of its people”.
He says Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s heritage sites – ancient mosques, churches, museums – means that “the memory of humanity is being erased before our eyes.”
4000-year old culture? This area has been controlled by more different groups in the last 4000 years than the average person has had sexual partners.
Let’s use The Great Mosque of Gaza as an example.
It used to be a Christian basilica for a couple hundred years until the Muslim’s conquerored the area in the 7th century and built a mosque, but before the basilica it was a Philistine temple for an unknown period of time.
Then the Christian’s recaptured it in the 12th century.
Then Muslims destroyed it and built a new mosque in the 13th century.
Then the mongols destroyed it, and it was rebuilt. Then an earthquake destroyed it, and it was rebuilt.
Then it got damaged a few more times and was rebuilt by the Byzantines.
Then it got taken by Israel, until Egypt invaded and formed Gaza when they got mostly pushed out.
The history in this area is war, shit getting knocked down, and rebuilding.
Israel is just adding to the history, not destroying it.
You’re talking about Jarusalem and most of what you say is true, but it isn’t true of Gaza. Gaza has a known history going back 4,000 years starting as a Caananite settlement. Yes various different powers have controlled the region, it has been repeatedly fought over. But the geographic distinction has long been there and maintained some degree of cultural uniformity through numerous wars and other mass migrations.
Your version of history is all over the place
What a beautiful contrast in this thread.
One response with a pointless political slogan and the other with an informed reflective response.
Doesn’t matter what “side” we take compared to the significance of knowing what you’re talking about.
Can we please stop posting a propaganda outlet that is financed and controlled by the same government that is also sponsoring Hamas?
Aljazeera reliably reports on world news that gets totally ignored by other outlets, is the thing. I haven’t read up on Qatar’s policy’s otherwise, and I do notice that aljazeera never seems point fingers at Qatar’s own issues, but I’ve generally been very glad it exists.
Do you have an alternative that’s equally good for breadth and depth of world news, but in your view less biased?
Edit: I’ll note also that aljazeera does post no shortage of negative articles about the actions of, and human rights abuses by, Hamas, too. They’re just not getting shared here on beehaw, since Israel’s actions are rather more attention grabbing at the moment. I’ve never seen them post any stories or opinion pieces praising Hamas, either.
DW (Deutsche Welle) is pretty good. It’s funded by the German government, but I haven’t found any faults with the reporting yet. Unlike with Qatar’s state media, there is a law preventing the German government from directly influencing the reporting. At worst, their English voice overs can be a bit clumsy at times and some of their English language stories are of relatively little relevance to an international audience.
It is worth noting that their Arabic-language team has come under fire for antisemitism in the past (similar to a recent scandal at the BBC), so even they are unfortunately not perfect.
As for Al-Jazeera (edit: and sorry for writing such a long comment, this wasn’t originally planned), there have been a number of occasions of their journalists cutting off citizens in Gaza the moment they started to criticize Hamas and/or Qatar. Two examples:
https://twitter.com/MEMRIReports/status/1724696674763719162
https://www.memri.org/tv/jazeera-reporter-gaza-prevents-criticism-of-qatar-turkey
Earlier in this war, when a rocket from a Hamas-aligned group struck the parking lot of a hospital, Al-Jazeera spread the lie that it was an Israeli air strike, even though the breakup of the rocket launched from Gaza could be seen on their live stream. They later switched to a questionable analysis that claimed the Iron Dome had intercepted the rocket over Gaza, even though that’s impossible, since the Iron Dome neither extends over the strip nor intercepts rockets during their boost phase.
Analysis:
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/21/gaza-hospital-explosion-00122889
This kind of reporting has consequences. Al-Jazeera’s Arabic language content in particular - which is far different in tone compared to the more moderate English-language edition - has an enormous reach in the Middle East. In this case, the misleading at best reporting resulted in riots and antisemitic pogroms in several Middle Eastern and North African countries, including the torching of a synagogue.
Israel has also accused several of their journalists of working directly for Hamas. While they have presented evidence, these accusations have been met with heavy criticism, although notably primarily by people and organizations already critical of the Israeli government.
IDF claim:
https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-781666
Counter reaction:
The fact that at the funeral of this journalist, Saleh Aljafarawi, a man known for his many roles and clear connection with Hamas was front and center does support the IDF claim though (first from the left kneeling down):
In case you are not familiar with him, here he is singing a Hamas propaganda song in uniform:
https://twitter.com/OliLondonTV/status/1723492449157288062
I’m not saying that every journalist killed by the IDF is automatically a terrorist or that the company any of them keep, in life and death, is evidence of wrongdoing, but the whole thing is definitely odd.
Al Jazeera though has been dubious at best for decades already. I recall that even all the way back in the early 2000s, they were being regularly criticized for uncritically broadcasting terrorist propaganda.
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