Manipulation Politics: Israeli Gaslighting in the United States  

BY M. REZA BEHNAM

 APRIL 26, 2024
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Photograph Source: U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv – CC BY 2.0

The Middle East will not be the same in the wake of 7 October 2023. More was breached on that day than the prison wall that Palestinian fighters burst through.  The fantasy Israel has staged-managed, and the United States has parroted, for over seven decades has finally seen the light of day.  The global community can no longer be gaslit.

Merriam-Webster defines gaslighting as “the act of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage.”  The term has resonance for what Israel and the United States have successfully done over a number of generations—create a benign identity for Israel that has never corresponded with its ruthless settler-colonial reality.      

The awful truth is that it has taken the death of over 34,000 Palestinians for many in the United States and the world to say “Free Palestine.”  The mainstreamed Israeli “good guy” narrative that has colonized the U.S. body politic for so long is being whittled away by the horrific images of daily genocide and ecocide from Gaza.    

A country does not become cruel overnight.  It takes intent, years of practice and strategies to effectively hide the cruelty.  Since it declared itself a state in 1948, the occupied territories known as Israel has relied on an elaborate state-run public relations industry to convince Western audiences, particularly Americans, of its bravery and noble intentions.

For over six months, Israel’s brutality has been brought into the living rooms of America.  Until then, Israel had made certain that its foundational myths and beacon of democracy tale dominated American politics and government, religion, journalism, academia, cinema and television.   

Those who have been successfully gaslit, whether consciously or unconsciously, and who wish to maintain existing power structures continue to deny the genocide being live-streamed before their eyes, and have galvanized to crush those opposed to Israel’s war on Palestinians.  

American Politics and Government

For decades, Israel has manipulated U.S. politicians emotionally and financially to advance its expansionist ambitions.  Israeli lobby groups, like the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), have poured billions into the coffers of receptive politicians.  

Pro-Israel spending has fueled Congress’s overwhelming support for the apartheid regime.  Rarely, if ever, do they question why aid is being given to the fourteenth richest (per capita) country in the world.  From 1990 to 2024, for example, the “I am a Zionist,” president, Joe Biden has received$5,736,701 from pro-Israel lobbies.  

In 2024, AIPAC plans to spend $100 million in an effort to unseat progressive members of Congress (eight in number) who have been critical of Israeli policy and who have called for a ceasefire in Gaza.  

In January 2024, The Guardian newspaper published its analysis of campaign data.  It found that congressional members supportive of the war received the most money from Israel lobby groups.  It also revealed that 82 percent of its members support Israel; 9 percent are supportive of Palestine; and 8 percent were equally supportive of both.  

Religion

Israel’s leaders have also capitalized on the powerful force of religion to whitewash their settler-colonial project. They have exploited the ideology of biblical chosenness and divinely sanctioned land ownership to legitimize land theft, to dispossess the Palestinians and to sell its genocidal war on Gaza.    

An Israeli Democracy Index, 2013 survey revealed that two-thirds (64.3 percent) of Israeli Jews consider Jews to be the “chosen people.”  The prominence of this belief has resulted in attitudes and government policies of exclusion, entitlement and ethnic chauvinism.  

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war rhetoric has been suffused with violent biblical references.  He has cynically ascribed the term Amalek—the staunch enemy of biblical Israelites—to Palestinians.  The far-right in Israel has, for a long while, used such references to justify killing Palestinians.

The Evangelical right has stood solidly with Israel; even more so during its war on Gaza.  The Israel, Zionist lobby and Christian Zionist (religious right) alliance have had enormous influence over U.S. Middle East policy.  For every one Jewish Zionist, there are 30 Christian Zionists.   Netanyahu has courted Evangelicals cognizant of the power they exert within Congress.  

Christian Zionism demands of its followers absolute support for Israel, believing that the Rapture and Second Coming of Christ require the gathering of all Jews in Israel, and that supporting Israel will bring God’s blessing on them and on their nation.   

Many American evangelicals, have been cheering Israel’s war on Gaza, believing it to be a prelude to the end times prophecy.  

Christian Zionists have found powerful allies in the White House and in the U.S. Congress.  In the Trump White House, for example, evangelicals held seats of power with the likes of former Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. 

There are at least 100  evangelicals currently serving in Congress, including the Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.   It has become almost mandatory for members to attend AIPAC and Christian evangelical events, as well as excursions to Israel to assure the apartheid leaders of their continued loyalty.  

Journalism

American public opinion has been molded to look with favor on Israel. Mainstream journalism has become largely a stenography service for U.S.-Israeli interests.  Most of the pundits and so-called experts on television, for example, come from think tanks funded by pro-Israel groups: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, American Enterprise Institute, Foreign Policy Research Institute, The Heritage Foundation and Council on Foreign Relations.  

Intellectually honest analysis or criticism of Israel is met with orchestrated pressure from Jewish lobby groups or with the dreaded label of antisemitism. Such tactics have been used to create a climate of intimidation, which has often led to self-censorship.

It is useful to look at a few examples to understand how alternative narratives regarding Palestine have been discouraged for decades.  

Ariel Sharon, former Israeli defense minister, filed a libel suit after Time magazine ran a cover story in 1983 accusing him of encouraging the massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon in September 1982.  In 1984, Americans for a Safe Israel filed a petition requesting that NBC’s license be revoked over its reporting of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.  CBS faced similar criticism for airing veteran reporter, Bob Simon’s “60-Minutes” report about Christians living under Israeli occupation.  A full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal excoriating Simon appeared soon after.  

CNN’s founder, Ted Turner, caused an uproar when he told the Guardian in 2002 that Israel was engaging in terrorism against the Palestinians, resulting in threats to the networks revenue.  Walter Isaacson, then CNN Chair, appeared on Israeli television to denounce Turner and the network’s chief news executive, Eason Jordan, flew to Israel to appease the regime.    

Magazines such as The New Republic, The Atlantic and Commentary have also been influential in creating an Israel-centric worldview.  Pro-Israel syndicated columnists Thomas Friedman, Bret Stephens, George Will and David Brooks—whose son has served in the Israeli army—dominate the op-ed pages of major newspapers.

Since the October assault, a number of journalists have faced censorship, retaliation or dismissal for presenting the Palestinian narrative or for criticizing Israeli violence.  The firing in October of Michael Eisen, editor of eLife, a prominent academic science journal, after he retweeted an article from the satirical Onion titled, “Dying Gaza’s Crticized for Not Using Last Words to Condemn Hamas,”reflects how censorship has reached into all media platforms. 

All foreign news organizations operating in Israel are subject to Israeli military censors. To suppress the horrors coming from Gaza, Israel has refused to permit foreign journalists independent access to that beleaguered Strip.  Only Palestinian reporters already there have been able to report; for that, they and their families have been targeted.  According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, as of 25 April, at least 97 journalists and media staff have been killed and 16 injured since the war began. 

Academia

For over two hundred days, Israel’s supporters have been straining to preserve their stranglehold over American universities.  They are aware that people are losing their fear of Israel’s watchdogs like Canary Mission, Stand With Us and Hillel; groups that have made it their mission to suppress critical discussion around Israel on college campuses.  

Academic freedom has been denied professors who have bravely challenged  accepted Israeli renderings.  Professors Rabab Abdulhadi, California State University, San Francisco, Steven Salaita, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Norman Finkelstein, De Paul are among the academics who have been intimidated or terminated.     

Pro-Israel forces have stepped up their pressure on administrators, as demonstrations on university campuses have grown.   Wealthy donors have used threats to withhold, or have withheld, donations if speech critical of Israel is allowed.  Administrators have responded, dismissing professors, setting limits on free speech, conflating protests with antisemitism and using police to breakup demonstrations.  More than 100 Columbia University students were arrested on 18 April after the university called in the New York Police Department to clear a protest encampment. 

Students reported being  sprayed with a putrid smelling chemical agent at a Columbia demonstration.  They later learned that they were sprayed with a chemical called “skunk;” an agent developed by Israel and that has been used for years by the Israeli military against Palestinians in occupied Palestine. 

Earlier in April, the University of Southern California, citing unspecified security concerns, cancelled plans for a graduation speech by this year’s valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, a Muslim student.  Disappointed,  Tabassum said the school had succumbed “to a campaign of hate meant to silence my voice.”

Pro-Israel groups have also looked to Congress to neutralize the growing pro-Palestinian protests.  House Republicans have held hearings to “investigate” antisemitism at America’s prestigious universities.  Thus far, the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania have resigned following their appearances.   And on 24 April, Speaker Johnson called for the president of Columbia University, Nemat Minouche Shafik, to step down.  

Safety and antisemitism have been used as weapons to silence campus criticism of Israel.  In November, after Jewish students complained of feeling unsafe upon hearing remarks critical of Israel,  Columbia banned its chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. 

The intensity of Israeli indoctrination is reflected in the reaction of some Jewish students who believe that protests targeting Israel constitute personal attacks on them as Jews.   

Many young American Jews have been raised with the idealized image of Israel as a righteous state, necessary for Jewish safety.  A large number have made the free ten-day trip to Israel sponsored by Birthright Israel, an organization supported by the Israeli regime and wealthy philanthropists like the late Sheldon Adelson.  Birthright, founded in 1999, has played a large role in shaping loyalty to Israel.  Predictably, the reality of the occupation has never been a part of the group’s tour.  

Cinema and Television

Israel loyalists have masterfully utilized the media to shape public perceptions and attitudes.  Movie and television screens have been filled with an abundance of positive, sympathetic images of Israel that have shaped public perceptions.     

Undoubtedly, the 1960 film, Exodus, firmly implanted the heroic image of Israel in the minds of many Americans.  The heroism of the Palestinian people fighting to preserve their homeland from Israeli domination has yet to hit the big screen.     

Beginning with the 1921silent film classic, The Sheik, filmmakers have cast Middle Easterners, Arabs and Muslims as exotic, uncultured, idiotic, lecherous and violent, indistinguishable from one another. 

Although racist depictions of Arabs is not new to the film and television industry, media providers Showtime, Netflix and HBO have amped up the propaganda with series such as Homeland, Fauda (meaning chaos in Arabic), The Messiah, The Spy, and Our Boys.  These dramas, from which many Americans draw their information, portray Israel’s secret police as virtuous defenders of law, hunting down threatening Arab “terrorists.”

Caricatures and negative cinematic imagery have contributed to the destructive dehumanization of Arabs, as witnessed today in Gaza.   The powerful political narrative created around Arabs has allowed Israel’s genocide of Palestinians to become an image on a screen or just another news event. 

For more than eight decades—from photoplay sheik movies of the 1920s to the elaborately produced films of the present—Hollywood filmmakers have perpetuated Middle Eastern stereotypes that have cultivated prejudice and division between peoples and nations.  These stereotypes have created a pattern of socialization that has made the Middle Eastern world distant and vulnerable to attack. 

Conclusion

Although the pro-Israel camp and their allies continue to dominate and influence Congress and the executive branch, they have slowly begun to lose control of the narrative.   

President Joe Biden, however, remains dedicated to the Israeli fantasy.  He has embraced and subsidized a racist supremacist Israeli regime; a 57-year apartheid occupation; squatter colonialism and genocide in Gaza. 

While professing commitment to achieving a Palestinian state, the United States alone vetoed a 18 April Security Council resolution that would have allowed full United Nations membership for the state of Palestine.  And while Israel continues its intense bombing in Gaza, Biden signed legislation on 24 April allocating another $26.4 billion for Tel Aviv to continue its atrocities. 

Israeli gaslighting has reached into and exerted influence in almost every segment of American society.  Consequently, Israel has grown into an entity unbound by borders, exempt from international law and able to commit genocide with impunity.  The horrific images coming from Gaza are, however, are making it increasingly difficult for Israel and its U.S. allies to silence dissent and to continue gaslighting the American public.

Manufacturing Consent in the 21st Century

BY ERIC ELLIOT AND GRANT INSKEEP

 APRIL 26, 2024

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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman wrote Manufacturing Consent in the late 1980s to describe the structural forces which cause an otherwise free media—one lacking government censorship, fear of prison for journalists (aside from those sharing designated government secrets), and staffed with people who genuinely see themselves as holding power accountable—can nonetheless produce systematic propaganda, with a highly consistent message, and a strong overton of acceptable opinion.

As Chomsky puts it, “the best way to control public opinion is in fact to promote vigorous debate. You set the limits of the debate, showing what the most extreme acceptable opinions are, and then allow and encourage debate within those limits. Thoughts that fall outside the acceptable spectrum are just off limits.” The five propaganda factors— ownership, sources, advertising, flak, and ideology— work through a series of inducements and threats to encourage views which align with the goals of the powerful, and to discourage or marginalize views which expose the reality beyond the spectrum of acceptable opinion. While Chomsky and Herman’s work was describing conventional mainstream media, which are in fact corporations whose product is the audience they sell to advertisers, using the news as bait, the same factors apply to social media, despite the fact that content is now being created by every user of a given platform. When it comes to social media content creation, there seems to be similarities in something like the music industry.

For example, being in the right time and place for your content to go viral, but also because people are paying to play the game.

Many content creators have paid for promotion, essentially buying followers, and use their page as a business just as the music industry functions. Not to go unmentioned is the fact that understanding how to game the algorithm works to your advantage—knowing what type of content to post, how often to share, etc. The parallel to the music industry to me is how some artists have an ability to write catchy singles but these people are not necessarily great songwriters. Conversely, there are plenty of great songwriters who do not have successful music careers.

Take Travis Scott for example. I’m certainly not going to say he’s a complete SHIT artist (I’m no fan of course), but it’s not particularly creative or inventive music, and you can pay Travis Scott up to $500k to appear on your song. Are people doing this because Travis Scott is objectively one of the best hip hop artists or a truly creative writer? No, they’re doing so because making a song with Travis Scott will extend the reach to more and more mainstream audiences. It’s about generating money, not creating quality or impactful material. You know what you are getting with artists like Travis Scott; objectively mediocre content but it will be noticed by lots of people, and most “successful” social media pages are consciously playing the same kind of game.

Most well established social media political pages—leftwing or not—are sharing content with one thing in mind: PROFIT. Recently I saw an anarchist related meme page with 22k followers who was “selling” their account, which they said was a steady income base for nearly a year until having found their ideal job. So what was this person creating the content for? Not to help people better understand these topics but to make money off their sociopolitical beliefs. These types of content creators are well aware that most people on these platforms are uninformed on the nuances and broad contexts of these discussions, as they tend to be themselves, and in turn they simply create content (memes, short hand, etc) that the algorithm is more inclined to share with audiences. I’m sure there are loads of people who see long hand and more involved pieces who simply don’t have the sociopolitical wherewithal to grasp the material or the internal drive to read something that takes 4-5 minutes of their time. There’s also plenty of leftwing social media accounts that treat the people following their pages like capital, that don’t adhere to solidarity with pages similar by collaborating equally, and this is likely because they don’t want to reroute their followers to better analysis and content creation. Like the music industry, though on a smaller scale, there’s a certain level of ego in running a political social media page with tens to hundreds of thousands of followers.

Where some place the time creating these pages into analysis or thoughtful commentary, there are many more who simply produce easily digestible memes, create multiple backup accounts in case they’re banned, and are clearly focusing their free time on amassing followers for their monetized social media presence. If someone’s format is memes or short hand content, then they may present themselves as an intellectual but they’re not having to back it up with any intellectual coherence. There’s a big difference between being a true left minded intellectual and simply making a lot of jokes rooted in Marxist language, which is what the vast majority of left wing political pages are doing because they know what the general public is here for or simply can’t form their own long form sociopolitical content. But if this is the reality of social media, which has now become the dominant way in which most people interact with politics, then we have to specifically address why this is the case. For starters, we all realize that social media platforms are giant corporations, which are now even larger and more profitable than those that own conventional media. Secondly, we almost reflexively note the nature of how these platforms operate, using terms like clickbait’ and recognizing the existence of promoted content.

There are some aspects of social media that go far beyond the control exercised by traditional media. The algorithm promotes content that serves the ends of the corporations— that gain the most interaction, and therefore generate the greatest amount of revenue. The average person is aware that other ordinary people have become influencers, whose income often comes from living subsidized lives of luxury while being paid for their posts. On the one hand, these influencers set the pattern for what posts are *supposed* to look like, which most users instinctively imitate; on the other hand, many users are actively trying to build sufficiently large followings to monetize their own accounts. Whether they succeed or not, these efforts push content in the same direction as is desired by the algorithm; and if they do succeed, then we have yet another large account that replicates and perpetuates the pattern of short hand content for corporate profits. These patterns exist whether the content is models, lifestyle, health and wellness, news and information, political related, etc. They are all pushed toward the formats and type of content that please the algorithm and its corporate designers. Which brings about another parallel between social media and conventional outlets. Social media algorithms champion memes, or content that does not get to the heart of the discussion. Similarly, conventional corporate media shortens everything into concise sound bites that leave little room for commentators to flesh out the intricacies and nuances of these discussions in order to paint a clearer picture. Going back to Chomsky and Herman’s work and looking at the five factors from their original propaganda model, we can see how they apply specifically in the domain of social media.

1 – OWNERSHIP. We all know who the wealthy owners of our platforms are—Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. They have well known biases, and every user can observe how these play out the heavy censorship of pro-Palestinian content for example, where even pro-Zionist accounts will have to write “G@z@” in order to avoid being flagged for mentioning a society that our owners have decided is a candidate for disappearance from history.

2 – SOURCES. Just as in the original “quest to get the story first,” which causes outlets to run stories with insufficient fact checking, or to simply re-run stories from other outlets, and which was manipulated by the Bush II regime by handing press releases directly to friendly outlets; there is a similar trend occurring with social media now. Many pages recycle memes, news content and other posts from each other. Meta decides which sources to flag for supposed “misleading” or “graphic” content and then suppresses the material; using corporate and government approved sources results in better visibility for posts and accounts, and it’s far easier to generate volumes of content by reposting things that you can see have done well, than by trying to generate your own content. These pressures lead to a lot of repetitive posts, recycled content from more popular pages, and an avoidance of sharing from sources that have been flagged, which results in these kind of posts and accounts being suppressed despite the accuracy of their messaging.

3 – ADVERTISING/FUNDING. Of course the real purpose of social media is to influence opinions while generating profit for the owners of the platforms. They don’t want to lose advertising money, which in turn puts pressure on them to curate their algorithms in a way that pleases advertisers, as well attracts and avoids alienating them. As mentioned, users are aware of the kind of content that gains followers and leads to monetization, and this exercises considerable influence on the kind of posts they make. Even where they go against this formula, popularity and monetization go hand in hand, and the accounts or posts that get the most promotion from the algorithm get the most financial benefit for their account operators. Of course, if an account becomes large enough that it is now the primary revenue source of its creators, they simply cannot afford to lose this income; this becomes akin to losing one’s job, which is honestly pathetic in itself as content creating on social media contributes nothing to the functionality of society. Therefore they will be under great pressure to avoid losing visibility, and to continue to have as much engagement as possible.

4 – FLAK. Just like in conventional media, complaints and official censure play a role. Posts can be reported, many accounts get deleted, and shadow bans are ubiquitous. Users learn where the line is, and either instinctively avoid pushing it, so as to keep to official narratives and superficial takes that barely scratch beneath the surface, or else their content risks being suppressed, their accounts shadow-banned, and even eventually deleted in many cases. The Canadian Government recently passed a law requiring social media platforms to pay news outlets if posts containing their content generate revenue for the platform. Rather than acquiesce, meta has now restricted users in Canada from viewing any news content. This shows how far they are willing to go to protect their profits and control their content. And of course there is no shortage of harassment, doxxing, aggressive DM’s and so on that accounts have to deal with when they post content that crosses the boundaries of acceptable opinion.

5 – IDEOLOGY. Originally ‘anti-communism’, then ‘anti-terror’, the primary form today; it also covers capitalism, communism, anarchism, etc. There are ideologies which are to be promoted, and those which are to be considered inherently vile. Content that aligns with a social media platform’s interpretations will be promoted and protected, while content that criticizes or promotes the *wrong* ideologies or interpretations will simply be branded “pro-terror,” “anti-western,” or whatever else. As in traditional media, it doesn’t really matter how transparent this is. Even pages adhering to subversive ideologies—Marxist, socialist, anarchist, etc—usually aren’t getting to the heart of these discussions and often are simply reenforcing the corporate state’s interpretation of these ideologies by not offering substantial analysis. The point is that at the end of the day, most users will primarily see content that aligns with the political, ideological and economic goals or beliefs of the ruling elites who own society, while subversive but easily digestible content will be presented as evidence of our supposedly open and free “marketplace of ideas,” with anything that actually poses a threat to power simply marginalized, removed, and dropped into the dustbin of history.