This opinion piece is being published anonymously by request of the author out of fear of possible reprisal.
When I first came to the US people would ask me where I’m from, when I said Palestine most people would respond with “Pakistan?” This was until the events of October 7th happened. The day when the news about the attack by Hammas on Israel covered every major headline in the world, as it had been declared a war by Israel.
For over 75 years Israel has been an occupying state and has been practicing apartheid and military regimes towards the Palestinians. It hadn’t been talked about until the attack of October 7th happened. Most countries were quick to support Israel and spread news about why we should support Israel. Only showing one attack and one side of history makes me question why is it that it takes an attack like the one on October 7th for recognition of what has been going on in that region. How is it that when a group of people who have been oppressed and living in a concentration camp defends themselves, they get labeled as terrorists?
After the attacks, people started to learn about the issue as a whole, but this is only applicable to people who do their own independent research, bringing me to the issue of why mass media is biased towards a side and refuses to report with honesty and fairness. For example when the media describes a 6 year old Palestinian girl as a young female and Palestinian hostages as prisoners, while the media describes a female IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) soldier as a child and hostages as hostages. Another being when the ICJ lawsuit brought by South Africa to charge Israel with genocide was only streamed when the lawyers for Israel were speaking and not the other way around.
This issue in the media branches out into more than just having an uninformed audience. It dehumanizes a whole ethnicity of people where they are being depicted as less of people than others. This has caused issues in the US like the stabbing of a 6 year old Palestinian and other hate crimes.
After seeing all these atrocious hate crimes towards my people, this makes me question my safety as a Palestinian. Finally I want to conclude by saying how I learned to not believe anything shown on mainstream media, to always seek for the truth and full story. These recent events have shown us how controlled everything is by the media and how in order to free Palestine we need to free ourselves from what we are consuming and wake up to what is actually going on.
