On being censored
In the mainstream press
This is the message I got today when I tried to access The Nation article I had seen yesterday.
Western Media
Mehdi Hasan’s article about the Western Media is relevant, saying the Western Media doesn’t care. “How many Palestinian women and children have to be killed in the occupied West Bank before anyone in the US or UK gives a damn?”
Which is one reason I will keep writing. “We will not be ‘moving on.’”
How many Palestinian women and children have to be killed in the occupied West Bank before anyone in the US or UK gives a damn?
“To my unborn child, with you, I will become a mother for the first time. I can’t believe how quickly this pregnancy has passed and how you have grown quietly within my womb, waiting for my first joy.”
These were what would tragically turn out to be the last words posted online by Sundus Shalabi, who was eight months pregnant. Early on Sunday morning, the 23-year-old Palestinian mother-to-be was killed by the Israeli military in the Nur Shams refugee camp, on the outskirts of Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank, in what the Palestinian Foreign Ministry is calling a “crime of execution” and the targeting of “defenseless civilians.”
Shalabi and her husband Yazan Abu Shola were shot in their car, with her husband critically injured. Their unborn child was also killed in the attack. “Medical teams were unable to save the baby’s life due to the [Israeli] occupation preventing the transfer of the injured to the hospital,” said a statement from the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah.
In the meantime, the Israelis can continue their “Operation Iron Wall” and other so-called “anti-terror” raids, which, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, have killed more than 70 Palestinians, including at least 10 children, since the start of the year and also displaced an astonishing 26,000 people from their homes.
Remember: all of this is happening in the West Bank, not Gaza. There is no ‘October 7th’ excuse for any of this brutal Israeli violence – from soldiers and settlers.
Last month, 2-year-old Laila al-Khatib was killed by the Israeli military inside her home in the village of Ash-Shuhada, just south of Jenin in the occupied West Bank. She was shot in the head.
If Laila had been an Israeli baby shot in the head by Hamas fighters, we would all know her name and face would have been plastered on newspaper front pages across the United States and the United Kingdom. If Shalabi had been an Israeli mother-to-be killed, along with her unborn child, by Islamic Jihad fighters, her story would be leading the news on cable channels across the West.
But they’re Palestinians. They’re unpeople. They don’t count.
Despite the recent flurry of coverage of Donald Trump’s endorsement of ethnic cleansing in the Middle East, much of the Western media has begun to ‘move on’ from the Gaza story in the wake of the so-called “ceasefire.”
Unlike other news organizations, however, Zeteo will not be turning a blind eye to Israeli atrocities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We will not be succumbing to “Gaza fatigue” or focusing only on the ongoing Trump outrages here in the United States.
We will not be ‘moving on.’
Mehdi Hasan
Israel Just Killed a Pregnant Palestinian Woman – And Western Media Doesn’t Care. How many Palestinian women and children have to be killed in the occupied West Bank before anyone in the US or UK gives a damn? by Mehdi Hasan, zeteo, Feb 10,2025