“Aligned With Israel’s Propaganda Strategy”: BBC Correspondent Challenges the BBC Director General

by Media Lens / July 22nd, 2024

Last November, we reported on an incisive and courageous email that had been sent on 24 October 2023 to Tim Davie, the BBC’s Director General, by Rami Ruhayem, a Beirut-based BBC correspondent. Basing his arguments on considerable evidence and rational analysis, Ruhayem was highly critical of the BBC’s pro-Israel coverage of Gaza since the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023.

A former journalist for the Associated Press, Ruhayem has worked as a journalist and producer for BBC Arabic and the BBC World Service since 2005. He wrote:

‘Words like “massacre”, “slaughter”, and “atrocities” are being used—prominently—in reference to actions by Hamas, but hardly, if at all, in reference to actions by Israel.

‘When the BBC uses such language selectively, with the standard of selection being the identity of the perpetrators/victims, the BBC is making a statement—albeit implicit. It implies that the lives of one group of people are more valuable than the lives of another.’ (Our emphasis)

As we pointed out at the time, this is extremely serious. The state-mandated BBC News organisation is essentially channelling Israeli propaganda that excuses its war crimes while demonising Israel’s victims, the Palestinian people.

Similar points were made in a 2,300-word letter sent in November 2023 to Al Jazeera by eight BBC journalists who, fearing reprisals, requested anonymity. They accused the BBC of:

‘failing to tell the story of the Israel-Palestine conflict accurately, investing greater effort in humanising Israeli victims compared with Palestinians, and omitting key historical context in coverage.’

They said that the BBC is guilty of a ‘double standard in how civilians are seen’, given that it is ‘unflinching’ in its reporting of alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

They noted that the BBC’s interviewers regularly asked Palestinians whether they ‘condemn Hamas’, while interviewees putting the Israeli perspective were not asked the same about Israel’s actions, ‘however high the civilian death toll in Gaza.’

A notorious example was a BBC Newsnight interview on 9 October 2023 with Husam Zomlot, the head of the Palestinian Mission to the United Kingdom, who had lost several members of his family during the early days of Israel’s bombing campaign.

He told presenter Kirsty Wark of his emotional pain. He listed the relatives who had been killed, describing them as ‘sitting ducks for the Israeli war machine’.

Wark replied:

‘I am sorry for your own personal loss. I mean, can I just be clear though, you cannot condone the killing of civilians in Israel, can you? Nor the killing of families?’

No doubt taken aback, Zomlot, who is not a Hamas representative, said:

‘No we don’t condone, no we don’t.’

Wark recently bid farewell to Newsnight after thirty years and was predictably garlanded with praise from across the state-friendly establishment of ‘mainstream’ politics and news.

Currently, the reported death toll in Gaza is approaching 39,000. But this may be a considerable underestimate, with over 10,000 estimated to be buried under the debris caused by Israeli bombing. A recent study in the prestigious Lancet medical journal points out that there will be many additional indirect deaths caused by destroyed health-care infrastructure; severe shortages of food, water, and shelter; the population’s inability to flee to safe places; and the loss of funding to Unrwa, the UN’s relief agency for Palestinians. The Lancet authors estimate that the total death toll in Gaza may even exceed 186,000. As a result, reports TRT World, Gaza ‘is turning into an open air cemetery’.

Israel’s attempt to eradicate Unrwa, and the withdrawal of many Western countries’ financial support for the agency on the basis of non-evidenced Israeli claims that Unrwa staff took part in the 7 October attacks, is a major but under-reported scandal. Israel has hit nearly 70 per cent of Unrwa schools in Gaza since 7 October. Over 95 per cent of these schools were being used as shelters when bombed. 539 people sheltering in Unrwa facilities have been killed. The agency said:

‘Nowhere is safe. The blatant disregard for UN premises and humanitarian law must stop.’

On 1 May 2024, Ruhayem sent a follow-up email to the BBC Director General, which was also sent to several departments of BBC News. This email was leaked to the right-wing UK press and reported the following day (see below). It has now been published in full on the Jadaliyya website, hosted by the Arab Studies Institute, a non-profit organisation.

The essential conclusion about BBC News coverage of Gaza, wrote Ruhayem, is that of:

‘a collapse in the application of basic standards and norms of journalism that seems aligned with Israel’s propaganda strategy.’ [Our emphasis]

Moreover, Ruhayem has revealed that BBC management has failed to respond to ‘a mass of evidence-based critique of coverage’ from members of staff. The implication is that there may well be considerable disquiet among many BBC journalists that the broadcaster has been a largely uncritical conduit for Israeli propaganda.

Although undoubtedly made more stark over the past nine months, this basic feature of BBC News is nothing new. Over many years, we have pointed out the propaganda function of the BBC in books and media alerts, incorporating valuable work by numerous analysts including the Glasgow Media Group. A major figure here was Greg Philo who died recently and whose books with Mike Berry (‘Bad News From Israel’ and ‘More Bad News From Israel’) are vital reading.

‘A Dizzying Pace’

In his 1 May email to the Director General of the BBC, Ruhayem begins by saying that, since his previous email of 24 October 2023, he has examined more thoroughly the ‘editorial failings’ that have characterized the BBC’s coverage of Gaza, and questions whether management is serious about addressing those failings. The evidence of a collapse in BBC journalism standards, in line with Israel’s propaganda strategy, ‘has been pouring in for months at a dizzying pace’.

Ruhayem collated some of this evidence of pro-Israel bias in two papers (see below) which he sent to management’s feedback email in February. Other BBC colleagues have documented similar problems and presented them in various ways to senior levels within the BBC. What has been the response?

Ruhayem wrote:

‘Management has recognized that many of us have deep misgivings about coverage, and that these should be heard. That seems to be the implicit logic behind the “Listening Sessions” and the feedback emails. But irrespective of what the intention(s) behind this process may have been, it has amounted to little more than a short-lived venting exercise.’

He added:

‘I have participated keenly in every avenue proposed by management that I managed to involve myself in, and more. Silence has been a common response to a mass of evidence-based critique of coverage. Nothing I sent to “feedback emails” has received a response, except once to say that maybe someone will respond, maybe not. Others have had similar experiences.’

The BBC correspondent then noted that:

‘The exceptions to such silence have usually been worse. In one email chain, a senior figure did not answer a simple question: do BBC presenters not have a duty to interject when serious, unverified claims are made on air? Another, when asked about the reasoning behind editorial decisions, saw fit to inform a group of staff that “editors edit”, seemingly in the belief that this should be enough to brush off everything we’d said.’

Anyone who has ever submitted a complaint to the BBC about its coverage, whatever the topic, will not be surprised by such dismissive treatment. We have lauded all those brave people who enter the labyrinthine den of the BBC ‘complaints system’. This is a soul-crushing experience that even the former BBC chairman Lord Grade once described as ‘grisly’ due to a system that is ‘absolutely hopeless’. So, what hope for us mere mortals? Anyone who makes the attempt is surely forever disabused of the notion that BBC News engages with, or indeed serves, the public in any meaningful way. Long-time readers may recall that Helen Boaden, then head of BBC News, once joked that she evaded public complaints that were sent to her on email:

‘Oh, I just changed my email address.’

It is noteworthy that the Beirut-based BBC correspondent and his colleagues expressing serious concerns about BBC coverage have also been rebuffed. It is perhaps perversely refreshing to hear that BBC management treats its own journalists with similar disdain as it does viewers and listeners.

Ruhayem told Davie that senior BBC managers would occasionally offer one or two links as counterexamples to serious bias in its coverage:

‘The implicit logic would appear to be that a collapse in standards is ok if there are exceptions. Faced with specific examples, senior managers might say it’s inappropriate to comment on individual stories. Faced with analysis that goes back in time to examine content, they might ask for “specific” examples. One of them once referred a group of us back to the unresponsive “News board” feedback email. Another told me they wouldn’t address issues that had already been raised to the News board.’

Again, we note the Kafka-esque contortions performed by BBC management to avoid proper accountability even to their own journalists.

One senior manager replied to a group of staff that all the examples of serious pro-Israel bias provided by Ruhayem and colleagues are the result of ‘decisions taken by editors’. This risible response was seemingly intended to preclude further argument.

Of course, as Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky observed in Manufacturing Consent, senior editors and managers in ‘mainstream’ news outlets – which, as we have repeatedly demonstrated, very much includes BBC News – have been selected for conformity to state-corporate ideology. Chomsky made the point succinctly to a young, befuddled, pre-BBC Andrew Marr in a now-famous clip:

‘I’m not saying you’re self-censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you say. But what I’m saying is if you believed something different you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.’

In his email to Davie, Ruhayem asked whether BBC editors:

‘gave instructions to drop requirements for applying scrutiny regarding the most serious, unverified claims that were being repeated by propagandists for Israel? Would they be able to explain why, and offer a defence of such decisions based on BBC values and standards? If that is not the case, would the editors be able to explain why – upon observing these standards being repeatedly cast aside – they did not intervene? In any case, would upper management clarify what it thinks its own duties are in such a situation?’

Media Lens analysis of BBC News since we began in 2001 reveals that ‘BBC values and standards’ is a doctrinal phrase that has little basis in reality. ‘Impartiality’, ‘objectivity’, ‘balance’ and ‘accuracy’ are largely jettisoned when it comes to the brutal truths behind state and corporate power. The myth that ‘we’ are ‘the good guys’ in world affairs must be maintained at all times.

Ruhayem goes on to say that the latest trend among BBC editors being challenged by their own journalists about biased Gaza coverage is to ask for ‘recent’ examples.

‘This is usually in response to questions about the first weeks/months of coverage, during which Israeli claims about the events of October 7 were given an open, uncritical platform by the BBC. This ignores the fact that – in many cases – examples of this kind of thing were flagged as they were happening but not addressed at the time, or at any time. It also ignores the lasting harm such content is likely to have contributed to causing. In any case, many of us have offered – and continue to offer – feedback that covers all these categories; individual examples, systemic issues, recent examples, not-so-recent examples, without receiving a meaningful response in any instance, at any time, whatever the channel we use, and usually without receiving any response at all.’ [Our emphasis]

These considered revelations are damning. Senior BBC editors and management are simply not willing and/or capable of engaging with serious scrutiny of the broadcaster’s coverage, even when challenged by their own journalists. At this point, we have to recognise the courage and moral integrity of Rami Ruhayem in being prepared to challenge senior BBC figures; no doubt, with considerable animosity from his line management and some colleagues, resulting in personal discomfort and, indeed, significant risk to his continued BBC employment.

When his 1 May email was leaked to the right-wing press, the reports downplayed the seriousness and extent of his collated evidence and emphasised the ‘outrage’ of ‘Jewish staff’ with the inevitable and insidious deployment of the ‘antisemitism’ card: The Times (‘BBC correspondent questions “facts” of October 7 attacks on Israel’), The Telegraph (‘BBC may be “complicit in Israeli war propaganda” claims Beirut correspondent’), and The Daily Mail (‘BBC correspondent says the broadcaster has a pro-Israel bias and should be questioning the “facts” of October 7 – sparking fury among Jewish colleagues’). No other newspapers reported the leak, including the Guardian and the Independent.

In short, Ruhayem is adamant that the problems of BBC coverage of Gaza are ‘evident, unmistakable, and ongoing.’

‘Israel’s War on Context’

So, what are the specifics of Ruhayem’s charges against BBC coverage? The first of two papers that he presented in February 2024 to Davie and senior BBC News staff concerned what the Beirut-based correspondent termed, ‘Israel’s war on context’.

This was elucidated by Ruhayem’s analysis of 22 interviews with Israeli guests – mostly current officials, a few former officials, army officers, politicians, and a ‘human rights activist’. All the interviews were conducted between October 10 and October 25, 2023 on the BBC News channel. They do not necessarily cover every interview with Israeli guests on the channel during that period.

His main findings were:

1. There was no challenge about different manifestations of what appears to be the Israeli government’s drive to destroy any chance of Palestinian self-determination, about Israeli officials in positions of power who had incited extreme violence against Palestinians prior to October 7, or what all of that might suggest about the motivations driving Israel’s conduct of the war.
2. Ruhayem found one single reference by a BBC presenter to one of the statements mentioned above [i.e. the statements summarised in point 1]. It was the only such mention in 22 interviews that took place over a period of 15 days. In that exception to the rule, the issue was framed in terms of the potential legal and reputational harm to Israel.  In other interviews, Israeli guests repeated claims that are at odds with such statements from top Israeli leaders, without the statements being mentioned by presenters.
3. The Dahiya Doctrine is not mentioned in any of these interviews.

The so-called Dahiya Doctrine is essentially an Israeli military doctrine that overrides any sense of ‘proportionality’ in Israel’s attacks on Palestinians. It was articulated in the wake of the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, and put into practice later in Gaza. Gadi Eisenkot, at the time head of the Israeli Northern Command and currently a member of the Israeli war cabinet, explained:

‘What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. […] We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases […]. This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved.’

Recall that, after the attack by Hamas on 7 October, Israeli leaders, officials and army personnel made boastful statements about how brutally Israel intended to conduct its attacks on Gaza. Defence minister Yoav Gallant said that ‘we are fighting human animals and we act accordingly’ and that he ‘removed every restriction’ on the army. An Israeli army spokesman said that the ‘emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy’.

The above three findings are, Ruhayem wrote, part of:

‘a growing body of evidence indicating that the BBC may have been withholding vital information from the public, contributing to incitement against Palestinians, and spreading and reinforcing Israeli war propaganda.’

He added:

‘There appears to be a ceiling on questioning Israeli officials and propagandists, expressed in the consistent failure of presenters to use crucial evidence to challenge Israel’s west-facing propaganda. Lines of challenge which are obvious to pursue and which would cast doubt on Israel’s west-facing messaging are conspicuously and consistently not pursued by BBC presenters.’

Ruhayem continued:

‘Unfettered by proper challenge, propagandists for Israel can then paint a picture of a peaceful state that has the misfortune of existing alongside pure evil, and present it as the backdrop to the unfolding horror in Gaza.’ [Our emphasis]

BBC coverage is thus fundamentally compromised, noted Ruhayem:

‘The main assumption is that Israel is trying to avoid harming Palestinian civilians as it conducts a war of self-defence. Thus, discussions between BBC presenters and Israeli propagandists are centred on the question of whether Israel is trying hard enough, or acting intelligently enough, to achieve its goal of “crushing” and “dismantling” Hamas without harming civilians – or its reputation. This framework is cemented because evidence to the contrary is erased.’

Moreover, BBC management have made:

‘little meaningful effort to examine our coverage with urgency and transparency in pursuit of evidence-based conclusions.’

Ruhayem’s second paper sent to senior BBC News staff on 25 February 2024 examined BBC content relating to the events of 7 October. Considerable BBC coverage was devoted to claims of alleged horrific acts carried out by Hamas attackers. These claims included the alleged beheading of babies and the blood-curdling story of a pregnant woman who had her belly cut open, the baby removed from her stomach and beheaded in front of her before she herself was beheaded.

Ruhayem noted that:

‘Claims and testimony that encourage the most extreme portrayals of Israel’s enemies are allowed to be repeated without challenge – regardless of whether or not they’re backed by evidence. Claims and testimony that raise the possibility of Israeli disinformation around the events of October 7 are ignored – despite the evidence.’

The purpose of Israeli’s repetition of horrific stories, platformed by the BBC and other news media, was clear: to drill into the public ‘the idea that any action Israel sees fit to take is justified’.

Ruhayem continued:

‘By seeking to place Hamas on the most extreme end of the spectrum of evil, propagandists for Israel seemed to believe they’d be able to defend whatever Israel chose to do – and set the stage for more. The seeming suspension of basic standards of scrutiny on the BBC most likely encouraged that strategy.’

He added:

‘Such coverage is likely to have aided Israel’s efforts to ensure political support in the West for its actions, and to intimidate those opposed to them and portray them as supporters of the most hideous atrocities.’

In summary, the evidence in both papers presented to senior BBC managers and editors by Ruhayem:

‘indicates a collapse in editorial standards and values […] which complements, reinforces, and otherwise serves Israel’s messaging. BBC output appears to have aided two pillars of Israeli propaganda: the obliteration of vital context, and incitement against Palestinians.’

It has, of course, been clear to careful observers since 7 October that BBC News has been, and remains, complicit in Israel’s attempted genocide of the Palestinian people. The particularly noteworthy aspects of the BBC correspondent’s leaked emails is that there is likely significant concern, even dissent, among BBC News staff, and that BBC management refuses to engage in any meaningful way with staff expressing such views.

Since the full publication of the leaked emails last week by the Jadaliyya website (Part 1 and Part 2), there has been zero coverage in the UK national press, according to our media database searches. The silence sums up the insidious censorship by omission that characterises ‘mainstream’ media when it comes to uncomfortable truths.

As a closing example of the BBC’s ‘impartiality’, consider the headline of a BBC News online story last week:

‘The lonely death of Gaza man with Down’s syndrome’

The article, by BBC journalist Fergal Keane, only revealed in the 16th paragraph that Israeli soldiers had set a combat dog on 24-year-old Muhammad Bhar, leaving him to bleed to death. His decomposed body was found a week later by his family who had been ordered to leave their home while Muhammad was locked in a room inside with Israeli soldiers. Muhammad’s brother Jibril said the soldiers likely tried to stop the bleeding, but then left him ‘without stitches or care’.

After a tsunami of online outrage, the BBC updated its headline to:

‘Gaza man with Down’s syndrome attacked by IDF dog and left to die, mother tells BBC’

Even this headline blunted the horrible truth. Historian and author Assal Rad, who regularly provides more accurate headlines to ‘mainstream’ news stories on Gaza, observed of the updated headline:

‘This was one of the worst stories I’ve heard, and this is how the BBC covers it’

She suggested a more accurate version:

‘Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian man with Down’s syndrome after setting a dog on him and leaving him to die’

This is yet another example of how the BBC routinely sanitises Israeli crimes and helps to ‘normalise the unthinkable’, to use the phrase deployed by the late Edward Herman.

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Media Lens is a UK-based media watchdog group headed by David Edwards and David Cromwell. The most recent Media Lens book, Propaganda Blitz by David Edwards and David Cromwell, was published in 2018 by Pluto Press. Read other articles by Media Lens, or visit Media Lens's website.

 

The Liberation of the Jews

by Dan Lieberman / July 24th, 2024

A revelation — in order to liberate Palestinians from a century of oppression and prevent their genocide, Jews must liberate themselves from centuries of conditioning that trained them to pose as perpetual victims while victimizing others. This is happening and too slowly; progressive Jews are wrestling with reacting to Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people without crippling the Jewish community. Almost entirely anti-Zionist in the 19th century, Zionist advances have enticed the Jewish community to split between Zionists and anti-Zionists. The former have gained control of a community that never had a higher hierarchy. Jew is preceded by an adjective ─ Zionist or non-Zionist. Those with the former adjective have witnessed pockets of hatred against their deliberate deceptions and corrosive actions. Concurrent with Jewish genocide of the Palestinians, hatred of Jews has swelled universally, appearing in Africa and Asia, where relatively few Jewish communities now exist.

The Jews during Zionism’s formation did not believe in or trust Zionism.
Reform Judaism’s Declaration of Principles: 1885 Pittsburgh Conference stated,

We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.

Between 1881 and 1914, 2.5 million Jews migrated from Russia ─ 1.7 million to America, 500,000 to Western Europe, almost 300,000 to other nations, and only 30,000 – 50,000 to Palestine. Of the latter, 15,000 returned to Russia. Jews rejected Zionism from its outset.

Despite rejection, Zionist supporters managed to skew Western governments’ policies to favor their mission. A worldwide propaganda machine obscures Identification of Israel as a criminal state that willfully murders Palestinians, steals their lands, has ethnically cleansed them, buried their villages under rubble, and destroyed their history and heritage. Quick to use the expression ‘Holocaust denial” on anyone who questions aspects of the Holocaust, the Zionists impressed upon the Jews the use of “denial” for anything that smacks of Jewish malfeasance, and includes the greatest malfeasance, the act of genocide. Charges of malfeasance by Jews are converted into anti-Semitism, truth becomes denied, anger of Jews against a manufactured hostile world is internalized, and bitterness against hostile Jews is intensified. The Zionists have used debts as collateral, turning valid charges against them into sympathy for their cause.

Start with the beginning of Zionism.
Although antipathy toward Jews and Judaism remained strong in Christian Europe, physical attacks on western European Jews, after a brief episode of the 1819-1826 Hep-Hep riots in Germany, were relatively few.

Often mentioned is the Dreyfus case, where a Jewish military officer in the 1896 French army was twice sentenced and later pardoned for giving military secrets to the Germans. Highlighted as an example of anti-Semitism in a French military, “rife with anti-Semitism,” and psychologically extended to the French populace, the Dreyfus case circulated for a century in American media, whose audience had no relation to the French incident (why?), giving the Dreyfus case a life of its own, and making it seem that there was not one Dreyfus but thousands. The Zionists needed a Dreyfus to substantiate their mission for all time, refusing to recognize that the Dreyfus case contradicted the Zionist mission; being an isolated case, it proved Jews could integrate into European institutions and receive equal justice.

Was the French military rife with anti-Semitism? According to Piers Paul, The Dreyfus Affair. p. 83, “The French army of the period was relatively open to entry and advancement by talent, with an estimated 300 Jewish officers, of whom ten were generals.” Only five African-American officers in the much larger US army in WWII. Why not emphasize the opposite of what the Zionists proffered; French Jews received equal and eventual justice. After the French Revolution, physical attacks on Jews rarely occurred in France.

Imperial Russia was another European community that the Zionists accused of serious anti-Semitism, exaggerating the damage done to Jewish communities in a multi-ethnic nation ravaged with ethnic disturbances. They used a special term, “pogroms,” to characterize attacks on Jews. Note that prejudice to other ethnicities does not qualify for a special term, such as “anti-Semitism,” nor does violence against any of them.

A lack of communications in Russia during the 19th century, a tendency to create sensational news, and a willingness to accept rumors make it difficult to ascertain the extent of attacks on Russia’s Jewish community. The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, a reference work on the history and culture of Eastern Europe Jewry, prepared by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and published by Yale University Press in 2008, is a more objective and authoritative source. Excerpts from their work can be found here.

Anti-Jewish violence in the Russian Empire before 1881 was a rare event, confined largely to the rapidly expanding Black Sea entrepot of Odessa. In Odessa, Greeks and Jews, two rival ethnic and economic communities, lived side by side. The first Odessa pogrom, in 1821, was linked to the outbreak of the Greek War for Independence, during which the Jews were accused of sympathizing with the Ottoman authorities. Although the pogrom of 1871 was occasioned in part by a rumor that Jews had vandalized the Greek community’s church, many non-Greeks participated, as they had done during earlier disorders in 1859.

After Alexander II became Tsar in 1855, he lessened anti-Jewish edicts, rescinded forced conscription, allowed Jews to attend universities, and permitted Jewish emigration from the Pale. His assassination in 1881 prompted Tsar Alexander III to reverse his father’s actions. Because some Jews were involved in Russia’s revolutionary party, Narodnaya Volya (“People’s Will”), which organized the assassination, the assassination acted as a catalyst for a wave of attacks on Jews during 1881-83.

Typically, the pogroms of this period originated in large cities, and then spread to surrounding villages, traveling along means of communication such as rivers and railroads. Violence was largely directed against the property of Jews rather than their persons. In the course of more than 250 individual events, millions of rubles worth of Jewish property was destroyed. The total number of fatalities is disputed but may have been as few as 50, half of them pogromshchiki who were killed when troops opened fire on rioting mobs.

Note that this was one large “pogrom,” which emanated from one incident that touched the Russian nerve, was directed mainly against Jewish property, did not have government support, and faded out. “Michael Aronson has sought to refute the long-standing belief that the regime of Alexander III actively conspired to lead the Russian masses into savage riots against the Jews. In Aronson’s view the pogroms were spontaneous, by which he means not that they happened without cause, but that they happened largely without prior planning or organization.”

Missing from references to the attacks on the Jewish population is that the Tsars inherited Jewish and other populations after the 1791-1795 partitions of Poland and sought means to integrate the new ethnicities into a Russian way of life. Nevertheless, in Tsarist Russia, the principal population to which Zionism should have had appeal, there is no evidence that a massive number of Jews accepted Zionism.

Unwaveringly secularist in its beliefs, the Russian Bund discarded the idea of a Holy Land and a sacred tongue. Its language was Yiddish, spoken by millions of Jews throughout the Pale. This was also the source of the organization’s four principles: socialism, secularism, Yiddish, and doyikayt or localness. The latter concept was encapsulated in the Bund slogan: “There, where we live, that is our country.” The Bund disapproved greatly of Zionism and considered the idea of emigrating to Palestine to be political escapism.

Imperial Russia contained several minorities that economically contested and attacked one another. Economic rivalry was the leading cause of attacks on Jews. From Middleman Minorities and Ethnic Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms in the Russian Empire, The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 87, Issue 1, January 2020.

Using detailed panel data from the Pale of Settlement area between 1800 and 1927, we document that anti-Jewish pogroms—mob violence against the Jewish minority—broke out when economic shocks coincided with political turmoil. When this happened, pogroms primarily occurred in places where Jews dominated middleman occupations, i.e., moneylending and grain trading. This evidence is inconsistent with the scapegoating hypothesis, according to which Jews were blamed for all misfortunes of the majority. Instead, the evidence is consistent with the politico-economic mechanism, in which Jewish middlemen served as providers of insurance against economic shocks to peasants and urban grain buyers in a relationship based on repeated interactions.

Violation of any human life can not be underestimated or ignored; Jews suffered in the 19th century Russian Empire, and so did almost everyone else, including native Russians. Placed in context — location, time, comparison of the fate and life of Jews to other minorities, and internal and external factors that favored the Jews — the reasons for Zionists to behave as the rescuer of their co-religionists is dubious.

For others, also not of the Russian Orthodox faith, persecution was magnitudes worse. From Balfour Project:

The Moscow Patriarchate presided over the state religion and other believers were generally disadvantaged, often persecuted, or sometimes driven from Russian lands. The non-Orthodox were despised as unbelievers and thousands of Catholics were deported to Siberia in the mid-19th century. At the same time, around half a million Muslims were driven from the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire, Iran or further afield. At the south-eastern border of the Pale of Settlement began the lands of the Circassians, a mostly Muslim group who had lived since the 14th century along the northern Black Sea coast from Sochi and eastwards into the Caucasus mountains. A long war of attrition ended in the genocide of 1865. According to official Russian statistics, the population was reduced by 97 per cent. At least 200,000, and possibly several hundred thousand people died through ethnic cleansing, hunger, epidemics and bitterly cold weather.

Compared to other ethnicities ─ Native American, slaved Africans, Chinese, Irish, and Catholic in the U.S., and Chinese, Indian, and African during the age of Imperialism, the persecution and distress of European Jews was insignificant. Yet, the Zionists made it appear that Jews were the most suffering people in the world and the world believed it.

Despite the overwhelming verbal and physical rejection of Zionism by worldwide Jewry, a small group of conspirators managed to convince the British government to issue the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which is not an official or legal instrument. It is not even a Declaration. It is a letter from Lord Balfour to Lord Rothschild, which has a phrase, “declaration of sympathy,” from which it was given the more lofty description of declaration. Who are these two guys?

Arthur James Balfour, known as Lord Balfour, served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905 and as foreign secretary from 1916 to 1919,

Lionel Walter Rothschild was a British zoologist from the wealthy Rothschild banking family, who served as a Conservative member of Parliament from 1899 to 1910. He was sympathetic to the Zionist cause and had an eminent position in the Anglo-Jewish community.

The letter:

Why was the letter issued, what did it exactly mean, and why did it have impact? Acceptable answers have not been supplied. One clue is from Minutes of British War Cabinet Meetings

Meeting No. 245, Minute No. 18, 4 October 1917: 4 October 1917: “… [Balfour] stated that the German Government were making great efforts to capture the sympathy of the Zionist Movement.”

Meeting No. 261, Minute No. 12, 31 October 1917
With reference to War Cabinet 245, Minute 18, the War Cabinet had before them a note by the Secretary, and also a memorandum by Lord Curzon on the subject of the Zionist movement. The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs stated that he gathered that everyone was now agreed that, from a purely diplomatic and political point of view, it was desirable that some declaration favourable to the aspirations of the Jewish nationalists should now be made.

World leaders failed to recognize the ominous outcomes of their San Remo Peace Conference and the newly formed League of Nations, which created a new international order that sliced the Middle East for the major European powers. Both approved establishment of a Jewish presence in the British Mandate in accord with the Balfour Letter. Despite these achievements, progress for obtaining a central headquarters for Zionism went slowly until US immigration laws and persecution of German Jews renewed Zionist life.

The year 1924 was fortuitous for the Zionists. The US Immigration Act closed the doors to mass Jewish immigration from East European nations and the Act steered Jews to migrate to Palestine. By 1931, Palestine housed 175,000 Jews. The economic depression slowed the migration. The rise of Nazi Germany reinvigorated it.

After the Nazis began their rule, they slowly froze Jewish assets. Although not proven, a principal reason for Germany slowly freezing Jewish assets and engaging in its own boycott of Jewish enterprises was the boycott of German goods, which was organized by Jewish groups in the United States as a response to the confined and sporadic violence and harassment by Nazi Party members against Jews in early 1933. Zionists saw the frozen assets as a means to bring Jews to the British Mandate.

By the Ha’avara Transfer Agreement with Nazi Germany, the Zionists used German Jewish assets, including bank deposits to purchase German products that were exported to the Jewish-owned Ha’avara Company in Tel-Aviv. A portion of the money from the sales of the goods went to the emigrants, who could leave Germany and regain assets after arrival in Palestine and in an amount corresponding to their deposits in German banks. The Zionists enabled the Nazi regime to circumvent the international boycott campaign that its policies had provoked. The Zionist movement, which had become the only authorized Jewish organization in Nazi Germany, was able to transfer about 53,000 Jews to Palestine. Again, the Zionists turned catastrophe to the Jews into an opportunity for themselves.

Zionist luck, if that is the proper word for gaining from calamities to others, continued. Revelations of the Holocaust and the plight of Jewish refugees after World War II gained worldwide sympathy for the Zionist cause. About 136,000 displaced Jews came to Palestine, mostly out of desperation and without intention to remain. The Cold War provided the most decisive benefit for Zionism ─ Soviet Union support for an Israeli state drove the United States to compete for Zionist attention. Votes from both nations, bribes, and arm twisting provided a narrow victory for United Nations Declaration 181 and the Zionists established their state.

Because neither state had official names at that time, designations as Arab and Jewish states were used to map out contours of land where the major portions of the ethnicities would live. President Truman recognized the Jewish state, which became Israel just before he approved recognition. The U.S. president failed to observe that, although the state was bi-national, a small Zionist group took control of all apparatus of the new state and did that without consulting Palestinian leadership.

The UN did not create two states; it divided one Palestinian state into two states ─ a Palestinian state composed of almost 100 percent Palestinians, and another mostly Palestinian state composed of about 70 percent who were native to the area (400,000 Palestinians), a small contingent of foreign Jews that had come as Zionists to live permanently in Palestine (200,000), and another larger contingent of foreign Jews (300,000) that arrived for expediency and not with original intentions of remaining in the British Mandate.  The Mandate was only a way station for Jews caught in the tragedies during the 1930s and World War II. If neither cataclysm occurred, would these Jews have gone to the Mandate? Without them, how many Jews would have been there in 1947?

David Ben-Gurion and a small clique of opportunists took advantage of an ill-advised UN, an ill-led and ill- equipped Palestinian community, and a confused world to declare their state, and, with seasoned militia forces — Haganah, Irgun, Lehi, and Palmach — cleansed the area of Palestinians and established Israel.

The Zionists turned lying, cheating, and deceiving into an accepted ethnic cleansing. During the next years, they continued the lies, cheats, and deceptions to steal more land and oppress Palestinians. Taking advantage of the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, the Zionist Jews have embarked on a genocide of the Palestinian people, masking it as a defense of their land against a force that has no offensive power to conquer anything.

The Zionists made the struggle (which they engineered) a zero-sum game of “us” or “them.” The “us” is those who steal the land and the patrimony and the lives of “them.” They forced the Jews into a choice, reasoning that the powers in control will favor “us.” This poses a difficulty for Jews who will not support genocide and, therefore, cannot support “us,” and fear that for the Palestinians to survive the Jews in Israel will not survive. A different look — if the Jews liberate themselves from the conditioned grip that Zionism has on them and differentiate between a liberated Jew and a Zionist Jew, the liberated Jews will lose their paranoid fear and the Zionist Jews will lose their power, which is based upon creating paranoia and fear in fellow Jews.

Unfortunately, the liberation of the Jews is not foreseen and the decimation of innocents will occur — a replay of the story of Purim, “when having obtained royal permission to strike their enemies, including women and children, the Jews kill over seventy-five thousand people! Esther then further seeks permission for another day of massacre.”

Unleashed from subjugation and drowned with power, they seek another day of massacre. Is Joshua, who slew the inhabitants of Jericho, eradicated the Canaanites, and is a hero in Jewish mythology, a clue to the mentality of leaders of the Jewish people? Do the horrors visited upon the Gazans, purposeful and wanton killings and massacres beyond credulity, carry Joshua to modern times and tell a cautious story of the Zionist Jews?Facebook

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Dan Lieberman publishes commentaries on foreign policy, economics, and politics at substack.com.  He is author of the non-fiction books A Third Party Can Succeed in America, Not until They Were Gone, Think Tanks of DC, The Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name, David L. McWellan). Read other articles by Dan.

 

How the Palestinian Authority abets Israel’s colonial project

by Tamara Nassar / July 24th, 2024

Palestinians inspect the damage following a raid by Israeli forces in the Tulkarm refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank on 23 July ( Mohammed Nasser APA images)

The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority held a secret meeting with American and Israeli officials in Tel Aviv earlier this month to conspire on “day after” plans in Gaza that would involve the collaborative body in reopening the Rafah crossing with Egypt.

“Egypt wants personnel from the Palestinian Authority to operate the crossing,” Axios reported. The crossing, when open, is typically operated by Hamas personnel from Gaza’s side, as the political and armed organization governs the interior of the Strip.

“Israel wants people who aren’t affiliated with Hamas to do it, but objects to any official involvement of the Palestinian Authority – mostly for domestic political reasons,” Axios added.

The Palestinian Authority rejected a proposal that would involve it in reopening the crossing in any unofficial capacity, the publication said.

The meeting reportedly included White House official Brett McGurk, the head of Israel’s domestic spying agency Ronen Bar, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee Hussein al-Sheikh and head of the PA’s military intelligence Majed Faraj.

This was the first time that Palestinian officials have met with US and Israeli counterparts “to discuss the day after the war ends in Gaza,” reported Barak Ravid, the Axios writer who is frequently fed information by Israel’s military and intelligence apparatus.

The United Arab Emirates also appears eager to conspire for a day-after plan in Gaza.

The Gulf state, which formalized relations with Israel in 2020, is looking “to deploy a temporary international mission” in Gaza that would establish “law and order,” the UAE ambassador at the United Nations, Lana Zaki Nusseibeh, wrote in the Financial Times last week.

“A temporary international presence in Gaza can only result from a formal invitation from the Palestinian Authority,” the ambassador wrote.

The Palestinian Authority was created in the early 1990s following the Oslo accords to act as native auxiliary on behalf of the Israeli occupation. It has performed that role – one that PA leader Mahmoud Abbas calls “sacred” – without interruption since day one.

It wouldn’t be surpring if Israel and its Arab allies sought to copy this model in a post-genocide Gaza Strip.

But in order for Israel to execute its vision in the wrecked coastal enclave, the Israeli military would have to achieve its stated goal of eliminating Hamas as a governing and military presence in Gaza.

This doesn’t appear close to happening.

Meanwhile, Fatah and Hamas agreed to “end the Palestinian national division” after the rival factions held negotiations in China this month alongside other Palestinian political parties.

Notably, the factions “underlined the Palestinian people’s right to resist occupation and to end it in accordance with international law,” according to Lebanese broadcaster Al Mayadeen, which obtained a copy of the declaration.

This is not the first time that the parties have made these declarations, and there is no indication that this one will be different.

A Palestinian Authority official said over the weekend that the Palestine Liberation Organization is the sole legitimate representative of Palestinians.

“Leaked news indicating that Washington is discussing plans on the future of the Gaza Strip with some parties will not have any legitimacy and will not be accepted by the Palestinian people,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh is paraphrased to have said, according to Wafa News Agency.

Echoing Israeli propaganda

Following an Israeli massacre in al-Mawasi earlier this month that killed at least 90 Palestinians and injured hundreds of others, the Palestinian Authority issued a statement effectively blaming Hamas for Israel’s slaughter.

“The presidency sees that by escaping national unity, and providing free pretexts to the occupation state, the Hamas movement is a partner in bearing legal, moral and political responsibility for the continuation of the Israeli war of genocide,” PA leader Mahmoud Abbas wrote in a statement.

Another PA official actually used an Israeli propaganda talking point against Hamas.

“Hamas is actually hiding between the residents to protect and save itself,” PA official Munir al-Jaghoub reportedly said.

“If Hamas wanted to fight face-to-face with Israel, it would’ve done so in areas where the army is located, and not in places where there are people.”

We were joined by writer and Birzeit University lecturer Abdaljawad Omar on 17 July on The Electronic Intifada livestream to talk about the situation in the West Bank.

Omar said that the Palestinian Authority “is trying to echo Israeli psychological warfare.”

It is doing so “by attempting to kind of de-link the Palestinian society overall from its resistance, and serving through this severance, serving Israeli war aims, which is to defeat the resistance and render Gaza unlivable.”

“We have this model in the West Bank: that’s what is in the fantasy of every military and political leader in Israel, to replicate some sort of system, a political system, a native authority that serves it, that cooperates with it and collaborates with it and makes the occupation inexpensive,” Omar said.“Not an authority or a governance structure like the one that Gaza had at least before 7 October,” Omar added, which binded armed resistance with the party governing the interior affairs of the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Authority is “most responsible for the continuation of war, for empowering Israel to think that it can defeat the Palestinian people,” Omar added, by producing “this docile, ineffective, corrupt leadership that is running now the West Bank.”

The successes of multiple factions of Palestinian resistance forces on the ground in Gaza are agitating the collaborationist body in Ramallah, Omar suggested, pointing to how the Palestinian Authority did not rise to the occasion following the Hamas operation of 7 October.

“The national challenge that has been opened on 7 October,” is for the Palestinian Authority “to actually participate and attempt, at least, to the best of its capacity to not allow Gaza to go through this war alone,” Omar said.

Not only did the Palestinian Authority abandon Gaza, he added, but it must be blamed “for even the continuation of the war.”

The elite of the collaborationist PA and the comprador class in Ramallah “is betraying the nation in the name of the nation,” Omar said.

“This elite has extreme anxiety over Hamas and Islamic Jihad and all the recent resistance groups in Gaza, coming out with significant strategic results from this war.”

Meanwhile, the resistance in the occupied West Bank has been developing and refining its tactics, but this uprising is not happening in all corners of the West Bank.Omar said he would confine the description of a “third intifada” to specific areas.

“I would confine it geographically to the north of the West Bank. So the areas that surround or go from the Jordan Valley upwards to Tubas, Tulkarem, Nablus, Jenin,” Omar said.

“These are the areas that have active militant formations that are engaging in the buildup of [improvised explosive devices], the capacity to resist, and refining tactics,” Omar said, making “it hard for the Israelis to enter freely into these areas.”

Israel responded with devastating revenge on entire communities where resistance emerges from, wreaking widespread devastation, severely damaging electricity networks, water and sewage infrastructure, uprooting roads and destroying homes.

More than 550 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since 7 October, including at least 539 by Israeli forces, according to UN monitoring group OCHA.

Israeli settlers have killed at least 10 Palestinians, and another seven were killed by either Israeli army or settler fire.

Of those killed in the occupied West Bank since 7 October, 138 were children.

But the “Israelis have not been able to really shock that resistance into a place where it’s defeated or raises the white flag,” Omar said.

On the contrary, “the resistance has been able to actually develop, evolve and and ensure that its defensive posture, or offensive posture has become more deadly for the Israeli forces entering the area.”

Watch the full interview with Abdaljawad Omar on The Electronic Intifada’s YouTube channel, or by clicking on the videos above.

• First published in The Electronic Intifada

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Tamara Nassar is an assistant editor at The Electronic Intifada. Read other articles by Tamara, or visit Tamara's website.

 

Today’s Musical Rebels Uphold the Moral Responsibility of the Artist

by David Penner / July 24th, 2024

In my youth I studied for many years as a classically trained oboist, and one day during the Yeltsin years whilst watching the squirrels in Washington Square Park it suddenly dawned on me that the stereotype of the classical musician being an elitist snob had an element of truth to it, and that there was something fundamentally wrong about the fact that most of us lived in a bubble utterly indifferent to catastrophic political and socio-economic problems. This revelation inculcated me with an understanding that the artist has a moral obligation to not turn away in the face of injustice, and to protect the memory and struggle of the weak in their attempts to defend themselves from being brutalized by the powerful. From Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie (“I ain’t got no Home in this World Anymore” and “The Jolly Banker” could have been written ten minutes ago) to Shelley and Blake, a small group of poets and singer-songwriters have always taken this courageous stance. Indeed, their struggles live on despite an increasingly powerful and pernicious censorship apparatus.

Sage Francis, one of the most important literate hip-hop artists, has written a number of inimitable songs that decry the growing inequality and totalitarianization in America. In his “Slow Down Gandhi” he rails against unfettered privatization, the Cult of Psychiatry (a demon likewise engaged in “Grace”), and the illiteratization of the proletariat. “Slow Down Gandhi” also emphasizes the moral bankruptcy of the two-party system resulting in a pervasive lack of intellectual honesty and meaningful choices for voters:

One love, one life, one too many victims.
Republicrat, Democran, one party system.
Media goes in a frenzy,
They’re stripped of their credentials.
Presidential candidates can’t debate over this instrumental.

In “Makeshift Patriot” and “Blue” Sage Francis condemns the psychopathy of our foreign policies which are intertwined with a rotting domestic culture, the latter falling under his crosshairs in “Conspiracy to Riot:”

Peep the game, dummy
You can’t keep the reign from me
It’s us who put in the overtime, they who make the money
Snickering at trickle down economy
We got nickled and dimed It’s more like highway robbery
Drive in the fast lane, eyes on the gas gauge
Listen to neo cons cry about black rage
It doesn’t stop there
They’re the blowhards, they puff out their chest they’re full of hot air
Providing entertainment for the status quo
Then once every 4 years they pander to the black vote
Oh, religion ain’t a tool of control?
Why they pull the God card once they’re losing in the polls
Foolish, I know, we’re victims of circumstance
It ain’t coincidence we’re children of the worker ants
And those in power ain’t never owned a pair of dirty pants
But they’re quick to kill your health insurance plans

Green Day, one of the most consistently radical contemporary American bands, and an ensemble with a political philosophy similar to that of Bob Dylan, executed one of the great anti-war songs in “21 Guns” which warns America’s youth of the devastating and often irreversible consequences of participating in illegal wars of aggression:

Do you know what’s worth fightin’ for
When it’s not worth dyin’ for?
Does it take your breath away
And you feel yourself suffocatin’?
Does the pain weigh out the pride
And you look for a place to hide?
Did someone break your heart inside?
You’re in ruins
One, twenty-one guns
Lay down your arms
Give up the fight
One, twenty-one guns
Throw up your arms
into the sky
You and I
When you’re at the end of the road
And you lost all sense of control
And your thoughts have taken their toll
When your mind breaks the spirit of your soul

If even one American teenager decides not to enlist after listening to this song, this is one life saved, one soul salvaged, one dream “wrapped in a blue cloud-cloth” to paraphrase Langston Hughes.

Green Day’s wistful “Macy’s Day Parade,” whose music video was fittingly shot amidst the ruins of an abandoned factory, bemoans the demise of the New Deal, deindustrialization, and the terrible suffering and despair that have ensued. Can a society survive once in thrall to the cannibalistic brutalities of unbridled capitalism and hypermaterialism?

Today’s the Macy’s Day parade
The night of the living dead is on its way
With a credit report for duty call
It’s a lifetime guarantee
Stuffed in a coffin, ten percent more free
Red-light special at the mausoleum
Give me something that I need
Satisfaction guaranteed to you
What’s the consolation prize?
Economy sized dreams of hope
When I was a kid I thought
I wanted all the things that I haven’t got
Oh, but I learned the hardest way
Then I realized what it took
To tell the difference between thieves and crooks
Lesson learned to me and you

Green Day’s “American Idiot,” “Still Breathing,” “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Wake me up when September ends” also fulminate against the militarism, immiseration, dissolution, and relentless brainwashing that have eviscerated American society.

Undoubtedly under pressure to avoid controversial subjects once they started making millions, Linkin Park still managed to come up with a number of insightful songs calling into question the American dream such as “Numb,” which struck a poignant chord with embittered American youth resentful towards callous parents who were fortunate to have graduated college during the heyday of the New Deal; “What I’ve Done,” which bemoans the barbarities humans inflict on one another and their environment; the post-apocalyptic “Shadow of the Day,” which portends the unraveling of society and its descent into chaos and authoritarianism; and “In The End,” which acknowledges the struggle of atomized individuals in an often futile attempt to disenthrall themselves from ruthless and seemingly intractable socio-economic forces, a song which is anchored in a deep-seated sense of alienation and despair not unlike the aforementioned “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and Black Sabbath’s haunting “God is Dead?” Particularly pertinent is Linkin Park’s “The Catalyst,” which opens with a series of strikingly heretical lines:

God bless us, everyone
We’re a broken people living under loaded gun
And it can’t be outfought, it can’t be outdone
It can’t be outmatched, it can’t be outrun, no!
God bless us, everyone
We’re a broken people living under loaded gun
And it can’t be outfought, it can’t be outdone
It can’t be outmatched, it can’t be outrun, no

Coupled with the song’s dark sense of resignation that the end of democracy is nigh, “The Catalyst” suggests that, as transpired in ancient Rome, this growing authoritarianism is inevitable due to the barbarities Americans have long inflicted on others:

God save us, everyone
Will we burn inside the fires of a thousand suns
For the sins of our hand, the sins of our tongue
The sins of our father, the sins of our young? No!
God save us, everyone
Will we burn inside the fires of a thousand suns
For the sins of our hand, the sins of our tongue
The sins of our father, the sins of our young? No

Another noteworthy anti-imperialist song is Christopher Todd Nolan’s little known yet stirring “Adolescents in a War for a Third Time” which condemns the genocidal violence being perpetrated against the people of Gaza:

Heard the news about a whole lotta people dying
Watch the TV for the truth, but they sell the crime
Adolescents in a war for a third time
See lifetimes of death by 29
If you’re lucky
All the industry
All politicking
All the demons making bank on the misery
They try to justify
But don’t believe the lies
They want you to support a whole lotta people dying
So even though I know
This question’s kinda loaded
I just wanna know
How it all corroded
Who runs the world?
Who runs the world?

Intimated by Nolan is the sense that the Zionist entity’s attempts at exterminating the Palestinian people are emblematic of the West’s moral and intellectual bankruptcy, and that our elected representatives are sock puppets of a lawless shadow government.

One of the most remarkable recordings of a radical song released in the post-Soviet era is Patty Loveless’ rendition of “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive.” While the lyrics are Darrell Scott’s, Loveless’ version is breathtaking and pays glorious homage to America’s suffering coal miners and unionizers of old – a class-conscious mentality which is in danger of being lost due to the sectarianism and tribalism relentlessly fomented by multiculturalism and identity politics. The song astutely points out that even the owners of the coal mines were sometimes buried under their own onslaught of brutality and avarice:

No one ever knew there was coal in them mountains
Till a man from the northeast arrived
Wavin’ hundred dollar bills, said, ‘I’ll pay you for your minerals’
But he never left Harlan alive

Mike Shinoda’s “Kenji” recounts the story of how members of his family were incarcerated in internment camps set up for Japanese and Japanese Americans by the Roosevelt administration after the start of the Second World War. Both “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive” and “Kenji” seek to remind the older generation as well as educate the younger ones about critically important episodes of American history which have long been expunged from the history books. Can democracy survive within a vortex of mass historical amnesia?

The Branch Covidian coup d’état inspired a number of fine anti-biofascism songs such as Julie Elizabeth’s heartbreaking “Silence,” Lukas Lion’s brilliant “1984,” RC’s “Just Say No,” along with Hi-Rez & Jimmy Levy’s magnificent “Welcome to the Revolution” and “This is a War.”

Lukas Lion’s “1984,” which had over a hundred thousand views on YouTube before it was removed by the Ministry of Truth, masterfully encapsulates the devastating psychological warfare techniques of the Branch Covidian putschists:

They say it’s 2021 but I ain’t too sure,
it feels like 1984.
They’ve been mentally and spiritually waging war, can’t you see what they’re aiming for?
Orwell underestimated the capability of villainy and tyranny,
These sick elites are masters of trickery.
They’re moving wickedly, watching the world bleed as they feed off our misery.
The world’s gone quite mad.
Yeah, the human psyche has been hijacked.
Propaganda bombardments, your mind is the target,
They wanna deceive and lead us into darkness.
Fear is their greatest tool.
Fear can turn the brightest minds to fools.
Televise endless lies, keep people terrified. That’s the way they maintain their rule.

Like Sage Francis, Lukas Lion brings a much needed element of political literacy to the rap genre. His poetic gifts are undeniable:

The only infection here is deception.
They fooled the whole world with PCR testing.
Look at all the facts they’re neglecting to mention.
Ask too many questions and you can get censored.
The thought police are patrolling,
they don’t want information if they can’t control it.

In contrast to the diabolical ravings of the legacy media and the education system (in actuality, a blind obedience system) “Welcome to the Revolution” calls on American youth to not blindly follow orders and to always place one’s soul before one’s career:

Keep the money
I would rather have my soul
They want power and control
That’s their number one goal
All my friends turn to foes
Look how easily they fold
Even Nazis say they were doing what they’re told
Walking down this road all alone in the cold
But my soul never sold
I’m exposing the clones
God has chosen this role
Although those who oppose
Want me hopeless and broke
Like I’m Noah on boats
I’m just tryin’ to tell ’em all ’bout the flood
I can feel it in my bones
I can feel it in my blood

These brave singers all hail from different backgrounds and have adopted very different styles, yet each shares an uncompromising devotion to liberty and is willing to take risks to expose the lies of the rich and powerful.

In a West drowning in depravity and being torn apart by neocons who have nothing to offer except war and privatization, and neoliberal cultists who stopped thinking following the end of the Vietnam War and can no more have a rational fact-based discussion about serious political problems than a clan of diseased Neanderthals, these musicians stand as empyreal lights proudly flickering from the sacrosanct torches of compassion, reason, and truth.

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David Penner’s articles on politics and health care have appeared in Dissident Voice, CounterPunch, Global Research, The Saker blog, OffGuardian and KevinMD; while his poetry can be found at Dissident Voice, Mad in America, and redtailedhawk.substack.com. Also a photographer, he is the author of three books of portraiture: Faces of The New Economy, Faces of Manhattan Island, and Manhattan Pairs. He can be reached at 321davidadam@gmail.com. Read other articles by David.