In Five Easy Steps: The danger in an age of social media is that images of starving babies will make you look very bad. Hold firm. The Western media will come to the rescue.

Israeli airstrikes hitting Gaza, Oct. 7, 2023. (Ali Hamad of
APAimages for WAFA, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
By Jonathan Cook
Jonathan-Cook.net
A short guide on how to engineer a genocide by starvation and ethnic cleansing:
One: Choose your moment. Ok, you’ve been ethnically cleansing, occupying, oppressing and killing your neighbours for decades. The international courts have ruled your actions illegal.
But none of that will matter the moment your neighbours retaliate by attacking you. Don’t worry. The Western media can be relied on to help out here. They will be only too ready to pretend that history began on the day you were attacked.
Two: Declare, in response, your intention to starve your neighbours, treating them as “human animals,” by blocking all food, water and power. You will be surprised by how many Western politicians are ready to support this as your “right to defend yourself.”
The media will echo them. Important not to just talk about blocking aid. You must actually do it. There will be no serious pushback for many, many months.

Israelis at the Kerem Shalom crossing blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, February 2024. (Yair Dov, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Three: Start relatively slowly. Time is on your side. Let a little bit of aid in. But make sure to relentlessly smear the well-functioning, decades-old aid distribution system run by the international community — one that is transparent, accountable and widely integrated into the community it serves. Say it is infiltrated by “terrorists.”
Four: Use that claim — evidence isn’t really necessary, the Western media never ask for it — as the pretext to bomb the aid system’s warehouses, distribution centres and community kitchens. Oh, and don’t forget to bomb all the private bakeries, destroy all the farmland, shoot all the animals and kill anyone who tries to use a fishing boat, so that there are no other sources of food. You are now in control of the trickle of aid reaching what is rapidly becoming a severely malnourished population.
Five: Time to move into higher gear. Stop the international community’s aid getting in all together. You will need a humanitarian cover story for this bit. The danger, particularly in an age of social media, is that images of starving babies will make you look very bad. Hold firm. You can get through this.
Claim — again evidence isn’t really necessary, the western media won’t ask for it — that the “terrorists” are stealing the aid. You will be surprised how willing the media is to talk about babies going “hungry,” ignoring the fact that you are starving them to death, or speak of a “famine,” as though from drought and crop failure, not from your carefully laid plans.
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.
This provides a very good guide to why the media is mostly a propaganda organ of the establishment.
Each step here works even though it challenges the underlying dogma.
Recognize the roots of the dogmas and it is easy to identify it.
The Easy Five Step Guide is not needed in America. In America, we know that in the 19th century the US Army waged deliberate campaigns of starvation against the native population by ‘separating them from their food sources.’ This had the effect of driving the native populations into the “reservations” (aka “aid distribution centers”) where they could then receive some “humanitarian aid” from the US Army and its contractors. IIRC, this was when General “War is Hell” Sherman had full command of the US Army.
After of course Gen Sherman’s other humanitarian efforts such as the burning of Atlanta and his March to the Sea during the Civil War. The later also had the deliberate effect of also starving the population as Sherman spread his army out wide across the countryside and “foraged” (ie “looted”) all supplies during the growing season. I would suspect there were also frequent cases of rape as such a widely spread army would have had only loose control from its officers. Sherman’s March to the Sea was added to Lincoln’s strategy of naval blockade of the South, which as always in the Anglo ‘control-of-the-sea’ strategy, is used to deliberately starve populations.
And that’s only what Americans do here on the home continent, so I’d guess there are plenty of other examples to add.
A great satirical analysis of the GENOCIDE in progress. Well done Mr. Cook.
FREE PALESTINE
BDS israel
Satirical? It’s merely a factual description of what the Israeli state’s been up to, and in most cases, they explicitly said that was what they were doing at the time: ‘Declare … your intention to starve your neighbours’, ‘Let a little bit of aid in’, ‘bomb the aid system’s warehouses, distribution centres and community kitchens’, and ‘Stop the international community’s aid getting in all together.’ By definition, satire involves some degree of irony or exaggeration; Cook’s account is just a condensed history of the last year and a half odd.
What’s satirical about it? It’s a pretty straightforward factual account of what’s happened.
Israel has ignored every UN Resolution of criticism since its’ inception in 1948. Israel has ignored and criticised every ruling of the International Court of Justice and the International War Crimes Commission on every revelation regarding the excessive activities of the IDF against the citizens of the Palestinian community. Israel has interfered with, intimidated and ultimately killed UNWRA staff and methodically destroyed UN funded Gazan hospitals, schools, universities, food aid systems together with UN funded infrastructure such as water supply and sanitation systems. Similar deliberate destructive activities have occurred in the occupied West Bank Palestinian Territory. under the direction of the Netanyahu Government. Whatever the sympathies or attitudes of the general Israeli populace are towards the current situation in Palestinian Territories, it is clear that Israel no longer qualifies or has the right to continue as a member nation of the United Nations and thus must be expelled if a majority vote of the UN membership so declares.
“Animals”
What Gallant said was, “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
( instagram.com/reel/CyMHlhOM8nM/ )
I don’t know about the original Hebrew, but this common English translation is ambiguous. It could mean ‘We are human animals that fight,’ which isn’t too inaccurate.
Hello Svay, with all respect, it might be possible to stretch that explanation if you ignore the context and the full extent of Gallant’s words and actions. The ICC indictment is pretty clear about the culpability of the parties, including Gallant. Jonathan provided a very good link to the press conference at which Gallant uttered the threats and disparagement. Irrespective of translation, there has been no ambiguity about the subsequent intent and action.
There’s little doubt, especially in the light if the IDF’s subsequent behaviour, that my admittedly stretched interpretation would be more apt.
Quite right.
1st version implies something like Israeli troops should act with all the finesse and gentleness of wolverines, the peaceful coexistence of Tasmanian devils, and the non-aggression of cape buffaloes. Setting aside that animal behavior is about survival whereas humans allegedly have the ability to reason, to reflect, and to make moral decisions.
The 2nd, probably what was intended, casts Gazans as vermin to be eradicated, like wolves were in North America. As sport, too; a sniper shot to the head of Gazan spawn (‘child’ to irrelevant bleeding hearts) no different than pushing useless American bison to near extinction. The descriptor “human” means only that the targets are bipedal.
Good observation. I think your interpretation is the correct one.
I don’t. It is a Zionist excuse.
‘We are human animals that fight’ is hardly the kind of excuse I’d expect from zionists, who like to think of themselves as Mr God’s chosen people.
Frank Herbert opened his novel Dune with a philosophical discussion about the difference between a “human” and an “animal” and how to test bipedal humanoids to see if they are working on an animal level or a human level. The scene also serves to setup the Atreides-Harkonnen conflict as the difference between the two. Its the Harkonnen who act animal, of course.
In Mr. Herbert’s terms, I prefer to be around humans who have risen above their animal instincts and drives. And I’m happy that this sense of good taste would keep me away from an animal who has warrants for war crimes out against him like Mr. Gallant.
If one follows proper English grammar as once taught to me by a blue-haired lady in high, school, for your interpretation there should be a comma between the two adjectives … ie, ‘fighting, human animals.’ The lack of the comma would appear to leave “fighting” as the verb and the rest as the object of what is being fought.
But, I would also regard a description as a “human animal that fights” as a personal insult. From my point of view to read it in that manner would be the same as Mr. Gallant acknowledging that “we are scum.” I try to be better, and don’t have a lot of respect for either the humans that like to fight or the humans who act as animals. Thus, no respect for “human animals that fight.”
“We are breathing biological entities” is grammatically parallel to “we are fighting human animals,” and could mean we inhale biological entities (eg. viruses and fungal spores), or we are biological entities that breathe. I’d say the second version is the more likely – but then I don’t have blue hair, so what would I know?
I also regard ‘human animals that fight’ as an insult to Gallant, and a pretty mild one compared to the unprintable stuff he warrants. I didn’t suggest that was what he meant, only that his comment – or rather, its English translation – could be read that way, perhaps more appropriately.