A video of Shaaban al-Dalou burning to death after an Israeli strike at a hospital has stoked criticism from Israel’s allies and highlighted the plight of people trapped in Gaza.
He was the son his mother boasted about: He memorized the entire Quran as a boy, and rose to the top of his university class. He wanted to become a doctor. But most of all, Shaaban al-Dalou dreamed of escape.
Since Israel launched its devastating retaliation for the Hamas-led attack just over a year ago, Mr. al-Dalou wrote impassioned pleas on social media, posted videos from his family’s small plastic tent and even launched a GoFundMe page calling out to the world for help getting out of the Gaza Strip.
Instead, the world watched him burn to death.
Mr. al-Dalou, 19, was identified by his family as the young man helplessly waving his arms, engulfed in flames, in a video that has become a symbol of the horrors of war for Gazans, trapped inside their blockaded enclave as the international community looks on.
The “neutral language” you’re describing is called passive voice. It’s used to avoid saying who performed the actions in question and that is a form of bias.
In the last few years, newspapers selective use of passive voice - cloaked as “neutral language” - to shield groups or organizations they’re sympathetic to from police to the idf has come under fire because people recognize it as deflecting blame from the powerful and casting the injustice and violence of those in power as unavoidable tragedy.
He just burned to death, isn’t that sad? Alexa play despacito.
at this point more than just the israelis are responsible for burning him alive
He burned to death in an Israeli strike on a hospital. Who else should be blamed in the story about the effect and meaning of his tragic killing? What particular responsible party should be named in the headline of that story?
I would argue the United States also carries the blame as they’ve supported Israel’s genocide, but that’s secondary to the primary point, on which you and I agree.