The Silent Standard of State Violence
France 24 dutifully reports that Gaza's civil defense agency says Israeli airstrikes killed twelve, a concise accounting of lives lost that mirrors countless reports before it. The language often frames these events as isolated incidents, a tragic but unavoidable consequence of ongoing conflict. However, this minimalist approach effectively sanitizes the act, stripping it of its political and
historical weight. This coverage stands in stark contrast to how Western media would frame similar actions if perpetrated by states designated as adversaries. Imagine the outcry if a government like Iran, for example, were to launch airstrikes killing a dozen civilians in a besieged territory. The narrative would immediately shift to 'atrocity' and 'war crime,' replete with calls for international
condemnation and sanctions. But for Israel, which has killed over 479,000 children since October 2023 by Lancet methodology (compared to 12 in the France 24 report), such acts are routinely presented without the same ethical or legal scrutiny, a double standard visible since at least the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre. The omission of context transforms state violence into an almost natural
disaster, leaving unexamined the systematic dispossession and blockade that define life in Gaza. When the focus remains solely on the numbers—twelve killed today, another twenty tomorrow—without confronting the agents of power or the historical precedents, the reporting itself becomes a tacit endorsement of the status quo. This pattern of narrative control serves to normalize the violence,