Forget the genocide of Palestinians, writes Jonathan Cook. Only when Israel exploits the deaths of Syrians living under its military occupation are there “consequences”to worry about.
The missile impact site on the soccer field on July 27 in Majdal Shams in Israel-occupied Syria, after those who were killed and wounded had been taken away. (IDF Spokesperson’s Unit/ Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
By Jonathan Cook
Jonathan-Cook.net
BBC coverage of the attack on a football field in the Golan Heights on Saturday has been intentionally misleading.
The BBC’s evening news entirely ignored the fact that those killed by the blast are a dozen Syrians, not Israeli citizens, and that for decades the surviving Syrian population in the Golan, most of them Druze, has been forced to live unwillingly under an Israeli military occupation.
I suppose mention of this context might complicate the story Israel and the BBC wish to tell — and risk reminding viewers that Israel is a belligerent state occupying not just Palestinian territory but Syrian territory too (not to mention nearby Lebanese territory).
It might suggest to audiences that these various permanent Israeli occupations have been contributing not only to large-scale human rights abuses but to regional tensions as well. That Israel’s acts of aggression against its neighbours might be the cause of “conflict,” rather than, as Israel and the BBC would have us believe, some kind of unusual, pre-emptive form of self-defence.
The BBC, of course, chose to uncritically air comments from a military spokesman for Israel, who blamed Hezbollah for the blast in the Golan.
Daniel Hagari tried to milk the incident for maximum propaganda value, arguing: “This attack shows the true face of Hizbullah, a terrorist organisation that targets and murders children playing soccer.”
Except, as the BBC failed to mention in its report, Israel infamously targeted and murdered four young children from the Bakr family playing football on a beach in Gaza in 2014.
Much more recently, video footage showed Israel striking yet more children playing football at a school in Gaza that was serving as a shelter for families whose homes were destroyed by earlier Israeli bombs.
Majdal Shams is to the left of the barrier between the Israeli-occupied portion of the Golan Heights and Syrian controlled territory, 2012. (Eviatar Bach, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Doubtless other strikes in Gaza over the past 10 months, so many of them targeting school-shelters, have killed Palestinian children playing football — especially as it is one of the very few ways they can take their mind off the horror all around.
So, should we — and the BBC — not conclude that all these attacks on children playing football make the Israeli military even more of a terrorist organisation than Hizbullah?
Note too the way the Western media are so ready to accept unquestioningly Israel’s claim that Hizbullah was responsible for the blast — and dismiss Hizbullah’s denials.
Viewers are discouraged from exercising their memories. Any who do may recall that those same media outlets were only too willing to take on faith Israeli disinformation suggesting that Hamas had hit Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital back in October, even when all the evidence showed it was an Israeli air strike.
(Israel soon went on to destroy all Gaza’s hospitals, effectively eradicating the enclave’s health sector, on the pretext that medical facilities there served as Hamas bases — another patently preposterous claim the Western media treated with wide-eyed credulity.)
The BBC next went to Jerusalem to hear from diplomatic editor Paul Adams. He intoned gravely:
“This is precisely what we have been worrying about for the past 10 months — that something of this magnitude would occur on the northern border, that would turn what has been a simmering conflict for all of these months into an all-out war.”
So there you have it. Paul Adams and the BBC concede they haven’t been worrying for the past 10 months about the genocide unfolding under their very noses in Gaza, or its consequences.
A genocide of Palestinians, apparently, is not something of significant “magnitude.”
Only now, when Israel can exploit the deaths of Syrians forced to live under its military rule as a pretext to expand its “war”, are we supposed to sit up and take notice. Or so the BBC tells us.
Update:
Facebook instantly removed a post linking to this article — and for reasons that are entirely opaque to me (apart from the fact that it is critical of the BBC and Israel).
Facebook’s warning, threatening that my account may face “more account restrictions,” suggests that I was misleading followers by taking them to a “landing page that impersonates another website.” That is patent nonsense. The link took them to my Substack page.
As I have been warning for some time, social media platforms have been tightening the noose around the necks of independent journalists like me, making our work all but impossible to find. It is only a matter of time before we are disappeared completely.
Substack has been a lifeline, because it connects readers to my work directly — either through email or via Substack’s app — bypassing, at least for the moment, the grip of the social-media billionaires.
If you wish to keep reading my articles, and haven’t already, please sign up to my Substack page.
Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years. He returned to the U.K. in 2021.He is the author of three books on the Israel-Palestine conflict: Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006), Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). If you appreciate his articles, please consider offering your financial support.
This article is from the author’s blog, Jonathan Cook.net.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Re.: “… social media platforms have been tightening the noose around the necks of independent journalists “: yes… though the security-state-pressure campaigns on social media platforms have been becoming more apparent, I suspect there has been a sudden ramping up of it all. Aaron Maté’s post and even just the url to Aaronmate.net are now blocked on FB – justified by false claims that it is ‘spam’. I’ve had several Fascist-Book posts removed because of links to factual articles of his, Seymour Hersh, and Scott Ritter – and I suddenly see reports of such censorship increasingly exponentially.
I will continue to support those indie journalists- the ones with integrity- as much as I can and urge all others to dig deeply to do the same. We’re also going to all have to find strategies that counter this censorship. I wish there was an org. (like ACLU used to be before they got so focused on “DEI” and all but abandoned the fight for foundational civil rights like that of a free press) to fight for press freedom; but we may have to build such ourselves.
Ah but you have to realise that one million Arab lives are not worth a Jewish finger nail, as the Israeli prime minister helpfully explained.
They’re only goyim, after all.
I have stopped watching the U.S. state media, though you can usually tell what’s going on by simply reversing the junk they peddle. Unfortunately, people in the UK are shut out of some alternative media and don’t seem to know how to navigate their way around the bans.
In addition to the hypocrisy of Israel blaming Hezbollah and pretending they haven’t murdered thousands of children, those who were killed in the Golan were Druze, not Jewish, and Syrian, not Israeli. Not that Israel doesn’t kill their own, as we all know well by now. Any whining about this incident should be understood to mean that Israel is the guilty party, not Syria, not Lebanon, not Palestine. If Israel weren’t artificially planted in Palestine 75-100 years ago, betcha it would be a quiet and peaceful place.
Another false flag to move their ugly agenda forward, ie, take control for the collective west of all middle eastern resouces but most specifically the energy/oil/natural gas resoutces.. But false flag is not a strong enough term for what Israel has done over the years trying to blame others for what they do in their efforts to further their agenda.
US/UK = asses of evil. That is why they get along so well…
We, in the western international spectator community have now stooped so low, that we have permitted ourselves to be seduced, and meekly succumbed to the media narratives, to accept and acquiesce in the measuring of genocidal sadism, solely by degrees of brutality.
Apparently whoever plays the foulest is the best on the field of play, and is the only stand-out who gets the recognition.
The horrors of mass killing have yet again been successfully sidelined.
All players commit fouls, when the only objective is winning the game!
It matters not which side is committing the dastardly deeds, nor why they are forced to react in like fashion, for all is now reduced to the distraction of savage entertainment, in the worlds first actually real-time virtual spectator blood-sport, where human beings have become the prey, and inhumane beings the hunters.
Human reason, as well as all wisdom, has literally been turned on its head!
The BBC also said repeatedly that Hugo Chavez is (was) a “brutal communist dictator”, and later claimed Juan Guaido was the real leader of Venezuela. The BBC, The Economist and most of the rest of MiniTrue have printed so many transparent lies about Vladimir Putin, it should be the stuff of late-night comedy shows. The BBC is lying again about Venezuela, which we have come to expect. The BBC, like the rest of the MassMediaCartel in the Anglo-sphere, are always in lock step with the Unified Hegemonic Narrative from our friends at MI6/CIA.
Thankfully, genuine journalists here at CN set the record straight.
I agree completely. This is why I support as many independent journalists as I can afford to, including CN.
Disseminating Israeli propaganda is the job of Western mainstream
media, and how convenient for mass public disinformation to
forget what Israel’s “most moral army in the world” is doing to
spread polio in Gaza by bombing any waste treatment facilities
left. Raw sewage is what’s given for the Palestinian children
to drink!
The BBC is no different from the other western media, particularly in the USA. All awful prejudice.
According to a report by Sputnik News (more trustworthy than BBC):
– Israel has refused any Western investigation by Israeli allies.
– two pieces with serial numbers matching a Falaq rocket were not shown at scene of the explosion.
– an Israeli Tamir interception missile, for example, has a 10 to 15 kilogram warhead.
– The Hezbollah Falaq rocket has a 50 kilogram explosive warhead.
– The crater from a Falaq rocket can be between 4 to 6 meters with a depth of 1.5 to 3 meters.
“Everything there indicates that we’re talking about a small-sized missile [and] not a big sized rocket of 50 kilograms.”
Elijah Magnier, Veteran war correspondent, [hxxps://sputnikglobe.com]
“British Bullshit Corporation” strikes again. I have not (and never will) visited that “dumbed down” (for the dumbed down people) website in many years now. Their form of propaganda is particularly revolting.
Nauseating. MSM/BBC hypocrisy is nauseating. We all now have months of images and information about the slaughter and suffocation of life in Gaza, the deliberate extermination ruthlessly carried out. This event must be clarified, as likely collateral from an Israeli interceptor system, instead of this routine, asinine smearing. Ambassador Freeman’s comments recommended.
When will the Western Public finally be told the TRUTH? I’m presuming “when hell freezes over”…
I desperate want to stop paying the bbc license fee but unfortunately the wife won’t have it.
I resent paying this £160 annual subscription to a bunch of lying propagandists.
I feel sorry for you. I gave away my television 12 years ago because everything on it was BS. There’s plenty of BS on the Internet too, but it can be avoided, along with all the advertising.
Hear hear. We got rid of our TV about 12 years ago also. Never regretted it. Plenty of good informative news and comment sites on the internet. John Pilger used to be slightly irritated (I thought), by people asking him where they should go for alternative news sites. The truth is out there if you look for it.
One hundred and sixty pounds?!?!?!? to buy state media? The British have actually put women in prison for not paying their fees, but a number of women online said they refused to do so and just would not answer the door if some cop showed up. I would assume that at least the state media in the USSR was free!
I got rid of mine over 40 years ago, as i didn’t want to pay the licence fee. At the time, i was one of 2% of the british isles who did not have a tv. I was told this by the inspectors who came round to see if you had a tv. I wonder if they still have those detector vans.
I do not think so. Apparently they were fake anyway; vehicles bristling with ‘antennae ‘, the very sight of them driving down your street used to prompt a rush for tv licences. I remember seeing them when I was a child back in the sixties.