In the past weeks, two American citizens were killed in Palestine. One of them was Harsh Goldberg the Israeli-American soldier and the other was the Pro-Palestinian activist Ayşenur Eygi.
The officials in the U.S. did not treat the murder of each of them fairly and neither did western mainstream media.
Who Is Hersh Goldberg-Polin And Ayşenur Eygi?
Hersh Goldberg-Polin was an American-Israeli soldier who was imprisoned on October 7’s Alaqsa Flood Operation by Hamas and other militant groups in the Gaza Strip. On August 31, Goldberg-Polin’s body was found along with 5 other bodies of Israeli prisoners in one of the tunnels in Rafah.
A week later, on September 6, a Turkish-born American activist Ayşenur Eygi was killed by Israeli soldiers after performing the communal Friday noon prayers while the soldiers surrounded them.
After the prayers, demonstrations broke out. Ayşenur Eygi was among the demonstrators who faced the IOF soldiers but was killed after about 20 minutes by a shot from the Israeli soldiers.
Two American citizens were shot. However, the Western media and American politicians did not react the same way toward each of them.
Bias In Biden’s Statements
On the same day that Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s body was found, the U.S. government condemned the killing without delay.
Commenting on the incident, President Joe Biden expressed his devastation and outrage for the loss of Hersh on the same day, describing October 7 as “Hamas’ savage massacre.” He said that he reached out to Hersh’s parents, mourning their loss and stressed, “Make no mistake, Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes.”
Nevertheless, when Ayşenur Eygi was killed, Biden refused to blame Israel, describing her killing as an “apparent accident,” and backed the Israeli claims, despite the testimonies of both Arab and Israeli witnesses.
Five days after her killing, Biden finally commented on Ayşenur Eygi's killing without condemning anyone, whilst Israel has acknowledged its responsibility. He only said that the U.S. will depend on the future results of the Israeli investigation.
Analyzing both of his statements on the killing of Goldberg-Polin and Ayşenur, it is noted that Biden did not hesitate to blame Hamas for the killing of Hersh Goldberg-Polin even before the findings of the investigations were released. He; however, refused to comment on Ayşenur Eygi on the spot and backed the Israeli claims until Israel acknowledged its responsibility.
While Biden’s tone in his statement on Ayşenur Eygi was apologetic on behalf of Israel, telling Israel to make sure that such incidents never happen again, his tone in Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s statement was threatening, promising Hamas leaders that they “will pay for their crimes.”
Biden has a long history of reaching out to the victims’ families, and that could be noted in his statement on Hersh Goldberg-Polin, where he said that he reached out to Goldberg-Polin’s parents and offered condolences to them. On the other hand, he did not reach out to Ayşenur Eygi’s parents, as National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters, nor did he offer any condolences to them in his statement.
Bias In The Stance Of The U.S. Officials
Officials in the U.S. also showed bias in their behaviors regarding the two killed Americans.
Secretary Antony Blinken, commenting on the killing of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, said in a post on X a day after the discovery of the six prisoners’ bodies that the killing of Hersh Goldberg-Polin and other hostages “only further confirms Hamas’s depravity,” offering condolences to Goldberg-Polin’s family and mourning him.
Blinken did not offer condolences when Ayşenur Eygi was killed and did not comment on his X account as he did with Goldberg-Polin. After 4 days of her killing, Blinken said at a press conference in London that the killing of Ayşenur Eygi is “unprovoked and unjustified” calling for Israel to change its way of operating in the West Bank. It could be noted that Blinken did not hold anyone accountable for her killing - the same way Biden has treated her killing.
Matthew Miller, the Spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, showed a similar attitude to Blinken. Five days after the discovery of the bodies of the six Israeli prisoners, Miller offered his condolences to Hersh’s parents in a conference, mourned their loss, and published a clip of the conference on his X account.
However, no word on the killing of Ayşenur could be found on his account. When asked by reporters about Ausenur’s killing, he said that the government will wait for the Israeli investigation regarding the incident, stressing that the investigations need to be “thorough,” “prompt,” and “transparent.” Miller also repeated Blinken’s call for Israel to make changes in the rules of engagement.
State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel also repeated the exact reaction. In a press briefing held on September 9, Patel refused to say that the bullet that killed Ayşenur was Israeli. He claimed that the killings of Ayşenur and Goldberg-Polin were different, stressing that Hamas members directly murdered Goldberg-Polin. However, he did not further elaborate on how Ayşenur's killing could be any different from Hersh's.
Over the 50-minute-long briefing, Patel refused to clearly state that he condemns Israel or blame it for the murder of an American citizen despite the pressure of journalists but did not hesitate to blame Hamas for the murder of another American citizen directly.
Aware of the double standards followed by the U.S. officials, journalists pursued a clarification in a press briefing with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, asking her whether the White House is satisfied with the findings of previous investigations regarding issues like the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh or the Palestinian and Israeli hostages carrying a white flag. Karine refused to answer the question saying that she is not going to go into every investigation.
Similar to the way President Joe Biden talked about the killing of Hersh Goldberg-Polin and Ayşenur Eygi, all American officials treated the two incidents the same way Biden did. They refused to clearly blame Israel but did not hesitate to blame Hamas.
Bias In The Media Coverage
As if keeping with the American officials’ behavior towards the two incidents, the mainstream media and most trusted outlets did not treat the two incidents equally either.
Misbar’s team examined the reports on the first two to three days of the killing of Ayşenur Eygi and Hersh Goldberg-Polin and found that the coverage was noticeably in favor of the Israeli-American soldier Hersh Goldberg-Polin. Nevertheles, Ayşenur Eygi did not get the same coverage as him.
The New York Times deliberately did not mention Israel in its headlines of Ayşenur’s reports. One can hardly understand that the bullet that hit her and killed her was an Israeli.
Reporting on the same day of her killing, the New York Times published an article, titled, “American Woman Shot and Killed at West Bank Protest.”
No reference could be found in the article to the responsibility of Israel except for an ambiguous suggestion in the third paragraph and testimonies in the fourth followed by skepticism and calls for investigations by the American officials.
Later in the day, the New York Times published another article about her murder, titled, “Ayşenur Eygi, American Killed in the West Bank, Was a Campus Organizer.” Likewise, no blame for Israel could be found in the headline or the whole article except for a single testimony.
ABC News also kept the word “Israel” far away from the headlines in an article published on the same day of Ayşenur’s murder. The reader shall go through twelve paragraphs to understand that murder was committed by Israel. The outlet did not even mention it directly but it was in a quotation from the Turkish Foreign Ministry.
The New York Post repeated the same method. In an article published on the same day of her murder, titled, “American woman, 26, dies after getting shot in the head in West Bank,” the outlet did not mention that an Israeli soldier shot her dead, neither in the headline nor in the body until reporting on what the Turkish Ministry has said in the fourth paragraph and after going through two photos and a video.
USA Today was one of the few outlets that clearly stated that Ayşenur’s murder was caused by Israeli troops in the second paragraph. However, the headline also did not refer to Israel.
Politico was the same as USA Today. No reference to Israel in its headline but there was a mention of Israel’s responsibility in the second paragraph.
Skirting around the perpetrator is a notable method followed by all of the outlets mentioned above regarding the case of murdering the Pro-Palestinian activist.
When comparing the method followed in reporting on the murder of Ayşenur Eygi with the method followed in reporting on Hersh Goldberg-Polin, it could be noted that the method was different.
NBC News uploaded a video on their YouTube channel where Hamas was directly accused in the headline of the murder.
USA Today also followed the same method, directly accusing Hamas in the title in a video uploaded on their YouTube channel.
Several magazines did not mention that Hamas killed Hersh Goldberg-Polin in the headline. However, it was stated directly in the report that Hamas killed him, and not on the tongue of the officials as it was done with Ayşenur. This method was followed by Politico.
The Israeli-American soldier also got a bigger and wider coverage than the Pro-Palestinian activist got.
In the New York Times, Hersh Goldber’s name appeared in 29 articles within the first week of his killing. Meanwhile, Ayşenur Eygi appeared in 15 articles within the first week of her killing.
Thierty-one times Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s name appeared in the New York Post and only five times did Ayşenur Eygi’s name appear within the first week of the killing of each of them.
ABC News could be one of the mainstream outlets that co vered the murder of Ayşenur the most, with 20 articles within the first week of her murder. However, this coverage could not be compared to the coverage Hersh Goldberg-Polin got. More than 40 articles mentioning Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s story could be found on ABC News within a week of his murder.
It is very noticeable that the mainstream media keeps up with the stance of U.S. officials. The same pattern was noted in the reports on the Vietnam War and the invasion of Iraq when the New York Times published false claims about the presence of weapons of mass destruction.
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