Be sure, despite its obsessive revisiting of the events of October 7 in Israel, the BBC won’t be reporting on this latest development: Families of those killed in Kibbutz Be’eri that day are demanding an official investigation into the growing body of evidence that their loved ones were killed not by Hamas but by the Israeli military.
Their concerns have been heightened by the recent admission from an Israeli commander that he ordered a tank to fire a shell into a house where 14 Israelis had been taken hostage by Hamas in Be’eri. Many of those hostages were incinerated by the shell, along with the Hamas fighters.
Nonetheless, Israel cited the charred bodies as proof of Hamas’ barbarity and justification for its subsequent genocidal campaign in Gaza, rather than as evidence of its own scorched-earth policy, one indifferent to the lives of its own civilians.
Jonathan Cook wrote about Israel’s role in the killings and the western media’s failure to report it here: https://dorseteye.com/why-wont-the-western-media-tell-us-what-israel-really-did-on-october-7th/
Haaretz’s report on the families’ demand can be found here: https://haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-06/ty-article/.premium/families-of-israelis-killed-in-beeri-home-hit-by-tank-fire-on-october-7-demand-probe/0000018c-de77-daf6-a5df-df7f22d60000
The corporate media are afraid of Israel. The Independent media are not
All reasonable people agree anti-Semitic tropes should be avoided, but what happens when a legitimate criticism gets conflated with an anti-Semitic trope? Are we supposed to fall silent in that instance? Are we supposed to ignore an injustice in the name of sensitivity?
There is an anti-Semitic trope that is regularly coming up at the moment: that Jews control the media, even the world.
There is also an undeniable fact: that our politicians and journalists have become almost incapable of standing up to the Israeli government. Does pointing this out mean we are saying Jews control the world’s media? Of course not, but that is exactly what we’re accused of because the term “anti-Semitic trope” is being weaponised to stifle debate.
Many of the accusers will happily talk of Russian interference and no one would entertain the idea that such an accusation is racist. Some would genuinely bomb Russia back to the stone age because they think Putin put Trump into power. But while I think these people are batshit, it’s perfectly reasonable to debate Russian interference in our politics.
Anyone who is not concerned the Tories were in bed with the Russians has not been paying attention. Who remembers Boris Johnson flying to Medvedev’s Perugia palazzo to party without a security detail? Who thinks the Russians might have kompromat on Johnson? Now who thinks Mossad doesn’t have secret videos of many of our politicians? We certainly know their diplomat tried to bribe our MPs. We certainly know they blackmail the Palestinians they mass surveil.
We should be able to talk about Israeli interference in the same way we talk about Russian interference, but the anti-Semitism accusers know what they’re doing. They’re trying to scare people into silence.
Despite their propaganda efforts, two-third of the public support a ceasefire. Just imagine how high that figure would be if our politicians and media backed a ceasefire. It would probably be over 90% – and if that were the situation, an isolated Israel would surely back down.
If you doubt for a second the pro-Israel bias is there, just look at this quote from Alan Dershowitz, the man who was touted to represent Israel at the ICJ:
“People say Jews are too powerful. We’re too strong. We’re too rich. We control the media. We have too much this. We have too much that. And we often apologetically deny our strength and our power. Don’t do that. We have earned the right to influence public debate. We have earned the right to be heard”.
Dershowitz is partly right. He openly admits there is huge Jewish influence in the west. This inevitably means a pro-Israel bias, even if you ignore the concerns of blackmail and corruption. It’s a good thing to have voices from your group heard as long as other groups are not being ignored. In this instance, Palestinian voices and the two-thirds of the public who want a ceasefire are being ignored.
The problem is not that some voices are too loud, it’s that others are dying because their voices are too quiet.
The media will occasionally do half-arsed criticism of Israel and revert to dehumanising Palestinians, and even that half-arsed criticism causes the pro-Israel crowd to lose their minds. Our politicians and journalists always seem either driven by bloodlust or paralysed by fear. Anyone who tries to stand up to the madness is likely to find themselves out of a job as Claudine Gay would testify.
Just look at the evidence: BBC employees have spoken in horror at the news coverage from their employer. Western TV hosts won’t stop talking down to the Palestinians they interview. Joe Biden is facing resignations from his staff over his support for Israel’s massacre. Perhaps most tellingly, ABC, NBC and CNN have admitted they send their Gaza reports to the IDF for authorisation.
For fucking authorisation.
Does that sound like a free press to you? Does that give you the impression they are approaching their coverage in a fair and balanced manner?
Last night, NBC uncritically aired the latest ridiculous claim from President Herzog that the IDF found documents about a Hamas summer school to turn children into Jihadists. Western media outlets are being used as propaganda arms for a foreign power.
In the US, the government is not allowed to interfere in speech, but it’s totally fine for the Israeli government to do just that. It’s not just TV channels the Israeli government is influencing either.
Not only does Israel have social media troll farms and teams to edit Wikipedia, but it has huge influence over Facebook. So much so, Nick Clegg has been telling the European Union how quick Facebook is to censor pro-Palestinian voices. They always call this “pro-Hamas content”, but much of the censored content is not in any way pro-Hamas. A similar thing happens on TikTok.
Ask yourself when was the last time someone was censored by social media for supporting a western war. Strangely, there has never been any suggestion of censoring pro-Israel voices.
Hamas is considered a dangerous organisation on Facebook, which is fine as long as there is fairness and consistency. Labelling any pro-Palestinian statement as “pro-Hamas” is not fair, and any social media company that has a policy against dangerous organisations that doesn’t include the IDF is not fit for purpose.
Why is it okay to support Israel’s war crimes on social media when supporting other war crimes gets you banned? The west has decided one form of terror is acceptable and it’s the one that is the deadliest by far. But at least we in the west believe in a free press, right? At least we don’t kill journalists like they do in the bad countries.
Well, the journalist death toll in Gaza is now, you know what? I’m not even sure any more. Last I heard it was close to 100 and I’ve seen reports of journalists getting killed every day since, but we tell ourselves we believe in a free press. I like comforting lies, don’t you?
Here is what our free press looks like:
This comes from an article by Declassified UK in relation to a study of BBC One’s Gaza coverage. Yet we are told by Netanyahu apologists the BBC has an anti-Israel bias. These people see anything other than their total dominance over Palestinians as discrimination against them. I’ve even heard Zionists say they won’t vote for Biden for being too pro-Palestine. You couldn’t make it up.
The Biden administration admitted they carried out no investigation into whether Israel is staying within international law before sending military aid. They even explained they get their reports about the humanitarian situation in Gaza from Israel. That’s like asking a serial killer if his victims are okay!
Let’s not put all the focus on the Democrats though when Republicans are every bit as dreadful. American fascist Mike Pence recently wrote a hate message on one of Israel’s missiles because genocide is more fun when you can personalise it.
Killing children is a game to these people, yet the biggest concern in the UK is the public might object to their disgusting game. Fortunately, Sir Keir Starmer is on the case. He has conflated pro-Palestinian protests with the unrelated murders of politicians to undermine the peace movement. Why worry about children being bombed when you can pretend the real concern is the safety of politicians who could simply stop supporting genocide?
The truth is coming together, and the independent media is working collectively to ensure establishment propaganda is exposed.
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