Dear Editor,

Thus far, over 10,000 Gazans, mostly civilians, have reportedly perished under unrelenting Israeli fire targeting Hamas.

It’s disturbing that so many Palestinian non-combatants have been prevented from crossing borders to safety since the beginning of Israel’s military response to Hamas’s invasion and slaughter a month ago.

I theorise that maybe Israel and Westerners in general, including our legacy news media, have got accustomed to Palestinian deaths over the many decades of Palestinian/Hamas-Israeli warring. It seems to me that for quite some time Palestinians have been perceived, thus treated, as not being of equal value to the Israelis.

Their suffering and deaths may somehow seem less worthy of our actionable concern as otherwise relatively civilised nations. In other words, the value of such life can/will be measured by the over-abundance of protracted conditions under which it suffers.

Meanwhile, the general Western corporate news media’s ‘coverage’ of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long been wanting, to put it mildly. This includes their reporting on current and past violence, but especially their non-reporting on the consequential anti-Palestinian social injustices that continue in-between every military flare-up over decades of Israeli occupation.

I’m far from alone in finding that Palestinian suffering and deaths in their entirety have not been justly represented.

Frank Sterle Jr

fgsjr2013@gmail.com