THE National really should be congratulated for its Saturday October 12 edition, from the front cover and the articles to the Gaza timeline.
Remembering the other mainstream UK papers over this last year of genocide in Gaza, the West Bank atrocities and now the invasion of Lebanon, it’s safe to say there has been a lack of consistency of critique, and little depth of unbiased analysis.
The National may not exactly be a lone voice, but it is very nearly. It provides the perspective of a people and their land with no army to defend or secure either from invasion and destruction.
READ MORE: John Mason expelled from SNP after Gaza remarks
That edition, with its articles including those by Mhairi Black and Hamish Morrison, highlighted the double standards and disinterest in the actuality of the surviving victims, far less seeking a solution.
There is always the necessity to condemn both Hamas and Hezbollah as if to establish some form of righteous credentials whilst ignoring the history, swiftly followed by the trope of “the right of Israel to self-defence”. Such obfuscation is immoral, as it attempts to create a 2023 context whilst in reality it diverts from the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
One of Hamish Morrison’s articles noted the almost empty room and a lack of UK media presence for a press conference relating to the current situation in Gaza. It can’t be “over exposure” or subject matter “fatigue”, since other outlets carry updates in either a one-sided or biased manner dressed up as journalism. And so throughout this, where has been the condemnation by the majority of journalists across the world at the massacre of local journalists in Gaza and the West Bank?
READ MORE: Gaza death toll passes 42,000 Palestinians killed by Israel
Since the beginning of the war in Gaza at least 140 journalists and media workers have been killed, several have been injured and others are missing. The International Federation of Journalists is working closely with its affiliate, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, to verify information in real time but it has documented the killing of 130 Palestinian journalists and media workers. And as they are eradicated attempting to provide us with information, Israel is censoring accurate news by excluding foreign journalists. Outrage? What outrage! Freedom of speech and access to unbiased information is vital, so again thanks to The National and its correspondents.
We have learnt over the year that food has become a weapon of war along with water, electricity and power denied. Hospitals are pulverised and medics are killed with impunity. There is a clear vacuum in political leadership, foremost in the West, where the majority of politicians appear to have rationalised genocide into some form of self-defence.
You cannot help but reflect that in the 1940s people had numbers tattooed on their arms. Today people choose to write their names on arms or legs, to enable some form of identification in the event of death and their bodies being dismembered.
What have we become as a so-called civilisation?
Selma Rahman
Edinburgh
WELL done on all the work on Saturday’s edition, especially that eye-catching front page regarding the Israeli/Palestine situation. I’m 80, have tried to be active concerning social justice since my teens (cared about Palestinians in particular for 60 years), but by this year feel what is the point in life today when everything is so unbelievably, crazily hopeless that I feel helpless. Your spark helps!
Catriona de Voil
via email
I READ the National’s Saturday edition report of “one year in Gaza” – journalism at its very best. It was the photo on page 28 of the Palestinian child which finally opened the floodgates.
Carole Downie
Arbroath
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