Western Media: Whitewashing Israeli Genocide and Manufacturing Consent
November 19, 2024
Image by Jakayla Toney.
A UN Special Committee has characterized Israel’s war in Gaza as genocide, while Western “free” media has abandoned its ethical responsibility to cover and or report objectively on the conduct of Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon. Western corporate media outlets, without exception, acquiesced to Israeli directives barring reporters from entering Gaza. Journalists embedded with the Israeli army report only what Israel permits them to observe, creating a one-sided, heavily filtered narrative.
The programmed absence has deprived Western public of critical information to show what UNICEF describes as the most dangerous place in the world for children. Disregarding these realities, corporate Western media outlets often dehumanize Palestinians, dismissing their grievance while overtly empathizing with the Israelis. Case in point, they extensively cover the relocation of hundreds of Israeli families, while offering little to no coverage on the Scholasticide of the 625,000 Palestinian children who are unable to attend school for a second year because Israel has damaged or destroyed 85% of Gaza’s schools. Similarly, they disregard U.N. documented Israel’s use of “starvation as a weapon of war . . . destroying vital water, sanitation and food systems,” and neglect the plight of 90% of Gaza’s internally displaced population, many of whom have been forced to relocate nine or ten times. In addition, the media’s intentional omission of the destruction of the entire higher education system, with 100% of Gaza’s 12 universities demolished, leaving 88,000 students unable to continue their studies.
Just as with the systematic destruction of Gaza’s educational system, the “free” media has failed to critically report on Israel’s deliberate strategy to dismantle Gaza’s healthcare system. According to former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, this strategy involved “relentless and intentional attacks on medical personnel and facilities,” including the killing, detention, and torture of medical staff as part of a “concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system.” By the end of July 2024, the World Health Organization reported that Israel had conducted 498 raids on healthcare facilities. Out of Gaza’s 36 hospitals, less than 16 are partially operational, leading to the near-total collapse of the healthcare system.
The managed “free” media deploys countless reporters in Tel Aviv to cover the effectiveness of Israel’s Iron Dome missile system, yet no one on the ground investigates the starvation in North Gaza or even show the face of one of the approximately 16,800 murdered children or the anguish of over 17,000 children who have lost one or both parents. At the same time, the programmed media floods screens with images of a broken glass window in a “Jewish only” colony, but no cameras are allowed to capture the devastated 163,778, plus residential units in Gaza.
The so-called “free” Western media does not question or fact-check Israeli disinformation, hasbara, when American made jets target schools or demolish residential towers under the pretext of “command centers” inside these facilities. Worse yet, the media propagates a false narrative, portraying Israel’s malevolent policies as acts of benevolence because they issue a warning ahead of bombing homes to smithereens, and then murder civilians as they evacuate under the same orders. Journalists ignore Palestinian voices pointing out that the wide scale destruction of homes, “safe shelters,” and critical infrastructure is part of a calculated Israeli strategy to render Gaza uninhabitable and forcibly displace its residents. Their reporting from afar, normalize Israeli violence and ethnic cleansing as they parrot Israeli Newspeak without scrutiny.
A glaring example of the media abdicating its objectivity is the case of Al-Shifa Hospital, where Israeli military officials showcased an elaborate 3D model purportedly depicting a command center beneath the hospital. The Israeli disinformation was echoed by U.S. President Joe Biden and the White House, further amplifying the false Israeli narratives to an unsuspected public.
In November 2023, Al-Shifa Hospital was occupied by the Israeli army. Doctors were arrested, several tortured to death in Israeli custody, and the hospital was forced out of service. Western journalists, embedded with the Israeli military, joined the Israeli army to show the world what was claimed to be a military command center beneath the hospital. However, to uncover that the only underground edifices in the hospital’s vast complex were originally designed by Israeli architects Gershon Zippor and Benjamin Idelson, and commissioned by the occupying Israeli Public Works Department in 1983.
The embedded Israeli propaganda tool, aka Western media, accompanied Israel’s chief disinformation officer on a tour of Al-Shifa Hospital but left empty-handed, unable to find the flaunted “command control center” or any military facilities under the hospital. Human Rights Watch later concluded that the military raid at the hospital constituted a war crime after failing to provide evidence “to justify revoking the hospital’s status as protected by the laws of war.”
Rather than holding Israel accountable for destroying a major health facility, the embedded media continued to market Israeli lies to excuse violations of international law. The lack of critical reporting and fact-checking is a betrayal of the journalistic responsibilities, effectively serving as implicit approval or, at the very least, normalization of the Israeli war crimes.
Another case on how the media facilitates violence and aggression is the adoption of Israeli-nuanced jargons that desensitizes readers, and redirects focus. For instance, by framing Israel’s wars against Palestinians in Gaza and the people of Lebanon as a war against “Hamas” or “Hezbollah,” the media employs euphemisms that deflect Israeli responsibility for the broader impact of the war on innocent civilians. This framing whitewashes Israeli culpability for the destruction of 80% of homes, 60% of the hospitals, 85% of the schools, 100% of the universities, the displacement of 90% of the population, the razing of villages, and the starvation of children, portraying these atrocities as mere “collateral damage,” or unintended victims in a crossfire.
Furthermore, Western media’s dereliction in contextualizing Israeli violations of the international humanitarian law, the findings of the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court, leaves readers unaware of the legal ramifications and obscures accountability. In doing so, Western media becomes, wittingly or unwittingly, a complicit platform in Israeli hasbara.
Western media has even abandoned fellow local journalists who remained in Gaza and were purposely targeted by the Israeli army. Israel’s assault on the truth, including attacks on journalists and their families, is unprecedented in war zones. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Israel has murdered 137 journalists and media workers, making it the deadliest since CPJ began collecting data in 1992.
Zionist hasbara, bolstered by a powerful media plutocracy and influential special interest groups in the West, has normalized Israeli lies and bias against Palestinians for over 76 years. This media-constructed narratives distorts public understanding, manipulates public discourse and shape policy debates. Inevitably, the systematic dissemination of misinformation shapes a one-dimensional view of the conflict, suppresses dissent, and position Western media as a key instrument in manufacturing consent for Israel’s wars of genocide.
Project Esther: A Trumpian Blueprint to
Crush Anticolonial Resistance
Image by Ian Hutchinson.
Donald Trump’s re-election as president of the United States marks a shift in US policy – from the Joe Biden administration’s hypocritical denial of American complicity in Zionist genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity to an unapologetic endorsement of all these actions.
Besides bringing Washington’s support for all of Israel’s excesses, crimes and violations out into the open, Trump’s return to the White House will also intensify and make even more overt the persecution of those who dare resist white supremacy and its Zionist incarnation.
Under Biden, those who opposed American-funded and -facilitated Zionist genocide, from university students and civil servants to racial justice activists and authors, already faced threats from politicians, police harassment, baseless accusations of anti-Semitism in the media and relentless intimidation from employers, university administrators and far-right-linked Zionist “self-defence” groups.
And yet, Trump says Biden has been “weak” in countering “Hamas radicals” and he would do even more to shut down anticolonial resistance as president. On the campaign trail, he called for the deportation of foreign nationals who support Palestinian resistance and, since being elected, has nominated pro-Israel hawks to key intelligence and security posts in his government, signalling he intends to keep his promises on cracking down on anti-Zionist activists. For example, Trump named Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor who once introduced a bill cracking down on criticism of Israel on the grounds of “ensuring the security of God’s chosen people”, as his secretary of homeland security.
Another indication that Trump’s second term will be marked by a new crackdown on anticolonial and antiracist resistance came in the form of a strategy to “combat anti-Semitism” titled “Project Esther”, drafted by the prominent Trump-aligned conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation.
The Heritage Foundation has been open about its intention to transform “Project Esther” into government policy under a second Trump administration. It states within the strategy document itself – which was published on October 7 to mark the first anniversary of the Hamas attacks on Israel – that it hopes “Project Esther” would present “an opportunity for public-private partnership when a willing administration occupies the White House”.
Created by the same minds that brought us the authoritarian, Christian nationalist “Project 2025”, “Project Esther” syncretises the story of Queen Esther, the Jewish heroine celebrated during Purim for saving Jews of ancient Persia from extermination at the hands of Vizier Haman, with modern day Zionist narratives of defence and victimhood to depict her as a defender of Jews against activists, academics and progressive members of Congress in the US who oppose racism, apartheid and genocide. The strategy paper, supposedly designed to be “a blueprint to counter anti-Semitism in the United States”, includes several fundamental aspects of fascistic thought and practice as outlined by Umberto Eco, such as syncretic culture, xenophobia, a cult of heroism and anti-intellectualism.
Targeted individuals – including numerous Black, Brown and Jewish elected representatives who voiced any criticism of Israel, including Senators Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer – are collectively mischaracterised as members of “Hamas Support Organisations (HSO)”, part of a “Hamas Support Network” and equated with Purim’s villain, Haman. Through this framing, the campaign targets prominent social justice advocates and progressive Democratic Party representatives as enemies of the Jewish people, using the mythology of Queen Esther to justify their persecution and repression.
“Project Esther” shamelessly states its aims to eliminate anticolonial perspectives from the US education system, limit the dissemination of related information and restrict advocates’ access to American society, the economy and Congress. It seeks to prosecute alleged legal and criminal violations by “HSO” members, disrupt their communications, restrict demonstrations and rally the Jewish community, allies and the American public against anticolonial resistance movements.
With fearmongering rhetoric draped in patriotism and “American values” and the latest Zionist spin on rebranding offensive aggression as “defence”, “Project Esther” institutionalises repression of dissent within a fallacious, fascistic theoretical framework, casting itself as the final bulwark against an imaginary threat of “foreign influence” and valiant protector of citizens from brown-skinned heathen hordes who have supposedly promised to infect white American open society with an anticapitalist agenda. Typically, “Project Esther” ideologues see themselves as heroes, courageously waging a holy war, much to the tune of the Ku Klux Klan’s infamous portrayal in Birth of a Nation.
Calling on “the silent majority” to “break its silence and speak” to “recover its voice and convert its words into actions to render impotent an illegitimate, hateful minority that threatens America’s soul” by, among other accusations, “corrupting our education system”, “Project Esther” weaponises xenophobic trends bolstered by the incoming Trump administration to threaten and fracture anticolonial movements that conscientiously oppose Zionism and white supremacy alike.
Under the guise of combating hate and appealing to a supposedly terrorised and humiliated underclass, “Project Esther” seeks to frame antiracist opposition to Zionist apartheid and genocide as inherently anti-Semitic. However, this exposes Zionism itself as white supremacy and a modern embodiment of anti-Semitic ideology, much like Haman in the myth of Queen Esther, actively targeting Jewish organisations such as Jewish Voice for Peace and the Reformed Jewish movement.
“Project Esther” criticises what it sees as “complacency” within the American Jewish community, invoking the Zionist-manufactured anti-Semitic ideal of a “new Jew” who rejects traditional beliefs that interpret oppression and hardship as divine punishment for sins. This vision disparages traditional reliance on defence as passive and weak, promoting instead an assertive, offensive approach to resistance. In line with this view, Zionists adopt the anti-Semitic notion that Jews have been responsible for their own suffering, advocating for segregation and land acquisition in a new homeland as the ultimate solution.
Notably, fearmongering has long been used by Zionists to encourage Jewish, preferably white, immigration to Israel as a means to restock the Israeli military and combat the Palestinian “demographic threat”. By amplifying the partnership between US white supremacy and Zionist expansionism, “Project Esther” presents a serious threat to anticolonial and justice-oriented intersectional movements across the country, on the one hand, and minorities, including Jews, on the other.
“Project Esther” promises to continue to speed up the mobilisation of Zionists and right-wing anti-Semites, now emboldened by Trump’s victory, to dismantle resistance to their racist policies through financial and academic audits, “name and shame” campaigns and “lawfare”. While shielding Zionist policies and aligning with US white supremacy, the document – riddled with misinformation about “anti-Israel and anti-Zionist Jew-haters attempting to lay siege to our education system, political processes, and government” – reinforces the incoming Trump administration as well as Zionist vigilante groups like the “Jewish Defence League” and their natural allies, American neo-Nazis, to stifle free speech and dissent.
Ultimately, campaigns like “Project Esther” manipulate Jewish historical trauma to promote white supremacy and suppress anticolonial, antiracist movements while gaslighting the public to accept Palestinian solidarity, even when expressed by Jews, as anti-Semitic. This alignment not only stifles dissent to right-wing agendas, it also perpetuates a fascist narrative that promotes violence against those who resist oppression, casting them as an existential threat. This Zionist-white supremacist partnership poses a direct challenge to justice movements, and humanity as a whole, using fear, propaganda and violence to undermine efforts for genuine solidarity and liberation.
This piece first appeared on AlJazeera.
No comments:
Post a Comment