Where can I NEUTRALLY keep up to date about the Palestina/Israel situation?
Looking at the two big news publishers in my country. One isn’t reporting about the current bombings at all, while the other one is phrasing their words mostly anti-Palestinian.
Is there some neutral coverage I can keep up to? Where do you guys get your info from?
This site collects news from multiple sources, tells you their political affiliation, shows the difference in summary based on left / center / right news sources, and optionally shows a lot more like ownership network etc if you pay for it.
Nothing will be neutral, but I like it to get an overview.
Stick with reputable news sites. Reuters is my gold standard. Along with AP News. They tend to be some of the least bias sources out there and do their due diligence when it comes to reporting.
It’s worth noting that a lot of the news coverage may come across as pro-isreal and anti-palestinian but that’s because a lot of the news is “Isreal claims this” and “An IDF statement that” the sources themselves are biased.
Also keep in mind that this is an active war. There will be a lot of wrong information as media reports the best information available, it’s not the media having a bias, it’s just the fog of war as things rapidly develop.
I’m aware of that, and some of the current claims are probably subject to change in the future. I just browsed through reuters, and they seem unbiased. While my local news refers to hamas as “radical islamic terror organisation Hamas”, reuters just uses “hamas”.
Good journalists will never make their own opinion on the matter known outside the comment/opinion/analysis pages.
Not: Man eats a delicious red apple
Not: Man eats a red apple and says it's delicious.
But: Man says he ate a red apple and claims it is delicious.
Or in some cases: Footage appears to show many saying he ate a red apple and claiming it was delicious.
If the journalist didn't see it with their own eyes, they won't state that it's a fact.
It's annoying how intertwined opinion and journalism have become, but it isn't a journalist's job to do anything more than report on what they saw, read or heard.
Unfortunately journalism has been in decline for so long now, that many people don't know the difference between good and poor journalism. So when a good journalist simply reports on what someone said, they wrongly think the journalist is agreeing with them, instead of simply reporting on what they heard the person say.
Good journalism isn't someone shouting about how angry something makes them, even if you agree with them. Good journalism is the equivalent of a court stenographer or someone who subtitles movies for the deaf.
Why is man “claiming” the apple is delicious? Is he in the pocket of Big Apple, and it really isn’t delicious? Or is the report from Fox Apple and they’re trying to cast aspersions on the man and his “claims”?
Right. It’s all about media literacy. Once you start picking up on loaded language like “Radical Islamic terror organisation Hamas” it starts becoming pretty evident what the biases are. That’s not to say the news they are reporting is false, just that it is going to take some extra work on your part to filter out all of the bullshit. Like you mentioned, the Common name of the government of Gaza is “Hamas” calling it anything else is an attempt to appeal to emotion to prime you to think about it a certain way. Like calling the Israeli government “zionists” it’s ment to sway to to something, not give you news.
Obviously, with the fact that the Palestinians have been opressed for decades, which led for organisations like the Hamas to arrise, there’s no good guys / bad guys in this situation.
While this might be true, it’s all about the context. They make it seem like the Israelis are targeting the “bad guys” and should be allowed to do so. But they don’t mention the unrightful suffering and death of Palestinian civilians at all.
You now what I mean? If they call the Hamas a radical islamic terror organization (which I’m fine with), why don’t they also call the Israelis a radical zionist terror organization?
What I want to read is, if the Hamas fucked up, then let me know about it, also, if the Israelis fucked up, I want to know about that too.
but that’s because a lot of the news is “Isreal claims this” and “An IDF statement that” the sources themselves are biased
It’s also important to keep in mind that when you read “Gaza health ministry claims”, in reality it’s the same as “Hamas’ health ministry claims” since Hamas has been ruling that area since 2006 and tortured the Palestinian opposition ever since (amnesty.org/…/gaza-palestinians-tortured-summaril… ). Same thing with claims by Al Jazeera since Qatar hosts Hamas’ leadership and funds their lavish lifestyles there so it wouldn’t be right for them to suggest in their own newspaper that they’re hosting terrorists, thus their news will rarely be critical of Hamas.
What’s the solution? There are a few choices you could make. You could cherrypick pro-Palestinian sources like Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye or Electronic Intifada and automatically dismiss whatever Israel says as disinformation and it could make you feel good about yourself as it’s very easy to oversimplify the conflict as just one big high-tech state abusing poor people fighting back with stones. You could also do the same cherrypicking for a pro-Israel position. Or you could dismiss any pro-Palestinian or pro-Israel source and only listen to news sources that provide a “balanced” account of the events (Associated Press is indeed very good). Or, much better but will require more thinking on your part: you read all of them and you dismiss none of them.
A pro-Palestinian position is (for now) anti-Hamas and pro-Abbas, supports the removal from Hamas from power, supports Israeli action against Hamas, but decries the limitations of aid or the blockades from Egypt/Jordan/etc against even short-term refugees.
Palestine would currently be a country, for the first time in human history, if Hamas did not exist.
A 2 state solution was offered multiple times and was denied because Palestinian leadership had a hard line of Israel not existing.
When a 2 state solution became politically viable in Palestinian territory, Hamas seized power and refused further elections
Just because I don’t know if you want clarity on the whole thing, Palestine as never been a country. It was part of Jordan and Egypt before being lost in the 6 Day War, and part of a chain of empires before that. There was no unified Palestinian identity prior to 1967.
To my knowledge the closest state to the 2 state solution was an offer to Arafat after the Camp David negotiations. He didn’t take the offer, but I don’t know why. But that was in 2000, before Hamas seized power in 2005. That was why I asked.
Abbas moving toward the 2 state solution was what led to the Hamas takeover, and violent skirmishes between the PA and Hamas. Specifically their issues were the more secular state the PA favors and that they don’t believe Israel should exist
So the ideal solution would be a 2-state+1-cage solution, where the cage is for Hamas and Netanyahu together with his Ultra Orthodox faction, where they can fight each other to death, while Israel and Palestine negotiate on a peace treaty.
Yeah definitely. But, they’re a charitable organization focused solely on that and not on political outcomes so I give them some leeway. It’s not like they hide their intent.
Just remember as you read news, these are inherently biased sources. Basically all of them are. Look at who they are citing to understand how bias might affect the information being relayed to you. For example, if Hamas or Gaza Authorities are saying something, it is probably coming from a pro Hamas perspective, if IDF or Israeli authorities are saying something, probably comes with some bias too. This is true of all news, all the time. The spin is real. Anyone claiming a lack of spin are probably the biggest spinners of bullshit. It sucks that to be well informed you have to be able to be literate not only in the language but also how to read journalism itself. But that’s the reality.
I agree with InfiniteGlitch, this conflict has been going on for centuries, arguably millennia. IMO, at its core, it’s land rights with religion piled on top. Depending on who you talk to, both sides have plenty of reason to hate each other (doesn’t make it lead to any good) because of what their forefathers have done up to present day atrocities. Ultimately, it has come down to reactionary hate over land rights, freedom, fear and safety. I find it helpful to read the facts of what is happening from a distance and take the emotion out of it. When you do that, I’m not sure how this conflict will end. There is so much retaliation. The prisoner thing has me understanding why they’re going overboard. The backlash from Israel makes sense if you think you’re justified in keeping everyone in an open air prison. I hope they all find peace, but I don’t see how that can happen when everyone is raised in that environment of hate & vengeance. Basically, read everything you can on it and take the facts from each. Everyone will spin it to their opinion.
Technically, Northern Ireland and Ireland share a border, just saying. Also, Ireland is more apt since they share the same religion, one came after the other, they both think they’re right and it’s a total, lengthy, shitshow.
That area, because of so many religions centered on it and/or the power it holds, has been fought over since Solomon’s Temple.
Nope! Solomon's temple was built 1000-600 BCE. From then till christianity took over it's mostly been a backwater, or buffer zone.
It only seems important because we have writing from people who lived there (the Torah, etc.) saying how important it was (to them), then that writing got the official stamp of truth when the Roman empire took over Christianity.
To the extent it was fought over, it was mostly because it was between much more important areas - the Egyptians and other powers like the Hittites, Babylonians or Assyrians.
Even then the neo-babylonians for example seem to have left the region largely depopulated - it's not like they actually wanted it for any reason
The neo-babylonians sacked Jerusalem, among many other cities and temples. Temples are where much of the wealth and power was kept, sacking the first temple had little to do with the potency of their specific religion. At that time the religion was just the normal Canaanite pantheon.
Judaism as we think of it, with the covenant between the special people and a single all powerful god - that only begins after the first temple is destroyed and Judah is largely depopulated, around the 500-200BCE time period.
What happened to the 2nd (actually 3rd) temple
The Romans destroyed it 70CE. ~600 years between major sacks of your city shows it's not that important.
Don’t forget, Crusades anyone?
Yes, during the medieval period Jerusalem finally starts to become an important goal of religious conflict - 2-2.5 thousand years later than the building of the temple of Solomon
So, you agree, since the destruction of the first temple, there has been some issues that have cropped up. Should I say 2nd temple then? I feel like you’re an archaeology student/pro that is getting lost in the weeds. It’s still millennia. (Or maybe 50 years short, if you’re going to be technical. I bet you’re going to be).
Also, stop editing everything, it’s a pain in the ass. That area has been in conflict over one of the religions since at least 70 CE.
The Romans destroyed it 70CE. ~600 years between major sacks of your city shows it’s not that important.
Right, not important enough to build an arc de triumph, oh wait…
Last comment, you still haven’t talked about the Waq, I wonder why.
“It’s the imperialist culture that drew the borders”, says person who apparently is completely unaware of the history of the middle east in the past few hundred years, nor in the geo-political forces behind the conflict in the past 75 years.
This seemingly simple comment already tells me you are pro-palestinian. Also, for someone that is interested enough in this matter to take part in this discussion, you show impressive ignorance.
So just to to troll you a bit, let me answer this way: Thinking that this crisis started when seven Arab armies attacked Israel with the proclaimed goal of “sweeping the Jews into the sea and pillaging the millions they invested in the country” is extremely short sighted.
Today's Israeli-Palestinian conflict dates back thousands of years and combines politics, religion, race, war, and territory all in one.
If you really want to understand this from a non- biased point of view, your best bet is probably wikipedia, where different people with different viewpoints can debate the facts and non-biased writing is somewhat enforced.
The truth is that it's a very complex conflict with innocent people and some very shitty people, on both sides.
This war in the middle east has been going on as long as I've been around, for 64 years and beyond that. It's not ever going to stop. The only solution to any of this is the most easy and yet frightening one -total annihilation of every human on earth. Yet that's what MUST happen if the earth is ever going to be a place of peace.
Yet somehow those "other" animal disputes don't end up destroying the climate or beheading kids in Palestine or Israel or threatening nuclear annihilation of the planet. Compared to what us human animals do to each other -- that looks very peaceful indeed.
There is no middle ground between their two conflicting narratives, so neutrality would be impossible unless you found a source that was criticizing every last individual who happened to be in the conflict. The closest you’d get is maybe a Bahai source, and I only say that as a tragically creative solution because Bahais don’t believe in discussing politics while being forced to talk about this because their leadership has been caught in the crossfire of the attacks, having shared a promised land with the Jews and being headquartered there.
Not a great idea to try. It’s theoretically possible but fraught with peril. Instead, it’s much more feasible to pick two news sources, one pro-whatever and one against, and check both.
There’s aggregators like (our sponsor,) ground news (!) that let you sort by stance and affiliation, that can make it more convenient.
If you must go with a shortcut, pick a country that is interested in the conflict, but not particularly on one side or the other, and read how its being reported there. India for instance, has been fairly neutral on this conflict, to the dismay of both sides, as they have economic ties to both Israel and the Arab world. They’re being critical of more or less everyone, and especially the British. lol Still not unbiased though, y’know?
So, it’s better to just check both sides regularly.
The idea that there could be a truly neutral source is not really realistic, human minds do not work that way and there are many other reasons why it's even harder than that.
As long as you stay away from the blatant extremes, partisans, people with some other stake in the game, etc., all you can do is evaluate relative bias, and try to adjust for it. It is inevitable that your take isn't going to be unbiased, either, but this way you'll have had a decent shot at minimizing wrongness.
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