In the opening paragraph of yesterday’s post – legally killed children – I referred to the Gaza breakout of October 7 (which saw other Palestinian groups taking part alongside Hamas) as an Uprising. 1 This may seem provocative but I say, for reasons set out in comments below the line, that those who see it as such have been shielded from the factuals by the most extensive and sophisticated propaganda matrix in history …
… by which I mean a vast web of understandings and meanings collectively known by some of us as ideology. But let’s turn here to the more crudely overt, yet for all that effective and in any case linked, discourses of Zionist propaganda. Some time ago Caitlin Johnstone made the point that Israel’s record of barefaced lying makes it sensible and principled to regard its every claim as a lie until we have mountains of independently verified evidence to the contrary.
It’s only common sense. Though as granny warned, common sense ain’t that common.
Millions therefore were taken in by the monstrous whopper, one of many 2 3 in respect of that day, of Hamas having weaponised systematic rape on October 7. Why millions? Because centre-spread treatment, by the New York Times no less, accorded to hair-raising accounts of the most depraved sexual violence saw to it that a tissue of IDF concocted lies had gone round the world and back while the truth was still putting on its shoes.
Subsequent events made crystal clear the truly evil nature of that lie. We may be unprepared – not having studied the detailed rebuttals perhaps, or emotionally resistant to the implications – to accept that the “weaponised rape” allegation was a Goebbelsian slander. But logic dictates that if it can be shown to be precisely that, then it is truly evil for the compelling reason that, in the face of stiff competition from all the other lies, it led the way in legitimising the genocide to come.
“We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.” Yoav Gallant, Israel Defence Minister, October 9 2023
This post presents a video by Electronic Intifada, 61:14 long, establishing beyond doubt that the NYT story was a fabrication from start to finish. It’s three weeks old – I’m still playing catch-up after Norway – but finite shelf life is only an issue if you’ve already seen it.
If you haven’t, sit back and be appalled.
* * *
- I prefer “uprising” to Jonathan Cook’s “slave revolt”. One of Israel’s many Jewish critics – I think Chomsky but maybe it was Pappé or Finkelstein – says of the “apartheid” descriptor that Israel pursues ends worse still. Pretoria did not wish to eliminate black people. It had need of their labour. As do slave owners. Ethnic cleansing comes far closer to the truth of Israel’s Western backed savagery than either slavery or apartheid.
- Other lies include Hamas tunnels under hospitals – back when it was still possible, just, to believe Israel’s war crimes borne of rage and inability to admit error, as opposed to a calculated holocaust – and spinning “Flourgate” as death by stampede. A fuller list was given by Mehdi Hasan in a May 2 piece – Which is worse, Israel’s lies about Gaza or its western backers who repeat those lies? – run by a Guardian Media Group obliged to platform the occasional voice of dissent to appease readers critical of the greater space given to apologetics like this Observer piece.
- For more on “Flourgate” see my March post, Gaza to Rochdale …. That post also speaks to the mass rapes lie, but from an angle I now view as needlessly oblique. I gave more straightforward coverage 17 days later in Did Hamas weaponise sexual violence?
Ex CIA analyst Larry Johnson provides some relevant data countering the wider propaganda narrative of Hamas being merely “a strictly terrorist organization” using official figures originating from Israel:
https://sonar21.com/the-hard-facts-about-palestinian-terrorism-debunk-western-narrative/
Notwithstanding such objective evidence the most pressing point right now is who is actually going to step up to the plate and stop this mass murder spree?
Because due process ain’t working – as demonstrated here by US Speaker Mike Johnson:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2024/may/22/mike-johnson-says-us-should-punish-icc-for-requesting-israel-arrest-warrants-video
Transcript:
As Arnaud Bertrand observes:
International law is effectively defunct. With the USA running amok in human blood all over the planet from The Near East to Ukraine and wanting more from Taiwan to Georgia.
Reason and morality have no purchase with those who think they are superior human beings and above the law – such as the Zionists in both the settler State of Israel and in the USA.
Diplomacy is non-existent with those who have convinced themselves they have exceptional rights above everyone and everything else by virtue of their nationality and/or ethnicity.
Which logically leaves few options, if any, beyond some kind of force to stop this atrocity.
See Caitlin’s post today, The US is discrediting all arguments for why it should lead the world.
She not only reminds us in withering tones of Washington’s breath-taking hypocrisy but, as do you, of its reckless insanity. On the latter, my masthead AToW features this very slightly edited extract: