The BBC presents Israel’s plans to colonise Gaza as ‘Who wouldn’t want a beach house?’

On social media, people are correcting corporate media headlines that obscure Israel’s war crimes. MintPress News writer Alan MacLeod pointed out the BBC astonishing framing in March of Israelis trying to colonise Gaza:

Imagine a foreign country bombed your town and a bunch of people turned up and stole your house. Then imagine the BBC ran with this headline describing it like this. 🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/FayLWyfdv1

— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) June 16, 2024

BBC: framing Gaza as a holiday destination

Apparently, settlers are merely ‘setting their sights’ on Gaza’s beachfront. It sounds like they are merely eyeing up a nice holiday destination. In fact, the article opens with the sentiment “who wouldn’t want a house on the beach?”

The piece looks at Daniella Weiss who leads a colonial organisation called Nachala. Weiss said there are 500 Israeli families already ready to settle in Gaza. She continued:

I have friends in Tel Aviv, so they say, ‘Don’t forget to keep for me a plot near the coast in Gaza,’ because it’s a beautiful, beautiful coast, beautiful golden sand

Gaza and the West Bank are the remaining territories of the Palestinian people. That’s after Zionists colonised 78% of Palestine in 1948 through mass displacement and murder. This creation of Israel is known as the ‘Nakba’ or ‘catastrophe’, for Palestinian people.

A “repeat” of the Nakba

Fast forward to the Israel of today and Israel’s agriculture and rural development minister Avi Dichter explicity referred to the ongoing military onslaught on Gaza as “Nakba 2023”.

And Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir called for “encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza”.

Then there’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who himself stated that Israel is “working on” the “migration” of people in Gaza.

Also a secret Israeli Intelligence Ministry document shows a plan to expel Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt.

Yet in the BBC piece the author charitably states that colonising Gaza is categorically “not government policy”.

In its ongoing genocidal assault on the Palestinian enclave, Israel has killed 37,920 Palestinian people including over 15,000 children. Israel has displaced nearly two million Gazan residents – more than the 800,000 Palestinians Zionists displaced in 1948.

Erika Guevara Rosas, senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns at Amnesty International, said:

Generations of Palestinians across the occupied territories are deeply scarred by the trauma of being uprooted and dispossessed multiple times and with no prospect of return to their homes.

It is utterly harrowing to see the chilling scenes of 1948 Nakba… repeat themselves as droves of Palestinians in Gaza are forced to flee their homes on foot in search of safety over and over, and Israeli army and state backed settlers expel Palestinians in the West Bank from their homes

Despite what the settlers say, God is not a real estate agent. We must oppose this genocidal colonisation.

Featured image via DW News – YouTube