Why might this be? It is not such a difficult one to figure out: day in, day out, we get to see what life is like for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Gratuitous violence, even killings, is commonplace. Homes being demolished, or seized by settlers. Protesters gunned down for just approaching a border fence. And yes, the A-Word. Apartheid.
In the West Bank, roads, buildings, and services for settlers, all set apart from those available to Palestinians. In Gaza, the constant noise of IDF drones, watching the population 24 hours a day. Total control of who enters what is widely viewed as an open-air prison, and who leaves. Millions living under occupation, for year after year, decade after decade.
Time was when Israeli spokespeople would describe the IDF as the “Most Moral Army” and it would be taken as fact. Not any more, as we can now see what that army gets up to, terrorising little children, standing by as armed settlers brutalise those they are displacing. A cycle of violence that has been going on for so long that fewer and fewer people believe the official line.
Worse for the Israelis, the diktat of “both sides-ing” by broadcasters like the BBC has worked against them, so when Mark Regev, who advises Binyamin Netenyahu, tells the Corporation that his Government’s armed forces do not bomb hospitals, and that they abide by international law, the Palestinian Ambassador to the UK is up next to call out Regev for lying.
Which just makes him, and Labour, look callous, on top of Keir Starmer initially asserting that Israel is OK to inflict collective punishment upon those in Gaza, before qualifying his remarks later. Labour later telling their MPs and councillors not to attend pro-Palestine gatherings was another example of a party out of sync with many of its members. And it gets worse.
Trying to frighten off those who might be inclined to show solidarity with the Palestinian cause by suggesting this means they support Hamas (it doesn’t) and then calling them anti-Semites is having little effect, especially as the news organisations shouting “anti-Semitism” the loudest, like the Mail and Telegraph titles, have indulged in blatant anti-Semitism in the recent past.
And the owner of another media organisation, Rupert Murdoch, whined openly about the “Jewish owned press” before someone prevailed upon him to put the Twitter feed down. Small wonder the Israeli authorities are trying to close down Internet access in Gaza. But it is too late. Our politicians are proving ineffective and unpersuasive, as well as untrustworthy.
The observation by Alex Tiffin that “UN Peacekeepers were literally created for situations such as what is happening in Gaza right now … They could monitor & aid humanitarian efforts and ensure supplies aren't used by Hamas as a tool” may soon reach a far wider audience. Israel doesn’t want that, and nor, I suspect, does Hamas. They want the war to continue.
The general public, inasmuch as they care, does not. Israel has lost support, and now it has lost the propaganda war. They are no longer the good guys.
https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton
5 comments:
Expect it all from tories blue and red.
But even the blue version hasn't claimed to be "Zionist without qualification".
Meanwhile, shouty Christian Fraser (slightly muted on this occasion) on BBC "interviewed" a well-scrubbed "military analyst" named Justin Crump (full on MI6 "asset") who said, and I'm not joking, "It's a step forward" that Israeli fascists have given advance warning to Palestinians that they're about to mass murder them. The same kind of militaristic moron who vomits garbage about "surgical/targeted strikes" without explaining how flying shrapnel can be targeted.
And now you've used the "apartheid" word, Tim, you can expect Starmer's Micawber Tendency to do to your name what they did to Jeremy Corbyn's.
Perhaps, just perhaps …
We great unwashed are becoming just a little tired of being fed an agenda defining patriotism as whatever the gvt, mauve Sir Keith and the rubbish media rags define it to be rather than whats felt as aturally right and just? Just saying ….
Another sign of the extent of the my-Israel-right-or-wrong tendency's panic that they're losing the propaganda war:
Steve Bell has been sacked by the Guardian for a cartoon depicting Netanyahu because they're too dim to understand that Shylock didn't demand a pound of his *own* flesh or that 'After David Levine' on Bell's cartoon is a reference to a specific cartoon from the Vietnam war period which was aimed at the warmogering of President Johnson and in which Johnson is depicted as showing his appendix scar to reporters.
According to the Guardian, Bell's cartoon is anti-Semitic, by which we can assume is meant 'not actively pro- Israel and pro-Netanyahu'.
How stupid is Guardian editor Katherine Viner?
But it's not stupidity, is it? Viner has found a convenient excuse to sack someone who doesn't follow the Guardian line on Israel/Palestine. The Guardian must now be added to the list of things which can be discounted when the question is asked: how many things can you think of which are better now than they were 13 years ago?
Bertie I'd usually be in agreement, but I think there has to be an instance where one thing can apply to a seldom heard community that would be perfectly innocent when aimed at another.
I think of Danny Baker. His habit of welcoming the Royal baby each time as a monkey might be fine, even funny, in most instances, but it was obviously offensive when welcoming Archie Windsor.
I think that's true of Bell's specific cartoon too. He's been fantastic, and you're probably right to say they have used it as a chance to get rid of him, but I do think it was a lapse.
I'm not sure if you have a workplace, but such things are relevant, and recurring, in a code of conduct. I know at Oxford we became aware of such nuances fairly quickly.
When Azerbaijan was starving Armenians for months, where were the calls for "international law?"
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