Jingoists
America’s mainstream media coverage of the Hamas Attack of Israel, October 8–10
Jingoistic is an apt term to sum up much of American mainstream media’s early coverage of the Hamas Attack. (1) Recall the first twenty-four hours of reporting and one is immersed in a cacophony of exhortations, grounded in nationalism and repression.
Jingoistic is Congress’s semi-official response in so far as of this writing, Congress lacks a Speaker and the Senate has abandoned military assignments. Congress ties a vote for increase in military aid to Ukraine with comparable increases in military aid to Israel. Where once one saw dual US/Ukraine flag lapel pins on House Representatives’ suit jackets, one sees US/Israel flag lapel pins.
Jingoistic is President Biden’s address Tuesday to the nation in so far as the President failed to deprive a terrorist regime the legitimacy of its attack on civilians — a breach of international norms and modern warfare. (2 )
Historical context and reckoning were glaringly absent. Viewers were offered a menu of military reports from journalists stationed in Israel, retired U.S. military whomever, speaking from home, and on October 8 leftist demonstrators protesting Israeli occupation in front of Chicago and New York Israeli Consulates:
“This episode is going to show a lot of Americans that the leftist movement contains, at the grassroots level, a lot of very inhumane, bloodthirsty people. Ultimately that revelation will hurt the movement in the eyes of progressive Americans, draining some of the goodwill it built up over the last decade.”
-Noah Smith, Substack, October 11
For a media obsessed with ‘fairness in reporting,’ for twenty-four hours watchers experienced veiled support of nationalism and repression from left and right — the meat of jingoism. Viewers witnessed repetitive displays of Israeli grief of lost and missing family. Excluded from the reporting was witness to the “open air prison” of 2.4 million Gazans crowded into 140 square miles, abandoned since 2005 by an Israeli military presence who could not defend itself within Gaza’s blockaded walls. Images of the cruel and inhumane massacre of Israeli kibbutzim and fleeing attendees at a Desert Rave Event would surface on Tuesday and Wednesday. (3, 4)
America can grieve for both Israel and Palestine: America has directly or indirectly supported both Palestine and Israel since Israel’s founding in 1948.
“A page has been turned, whatever the outcome of the war that has just begun. Israel has not, after all, moved beyond the conflict that has haunted it since the creation of the modern state in 1948: the claims of two peoples, Jewish and Palestinian, to the same narrow strip of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.”
-Roger Cohen, “A Shaken Israel Is Forced Back to Its Eternal Dilemma,” New York Times, October 8
Recently, America attempted to broker a detente between Israel and Saudi Arabia, two governments who sat by while Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu claimed ‘Gaza’ doesn’t exist. This is not a form of ‘gotcha analysis’ — America chooses not to “intervene,” which is a form of intervention.
America can acknowledge the rejection response that has emerged from victimized Israelis: what about my family member who is being held hostage?
Isn’t their welfare, their return, worth fighting for?
Throughout the debacle for Israel and for Palestine, a dread has been reported coming from regional security stakeholders. Condemnation feels hollow, gratuitous. A global dimension is missing. One Israeli mother grieves, “Why does the UN think that funds going to improve health care and early education in the Gaza are not ending up with Hamas buying rockets and weaponry?”
And as has been exposed — a break in the jingoistic cloud: ‘why are we tip-toeing around barbarism?’ (5)
Biden in his Tuesday (October 10) address skirted the naked issue of terrorist hostage-taking. Wednesday, October 11, he recanted and pledged to get American hostages home. But by early positioning Hamas as sole perpetrator, Biden forced an equivalency on the American public: support for Israel means embracing the notion that Hamas represents evil. In the next political moment, Biden touts his long relationship with Netanyahu. One can overhear the off-mic whisper, “Do the right thing, Bibi.”
Cannot America support Israel and Palestine and condemn violence? Notably, the last American President to attempt this approach was Jimmy Carter, who temporarily breathed some air into a fraughtful, neo-historic conflict.
However, America’s reluctance at endorsing a two state solution remains intact. American intelligence, a history of assassinating populist leftist leaders — Mossadegh in Iran, Allende in Chile — fails at coordinating security in the Middle East, an area where American strategic prerogatives do not prioritize maintaining peace. A dialogue, filtered out by the partisan scrim of American politics, has yet to take hold. At the United Nations, discussion of a UN Protectorate, maintained by an international consortium pledged to sustain regional peace and reconciliation, seems remote.
As America searches for answers from those so tasked, the questions remain elusive: Where are the priorities of security: both physical, mental, and humanitarian that demand reckoning?
Or are we left with the deals, the secrets, the ironies such as assisting Saudi Arabia in brokering peace in the Middle East — a ‘nation’ that gave safe harbor to the terrorists who flew planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania pasture, on 9/11?
A day after the October 7 attacks, several Israeli news outlets cast the events of this week: this is Israel’s 9/11.
The pattern is stunning.
October 12
Notes
1 Jingoism “is nationalism in the form of aggressive and proactive foreign policy, such as a country’s advocacy for the use of threats of actual force, as opposed to peaceful relations, in efforts to safeguard what it perceives as its national interests. Colloquially, jingoism is excessive bias in judging one’s own country as superior to others — an extreme type of nationalism.” Wikipedia
Comment: The use of the term ‘jingoistic,’ seems antique, picked from the anti-imperialist American muckrakers of the early 1900's. My interpretation of ‘jingoism’ is more a reflection on nationalistic bias, which in the age of modern technological warfare, is dissembling.
For a recent counter-jingoistic orientation portrayal, see “Official Secrets,” (2019), a compelling account based on the true story of British whistleblower Katherine Gun, starring Keira Knightly, directed by Gavin Hood.
2- Ann Applebaum, “There Are No Rules,” October 9, Atlantic
3- Ayman Mohyeldin comments, MSNBC News Show host, “The Reid-Out with Joy Reid,” Monday, MSNBC, October 9
4- Nicole Wallace, MSNBC, October 10 &11
5- Bruce Hoffman, “Understanding Hamas’s Genocidal Ideology,” Atlantic Newsletter, October 10
