Israel's genocidal mission against the Palestinian people is continuing unabated. The Zionist attackers fear none, neither UN nor ICC nor any other. But they are challenged by only one force, an emerging undaunted part of the media. It is clear that the world's major media are serving the Israeli mass murderers. All western big powers led by the USA are at their service, and so the big media. Yet, a fraction of the media has stood against the Zionist attack with sacrifice of their lives and career. This anti-Zionist, anti-colonial and anti-apartheid media is now a major headache for the Israeli war leaders.

Journalists are embracing death in Gaza to remove the veil of falsehood and expose truth to the world. Israeli war machine is also awarding them with death by bombs. So far, 108 journalists have been killed, 32 wounded, 2 missing, 51 arrested and harassed, according to CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists). Recently, two journalists, Yasser Qudih and Wael Al Dahdouh, have lost 8 and 4 members of their families, respectively.

Before going into our topic let us read a timely excerpt from Vivek Chibber's article, 'Let's Celebrate Noam Chomsky, the Intellectual and Moral Giant,' in the Jacobin (18 June 2024):

'Media owners don't have to micromanage anything, don't have to tell anyone what to say or do. All of those possibilities are ruled out at the hiring decision. The higher up you go in the food chain, the more agreement you'll find on basic issues, because interests are aligned. Of course, sometimes people are hired who don't play along, or whose views evolve so that they diverge from owner interests. In this case, they don't have to be fired or punished, though of course this might become necessary. A more subtle mechanism is available, which is a slower path of career advancement: as Chomsky has noted, "People who break away from the consensus have dubious prospects in the media or the academy, in general." So there doesn't have to be a "ministry of propaganda" as there was in Nazi Germany. The one-sided presentation of facts is assured by media people following their own class interests. In his "propaganda model," there are actually four structural filters that function to weed out dissenting views from the media, so that what comes out is mostly propaganda.'

Of the present-day world journalists, some have fearlessly broken away from the genocidal consensus and so jeopardized their career. They have come under threat because they have stood against the US-Israeli propaganda machine of spreading lies about killing in Gaza. Of those who lost their jobs for telling the truth and not succumbing to the mercenaries of lies, Mehdi Hasan of MSNBC, Sangita Myska of LBC, Belle Donati of Sky News, and Briahna Joy Gray and Katie Halper of The Hill come to mind instantly. These bold and truth-seeking journalists did not bow before the power whose hand reaches the remotest corner of the earth and whose bomb can fill a land of culturally rich living people with blood and dead bodies.

Mehdi's program Mehdi Hasan Show on MSNBC was widely popular and recognized as a unique platform for giving voice to the pro-Palestinians. Big, powerful and smart liars were being caught and ruthlessly grilled by Mehdi. But it went too far even for MSNBC. After he interviewed Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev and proved him a liar through fact-checking all his statements, his days in that media house became numbered. MSNBC suddenly cancelled his show and offered him a less prioritized position in next shows. Mehdi left the media company and in January launched his own, Zeteo.

In that famous interview, Mehdi challenged Mark by saying, "You say Hamas's numbers-I should point out, just pull up on the screen, in the last two major Gaza conflicts, 2009 and 2014, the Israeli military's death tolls matched Hamas's Health Ministry death tolls, so - and the U.N., human rights groups all agree that those numbers are credible. But look, your wider point is true."

Mark Regev challenged him back and said, "Those numbers are provided by Hamas. There's no independent verification. And secondly, more importantly, you have no idea how many of them are Hamas terrorists, combatants, and how many are civilians. Hamas would have you believe that they're all civilians, that they're all children. And here we have to say something that isn't said enough. Hamas, until now, we're destroying their military machine, and with that, we're eroding their control. But up until now, they've been in control of the Gaza Strip. And as a result, they control all the images coming out of Gaza. Have you seen one picture of a single dead Hamas terrorist in the fighting in Gaza? Not one."

After some length of arguments Mehdi said, "But they're also people your government has killed. You accept that, right? You've killed children? Or do you deny that?"

Regev replied, "No, I do not. I do not. I do not. First of all, you don't know how those people died, those children."

Democracy Now's Amy Goodman ended this excerpt on her show by saying, '"Oh wow," Mehdi Hasan responded, interviewing Netanyahu adviser Mark Regev on MSNBC. Soon after, MSNBC announced that he was losing his shows.'

LBC's Sangita Myska has been put off air since interviewing Israeli Government spokesman Avi Hyman in April. Sangita is a well-respected award-winning journalist working formerly with BBC. She was a regular host on LBC. Jacqie Kohler wrote on Sussex Bylines (30 May 2024), "Many news sources had reported that Israel had attacked Iran's consulate in Syria and, two weeks later, that Iran had launched 200 drones and missiles at Israel in retaliation.

Myska referred to the convention that consulates and embassies are considered sovereign territories of their Government, and asked Hyman whether Israel's actions had therefore escalated an already fragile situation. Hyman took issue with the question, specifically Myska's use of the term consulate, despite her simply referring to what had been reported widely elsewhere."

Listeners called for her reinstatement with more than 38,000 signatures in a petition and over 100 media personalities declared their support for her, all without result.

Sky News anchor Belle Donati had to go away after interviewing Danny Danon, a senior Likud member of Israel's Knesset and former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. She quoted from an article Dannon co-authored with Ben Barak in the Wall Street Journal on 13 November 2023.

Danon and Barak gave examples of European countries and the US accepting refugees and asylum seekers from Europe and elsewhere and wrote, "Looking at these examples, countries around the world should offer a haven for Gaza residents who seek relocation."

Donati quoted from the piece, "One idea is for countries around the world to accept limited numbers of Gazan families who have expressed a desire to relocate."

She identified Danon's idea as ethnic cleansing and compared the voluntary migration of Palestinians from Gaza with the plight of Jewish people during the Holocaust. This seriously angered Danon and he called her antisemitic. He later demanded immediate termination of her from Sky New Group. And they obliged accordingly.

Briahna Joy Gray, Progressive African American journalist who was National Press Secretary for the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign and a vocal critic of the Israeli occupation and genocide in Gaza, lost her job at The Hill. She co-hosted 'Rising' and regularly exposed hypocrisy, cruelty, apathy, greed etc. of the US-Israel alliance. She demolished all the Israeli bullshit of beheading babies, systematic rape of women hostages, Hamas hiding under hospitals, etc.

Briahna wrote on June 6 in the social media: It finally happened. The Hill has fired me. There should be no doubt that Rising The Hill has a clear pattern of suppressing speech-particularly when it's critical of the state of Israel. This is why they fired Katie Halper, and it was only a matter of time before they fired me."

Katie Halper, a popular left-wing podcaster, was fired from 'Rising' exactly for the same reason in 2022. She called Israel an apartheid state and supported Rashida Tlaib, the US congresswoman of Palestinian origin.

This is the world we are living now-media, the eyes and ears of people in a state, are shut down, hijacked, distorted with journalists living the most unsecured life. The only ray of hope gleaming at the end of this dark tunnel is the voice we hear from Mehdi Hasan, Sangita Myska, Belle Donati, Briahna Joy Gray, Katie Halper, and others like them. We should everyday celebrate their heroic standing against the Israeli apartheid and US-backed longstanding genocidal consensus.

The author is Editor, Biggan O Sangskriti