Israel Unmasked
“You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot keep Spring from coming.”
~ Pablo Neruda
For over a year, the masters of war in Israel and the United States, abetted by the corporate media, have buried truth under the rubble of Gaza. The U.S. mainstream media have acted as the hewers of wood and drawers of water for the empire.
To understand how we got here, we need to borrow from the 19th century Scottish author, Walter Scott, who wrote, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”
Scott’s reflection helps in understanding how the media have turned the horrific suffering of Palestinians and Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza into just another news story – “acceptable” scrim as we go about our daily lives. It also provides insight into how the Israeli regime soaked in blood has been portrayed as the victim, the good soldier and worthy of defense.
Israel is a veteran of information deception. For a half-century, they have defined the narrative and controlled the information environment in order to hide their brutal apartheid occupation and expansionist goals in Palestine. They have overwhelmed audiences, particularly in the United States, with information favorable to Israel’s cause and suppressed that which has challenged their narrative.
Television anchors, journalists and the “intelligentsia” in think tanks that dot the nation’s capital have been conditioned to accept and defend Israel’s political trope and to swiftly discredit the arguments of those who challenge its dissembling.
Corporate media self-censorship, underreporting, airbrushing of atrocities, failing to contextualize the Palestinian experience under apartheid rule and, most egregious, ignoring America’s complicity in constructing and maintaining the Israeli apartheid regime over 76 years, have contributed to an environment that has encouraged Israel to become increasingly violent.
The worst journalistic practices were glaring after the Palestinian offensive of 7 October 2023. The mind managers have allowed Israel to establish the parameters of the message, of what could/ could not be written and said.Coverage would be done Israel’s way – through a military lens. All foreign news organizations operating in Israel are subject to the rules of a military censor, with only certain subjects allowed. It is commonplace, for instance, to read or to hear journalists begin their reports with “Israel said.”
There has also been little attention paid to Tel Aviv’s refusal to permit foreign journalists access to Gaza, to the regime’s internal media censorship and bans, and to the 128 Palestinian journalists and media staff in Gaza, who have been targeted and killed by the Israeli military.
Although the media gave an inordinate amount of coverage to the now debunked Israeli stories about mass killings, beheaded babies and allegations of widespread and systematic rape during the October attack, no such attention has been paid to Israel’s “Hannibal Directive” and “Dahiya Doctrine.”
On 7 October, the Israeli military gave its forces permission to execute the Hannibal Directive. Adopted in 1986, the code of conduct allows soldiers to kill their own people if they are going to be taken alive by their perceived enemy. A growing body of evidence has revealed that hundreds of Israelis who died that day were killed, not by Hamas, but by their own soldiers.
The Dahiya doctrine became official military policy after Israel’s devastating attack on Lebanon in 2006. Named after the Dahiya suburb in Beirut, the doctrine – illegal under international law – calls for the use of massive, disproportionate force and deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure in future wars.
For far too long, deceptive narratives have been used and scant attention paid to Israel’s indefensible policies. This is particularly the case regarding U.N. General Assembly Partition Resolution 181 (1947) that Israel used to declare statehood and in its colonizing of what was left of historic Palestine.
By eschewing years of Israeli apartheid rule and the 16-year siege of the Gaza Strip, the public was left with the impression that the October assault was a random unprovoked act of violence. They heard few details of the crushing siege Israel imposed on Gaza when it withdrew in 2005, leaving behind a restrictive disengagement plan retaining exclusive control over Gaza’s air space, territorial waters, borders, electricity, water supply and movement of people and goods.
History reveals that there is a direct link between occupation and violence; that occupied people will use whatever means they have to be free, including violence.
https://original.antiwar.com/Reza_Behnam/2024/11/14/israel-unmasked/