During a recent appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, CNN’s Van Jones told the studio audience that young people protesting Israel’s genocide are actually falling for an Iranian-Qatari disinformation campaign.
Jones proceeded to do an impression of a young person’s social media feed. “Dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, Diddy, dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby!,” he joked.
Jones’s callous attempt at humor was condemned across social media, and he quickly apologized for the comments, acknowledging that they were “insensitive and hurtful.”
However, as Howard University law professor Ziyad Motala notes in an Al Jazeera op-ed, Jones’s apology failed to engage with a dark reality at the root of his joke: the consistent dehumanization of Palestinians.
“A true apology would have confronted the deeper problem: the instinct, common in US media, to distrust evidence of Palestinian pain unless it is filtered through Western validation,” wrote Motala. “It is an impulse rooted in hierarchy, the same hierarchy that divides the grievable from the disposable, the innocent from the suspect.”
That hierarchy has been on full display in recent days, as the mainstream media has centered stories of released Israeli captives while largely ignoring stories of Palestinians.
In a Middle East Eye, Doha Institute professor Mohamad Elmasry identifies a number of such examples.
“Since Trump announced his plan two weeks ago, western coverage has focused heavily on Hamas’s requirement to release the remains of 28 dead Israeli captives,” points out Elmasry. “Much less attention has been devoted to Israel’s obligation, under Article 5 of the plan, to return the remains of 420 Palestinians it has long withheld.”
Such bias has been par for the course throughout the genocide. Media critic Adam Johnson recently noted that the Sunday cable news shows have not featured a single Palestinian guest since October 7.
Hellbound and Down 