Since the outbreak of fighting between the Lebanese army and the Fatah al-Islam terrorists on Sunday, the US media have been reporting on the horrific conditions in which the 40,000 Palestinian refugees are in and detailing injuries and casualties. In the Thursday’s New York Times, the story reads:

“By late Wednesday, about 15,000 refugees had left the camp, the Red Cross said, piling into buses, pickup trucks and cars. Some walked out, still shaken by the four-day conflict between the Lebanese Army and Fatah al Islam, a militant Palestinian group.

Fearing more fighting, most of the evacuees went to the nearby Badawi refugee camp, where they stayed with relatives and at schools that were turned into makeshift shelters. As many as 40,000 Palestinians had been trapped inside Nahr al Bared with no running water or electricity and dwindling food supplies since the fighting erupted Sunday.” (1)

it absolutely amazes me that US media care so much for the plight of Palestinian refugees now and show pictures and video on all news broadcasts and in newspapers. They describe injuries to children and name the refugees involved showing children crying as if they were sympathetic to their situation.

This is outrageous!

For sixty years the refugees have suffered these and worse horrors with virtually no mention whatsoever in US media because the agony and tragedy of the refugees came at the hands of Israel; the sole cause for there being Palestinian refugees to start with. Why is it that they are ignored entirely or treated as animals in some petting zoo by US media when Israel bombs a sanitation facility for Palestinians or devastates their lands with depleted uranium?(2) Whenever Israel assaults innocent Palestinian civilians, as they did in Jenin(3) in 2002, the typical US response is “Israel has a right to defend itself” regardless of the suffering of the Palestinian people. When Lebanon now fights a clear and present threat, the US media calls on them to be more careful and complains about the suffering of the innocent people in the camps. Why the double standard? I am not downplaying the suffering of those in Nahr al-Bared. They are suffering and have been living in squalor for years. I truly sympathize with them and pray for their safety. However, I am pointing out the fact that US media can no longer claim ignorance when it comes to the suffering of Palestinians in all refugee camps and in the West Bank and Gaza regardless of the actions of Hamas and others. They also acknowledge, unlike how they cover Israel, that you can not commit wholesale slaughter regardless of the threat against you or your ‘right to self defence’ when innocents are involved.

It is far past time US media recognize and publish accounts of the suffering of Palestinians but they should not limit it to criticism of the courageous Lebanese army when they are fighting al Qaeda on their own territory. They should also call out, with equal or greater vigor, the atrocities committed by Israel in the name of self defence against innocents in the West Bank and Gaza.

(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/world/middleeast/24lebanon.html?ref=world

(2) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/1106531.stm

(3) http://hrw.org/reports/2002/israel3/israel0502-01.htm#P49_1774