Israel’s Genocidal, Human Rights Violating and War Criminal Answer to the Palestinian Question, Part 8
In Western mainstream media, Israel is regularly portrayed as a victim or at best as an about equally responsible party in the allegedly ‘complicated’ and ‘both-sidesy’ Israel-Palestine conflict. In this article series and following the May 2021 ‘clashes,’ I would like to show that and why Israel is instead very clearly the main responsible party and perpetrator in this conflict. The article series also serves the purposes of documenting Jewish-Israeli crimes against Palestinians and of deconstructing the usual pro-Israel propaganda.
Part 8 concludes the series by delving into insane mainstream pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian propaganda narratives that are also propped up by lying mainstream talk show hosts, fake left/progressive ‘news’ outlets, ‘independent think tanks’ or transparent propaganda in schools. This omnipresent mainstream propaganda is then contrasted with some positive examples of reporting that indicate a possible shift in the mainstream media narrative and before ending on the note that international sanctions against Israel need to be brought about as the only effective and legal means to prevent the insane apartheid, rogue, settler-colonialist and terrorist state of Israel from committing further grave crimes against native Palestinians.
(Warning: The following article series contains material that might be disturbing for some viewers and that is usually not shown in mass media. I sometimes also use an ironic, satirical or cynical tone which is mainly directed against relativising, rationalizing, veiling, looking away from, playing stupid or remaining silent about Jewish-Israeli-Zionist crimes against Palestinians)
(links to: the older, significantly shorter and all-in-one German version; the more recent and in-depth English article series, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7)
How Western Mainstream Media Propaganda Works
I have started this article series with some strands of pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian propaganda, and I will also finish it with some other important input on propaganda that will make all the difference between you understanding the Israel-Palestine conflict or not.
Robert Fisk on propaganda through words
As per the world-famous sentence “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength” from George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, people need to understand that Western mainstream media propaganda does not start with sentences but already with individual words. This was also repeatedly highlighted by the late and great journalist Robert Fisk:
This explains why I wrote about ‘clashes’ in single and ironic quotation marks: Clashes suggest both-sidesy, but as I explained in parts 1 and 2, the conflict is actually very one-sided in terms of who is the aggressor and instigator.
Note that some even oppose the use of conflict as yet another propagandistic term. But I find it agreeable since I think about it as a “conflict of interest”: Israel wants to and does steal Palestinian land and resorts to all sorts of grave crimes (see part 4) to try to achieve that whereas Palestinians obviously do not want to be subjected to Israel’s crimes, including to its ongoing land theft.
Further examples for propagandistic terms in the Israel-Palestine conflict are the following; the ensuing quotations are from Fisk:
My own exposure to Robert Fisk’s most valuable and likewise polemic input on propagandistic words of power occurred when reading his Al Jazeera article “Journalism and ‘the words of power’” from 2010:
For two decades now, the US and British — and Israeli and Palestinian — leaderships have used the words ‘peace process’ to define the hopeless, inadequate, dishonourable agreement that allowed the US and Israel to dominate whatever slivers of land would be given to an occupied people.
I first queried this expression, and its provenance, at the time of Oslo — although how easily we forget that the secret surrenders at Oslo were themselves a conspiracy without any legal basis. Poor old Oslo, I always think! What did Oslo ever do to deserve this? It was the White House agreement that sealed this preposterous and dubious treaty — in which refugees, borders, Israeli colonies — even timetables — were to be delayed until they could no longer be negotiated.
When we westerners find that ‘our’ enemies — al-Qaeda, for example, or the Taliban -have set off more bombs and staged more attacks than usual, we call it ‘a spike in violence’. Ah yes, a ‘spike’!
A ‘spike’ in violence, ladies and gentlemen is a word first used, according to my files, by a brigadier general in the Baghdad Green Zone in 2004. Yet now we use that phrase, we extemporise on it, we relay it on the air as our phrase. We are using, quite literally, an expression created for us by the Pentagon. A spike, of course, goes sharply up, then sharply downwards. A ‘spike’ therefore avoids the ominous use of the words ‘increase in violence’ — for an increase, ladies and gentlemen, might not go down again afterwards.
[…]
So an ‘occupation’ can become a ‘dispute’ [or ‘conflict’]. Thus a ‘wall’ becomes a ‘fence’ or a ‘security barrier’. Thus Israeli colonisation of Arab land contrary to all international law becomes ‘settlements’ or ‘outposts’ or ‘Jewish neighbourhoods’.
So much for the use of Orwellian terms in contemporary Western mainstream propaganda.
Propaganda through filters
Another key aspect of propaganda that people are usually insufficiently aware of are “filters,” a term that was popularized with Edward S. Hermann and Noam Chomsky’s five filters model (ownership, advertising, the media elites, flak, the common enemy). I detect a general category error in this respect though since these five still applicable factors are rather the causes or reasons for why filters are applied but not yet the filters themselves.
At the most fundamental level, the filters of propaganda lead to generally and especially for the 99% reportworthy events not being reported at all — for instance since reporting would run contrary to the interests of the owners of the mainstream medium. At the less fundamental levels, the filters of propaganda lead to in various ways biased or otherwise twisted reporting of events: An important story might be buried further inside a newspaper in a shorter and very much pro-1% biased article whereas irrelevant personal tripe about the British Royals might be used for the headline.
So when considering questions such as
“Why did Western political leaders whine so much about their NATO/Belarussian and neonazi Azov Batallion-related regime change tool Roman Protasevich on the one hand and why did and do they remain completely silent about the West’s most famous long-term political prisoner Julian Assange, who also suffered far more than Protasevich over the years, on the other hand?”
or “Why do Western political leaders engage in virtue signalling about muslim Uighurs in China while at the same time once again being completely silent about the far, far worse war of aggression of the Saudis against Yemen and its civilian population?”
then the answer to that, aside from Western leaders’ non-existent or double pseudo morality, inevitably lies in the filters of propaganda: The from the power elites’ perspective undesirable content is filtered out or portrayed in an unduly negative light whereas the from their perspective and for their purposes beneficial content — including many distractions — is given undue attention or portrayed in an unduly positive light. I should add that it is also already individual words that function as such filters.
The Purpose of Propaganda: Manufacturing Consent
As noted by Hermann and Chomsky in the title of their book from 1988, the purpose of the 1%’s propaganda lies in “manufacturing consent” for whatever it is that the 1% want — for instance waging various wars of aggression, engaging in equally bad regime changes against democratically elected governments which actually do work for the 99%, making China the new ‘terrible enemy’ simply since it is economically overtaking the increasingly decaying and rotting USA,
or supporting the apartheid rogue terrorist state of Israel and its many grave crimes against Palestinians.
All of that and much more is a continuation of Hitler’s concept and application of “the big lie” which revolves around making the lie so big and all-encompassing that it becomes hard to impossible to detect for individuals. As yet another great irony of history, even Zionist Israel itself perpetuates and revolves around such a big lie (e.g. “a land without people for a people without land”) in which the purveyors and sellers of the big lie also constantly lie to themselves in order to maintain a pleasant fiction that covers up an actual and still ongoing horror (hi)story (see parts 3 and 4).
Examples for Western mainstream media propaganda about Israel and Palestine
Propaganda by the news agencies Associated Press (AP) and Reuters
Another naive misconception about mainstream (media) propaganda and manufacturing consent or the big lie is that the big news agencies just provide the news or the facts. That is incorrect since Western mainstream propaganda — including the pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian one — already starts with the Western news agencies such as AP and Reuters themselves:
To further demonstrate its pro-Israel bias, AP also fired the young reporter Emily Wilder three weeks into her job since Wilder had been insufficiently sycophantic about Israel on social media in the past:
Once again and despite Wilder being Jewish, anti-Semitism smears by right-wing Zionist nutjobs (part 7) from, this time, the “Stanford College Republicans” contributed to Wilder’s firing and further demonstrated that, contrary to the AP, Wilder actually is taking journalism and being truthful seriously:
Gazan journalist Omar Ghraib went through a similar situation and harrassment:
Reuters is likewise a producer of imperialist and Orwellian propaganda:
Reuters propaganda about Israel and Palestine in turn for instance looks as follows:
Reuters also ran the “Jews/Israelis are permanent victims” strand of propaganda that I already identified in part 1:
But that is of course nonsense. Here is the video which shows how, contrary to the above Reuters propaganda, the poor poor Jewish ‘victim’ rams two Palestinians with his car (one could debate the motives or causes, but not the fact which Reuters conveniently and intentionally omitted). Also compare that situation with the facts that the two Jewish-mob hunted Palestinian car drivers from part 3 somehow did not run their car into Jewish-Israeli-Zionists even though their cars were visibly hit with stones by them:
As should be expected, the two big Western news agencies AP and Reuters also serve propaganda, try to manufacture consent and continue the big lie for the 1% and against the 99% in other ways and areas:
Washington Post (WaPo) propaganda
The corporate owned mainstream or “legacy media,” including the WaPo and the NYT, are likewise easily identifiable as peddlers of pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian propaganda. The WaPo for instance used the deeply propagandistic and ‘both-sidesy’ term of “clashes” to describe very one-sided Jewish-Israeli-Zionist atrocieties against or “massacres” of Palestinians:
The “Hamas is everywhere and everyone” strand of propaganda (part 4) is also being serviced by the WaPo:
In case you had not noticed yet and pursuant to the number one propagandistic filter of “ownership”: Oligarch-owned newspapers regularly churn out propaganda for the 1% in general:
New York Times (NYT) propaganda
Bret Stephens, a well-known propagandist for the NYT and the author of completely harmless and sane pieces such as “The U.S. Needs More Nukes”,
effectively called for a massacre and genocide against Palestinians by indirectly building on the “Hamas is everywhere and everyone” strand of propaganda:
Reporter Abby Martin agrees with cancelling the NYT over Stephen’s effective call for a mass murder of Palestinians:
Another most useful source for discovering how the NYT’s masterful propaganda works is the Twitter account “Editing TheGrayLady/@nyt_diff” which is a “bot that highlights the changes in the news on the main page of @nytimes” (also see NewsDiffs/@newsdiffs).
As can be established by letting your mouse hover over the tab of the article, the original title of one NYT article appears to have been “I’m from Gaza. Hamas Is Irrelevant”:
Tweets from May 24, 2021, such as the following also suggest that the article’s original title was “I’m from Gaza. Hamas Is Irrelevant”:
“Editing TheGrayLady/@nyt_diff,” however, shows how the NYT editors changed the title on May 24 to a deceptive and much more ambivalent and obscure “A Gazan’s View on Hamas: It’s Not Complicated” that can also be interpreted as suggesting that it is clearly Hamas which is the main culprit — something that goes completely against the author’s intentions, text and much clearer original title (why the original title appears as “To Focus on Hamas Is to Miss the Point” and not as “I’m from Gaza. Hamas Is Irrelevant” is currently unknown to me):
And this how it goes on and on in the NYT: Titles and also abstracts are deceptively edited in order to create a completely wrong impression especially for those who do not have or take the time to read the articles themselves:
A properly journalistic and descriptive
“The policed entered the compound and fired rubber-tipped bullets. Anger was already building in response to the looming expulsion of several families from their homes in the city”
thus becomes a biased and propagandistic
“Gaza militants fired rockets toward Jerusalem and the Israeli police fought with Palestinian protesters in an escalation of violence after a week of increasing tension.”
that has hardly any resemblance with the original information. And that is how it goes on and on and on in the NYT MSM propaganda outlet on a regular basis and as just one of the many ways in which it manufactures consent in minds of those who still do not know how these 1%-controlled mainstream media work:
As further reading that begins to shed light on mainstream media’s cooperation with intelligence agencies such as the CIA and that helps to explain why there is so much propaganda in mainstream media, I recommend Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Bernstein’s article “The CIA and the Media” from 1977 and a look into the CIA’s underlying Operation Mockingbird and related literature:
Operation Mockingbird is an alleged large-scale program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that began in the early years of the Cold War and attempted to manipulate news media for propaganda purposes.
Fox News propaganda
The difference between conservative and liberal mainstream media propaganda consequently is not that the former exists and that the latter does not exist, but only that the former tends to be cruder than the latter and more obvious for liberals who are in turn typically blind on both eyes for liberal propaganda such as the one by the NYT, MSNBC or CNN.
As one can see from the following examples, conservative Fox News does not even seem to be capable to align the footage with the texts or comments: What is shown is the destruction that Israel wreaked in Palestinian homes while the text is about Hamas — the propagandistic equations here being Palestinians, including children = Hamas. The following can perhaps also be understood as ‘destruction and hate porn’ that enables Fox News’ more racist and anti-Muslim viewers to experience a power-rush via projection:
Another and more obvious mismatch between comment and footage occurs when pro-Israel Christian fanatic and former head of the CIA and then State Department Mike Pompeo (his admission: “We lied, we cheated, we stole”) talks about Hamas rockets while Fox News shows footage of how the apartheid rogue terrorist and war criminal state of Israel pulverizes Palestinians apartment blocks. It is at least remotely conceivable that Fox News is blending these two disparate items together in order to manipulate not that bright and typically also older Fox News viewers into thinking that the shown damage is caused by Hamas rockets:
US Talk Show Host Propaganda
The usually somewhat more subtle and less obvious centrist-liberal pro-Israel and anti-Palestine propaganda is also issued by several talk show hosts. The most brazen and disgusting of these talk show hosts might be Bill Maher who in all seriousness and in a quick succession of 40 falsehoods(!) spouted the outragoues lie “I would submit that Israel did not steal anybody’s land” — something which is complete bullshit since Israel’s very existence revolves around continued land theft (part 2):
This rampant propaganda in especially US mainstream media and ever greater awareness of it also explains why
BBC propaganda
In case you thought that this type of propaganda is only present in US mainstream media and since the USA is Israel’s strongest ally with a likewise genocidal settler-colonialist past, that would be incorrect. One can also encounter the same type of propaganda in other Western MSM such as the equally terrible BBC which for instance paints a picture of the genocidal war criminal Netanyahu as this ‘sexy swashbuckler Bibi,’ the piratey Johnny Depp/Jack Sparrow of Israeli politics who might not act entirely in accordance with international law but who is nevertheless quite alright or something like that:
Pushback against this propagandistic drivel was hard and well-deserved:
The following interview is from 2013. Little has changed since then regarding the BBC’s ‘reporting’/propaganda:
In supporting the pro-Zionist camp, the BBC also supported right-wing “apartheid” and “Jewish/White supremacists” and continued spinning the propaganda strand of permanent Jewish/Israeli/Zionist victimhood:
To get a general idea of just how barrel-scrapingly bad the BBC has become: The BBC is so trashy and biased that even rulers such as Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev have started to call them out on their transparent propaganda. The following BBC interview starts with some BBC “concern-trolling” about freedom of speech in Azerbaijan under Aliyev (take note of the very serious and concern-trolly face of the BBC interviewer):
Aliyev then does a beautiful reversal by pointing out that the West has a serious freedom of speech and moral problem due to the false imprisonment of the heroic journalist and whistleblower Julian Assange, the West’s indubitable political prisoner No1 (note that the video has over 3.6 millions views already and that it is “beautiful” indeed):
“[…] freedom of speech. But if you raise this question, can I ask you also one: How do you, ahh, assess what happened to Mr. Assange? Is it a reflection of free media in your country? […]
How many years has he spent in the Ecuadorian embassy? And for what? And where is he now? For journalistic activity. You kept that person hostage, actually killing him, morally and physically. You did it. Not us. And now he is in prison. So you have no moral right to talk about free media when you do these things.
Wikileaks and a representative of the Chinese government confirm:
That the BBC is a farcical ‘Biased Broadcasting Corporation’ or ‘British Broadcasting Conservatives’ institute (two nicknames observed on Twitter) can also be inferred from the fact that the two human catastrophes Priti ‘Ugly on the Inside’ Patel and Boris ‘Killer Klown’ Johnson support the BBC’s ‘journalists’ (i.e. establishment mouthpieces):
The Economist propaganda
In case you still take the Economist seriously: Don’t — it is yet another trashy Western and British propaganda outlet:
New York Post and Deutsche Welle (DW) propaganda
Two further mainstream media who print transparent pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian propaganda are the Murdoch-owned New York Post, the in 2019 fourth most popular US daily newspaper ahead of the LA Times and the WaPO, and the Deutsche Welle. Again take note that this amounts to both a more conservative/right-wing/yellow pressy and a more centrist/liberal/‘quality’ mainstream medium from a different region featuring the fundamentally same type of propaganda:
‘Alternative Media’ Propaganda from The Young Turks (TYT)
High quality independent alternative progressive/leftist media are a general solution to that mainstream media propaganda show, but unfortunately, not every alternative medium or more generally source that sells itself as alternative, independent and/or progressive is that — and at the very barrell-scraping bottom of these fake ‘alternative, independent, progressive’ media we currently find Cenk Uygur’s and Ana Kasparian’s currently imploding The Young Turks which also peddle the usual pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian propaganda under a veneer of ‘progressiveness.’ A $20.000.000 donation by Clinton and Obama sponsor and fundraiser and DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg just might have something to do with that fakery.
Cenk for instance falsely claims that the Israel-Palestine conflict is both-sidesy and fundamentally religiously motived which is utter bullshit since it is extremely one-sided and land-motivated. Pushback against this propagandistic and intellectually dishonest nonsense looks as follows:
The general job of fake progressives such as TYT is to “run interference” on behalf of the establishment and the 1% which they actually serve, and that is also what Ana Kasparian does when she dutifully smeared the actually independent journalist Aaron Maté from the Grayzone as an ‘Assadist’:
As pointed our by Maté himself, the video shown by TYT was indeed deceptively edited since it omitted some critical initial words:
More specifically, the bought TYT smear-merchants conveniently removed the part where Maté said “To people who’ve just lived through a war where the alternative is living under Saudi-armed fanatics,” and simply started with the ensuing part where Maté continues with “…Assad is understandably a hero.”
Independent journalist Caitlin Johnstone gives the following fitting explanation for the implosion of the increasingly desperate TYT:
But TYT did not yet have enough, because like all insane people who think that more of the failing same is the answer, they doubled down with even more smears, this time with sexual harrassment smears against the independent progressive political commentator and satirist and former workmate Jimmy Dore with whom they have a longer-standing feud:
And it just so happens to turn out that they actually did far, far worse things on their shows. From one of their own earlier shows about a mentally unstable Britney Spears and as linked by Aaron Maté in the video above:
Cenk U.: “And how does she decide to make up for that Ana?”
Ana K.: “She flashes more coochie.”
Cenk U.: “Hahahaha! The more… Haha! This is from last night! More cooch. More cooch! This is unbelievable.”
[…]
Ana K.: “There is something weird about how her cooch looks.(!) Ahahaha.”
Cenk U.: “[…] it feels like… You know what it is? It looks like an old cooch.(!)”
Ana K.: “It does look like an old cooch.”(!)
Cenk U.: “Yeah. Ah, so Ana, is there some psychological thing behind this or is she just so drunk that she does not realize that she does not have panties on, and just opens up her legs like this [*gestures*] in front of the cameras?”
Ana K.: “I don’t think it’s a psychological thing at all. I mean, first of all, if you are gonna wear a short skirt or a short dress without underwear you’re an idiot. Like, that’s just stupid. You know what I mean? And she’s done it so many different times, I mean it’s not like this has happened once or twice, it has happened like three or four times. Nobody wants to see her coochie, girl. Close those legs.”
Cenk U.: “Hahaha, my guess is that, actually, a lot of people wanna see her coochie, unfortunately, hahaha.”
Ana K.: “That’s nasty.”
Cenk U.: “Haha, you think it’s nasty?”
Ana K.: “Yes.”
[…]
Cenk U.: “Britney, get some help, man. Get some help. Ah…, is…, cover yourself up, this isn’t doing you any favors. Alright, if you want to, real pictures, uncensored, on TheYoungTurks.com.” (!)
And this is not even the only degrading video and commentary which Uygur and Kasparian did about female celebrities. As also noted by the accused and surprised Jimmy Dore who had only joined TYT for a few years:
Jimmy then collected many of these misogynist TYT videos and came back hard:
It is consequently true to say that ‘progressive’ TYT/Uygur and Kasparian actually did sink to the level of Nazi propaganda:
TYT is consequently pretty much finished since an ever increasing number of people see through their charade and facade:
So much for propaganda and interference by fake progressives such as TYT/Uygur and Kasparian.
‘Independent think tank’ propaganda
Another and more traditional source of propaganda are fake ‘independent think tanks,’ which is often an Orwellian and propagandistic term for totally dependent lobbying groups. And lo and behold, the following ‘independent think tank/dependent lobbying group @MENA_WATCH which I had to block due to its very high level of Zionist trolling once again and as per the typical Zionist affiliation (part 7) turns out to be a right-wing group which for instance “denies,” “relativizes” and “delegitimizes” the Palestinian Nakba, “blames Palestinian” and ignores their “collective trauma”:
Their members belong to right-wing extremist groups:
And MW questions both the truth of “occupied palestinian territories” and of “illegal israeli settlements,” thereby identifying this ‘independent think tank’ as a totally dependent right-wing extremist Zionist lobbying group and as yet another source of propaganda:
British school propaganda
Pursuant to the time-trusted propagandistic principle of “you need to get them while they are still young,” there is also rampant propaganda in schools such as the following British one and due to Britain being one of those countries where insane Zionists unfortunately have a strong lobby.
In what is described as a “racist” school with “strong Zionist links,” the headteacher spread this bullshit propaganda and ‘preventative epistemic violence’:
Here we have yet another British ‘teacher’ spreading false information, engaging in sickening epistemic violence and hypothetical guilt-tripping (“my descendents could be Israeli Jews that Palestinians could have killed — how would that make me feel?!”) and raising her voice against a child who dared to think for himself and to speak out against apartheid:
The socially-conscious rapper Lowkey and a replier explain why the situation is so bad in Britain:
From the article:
‘Terrorist-like views’
Last year, a teenaged boy revealed he had been questioned by police and accused of holding “terrorist-like views” after being referred to Channel by teachers after distributing leaflets for Friends of al-Aqsa, a Palestinian rights organisation, during Israel’s 2014 war in Gaza.
Teachers also reported being told by police that they should “keep an eye” on students who attended demonstrations against Israeli bombing in Gaza.
“They are conflating a political issue, which requires a political solution, with extremism and stifling that debate actually breeds extremism,” Ismail Patel, chairman of Friends of al-Aqsa, told MEE.
“We need to appreciate that if we stifle debate it means that people will feel that their rights are being eroded and they have no other means to express their grievances.”
Austrian liberal mainstream media propaganda
Due to my homecountry of Austria being one of the “ewiggestrige” countries who are still living a past in which they are somehow always the perpetrators when it comes to Israel and Jews, one can also find plenty of at least insufficiently critical pro-Israel propaganda in Austrian mainstream media and by political pundits.
Right-wing extremism expert and social democrat party (SPÖ) member Natascha Strobl, for instance, was not concerned about the mid-May Jewish-Israeli-Zionist pogroms against Palestinians (part 3) but about whether those who understandably protested against these grave injustices in Vienna used politically correct terms — e.g. “child murderer Israel”— and slogans(!):
As shown in the following video, Strobl’s and Sulzbacher’s critique is justified to a certain extent since the motivation of these protesters were not only humanistic or human rights related but also of a less high-standing nature:
But to pretend that a critique of Israel falls exclusively in the domain of antisemitic, muslimic, fascist, misogynist, etc. persons while at the same time remaining completely silent about the grave crimes of Israel is utterly pathetic and shows that Austrian mainstream media standards about Israel-Palestine are about as low as elsewhere in the Western world.
To enlighten propagandized propagandizers like Strobl and Sulzbacher, it should be stated that a critique of Israel and respective (moderate) anti-Zionism generally and simply stems from humans with a functioning mind and consciousness:
Second and contrary to the political correctness and virtue signalling bullshit of the likes of clueless liberals such as Natascha Strobl, the term or charge of “child murderer Israel” is simply factually correct: The Jewish-Israeli-Zionist occupation forces did murder Palestinian children over days and throughout the years (2021, 2018, 2014, etc.) — and liberal propagandists such as Natascha Strobl support that by pretending that these clear facts are somehow right-wing anti-Semitic propaganda. That is why these people are not only utterly useless but even harmful when ‘reporting’ about Israel and Palestine.
A major shift in MSM ‘reporting’?
In an interesting turn of events though, both liberal and conservative MSM occasionally swayed from their usual propaganda narrative and manufacturing of consent about Israel and Palestine and did something that amounted to actual and truthful reporting.
As analyzed by Kyle Kulinski, MSNBC’s Ali Velshi massively criticized the “apartheid state” of Israel for its “ethnic cleansings” of Palestinians, Israel’s “at best third class citizens”:
“The idea that it’s even remotely controversial to call what Israel has imposed on Palestinians a form of apartheid is laughable. One look at the current map of Israel, Gaza and the occupied territories conjures up only one other example: apartheid-era South Africa.
The Israeli government, on an ongoing basis, declares parcels of land on which Palestinians live to be either of military or archeological importance, causing residents to be evicted. Sometimes there is a court case, and almost always the Palestinians lose. Yet months or weeks later, that same ‘important land’ suddently becomes home to a brand new Israeli settlement. As more and more Jewish settlers take over land on which Arabs lived, the occupied West Bank becomes de facto more Israeli and, in the explicit hopes of the Israeli government, more Jewish.” […]
A similar exception from the rule even occurred on Fox News when Fox News host Geraldo Riv(i)era also spoke up about Israeli crimes, Palestinian suffering and in support of progressive Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib on the show hosted by Martha MacCallum (middle)— something which the female Fox News commentator Katie Pavlich (left), “one of the dumbest people on television” (2:30), tried to counter with some blatantly stupid and dishonest propaganda:
M.M.: “Geraldo, it sounds like you are sympathetic to Tlaib’s argument here.”
G.R.: “I am indeed, Martha. I think that people have to recognize what Gaza Strip is: It’s one of the most melancholy, menacing places on Earth that I have ever reported from. It’s a 20-mile-long strip of desert by the sea. Two million Palestinians trapped inside by a brutal blockade […]. It’s a crowded cesspool, highest unemployment on Earth — over 50%. Everything and everyone going into and out of Gaza is controlled by Israel: Electricity, fuel, airspace, ports, cell phone service; even who gets to form those meager fields they have. It’s effectively one of the world’s largest prison camps, and it’s being bombed with bombs supplied by the United States of America. It’s outrageous that we gave Israel these hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons without insisting on a ceasefire now. Why not a ceasefire now.”
K.P.: “[…] the Israelis gave the Palestinians the Gaza Strip in return for peace (!) and the only thing they have received since then is rockets, terrorist attacks and kidnappings of innocent Israeli citizens.” […] “it is Hamas who is firing on aid convoys trying to get into Gaza”(!) […]
G.R.: […] the fact that the United States of America is providing Israel many of the weapons that Israel is using today to kill Palestinian civilians without even demanding a ceasefire… Tlaib is right — that makes us complicit in an ongoing crime against humanity.”
Then there also was the already discussed New York Times article which made Zionists’ heads explode (see part 7):
The Overton window on Israel-Palestine thus appears to have shifted at least somewhat:
Surprisingly, there were even 200+ and now 500+ US journalist who signed a letter of support for better coverage on Palestine:
From the beginning of the letter:
Finding truth and holding the powerful to account are core principles of journalism.
Yet for decades, our news industry has abandoned those values in coverage of Israel and Palestine. We have failed our audiences with a narrative that obscures the most fundamental aspects of the story: Israel’s military occupation and its system of apartheid.
For the sake of our readers and viewers — and the truth — we have a duty to change course immediately and end this decades-long journalistic malpractice. The evidence of Israel’s systematic oppression of Palestinians is overwhelming and must no longer be sanitized.
But the letter also sparked some legitimate criticism by independent progressive Jewish journalist Max Blumenthal from The Grayzone:
Then there is also what Caitlin Johnstone wrote about “validate-and-divert tactics” in an article that I already linked in part 7:
[T]he managers of empire are going to have to regain control of the narrative somehow and get the public consenting to the US-centralized empire’s arm of operation in Israel again. How are they planning on doing this? Well, I know how I would do it if I were them.
I’ll start with what I would not do. If I were an imperial narrative manager trying to regain control of the Israel narrative, I definitely would not be telling all the pro-Palestine protesters to shut up and obey and get back into line. I definitely would not want the oligarchic media churning out articles and cable news segments screaming in unison that everyone must support Israel even when it kills scores of children in Gaza. That would only make things worse.
The absolute worst thing you can do to shut down a populist protest movement is push back against it. Unless you’re willing to alienate all your allies and lose the narrative war on the world stage by mowing down protesters with machine guns and throwing online dissidents into prison, opposing them will only create more resistance from them and give the protest movements more energy.
[…]
That’s why the establishment didn’t meet the Black Lives Matter protesters with opposition, but with “We hear you, we support you.” If they’d said “Silence you filthy riff raff and obey the police!” as many of them doubtless wanted to, it would have only showed people that the system is indeed unjust and their protests must continue with greater force. Instead they kept assuring protesters that they were heard and that their country’s political, media and corporate institutions fully support them, the whole time intending to do nothing whatsoever, and the protests eventually died off with the imperial police state having been left fully intact.
This validate-and-divert tactic is what the leaders of American corporate liberalism specialize in. It’s also the tactic caregivers are taught to employ in dementia care facilities. If you’ve got an agitated resident demanding to leave such a facility, the worst thing you can do is tell them no, because it will trigger a catastrophic response. What you do instead is validate their demand, assure them you’ll help them, then distract them with conversation until they forget what they were demanding a few minutes earlier.
If I were an imperial narrative manager trying to help regain control of the Israel narrative, I would employ such validate-and-divert tactics. I would not try to dismiss people’s concerns about the oppression and murder of Palestinians, I would validate those concerns. I would get on their side. I would insert myself into the conversation by condemning Israeli apartheid abuses and calling for Palestinian freedom. And then, once I was a part of the conversation, I would begin working to make the conversation about anti-semitism instead.
So it is entirely conceivable and possible that the conservative and moreso liberal MSM propagandists now show the occasional hint of sympathy for Palestinians as an instance of such validate-and-divert tactics and in order to take the wind out of their protests before returning to their usual manufacturing of consent for Israel and against Palestinians. For now though, slight and rare improvements in MSM ‘reporting’ about Israel and Palestine can be constated.
Conclusion: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)
As others such as Ha’aretz’s Gideon Levy have already stated, there is no realistic chance whatsoever that Israel by itself will ever change its anti-Palestinian settler-colonialist course. Quite on the contrary and as explained in part 7: Israel is something like the most extreme right-wing state and nation in the world that would actually very much want to proceed to a genocidal and murderous Final Solution for the Palestinian question. So the main reason why it has not done that (yet) is rather because it would be ‘bad optics’ — its crimes could not even be concealed with the best of propaganda then — and because the disgusting Zionist states in the international community such as the USA, UK or the almost equally disgraceful EU (barring Ireland) could no longer afford to support the apartheid, rogue, settler-colonialist terrorist state of Israel under these circumstances. Israel consequently proceeds as hard as it can against Palestinians and only stops around that point where it would lose even the support of its international Zionist allies who have a ‘human rights and Western values’-facade to maintain via their own populations.
So since change from inside of Israel is essentially impossible, it will have to come from outside. That change cannot come militarily such as in Iraq or Libya since Israel has a strong army with hundreds of nuclear weapons — including a respective “Samson Option” — and since Israel for the time being still has the military support of the nuclear superpower USA which still wastes close to 4 billion dollars per year on apartheid Israel while its own support- and infrastructure crumbles and decays. This should also be interpreted as evidence of just how much Israel has successfully undermined and hijacked especially US-politics — see e.g. the documentary The Lobby — USA.
That change also cannot come via the usual instituations such as the UN Security Council and its resolutions or the International Criminal Court. That Netanyahu and other right-wing extremist Israeli regime leaders such as Naftali Bennett, Ayelet Shaked and many others ought to be tried and — based on the overwhelming evidence — no doubt convicted by the ICC for genocide, crimes against humanity (including apartheid), war crimes and the crime of aggression in a Nuremburg style trial is of course clear:
But the problem is that the Israel lobby in the USA is still very strong and that the USA consequently prevents institutions such as ICC or the UN Security Council from doing their work:
Blinken’s suggestion that Israeli courts can deal with Israeli crimes against Palestinians is a complete joke and a bare-faced lie since he knows that Jewish-Israeli-Zionists will never give Palestinians more than lip service:
Change from outside consequently will not come from these international institutions either at least for the time being and most certainly not from Israeli courts. Instead, it has to come via people-powered global boycott, divestments and sanctions (BDS) movement, a recipe that was already successful against apartheid South Africa and one which the Israeli regime fears the most:
To conclude with the words of the Jewish Israeli human and Palestinian rights advocate and international speaker Miko Peled on the Katie Halper Show (the following segment starts at around 1:21:50):
Leslie Lee III: “People have been asking in the chat: ‘What can we do now that can make a difference?’”
Miko Peled: “That’s a gooood question. That’s why I wear this button, […] this pin. […] In 2005, Palestinian civil society gave us a gift — a huge gift. They told us what they need us to do to help them with their struggle. It’s called boycott, divestment and sanctions.
And they defined three very, very clear demands. [1] Ending what is called the “military occupation,” which are parts of Palestine […] where Palestinians live that are still governed by the military. Like what used to be the West Bank and now these are just these large ghettos — and of course Gaza. [2] […] creating a mechanism to allow refugees to return to their homes and their land. [3] And equal rights, full equal rights.
Now all these three demands are already sanctioned by international law. There are UN resolutions that support these. Uhm, Iike I said my father called for sanctions in the early 90s already. Uhm, so nothing here is outrageous, nothing here is unreasonable. There is no demand to hurt anyone or kill anyone or expel anyone. If you look at these three demands, they deal with the three main issues that plague Palestine as a result of the creation of the state of Israel. […]
There is a UN resolution which is the most reinforced UN resolution in the history of the UN — resolution 194. […]”
Miko Peled (continuing at 1:24:10): “Their rights are as strong as ever. Their case is as strong as ever. Ending the military occupation… I mean how many UN resolutions, how many… it’s even part of American… U.S. foreign policy to end the occupation. And equal rights. […] What could be more basic than equality. […] Equal rights does not take anything away from me as an Israeli when I’m there. It just provides the same privilege to everybody.”
[end of the article series]
