And finally, the media silence on Israel's treatment of Palestinians like Khader Adnan, reveals the degree to which main stream media's silence exposes the unpleasant fact that MSM's primary loyalty is not to its readers, but to its corporate masters.
The Twitter social media -- one important factor that made Israel decide to pay serious attention to Khader Adnan's hunger strike -- is described by Jalal Abukhater in a posting published before Israel reversed itself on Adnan. (The picture here is from that web site. It shows Adnan's father holding his own poster asking for his son's release.)
Abukhater describes Twitter and its potential to support movements of protests. Twitter's presence was an important factor in Egypt and Libya at the outset of the Arab Spring.
"Organizing a trending hashtag for Khader Adnan is just like organizing a large protest on the corner of the busiest and most crowded street in a city.
"As you read this, Khader Adnan is very close to death. It is high time the Israeli state respond to calls by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Carter Center, and many other human-rights organizations to release Adnan immediately.
"As Adnan enters the 65th day of his hunger strike, activists and human rights defenders have joined this campaign. In addition, Amnesty International is calling for Israel to abolish the system of administrative detention.
"Adnan is the victim of arbitrary detention. He is one of 309 Palestinians who are currently being held under Israeli administrative detention. Adnan, an administrative detainee, has not been charged, he has not been tried, and he does not know when the period of detention will end. Indefinite detention without a trial or charge is not permitted under International Law. It is considered a form of arbitrary detention which no country should be practicing.
"The silence of the world community is deafening. The late awakening of the mainstream media is inexcusable. Imagine if Adnan were an Iranian man on hunger strike in an Iranian jail. Would we have had to do this massive movement on Twitter to get the world's attention? I don't think so.
"While the mainstream media has failed to cover Adnan's story, Twitter is at the forefront of the campaign to pressure the Israeli government to act. Twitter users have taken on the responsibility of filling the void created by the mainstream media.
"At this moment, according to Topsy Twitter statistics, the hashtag #KhaderAdnan has been mentioned about 40,000 times on Twitter. It should be noted that this statistic excludes other related hashtags which would count in the thousands.
"A hashtag is a special tool used in Twitter to mark certain tweets as part of one conversation. In order to enter a hashtag, one must add (#) before any keyword. When a hashtag is selected the user is directed to a page where they are able to read all Twitter updates using this specific hashtag. Whenever there is a big news story, a popular event, or even a revolution, people use a certain hashtag to contribute to that conversation. That is what Palestinian and other activists are doing now for Adnan."
The picture of Khader Adnan at top, is from the End the Occupation blog.
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