It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
A review of sustained mammal-to-mammal bird flu transmission in diverse species, led by The Pirbright Institute, shows global control strategies are not working.
Writing in Nature, researchers analysed whether outbreaks in European fur farms, South American marine mammals and United States dairy cattle raise questions about whether humans are next. Led by zoonotic influenza specialist Dr Thomas Peacock, the scientists evaluated how recent changes in the ecology and molecular evolution of H5N1 in wild and domestic birds increase opportunities for spillover to mammals.
They also weighed various evolutionary pathways that could turn the global H5N1 influenza panzootic into a human pandemic virus.
“Influenza A viruses (IAV) have caused more documented global pandemics in human history than any other pathogen. Historically, swine are considered optimal intermediary hosts that help avian influenza viruses adapt to mammals before jumping to humans,” said Dr Peacock, who investigates the drivers of the current H5N1 avian influenza panzootic. “However, the altered ecology of H5N1 has opened the door to new evolutionary pathways.”
The review highlights potential gaps in control mechanisms, including a reluctance to engage with modern vaccine and surveillance technologies and a dearth of data collection around the transmission of H5N1 between cows and to humans on US dairy farms.
Whilst previous generations of US cattle producers had eradicated foot-and-mouth disease by rapidly sharing epidemiological data, the authors say months of missing data is leaving researchers, veterinarians, and policy makers in the dark.
“H5N1 is a reportable disease in poultry, but not mammals, in the US. The US Department of Agriculture requires H5N1 testing only in lactating cattle prior to interstate movement,” said Dr Peacock.
Current practices for H5N1 testing in wildlife focus on carcasses, not monitoring animals whilst alive, the paper notes, providing opportunities for variants of H5N1 to spread silently undetected.
“What keeps scientists up at night is the possibility of unseen chains of transmission silently spreading through farm worker barracks, swine barns, or developing countries, evolving under the radar because testing criteria are narrow, government authorities are feared, or resources are thin.”
An evolutionary process of “genomic reassortment” in viruses with segmented genomes is driving the global panzootic outbreak. When two or more viruses co-infect a single host, they can swap entire segments during genome replication to create novel hybrids.
The reassortment between H5N8 and low pathogenicity avian influenza (LPAI) viruses that generated the panzootic H5N1 virus in the Americas is believed to have occurred in Europe or central Asia around 2020, infecting South American marine mammals and US dairy cattle.
The writers say the prospect of H5N1 becoming continually present in Europe and the Americas is a turning point for High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (HPAI).
“New control strategies are needed, including vaccination. Influenza vaccines are licensed for poultry that reduce disease burden, but do not prevent infection and have varying degrees of success.”
Stocks of H5 vaccine that are antigenically related to circulating viruses are available and could be produced at scale using mRNA platforms if H5N1 begins spreading in humans, the authors note.
“The severity of a future H5N1 pandemic remains unclear. Recent human infections with H5N1 have a substantially lower case fatality rate compared to prior H5N1 outbreak in Asia, where half of people with reported infections died. The lack of severity in US cases may be due to infection through the eye, rather than through viral pneumonia in the lung.”
Older people appear to have partial immunity to H5N1 due to childhood exposure, whereas younger people born since the 1968 H3N2 pandemic may be more susceptible to severe disease in a H5N1 pandemic.
Premier Danielle Smith announces plan to change Alberta Bill of Rights
TRYING TO MAKE ANTI VAXXERS A PROTECTED CATAGORY LIKE LGBTQ+
Lisa Johnson Tue, September 24, 2024
EDMONTON — Premier Danielle Smith says she plans to reinforce the right to decide whether to receive a vaccination or other medical procedure in changes to the Alberta Bill of Rights.
In an online video posted Tuesday, Smith said her government aims to amend the document in a few weeks to ensure people have the right to make informed decisions without fear of undue pressure or interference by the government.
"It is my firm conviction that no Albertan should ever be subjected (to) or pressured into accepting a medical treatment without their full consent," she said.
The changes outlined by Smith would also ensure the province respects "the right of individuals to legally acquire, keep and safely use firearms."
Smith says she believes law-abiding gun owners have been targeted by the federal government, and she hopes the changes will better protect farmers, ranchers, hunters and sports enthusiasts.
The legislation would also declare that Albertans can't be deprived of their property without due process of law and fair compensation.
"This is a reaffirmation of your right to own and enjoy the property that you've worked so hard for," said Smith.
United Conservative Party members have been pushing Smith for the recognition of rights that go well beyond the Canadian Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, including around guns, parental rights and taxes.
Smith's announcement comes as she faces a party leadership review in early November.
Alberta conservatives have been known to boot their own leaders from the top job, including former UCP premier Jason Kenney.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Sept. 24, 2024.
Lisa Johnson, The Canadian Press
Monday, September 23, 2024
BIRDS OF A FEATHER
Austria’s far right woos anti-vaxxers with fund for vaccine ‘victims’
Herbert Kickl, former Austria's Interior Minister and member of FPOe (Austrian Freedom Party) speaks during the 33rd Ordinary Federal Party Congress in the Graz, Austria on September 14, 2019.
Monday, 23 Sep 2024
VIENNA, Sept 23 — Anti-vaxxer Martin Rutter is delighted he has been able to apply for public funds for “vaccination victims” from his far-right allies who run the province around Vienna.
The controversial project, pushed through by the Freedom Party (FPOe) — which looks set to win this week’s Austrian elections—has raised the ire of other parties but has drawn thousands of applications.
“I have an association that takes care of vaccination victims,” said Rutter, who is known for spreading conspiracy theories online.
The 41-year-old helped organise massive demonstrations against the conservative-led government’s Covid measures, which were also attended by the FPOe’s leader Herbert Kickl.
The far right is tapping into still seething voter anger about restrictions during the Covid pandemic, which it hopes will propel them to power on Sunday.
“The FPOe was the only party that did not support these measures,” Rutter told AFP, describing them as an “orgy” of restrictions.
Cash for jab refuseniks
Rutter—who peddles conspiracy narratives online, including recommending fruits to cure cancer—has applied for money from a €31.3 million (RM146 million) fund set up by the Lower Austria region, which the FPOe co-governs, for “information events” he organises.
The fund was set up last year to “repair” the “poor crisis management” of the pandemic, according to Maximilian Fender-Tarczaly, who works for the FPOe state councillor in charge of the project.
The project is meant to support “victims... who are suffering from the various consequences of the disease, the measures and the vaccination”, he said in a written reply to AFP.
“The spectrum is broad... mental health problems, isolation, vaccination impairments, fines for non-compliance with health measures,” he wrote.
Some 5,700 applications had been approved and €3.7 million paid out by July, but “until now no money has been paid” to Rutter, Fender-Tarczaly said then.
The FPOe is keen to roll out the project nationally, railing in its election manifesto against the government’s “unprecedented indoctrination and brainwashing” during the pandemic.
‘Irresponsible’
Health Minister Johannes Rauch of the Greens party described the project as “irresponsible”, arguing that out of 20 million vaccinations, just 200 people have suffered side effects.
“Vaccination has saved millions of lives, and if the willingness to be vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella also decreases, this jeopardises the lives of children,” he said in May.
The opposition Social Democrats have accused the FPOe of “losing all moral sense” by offering a “bonus” to those who “attack elected officials”, while the opposition liberal NEOS party has slammed the far right for pandering to its base.
The pandemic—and in particular the government’s move to make vaccination mandatory, which was later scrapped—have led to lasting “polarisation” in the Alpine nation of nine million people, according to Julia Partheymueller, a political scientist from Vienna University.
The vaccinations “victims” project was a means to criticise “the government’s mistakes” and has come from a “desire for revenge” rather than reconciliation,” she argued. — AFP
CLIMATE CRISIS
Central Africa: Devastating West and Central Africa Floods Affect Over 4 Million People, Raise Health Risks
The extent and severity of the floods are unprecedented Facebook
Brazzaville — Widespread flooding in West and Central Africa has affected more than 4 million people, caused extensive damage to homes, schools, health facilities and swaths of farmland, heightening the risk of water-borne diseases, food insecurity and malnutrition.
The floods - the most devastating in recent years with unprecedented scale and severity - have mainly affected Cameroon, Chad, Guinea, Mali, Niger and Nigeria, and displaced more than 500 000 people, destroyed over 300 000 houses and claimed over a thousand lives. The deluge has also compounded existing humanitarian challenges across the region, where vulnerable communities are already grappling with poverty, food insecurity and conflict.
To support national authorities, World Health Organization (WHO) has provided emergency medical supplies and medicines to assist more than 580 000 people in the six affected countries. The Organization has delivered medicines for treatment and prevention of cholera and malaria, as well as kits to treat malnutrition. WHO has also provided supplies for hygiene and sanitation services and is working closely with partners and governments to coordinate the health emergency response to the flooding disaster. In addition, rapid response teams have been deployed in the countries.
"The extent and severity of the floods are unprecedented with dire devastation among some of the most vulnerable communities in the region," said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa. "The impact of these floods emphasizes the need to address the accelerating effects of climate change. As we provide emergency assistance, it's crucial to invest in sustainability to protect the most vulnerable populations from these escalating threats."
The current floods in Nigeria, the worst the country has witnessed in 30 years, have affected more than a million people in 15 of the country's 36 states, with the states in the north and north-eastern regions being the worst hit. Entire communities, health facilities, schools and farmlands have been inundated.
More than a million people have been affected in Niger, notably in Maradi, Zinder, Dosso and Tillabery regions. The country is also experiencing a cholera outbreak in Agadez, Moradi, Tahoua and Zinder.
In Mali, over 179 000 people have been affected. The major challenges include poor access to clean drinking water, shelter, hygiene kits, and essential medicines. The destruction of homes and health facilities have left vast areas with limited access to health care.
In Cameroon, Chad and Guinea, widespread flood devastation has also left hundreds of thousands of people in dire need of emergency assistance, with farmlands, homes and key infrastructure destroyed or damaged. In Chad, all 23 regions have been affected, while in Cameroon health services have been disrupted in the affected regions.
Most of the affected countries, especially the Sahel countries of Chad, Mali, Niger and Nigeria, are already grappling with high rates of acute malnutrition, and disrupted health services leaving women and children particularly at risk of worsening impact of malnutrition.
Th floods devastation has deprived families of livelihoods in addition to displacement, fatalities due to drowning, missing family members, loss of property and exposure to violence. These challenges are contributing to psychological distress and mental health disorders.
In addition, the risk of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles among children could heighten due to overcrowding in displacement sites among populations with reduced nutritional status and low vaccination coverage. Mali, Niger and Nigeria are already experiencing measles outbreaks.cording to forecasters, the rains are expected to continue in the coming weeks, further worsening the ongoing humanitarian crisis. The intensity of the rains in a short space of time, already degraded soil, poor urban planning and now overflowing rivers have worsened the flooding crisis.
WHO is collaborating with partners and the respective governments to further address the escalating needs and mitigate the imminent public health risks, while ensuring readiness for potential exacerbation of the crisis.
The floods, which underscore the rising impact of climate change, call for significant investments by governments and development partners in disaster preparedness, building resilient health systems and supporting vulnerable communities recover from climate-related crises.
Sunday, September 22, 2024
A two-dose schedule could make HIV vaccines more effective
MIT researchers find that the first dose primes the immune system, helping it to generate a strong response to the second dose, a week later
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
One major reason why it has been difficult to develop an effective HIV vaccine is that the virus mutates very rapidly, allowing it to evade the antibody response generated by vaccines.
Several years ago, MIT researchers showed that administering a series of escalating doses of an HIV vaccine over a two-week period could help overcome a part of that challenge by generating larger quantities of neutralizing antibodies. However, a multidose vaccine regimen administered over a short time is not practical for mass vaccination campaigns.
In a new study, the researchers have now found that they can achieve a similar immune response with just two doses, given one week apart. The first dose, which is much smaller, prepares the immune system to respond more powerfully to the second, larger dose.
This study, which was performed by bringing together computational modeling and experiments in mice, used an HIV envelope protein as the vaccine. A single-dose version of this vaccine is now in clinical trials, and the researchers hope to establish another study group that will receive the vaccine on a two-dose schedule.
“By bringing together the physical and life sciences, we shed light on some basic immunological questions that helped develop this two-dose schedule to mimic the multiple-dose regimen,” says Arup Chakraborty, the John M. Deutch Institute Professor at MIT and a member of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science and the Ragon Institute of MIT, MGH and Harvard University.
This approach may also generalize to vaccines for other diseases, Chakraborty notes.
Chakraborty and Darrell Irvine, a former MIT professor of biological engineering and materials science and engineering and member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, who is now a professor of immunology and microbiology at the Scripps Research Institute, are the senior authors of the study, which appears in Science Immunology. The lead authors of the paper are Sachin Bhagchandani PhD ’23 and Leerang Yang PhD ’24.
Neutralizing antibodies
Each year, HIV infects more than 1 million people around the world, and some of those people do not have access to antiviral drugs. An effective vaccine could prevent many of those infections. One promising vaccine now in clinical trials consists of an HIV protein called an envelope trimer, along with a nanoparticle called SMNP. The nanoparticle, developed by Irvine’s lab, acts as an adjuvant that helps recruit a stronger B cell response to the vaccine.
In clinical trials, this vaccine and other experimental vaccines have been given as just one dose. However, there is growing evidence that a series of doses is more effective at generating broadly neutralizing antibodies. The seven-dose regimen, the researchers believe, works well because it mimics what happens when the body is exposed to a virus: The immune system builds up a strong response as more viral proteins, or antigens, accumulate in the body.
In the new study, the MIT team investigated how this response develops and explored whether they could achieve the same effect using a smaller number of vaccine doses.
“Giving seven doses just isn’t feasible for mass vaccination,” Bhagchandani says. “We wanted to identify some of the critical elements necessary for the success of this escalating dose, and to explore whether that knowledge could allow us to reduce the number of doses.”
The researchers began by comparing the effects of one, two, three, four, five, six, or seven doses, all given over a 12-day period. They initially found that while three or more doses generated strong antibody responses, two doses did not. However, by tweaking the dose intervals and ratios, the researchers discovered that giving 20 percent of the vaccine in the first dose and 80 percent in a second dose, seven days later, achieved just as good a response as the seven-dose schedule.
“It was clear that understanding the mechanisms behind this phenomenon would be crucial for future clinical translation,” Yang says. “Even if the ideal dosing ratio and timing may differ for humans, the underlying mechanistic principles will likely remain the same.”
Using a computational model, the researchers explored what was happening in each of these dosing scenarios. This work showed that when all of the vaccine is given as one dose, most of the antigen gets chopped into fragments before it reaches the lymph nodes. Lymph nodes are where B cells become activated to target a particular antigen, within structures known as germinal centers.
When only a tiny amount of the intact antigen reaches these germinal centers, B cells can’t come up with a strong response against that antigen.
However, a very small number of B cells do arise that produce antibodies targeting the intact antigen. So, giving a small amount in the first dose does not “waste” much antigen but allows some B cells and antibodies to develop. If a second, larger dose is given a week later, those antibodies bind to the antigen before it can be broken down and escort it into the lymph node. This allows more B cells to be exposed to that antigen and eventually leads to a large population of B cells that can target it.
“The early doses generate some small amounts of antibody, and that’s enough to then bind to the vaccine of the later doses, protect it, and target it to the lymph node. That's how we realized that we don't need to give seven doses,” Bhagchandani says. “A small initial dose will generate this antibody and then when you give the larger dose, it can again be protected because that antibody will bind to it and traffic it to the lymph node.”
T-cell boost
Those antigens may stay in the germinal centers for weeks or even longer, allowing more B cells to come in and be exposed to them, making it more likely that diverse types of antibodies will develop.
The researchers also found that the two-dose schedule induces a stronger T-cell response. The first dose activates dendritic cells, which promote inflammation and T-cell activation. Then, when the second dose arrives, even more dendritic cells are stimulated, further boosting the T-cell response.
Overall, the two-dose regimen resulted in a fivefold improvement in the T-cell response and a 60-fold improvement in the antibody response, compared to a single vaccine dose.
“Reducing the ‘escalating dose’ strategy down to two shots makes it much more practical for clinical implementation. Further, a number of technologies are in development that could mimic the two-dose exposure in a single shot, which could become ideal for mass vaccination campaigns,” Irvine says.
The researchers are now studying this vaccine strategy in a nonhuman primate model. They are also working on specialized materials that can deliver the second dose over an extended period of time, which could further enhance the immune response.
The research was funded by the Koch Institute Support (core) Grant from the National Cancer Institute, the National Institutes of Health, and the Ragon Institute of MIT, MGH, and Harvard.
Two-dose priming immunization amplifies humoral immunity by synchronizing vaccine delivery with the germinal center response
Article Publication Date
20-Sep-2024
Saturday, September 21, 2024
How the war on Gaza exposed Israeli and western fascism
Material and rhetorical support for the genocide of the Palestinian people is everywhere. It’s time to ask why
by Jonathan Cook / September 18th, 2024
Nearly a year into the world’s first live-streamed genocide – which began in Gaza, and is rapidly expanding into the occupied West Bank – the establishment western media still avoid using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s rampage of destruction.
The worse the genocide gets, the longer Israel’s starvation-blockade of the enclave continues, the harder it gets to obscure the horrors – the less coverage Gaza receives.
The worst offender has been the BBC, given that it is Britain’s only publicly funded broadcaster. Ultimately, it is supposed to be accountable to the British public, who are required by law to pay its licence fee.
This is why it has been beyond ludicrous to witness the billionaire-owned media froth at the mouth in recent days about “BBC bias” – not against Palestinians, but against Israel. Yes, you heard that right.
We are talking about the same “anti-Israel” BBC that just ran yet another headline – this time after an Israeli sniper shot an American citizen in the head – that managed somehow, once again, to fail to mention who killed her. Any casual reader risked inferring from the headline “American activist shot dead in occupied West Bank” that the culprit was a Palestinian gunman.
After all, Palestinians, not Israel, are represented by Hamas, a group “designated as a terrorist organisation” by the British government, as the BBC helpfully keeps reminding us.
And it is the supposedly “anti-Israel” BBC that last week sought to stymie efforts by 15 aid agencies known as the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) to run a major fundraiser through the nation’s broadcasters.
No one is under any illusions about why the BBC is so unwilling to get involved. The DEC has chosen Gaza as the beneficiary of its latest aid drive.
The committee faced the very same problem with the BBC back in 2009, when the corporation refused to take part in a Gaza fundraiser on the extraordinary pretext that doing so would compromise its rules on “impartiality”.
Presumably, in the BBC’s eyes, saving the lives of Palestinian children reveals a prejudice that saving Ukrainian children’s lives does not.
In its 2009 attack, Israel killed “only” 1,300 or so Palestinians in Gaza, not the many tens of thousands – or possibly hundreds of thousands, no one truly knows – it has this time around.
Famously, the late, independent-minded Labour politician Tony Benn broke ranks and defied the BBC’s DEC ban by reading out details of how to donate money live on air, over the protests of the show’s presenter. As he pointed out then, and it is even truer today: “People will die because of the BBC’s decision.”
According to sources within both the committee and the BBC, the corporation’s executives are terrified – as they were previously – of the “backlash” from Israel and its powerful lobbyists in the UK if it promotes the Gaza appeal.
A spokesperson for the BBC told Middle East Eye that the fundraiser did not meet all the established criteria for a national appeal, despite the DEC’s expert opinion that it does, but noted the possibility of broadcasting an appeal was “under review”.
Pulling punches
The reason Israel is able to carry out a genocide, and western leaders are able to actively support it, is precisely because the establishment media constantly pulls its punches – very much in Israel’s favour.
Readers and viewers are given no sense that Israel is carrying out systematic war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, let alone a genocide.
Journalists prefer to frame events as a “humanitarian crisis” because this strips away Israel’s responsibility for creating the crisis. It looks at the effects, the suffering, rather than the cause: Israel.
Worse, these same journalists constantly throw sand in our eyes with nonsensical counter-claims to suggest that Israel is actually the victim, not the perpetrator.
Take, for example, the new “study” into supposed BBC anti-Israel bias, led by a British lawyer based in Israel. A faux-horrified Daily Mail warned over the weekend that the “BBC is FOURTEEN times more likely to accuse Israel of genocide than Hamas … amid growing calls for inquiry”.
But read the text, and what’s truly stunning is that over the selected four-month period, the BBC associated Israel with the term “genocide” only 283 times – in its massive output across many television and radio channels, its website, podcasts and various social media platforms, which serve myriad populations at home and abroad.
What the Mail and other right-wing attack-dog media don’t mention is the fact that none of those references would have been the BBC’s own editorialising. Even Palestinian guests who try to use the word on its shows are quickly shut down.
Many of the references would have been BBC News reporting on a case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice, which is investigating Israel for what the world’s top court termed in January to be a “plausible” risk of genocide in Gaza.
Regrettably for the BBC, it has been impossible to report that story without mentioning the word “genocide”, because it lies at the heart of the legal case.
What should, in fact, astound us far more is that an active genocide, in which the West is fully complicit, was mentioned by the BBC’s globe-spanning media empire a total of only 283 times in the four months following 7 October.
Campaign of intimidation
The World Court’s preliminary ruling on Israel’s genocide is vital context that should be front and centre of every media story on Gaza. Instead, it is usually unmentioned, or hidden at the end of reports, where few will read about it.
The BBC infamously gave barely any coverage to the genocide case presented in January to the World Court by South Africa, which the panel of judges found to be “plausible”. On the other hand, it broadcast the entirety of Israel’s defence to the same court.
Now, after this latest campaign of intimidation by the billionaire-owned media, the BBC will likely be even less willing to mention the genocide – which is precisely the aim.
What should have stunned the Mail and the rest of the establishment media far more is that the BBC broadcast 19 references to a Hamas “genocide” in the same four-month period.
The idea that Hamas is capable of a “genocide” against Israel, or Jews, is as divorced from reality as the fiction that it “beheaded babies” on 7 October or the claims, still lacking any evidence, that it committed “mass rape” on that day.
Hamas, an armed group numbering thousand of fighters, currently pinned down in Gaza by one of the strongest armies in the world, is quite incapable of committing a “genocide” of Israelis.
This is, of course, why the World Court is not investigating Hamas for genocide, and why only Israel’s most fanatic apologists, including the western media, run with fake news either that Hamas is committing a genocide, or that it is conceivable it may try to do so.
No one really takes seriously claims of a Hamas genocide. The tell was the world’s stunned reaction when the group managed to escape from the concentration camp that is Gaza for a single day on 7 October and wreak so much death and havoc.
The idea that Hamas could do anything worse than that – or even repeat the attack – is simply delusional. The best Hamas can do is wage a guerrilla war of attrition against the Israeli military from its underground tunnels, which is precisely what it is doing.
Here’s another statistic worth highlighting from the recent “study”: in the same four-month period, the BBC used the term “crimes against humanity” 22 times to describe the atrocities committed by Hamas on one day last October, compared with only 15 times to describe Israel’s even worse atrocities committed continuouslyover the past year.
Allowable thought
The ultimate effect of the latest media furore is to increase pressure on the BBC to make even larger concessions to the self-serving, right-wing political agenda of the billionaire-owned media and the corporate interests of the war machine it represents.
The state broadcaster’s job is to set limits on allowable thought for the British public – not on the right, where that role falls to papers such as the Mail and the Telegraph, but on the other side of the political spectrum, on what is misleadingly referred to as “the left”.
The BBC’s task is to define what is acceptable speech and action – meaning acceptable to the British establishment – by those seeking to challenge its domestic and foreign policy.
Twice in living memory, progressive left-wing opposition leaders have emerged: Michael Foot in the early 1980s, and Jeremy Corbyn in the late 2010s. On both occasions, the media have united as one to vilify them.
That should surprise no one. Making the BBC a whipping boy – denouncing it as “left-wing” – is a form of permanent gaslighting designed both to make Britain’s extreme right-wing media seem centrist, and to normalise the drive to push the BBC ever further rightwards.
Over decades, the billionaire-owned media have crafted in the public’s mind the idea that the BBC defines the extreme end of supposedly “left-wing” thought. The more the corporation can be pushed to the right, the more the left faces an unwelcome choice: either follow the BBC rightwards, or become universally reviled as the loony left, the woke left, the Trot left, the militant left.
Bolstering this self-fulfilling argument, any protests by BBC staff can be deduced by the journalist-servants of Rupert Murdoch and other press tycoons as further proof of the corporation’s left-wing or Marxist bias.
The media system is rigged, and the BBC is the perfect vehicle for keeping it this way.
Pressing the button
What the BBC and the rest of the mainstream media are downplaying are not just the facts of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, but also the obvious genocidal intent of Israeli leaders, the country’s wider society, and its apologists in the UK and elsewhere.
It should not be up for debate that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, when everyone from its prime minister down has told us that this is very much their intent.
The examples of such genocidal statements by Israeli leaders filled pages of South Africa’s case to the World Court.
Just one example: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the Palestinians as “Amalek” – a reference to a biblical story well known to every Israeli schoolchild, in which the Israelites are ordered by God to wipe an entire people, including their children and livestock, off the face of the earth.
Anyone engaged on social media will have faced a battery of similarly genocidal statements from mostly anonymous supporters of Israel.
Those genocide cheerleaders recently gained a face – two, in fact. Video clips of two Israelis, podcasting in English under the name “Two Nice Jewish Boys”, have gone viral, showing the pair calling for the extermination of every last Palestinian man, woman and child.
One of the podcasters said that “zero people in Israel” care whether a polio outbreak caused by Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s water, sewage and heath facilities ends up killing babies, noting that Israel’s agreement to a vaccination campaign is driven purely by public relations needs.
In another clip, the podcasters agree that Palestinian hostages in Israeli prisons deserve to be “executed by shoving too large of an object up their butts”.
They also make clear that they would not hesitate to press a genocide button to wipe out the Palestinian people: “If you gave me a button to just erase Gaza – every single living being in Gaza would no longer be living tomorrow – I would press it in a second … And I think most Israelis would. They wouldn’t talk about it like I am, they wouldn’t say ‘I pressed it’, but they would press it.”
Relentless depravity
It is easy to get alarmed over such inhuman comments, but the furore generated by this pair is likely to deflect from a more important point: that they are utterly representative of where Israeli society is right now. They are not on some depraved fringe. They are not outliers. They are firmly in the mainstream.
The evidence is not just in the fact that Israel’s citizen army is systematically beating and sodomising Palestinian prisoners, sniping Palestinian children in Gaza with shots to the head, cheering the detonation of universities and mosques, desecrating Palestinian bodies, and enforcing a starvation-blockade on Gaza.
It is in the welcoming of all this relentless depravity by wider Israeli society.
After a video emerged of a group of soldiers sodomising a Palestinian prisoner at Israel’s Sde Teiman torture camp, Israelis rallied to their side. The extent of the prisoner’s internal injuries required him to be hospitalised.
In the aftermath, Israeli pundits – educated “liberals” – sat in TV studios discussing whether soldiers should be allowed to make their own decisions about whether to rape Palestinians in detention, or whether such abuses should be organised by the state as part of an official torture programme.
One of the soldiers accused in the gang rape case chose to cast off his anonymity after being championed by journalists who interviewed him. He’s now treated as a minor celebrity on Israeli TV shows.
Polls show that the vast majority of Jewish Israelis either approve of the razing of Gaza, or want even more of it. Some 70 percent want to ban from social media platforms any expressions of sympathy for civilians in Gaza.
None of this is really new. It all just got a lot more ostentatious after Hamas’s attack on 7 October.
After all, some of the most shocking violence that day occurred when Hamas fighters stumbled onto a dance festival close to Gaza.
The brutal imprisonment of 2.3 million Palestinians, and the 17-year blockade denying them the essentials of life and any meaningful freedoms, had become so normal to Israelis that hip, freedom-loving Israeli youngsters could happily hold a rave so close to that mass of human suffering.
Or as one of the Two Nice Jewish Boys observed of his feelings about life in Israel: “It’s nice to know that you’re dancing in a concert while hundreds of thousands of Gazans are homeless, sitting in a tent.” His partner interrupted: “Makes it even better … People enjoy knowing they [Palestinians in Gaza] are suffering.”
‘Heroic soldiers’
This monstrous indifference to, or even pleasure in, the torture of others isn’t restricted to Israelis. There’s a whole army of prominent supporters of Israel in the West who confidently act as apologists for Israel’s genocidal actions.
What unites them all is the Jewish supremacist ideology of Zionism.
In Britain, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has not spoken out against the mass slaughter of Palestinian children in Gaza, nor has he kept quiet about it. Instead, he has given Israel’s war crimes his blessing.
Back in mid-January, as South Africa began making public its case against Israel for genocide that the World Court found “plausible”, Mirvis spoke at a public meeting, where he referred to Israel’s operations in Gaza as “the most outstanding possible thing”.
He described the troops clearly documented committing war crimes as “our heroic soldiers” – inexplicably conflating the actions of a foreign, Israeli army with the British army.
Even if we imagine he was truly ignorant of the war crimes in Gaza eight months ago, there can be no excuses now.
Yet, last week, Mirvis spoke out again, this time to berate the British government for imposing a very partial limit on arms sales to Israel after it received legal advice that such weapons were likely being used by Israel to commit war crimes.
In other words, Mirvis openly called for his own government to ignore international law and arm a state committing war crimes, according to UK government lawyers, and a “plausible genocide”, according to the World Court.
There are apologists like Mirvis in influential posts across the West.
Appearing on TV late last month, his counterpart in France, Haim Korsia, urged Israel to “finish the job” in Gaza, and backed Netanyahu, who the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor is pursuing for war crimes.
Korsia refused to condemn Israel’s killing of at least 41,000 Palestinians in Gaza, arguingthat those deaths were “not of the same order” as the 1,150 deaths of Israelis on 7 October.
He clearly meant Palestinian lives were not as important as Israeli lives.
Inner fascist
Nearly 30 years ago, Israeli sociologist Dan Rabinowitz published a book, Overlooking Nazareth, that argued Israel was a far more profoundly racist society than was widely understood.
His work has taken on a new relevance – and not just for Israelis – since 7 October.
Back in the 1990s, as now, outsiders assumed that Israel was divided between the religious and secular, the traditional and modern; between vulgar recent immigrants and more enlightened “veterans”.
Israelis often see their society split geographically too: between peripheral communities where popular racism flourishes, and a metropolitan centre around Tel Aviv where a sensitive, cultured liberalism predominates.
Rabinowitz tore this thesis to shreds. He took as his case study the small Jewish city of Nazareth Illit in northern Israel, renowned for its extreme right-wing politics, including support for the fascist movement of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane.
Rabinowitz ascribed the city’s politics chiefly to the fact that it had been built by the state on top of Nazareth, the largest community of Palestinians in Israel, specifically to contain, control and oppress its historic neighbour.
His argument was that the Jews of Nazareth Illit were not more racist than the Jews of Tel Aviv. They were simply far more exposed to an “Arab” presence. In fact, given the fact that few Jews chose to live there, they were heavily outnumbered by their “Arab” neighbours. The state had placed them in a direct, confrontational competition with Nazareth for land and resources.
The Jews of Tel Aviv, by contrast, almost never came across an “Arab” unless it was in a servant’s role: as a waiter or a worker on a building site.
The difference, noted Rabinowitz, was that the Jews of Nazareth Illit were confronted with their own racism on a daily basis. They had rationalised and become easy with it. Jews in Tel Aviv, meanwhile, could pretend they were open-minded because their bigotry was never meaningfully tested.
Well, 7 October changed all that. The “liberals” of Tel Aviv were suddenly confronted by an unwelcome, avenging Palestinian presence inside their state. The “Arab” was no longer the oppressed, tame, servile one they were used to.
Unexpectedly, the Jews of Tel Aviv felt a space they believed to be theirs exclusively being invaded, just as the Jews of Nazareth Illit had felt for decades. And they responded in exactly the same way. They rationalised their inner fascist. Overnight, they became comfortable with genocide.
The genocide party
That sense of invasion extends beyond Israel, of course.
On 7 October, Hamas’s surprise assault wasn’t just an attack on Israel. The breakout by a small group of armed fighters from one of the largest and most heavily fortified prisons ever built was also a shocking assault on western elites’ complacency – their belief that the world order they had built by force to enrich themselves was permanent and inviolable.
7 October severely shook their confidence that the non-western world could be contained forever; that it must continue to do the West’s bidding, and that it would remain enslaved indefinitely.
Just as it has with Israelis, the Hamas attack quickly exposed the little fascist within the West’s political, media and religious elite, who had spent a lifetime pretending to be the guardians of a western civilising mission – one that was enlightened, humanitarian and liberal.
The act worked, because the world was ordered in such a way that they could easily pretend to themselves and others that they stood against the barbarism of the Other.
The West’s colonialism was largely out of sight, devolved to globe-spanning, exploitative, environmentally destructive western corporations and a network of some 800 US overseas military bases, which were there to kick ass if this new arms-length economic imperialism encountered difficulties.
Whether intentionally or not, Hamas tore off the mask of that deception on 7 October. The pretence of an ideological rift between western leaders on the right and a supposed “left” evaporated overnight. They all belonged to the same war party; they all became devotees of the genocide party.
All have clamoured for Israel’s supposed “right to defend itself” – in truth, its right to continue decades of oppression of the Palestinian people – by imposing a blockade on food, water and power to Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants.
All actively approve arming Israel’s slaughter and maiming of tens of thousands of Palestinians. All have done nothing to impose a ceasefire apart from paying lip service to the notion.
All seem readier to tear up international law and its supporting institutions than to enforce it against Israel. All denounce as antisemitism the mass protests against genocide, rather than denouncing the genocide itself.
7 October was a defining moment. It exposed a monstrous barbarity with which it is hard to come to terms. And we won’t, until we face a difficult truth: that the source of such depravity is far closer to home than we ever imagined.
