The Star – ‘the Palestinian People’s Paper’
By Helen Ang (Umno heroes and ‘Star’ spear Israel)
In a single day, The Star employed courageous, strong language never marshalled before for all our own homegrown efforts like Bersih, Hindraf and ‘Justice for Teoh Beng Hock’ combined.
Phrases such as “brazen and bloodthirsty” to characterize Israel, “under the heel of a vicious regime” to describe Palestinians, and how “nobody had to bleed or die” to portray the Middle-East conflict valiantly shone forth in the opinion-editorial penned by Star associate editor Bunn Negara.
Needless to say, all our mass media – or do I mean mass hysteria – joined the bash-wagon.
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The Star says … ‘Palestinians of all faiths living in their own land are thus denied free access to food, medicines, clothes, educational materials, hospital equipment and building materials after the Israeli army demolished their homes – and human dignity. And all because Zionists from Europe several years ago decided to grab their land to create today’s state of Israel.’ |
Let’s just try a little experiment and substitute ‘Penan’ for ‘Palestinians’ while retaining the same imagery. So now The Star paragraph might read:
“Penans living in their own land are denied free access to food, medicines, clothes, educational materials, hospital equipment and building materials after big business encroached into their homes – and human dignity. And all because loggers from crony companies in Sarawak several years ago decided to grab their land to create easy profits for themselves.”
What the mainstream media is reluctant to comment on, fortunately for us, sees print in spunky alternative online media like Free Malaysia Today. Wrote FMT writer Joe Fernandez: “What would be Malaysia’s response if a foreign flotilla of ships, led by the Bruno Manser Foundation of Switzerland, were to head towards the Sarawak coast with 10,000 tonnes of medical and food supplies for the starving Penans?”
Charge of the ‘Star’ brigade
The third of the Star sallies against Israel on June 6 came from its group editor Wong Chun Wai.
Again using the substitution method, we can take for our template what Wong had written about Palestinians and Israel, and re-use the very words from his stinging op-ed to instead express the situation at home.
So by simply replacing ‘Palestinians’ and ‘Israel’ with an appropriate local context while maintaining the rest of Wong’s write-up almost in toto, the op-ed penned by Star’s head honcho could have read like the following:
Time to bring the bully to heel
“Just listen to the tone of the language used by the Inspector-General of Police after PDRM shot Aminulrasyid in the back of the head – it’s arrogant, defensive and aggressive.
Never mind the fact that the violent assault took place against a 15-year-old boy. It’s a clear violation of standard operating procedure. The police have also ignored that the excessive show of force that left a teenager dead and his same-age passenger beaten up.
If the Malaysian public expects remorse and regret, they would have waited in vain; this is not the first time and probably not the last for such a display of arrogance on the part of police.
This is a country where the police considers itself above the law.
It is untouchable and no one can blame PDRM for being smug when it has been let off with pathetic excuses every time an alleged ‘suspect’ is shot dead.
Thanks in part to Big Brother, Umno, which has made sure that the condemnation is not overly harsh.
There’s not even a squeak from the Prime Minister, who said on Sunday he regretted the incident (which happened Monday a week earlier) but that it was nonetheless unnecessary to call for the IGP to step down.
As in previous violations of human rights or to be more precise, the simplest form of human decency, the police see such a slap on the wrist as an encouragement to continue to disregard public opinion.
After the usual lame condemnation, the government will move on.
Aminul’s death would be swiftly forgotten, including the attack on Kugan, Francis Udayappan and all the rest in police lock-ups, and the same action would take place again, possibly more killings. The PM’s office would dust off their documents and issue the same sounding hypocritical condemnation of such aggression and persuade Malaysians to be soft to Polis Raja di Malaysia, their Umno ally.”
I would ask you to compare the passages above on police brutality with what Wong wrote in The Star about the Israelis. It is the exact same mould, same moral outrage, and same shrill register.
But you never hear such tough talk in the mainstream media about what happens here or such brave denunciations against the corrupt institutions and thuggish movements (e.g. Perkasa) propping up Umno, do you?
The black hole informing what’s been left unsaid is especially poignant when The Star bills itself as ‘the People’s Paper’; perhaps the self-referential tagline, on that day at least, should have been modified to ‘the Palestinian People’s Paper’.
