Palestinian Bilal Saleh was shot in the chest by an Israeli settler as he was harvesting his olive trees in al-Sawiya, occupied West Bank.
I disagree that it’s not a good source. Obviously, it has an Arab perspective but Al Jazeera English is one of the few TV news sources with journalists on the ground in Gaza (and Lebanon). I’ve found it to be more reliable than U.S. cable news, which has cut back on international reporting and so has been fairly worthless this whole conflict. To me, the quality of reporting on AJ English — not the pundits but the straight news segments — is as high as any other channel.
Obviously, some media literacy and critical thinking is required and you should be aware that it’s a government-backed channel. When it switches to talk shows and more opinionated stuff, it’s very biased (as you’d expect). But they aren’t like RT or Fox News where even the ostensibly straight news bits are pure, uncut party propaganda.
Also, no news source is free of bias. The NY Times is reliable and professional about reporting facts but it’s also going to cover topics of interest to upper class New Yorkers even when it’s silly. They cover student groups at fancy private colleges like they’re prominent NGOs staffed with experts and not a bunch of idiot kids who were born in like 2004 and haven’t been alive long enough to know shit from shinola. No matter where you get your news, you should always be aware of the incentives, target audience, and funding sources.
For comparison, the Times of Israel, citing quite a bit of Haaretz (which is generally paywalled I’m not even going to try). By now the off-duty soldier has been arrested which is the actual news in this instance, presumably due to international eyes on the whole wider situation. Israel is generally speaking shit at extending the rule of law to Palestinians, and should Palestinian authorities try to touch an Israeli they get roflstomped.
There’s left-wing Israeli orgs regularly organising trips into the West Bank to help Palestinians with the harvest specifically to avoid that kind of settler violence as should settlers kill an actual Israeli, even a left-wing one, they won’t get away wich cheap excuses, so they don’t even attempt to.
Overall, right now, we seem to have a curious combination of fascists being emboldened while simultaneously Israel is trying its darnedest to not be seen as an Apartheid regime.
How can Hamas do this.
It’s almost funny how some people, who didn’t follow the conflict before Oct 7th, are so shocked by this. Like this isn’t a regular occurrence in the West Bank…
Businesses as usual, Israeli settlers living on stolen lands rottenly rob, harass, attack, and murder Palestinians and the Israeli settlers who was arrested by the police, will be let go without a charge, as was the case of every single incident before. Israeli settlers are armed to the teeth, and are protected to commit crime.
protected to commit crimes
He literally got arrested right afterward
I’ve been generally supportive of Israel’s response to the attacks and do believe that the removal of Hamas is absolutely justified, however, that doesn’t change the fact that West Bank settlers are an absolute blight on the country and do nothing but stand in the way of peace. My sympathies for them are extremely limited, and if this does turn out to be an unprovoked attack, this guy is no different than the terrorists from three weeks ago and deserves the same treatment.
This is literally what the UN secretary general was referring to when he said the Hamas attacks didn’t happen in a vacuum. I don’t think the attacks were justified or even effective but it wasn’t some random act, the growth of Hamas comes from Israeli government backed oppression of Palestinians which itself comes after failed peace talks so on and so forth until the birth of civilization (though you could argue until the late 1940s).
People living comfortably here in Germany are flocking to extremist parties, because having to wear a mask during a pandemic or minding the rights of other people makes them feel oppressed.
The rise of Hamas was absolutely inevitable given the way people in Gaza were treated. If you’re literally fighting for survival and you realize more moderate groups are unable to change anything, you will support extremists out of sheer desparation.
