Averting The Dissent Caused by Dead Babies
As the Israeli Zionist state’s US-developed missiles smashed into the Gaza Strip at the end of last week, another weapon was unleashed in tandem on the unsuspecting public in much of the rest of the world.
This weapon causes no obvious discomfort or distress for those targeted, yet it compounds and perpetuates their plight immeasurably.
For as long as the struggle for freedom in Palestine has existed, it has resulted in increased discomfort, distress and death for thousands of Palestinians.
The weapon, of course, is disinformation. It was used to deadly effect yet again on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (February 28-March 1) by manipulative media outlets across Europe, north America and elsewhere.
As the people of Gaza counted their dead in dozens, any international action or pressure, which might have ended the massacre, was averted by a deliberate distortion of what was really happening in Palestine.
Reading any major newspaper or watching any big television station, you could be forgiven for thinking that the events in Gaza were an understandable, if harsh, Israeli reaction to an intolerable campaign of terror that had left their population cowering in fear.
Images of Israeli-populated cities hit by rockets fired from the Gaza Strip were flashed across TV screens and placed in newspapers globally. Wailing ambulance sirens completed the sense of fear.
An Israeli was killed in one such attack on Wednesday (February 27) and, days later, the rockets began to land in the city of Ashkelon, the furthest target from Gaza to date.
The common media discourse intimated that - faced with such a situation, the Israeli ‘Defence’ Force had to react. It has been portrayed that the reaction was ‘hasty’, ‘emotive’, ‘harsh’, but ultimately defensive and in protection of Israel.
The information left out, however, paints a different picture.
The Zionist, Israeli state has been involved in a brutal war against the people of the Gaza Strip for a long time. The tactics used in this war have included such acts of collective punishment as inducing power cuts, fuel and food shortages, sealing border crossings, mass arrests, targeted bombings, un-targeted bombings, assassinations and mass murder.
The campaign against the democratically-elected Hamas government and the collective punishment of its electorate, is the latest stage in this campaign. Last week’s military offensive was just that – a new military offensive in a continuous war.
Very powerful people set the context for this offensive.
On Monday (February 25), EU Commissioner Franco Frattini announced during a visit that,
“For too long, European public opinion and some of its leaders put too much of the blame for the failure of the peace process on Israel’s shoulders.”
Commissioner Frattini also committed himself and by extension the European Union to
“…personally and institutionally assisting Israel and the Israeli people in the years to come”.
Considering the nature and actions of the Israeli regime and the massive support they receive from the US government amongst others, such comments can only be seen as giving the Zionist generals carte blanche in their terror campaign.
By Friday (February 29) Israel’s deputy defence minister Matan Vilnai was threatening a “shoah” (the Hebrew word for holocaust) against the Palestinian people. Cue Saturday and the Zionist massacre in Gaza had intensified – over 50 Palestinians, including eight children, were killed in a single day.
Since Wednesday, 112 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military machine. 1 Israeli has been killed by rocket fire from Gaza. These were people of all ages – from a six-month-old baby to pensioners, without even a hint of international intervention.
The talk of holocausts was strategically left out of most news reports or buried deep in the few that carried it. Likewise, the European media made sure the supposedly accountable Mr Frattini was not held to account by European citizens who would be very concerned at the prospect of giving support to an apartheid regime.
In all of this, disinformation is deadly and further compounds the barbarism of these war crimes. Israel is susceptible to a certain amount of international political pressure. Yet, by ensuring that citizens are not armed with the information to make their governments apply this pressure, the mass media are complicit in mass murder.
Spokesperson for Éirígí Daithí Mac an Mhaistír called for condemnation of the Israeli attacks and continued solidarity with the oppressed people of Palestine,
“Citizens of the world must unite in their absolute condemnation of the barbaric atrocities perpetrated by the Israeli regime over the weekend, but that is not enough. Each complicit state which provides succour and support to this truly ‘terrorist’ state should be forced to volte-face immediately and take the only moral position available – absolute, unreserved, condemnation.
“Failing credible reporting, it is incumbent upon solidarity activists to raise awareness and momentum around the general boycotts and protests of Israeli state violence and to continue to build pressure on what is surely the most tyrannical entity in the Middle East.
“However, it is important also that the many credible journalists fighting dead end struggles within their monolithic news agencies, make their plight known and expose the blatant political manipulation of the press.
“It was only with international pressure on complicit governments that any shift could be realised in the South African apartheid regime. It is with the same pressure on today’s same complicit western governments that the violence of the Israeli regime can be quelled.
“Our thoughts, solidarity and support continues to be with the Palestinian people. Free Palestine!”