Wednesday, November 01, 2023

Western Media Manufactures Consent for Gaza Genocide

Source: Al Mayadeen English

The BBC has repeatedly given every appearance of laying justificatory foundations for genocidal Zionist attacks before they happen.

Ever since Palestinian freedom fighters initiated Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, the Western media has been monomaniacally focused on events in "Israel" and Gaza. No other domestic or foreign matters are apparently of any importance. Remarkably though, none of this coverage equips readers with any information relevant to truly comprehending what has been happening, and why. Even more egregiously, the deluge distorts, obfuscates, and even preemptively justifies Zionist atrocities against innocent civilians.

Given the pace at which events are moving, it is all but impossible to keep up with the sheer volume of misleading or outright false propaganda and whitewashing that has spewed out of the mouths and social media accounts of Zionist officials, pundits, and think tank “experts”, duly regurgitated unquestioningly and uncritically by major news outlets and the self-appointed “journalists” which they employ.

Nonetheless, at the core of media misreporting and malfeasance is a total lack of any context. This robs readers of both comprehension of the causes of Operation Al-Aqsa, and the paths to its resolution. One could do worse than consulting the words of Israeli historian Benny Morris in January 2004.

“There could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst, there would be no such state, it would not be able to exist,” he explained, noting “a Jewish state could not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians…therefore it was necessary to uproot them.” 

That same year, demographer Arnon Sofer of Haifa University laid out detailed plans for the isolation of Gaza directly to Ariel Sharon’s government. This entailed withdrawing Israeli forces from the area entirely and constructing a stringent system of surveillance and security to ensure nothing and no one went in or out without Zionist proviso. He expected dire results:

“When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today…The pressure at the border will be awful.  It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day…the only thing that concerns me is how to ensure the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings.”

‘Evade Detection’

As Al Mayadeen revealed on September 21st, declassified files show as far back as the 1960s, British intelligence was well-versed in surreptitiously packaging weaponized information serving specific psychological warfare objectives as innocuous, “unemphasised news items” for broadcast via the BBC, and other “organs of publicity” London’s spies “control or influence.” This way, brazen propaganda campaigns were “far more likely to be believed” by unsuspecting target audiences.

Such revealing excerpts are highly relevant to consider today, given the British state broadcaster has repeatedly given every appearance of laying justificatory foundations for genocidal Zionist attacks before they happen. In the most egregious example to date, on October 16th the BBC investigated whether Hamas constructs tunnels “under hospitals in schools,” reportedly in response to a question from a curious “anonymous reader.”

The British state broadcaster declared that Hamas did, contending based on uncorroborated “reports” and a graphic map supplied by Israeli Occupation Forces, that “some passages have entrances located on the bottom floors of houses, mosques, schools, and other public buildings to allow militants to evade detection,” therefore “effectively using them as human shields.” The very next day, Gaza’s al-Ahli Arab Hospital, brimming with hundreds of injured patients, and thousands of Palestinians seeking refuge from the inexorable onslaught of Zionist airstrikes, was obliterated from the sky.

The damage was absolutely cataclysmic, and fatality estimates range from 500 - 800. Even at the lower end of the scale, this would represent the largest single loss of life in Gaza since "Israel" sealed the area off from the outside world almost two decades ago. Before the dust had even settled at the hospital, Hananya Naftali, an IOF operative “recently called up from the frontline to another front - the digital war,” took to Twitter to boast about the carnage:

“Israeli Air Force struck a Hamas terrorist base inside a hospital in Gaza. A multiple number [sic] of terrorists are dead. It’s heartbreaking that Hamas is launching rockets from hospitals, mosques, schools, and using civilians as human shields.”

‘Nakba 2.0’

The echo in these words of the BBC’s “unemphasised news item” from 24 hours earlier is obvious. Conspicuously though, Naftali deleted this post within hours. A post Netanyahu’s official account, which perversely branded the IOF assault on Gaza “a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle” was almost promptly purged. Hurriedly, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a video purporting to show a Palestinian rocket striking the hospital.

Almost instantly though, online sleuths determined the clip to be fraudulent, and it was deleted. Despite such behavior and falsification being unambiguous signifiers of guilt, mainstream journalists not only persist in refusing to attribute the hospital strike to either “side”, but urge their audiences to avoid jumping to conclusions, and/or blaming Zionist forces. Veteran Sky News editor Adam Boulton went to the extent of declaring, “Israel had nothing to gain from this.”

Yet, "Tel Aviv" absolutely did have much to gain from destroying the hospital, just as it does from its wholesale destruction of the Occupied Territories and all who live there. The current blitz on Gaza is concerned with completing the long-running Zionist objective of purging all of Palestine of its indigenous population, and leaving what remains a monoethnic state forever. In the wake of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’s launch, multiple Israeli lawmakers and officials openly called for a “Nakba 2.0”.

Those horrific proposals remain extant today. So too does a heinous statement from Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Givr, issued not long after the destruction of Gaza’s al-Ahli Arab Hospital:

“As long as Hamas does not release the hostages in its hands, the only thing that needs to enter Gaza are hundreds of tons of explosives from the Air Force, not an ounce of humanitarian aid.”

Zionists over many, many years have made their genocidal intentions toward the Palestinian people abundantly clear. It is therefore urgently incumbent upon us all to do what Western journalists refuse to do. Namely, take them at their word, and act accordingly.

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