The Observer’s Defense of Genocide

A phalanx of the U.K.’s most influential journalists has decried as a “blood libel” the reporting of Israel’s killing of thousands of children in Gaza, writes Jonathan Cook.

Wounded Palestinians wait for treatment at the overcrowded emergency ward of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City following an Israeli airstrike on Oct. 11, 2023. (Atia Darwish, Palestinian News & Information Agency for APAimages, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

By Jonathan Cook
Jonathan-Cook.net

I can’t put this strongly enough. Howard Jacobson’s article in The Observer newspaper may be one the vilest pieces of journalism published in Britain in living memory, arguing that any reporting of Israel’s documented slaughter of many thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza is a “blood libel” and anti-Semitic. It is pure genocide apologism.

But far worse is the fact that the Guardian Media Group signed off his column. This isn’t the work of one Zionist loon. A whole army of journalists brought it to print.

And note: Jacobson, odious as he is, isn’t responsible for the choice of photo. That is entirely down to The Observer newsroom.

I worked at both The Guardian and The Observer, its Sunday sister paper, for many years. The comment editor, the photo editor, the revise sub-editor, the Observer’s chief editor and all the section heads would have approved not only Jacobson’s text but that photo too.

What on Earth did they all imagine that “illustrative” photo of a blood-smeared doll suggested?

• That the many thousands of children blown to pieces by Israeli bombs are a fiction.

• That all the children decomposing under rubble are made up.

• That all the unidentified children buried in Gaza’s sands are a lie.

• That all the children dying of epidemics like polio or starving to death from Israel’s aid blockade are an invention.

That any single journalist imagined for a moment that this was an acceptable article or photo in the midst of a genocide is astounding enough.

This is a list of names of murdered Palestinians whose identities have been CONFIRMED.

It does NOT include the unidentifiable or those still under the rubble.

You have to watch for well over a minute to get to the end of the babies who were aged ZERO! pic.twitter.com/T8WRvCgY2i

— Niz (@NizMhani) October 7, 2024

But that a whole phalanx of the most influential and “liberal” journalists in the country backed it without a second thought tells us something about the depraved culture that passes for journalism in the Western establishment media.

These elite journalists are completely divorced from reality. They have no moral core, they live and work as fanatical ideologues for Western supremacism. They are as racist as their forebears who cheer-led Britain’s subjugation and colonisation of the rest of the globe.

There is no hope of ever having a healthy world as long as these war-mongers and genocide apologists are allowed to remain in charge of shaping our consciousness.

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.

Please Donate Today to CN’s Fall Fund Drive