Now in its twelfth month, Israel’s war on Gaza continues to steadily kill civilians while choking off vital food, water, medical supplies and more. The U.S. government makes it all possible by arming and subsidizing the Israeli military, which has killed well over 40,000 Palestinian people, most of them children and women. We must continue to demand no more weapons to Israel. The Gaza war “received a vast amount of U.S. media attention, but how much the media actually communicated about the human realities was a whole other matter,” RootsAction national director Norman Solomon has written in the new paperback edition of his book War Made Invisible. “The words and images reaching listeners, readers, and viewers were a far cry from experiences of being in the war zone.” Treating the people of Gaza as abstractions is a way of consigning them to death. Overall, the real-life horrors in Gaza have been “out of media sight, in private agony and grief,” Norman wrote. The occasional tragic stories about individuals have done little “to convey the size, scope, and depth of the widening disaster.” “The narratives of catastrophe were short on zeal for exploring causality – especially when the trail would lead to the U.S. ‘national security’ establishment. American media frames around heartrending portrayals of Palestinian victims rarely also encompassed their victimizers in Washington. Top government officials readily voiced facile regret for the tragic loss of life, while they continued to put out enormous welcome mats for the grim reaper.” We should not only rage against the killing of the light. We should insist that it stop. | 
