Commentary, Israel, Media, Palestine, Racism

More US PR Stunts While Hospital Patient Burns Alive

The massive disparity between the way the mainstream press report on Israeli and Palestinian deaths is evidence that Palestinians are not viewed as human beings by the Western political-media class, writes Caity Johnstone.

Gaza solidarity protest in Washington, Nov. 4, 2023. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com.au

Listen to a reading of these combined articles  by Tim Foley here and here.

The Biden administration is performing another PR stunt about getting humanitarian aid into Gaza as election day approaches.

The White House has given Israel a 30-day notice that it needs to improve humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip or risk losing military aid—a deadline which you will notice conveniently falls after U.S. election day on Nov. 5. 

Rather than releasing this information itself, the Biden administration published it in its customary manner by laundering it through Axios as a letter that was “obtained” by the outlet and its Israeli intelligence insider Barak Ravid, thereby framing this as a news story and not a White House press release.

Not only does the 30-day deadline fall after election day, it also falls after Israel’s planned attack on Iran in response to Iran’s retaliatory missile strike on Israel. Anonymous officials have told The Washington Post that Israel will be launching this attack before the election in the U.S..

This narrative the Biden administration is trying to insert into public consciousness is already falling apart. The Washington Post’s John Hudson reports via Twitter:

“Biden’s spokesmen at the White House and State Department declined to say the U.S. will restrict arms sales to Israel if it continues to block aid, raising doubts for some about the seriousness of the U.S. warning.”

Hudson also cited the analysis of former senior Biden administration official Jeremy Konyndyk, now the president of Refugees International, regarding this development:

“After the past year, Netanyahu will be understandably skeptical that Biden will put real teeth behind this sort of warning. He has blown through every guardrail the U.S. has tried to erect, and has done so with total impunity so far.”

If this was a real thing with real teeth and not an incredibly cynical eleventh-hour election ploy, it would have happened a full year ago. As with all words the U.S. government releases about Israel, it can be safely ignored without missing out on anything of value. The Biden administration’s actions speak for themselves, and have done so for a year.

Ignore their words. Watch their actions. If you just look at the material actions of the U.S. government and Israel and mentally mute all their mountains of verbiage about it, you simply see a big country pouring weapons into a little country who uses them to attack its neighbors.

If you tune out all the words expressing “concern” for the people of Gaza, about how Israel must do more to get humanitarian aid to civilians and try to kill fewer people, about how sad and tragic and unfortunate this whole thing is but it’s oh so very important that Israel has the ability to “defend itself”, and plus Hamas and Hezbollah are hiding behind the civilians and blah blah blah blah ?— ?if you tune all that out and just look at the raw data of what’s happening, you just see a state raining hellfire on civilian populations packed full of children and using siege warfare to starve hundreds of thousands of people.

Ignore their words and watch their actions. That’s how you sort out fact from fiction in an information environment that’s saturated in propaganda and manipulation — not just with Israel, but with everything. Watch where the war machinery is going, where the money is going, and where the resources are going, and ignore all the words about why it makes perfect sense for this to be happening. Do this and you’ll have an infinitely better understanding of what’s going on in the world than you could ever hope to glean from watching CNN or Fox News.

This is a great way to see through the manipulations in your personal life as well. If you’re in a relationship with someone who keeps letting you down in various ways and always has sensible-sounding reasons for doing so, but when you look at where the resources and/or relaxation and/or pleasure are going in your relationship you see it’s mostly going toward your partner, that tells you what’s really going on there. It tells you you’re in an unequal and exploitative relationship, regardless of what words they use to explain why they keep getting their way at your expense.

Manipulators understand that you can trade words for real material benefits. Say the right words in the right way and you can get people to agree to let you commit mass atrocities. You can get them to give you control over their material circumstances. You can get them to consent to wildly unfair economic and political systems.

You can persuade them to let you destroy the biosphere they depend on for survival. You can get them to give you power, money, sex, egoic gratification —whatever it is you’re after — just by saying the right words in the right way.

And that’s basically our entire problem as a species right now. That’s why the world looks the way it looks. A few clever manipulators have figured out how to use mass-scale psychological manipulation to get us to trade away real material benefits for empty narrative fluff. That’s the only reason this genocidal, ecocidal, exploitative, bat shit insane political status quo has been permitted to exist by people who vastly outnumber the few who benefit from it.

This will keep happening until humanity becomes a conscious species. To become a conscious human is to awaken from the trance of the believed narratives in your skull and begin perceiving life as it truly is.

The difference between our mental stories about how life is happening and how it really is could not be more different — which is why manipulators are able to extract so much benefit from manipulating our mental stories about how life is happening. Manipulators will always have the ability to do this until we make the necessary adaptation as a species from believing mental narratives to perceiving life as it truly is.

Every species eventually hits an adaptation-or-extinction juncture as its conditioning runs into changing material realities on this planet. We’re at ours right now, and unlike other species who have gone extinct before us, our own behavior is responsible for the changing material realities we are running up against.

Since our behavior at mass scale is being driven by mass-scale psychological manipulation via the most sophisticated propaganda machine that has ever existed, in order to see a change in the way humans behave on this planet, we’re going to have to see a mass-scale shift in our species’ relationship with mental narrative.

It is possible for an individual to stop imbuing their mental chatter with the power of belief and start seeing life as it is, and if it is possible to do this individually it is possible to do it collectively as well. We all have this potentiality sleeping within us. It will either awaken and carry us beyond the adaptation-or-extinction juncture we now face, or we will go the way of the dinosaur.

That’s where we’re at right now. We have the freedom to go either way.

* * *

Meanwhile, nothing illustrates the malfeasance of the mass media like the vast disparity between how they’re covering the killing of four 19 year-old IDF soldiers by Hezbollah versus their complete lack of interest in a 19 year-old hospital patient who was burned alive by the IDF in Gaza.

A shockingly horrible headline appeared in Sky News on Monday reading, “Israel names teenage soldiers killed in Hezbollah drone attack — as ‘23 die’ in Gaza school strike.” It opens with the even more horrid paragraph “Israel has named the four teenage victims of a Hezbollah drone strike on a military base?—?as at least 23 people were reportedly killed in an attack on a central Gaza school.”

Notice the scare quotes and passive language in Sky’s use of “23 die” and the way these active-duty combatants are being framed as innocent little children who were the “victims” of an unprovoked attack which “killed” them.

The killings in Gaza are almost always framed by the mainstream press as “deaths” which passively happen, couched in doubtful language like “reportedly” and “according to the Hamas-run health ministry,” whereas Israelis are always “victims” who are “killed.”

The Western media’s propagandistic use of language to frame Israel in a sympathetic light and Palestinians in an unsympathetic light is widespread, and has been extensively documented.

Back in January The Intercept published a study showing that outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times used wildly different language to describe the killings of Israelis on Oct. 7 and the killings of Palestinians in the months since, with inflammatory words like “slaughter,” “horrific” and “massacre” used consistently with the former and never with the latter.

Another report by The Intercept this past April revealed that this is not an accident; a leaked internal memo from The New York Times reveals the outlet’s staff receiving explicit instructions to avoid specific language that harms Israeli information interests.

Look at the way Sky News names the armed Israeli soldiers killed in battle while framing them as innocent little babies who were slaughtered by monsters, and contrast this with the fact that you’re rarely seeing the name Sha’ban al-Dalou in the mainstream press.

Sha’ban al-Dalou was also 19 years old when he died, but unlike those Israeli soldiers, he was a civilian lying in a hospital bed, and he died a much more painful and horrific death than they did.  

If you’ve been on social media at all recently, you may have seen the gut-wrenching footage of al-Dalou burning to death in a hospital bed while still connected to his IV after an Israeli airstrike on the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, desperately crying out for help in a blazing inferno. 

Middle East Eye reports on al-Dalou as follows:

“Sha’ban al-Dalou, a 19-year-old software engineering student at Al-Azhar University in Gaza and a memoriser of the Quran, was burned alive after an Israeli air strike hit Al-Aqsa Hospital which killed three others.

“Sha’ban, who was forcefully displaced last year after Israeli forces destroyed his home, had just started his university studies in September 2023.

“Last week, Sha’ban miraculously survived an Israeli strike on a mosque that claimed 20 lives.

“Sha’ban and his mother perished in a fire after Israel attacked the hospital engulfing the tent camp for displaced civilians in Gaza.”

 

Any mentions I can find of al-Dalou’s death in the mainstream press do not name him, referring to him only as a “man” or a “person” (not a “teenager”) who died in a fire.

“Videos from the scene appeared to show one man being burned alive as bystanders could do little but watch,” The Washington Post reports.

“In multiple videos shared on social media and verified by NBC News, at least one person could be seen reaching their hands out from the flames as they were burned alive,” reports NBC News.

Contrast this with the solemn, reverent way Sky News reads out the names of the four IDF soldiers in its segment on their deaths, repeatedly emphasizing the fact that “all four were just 19 years old.”

Sky News, which Rupert Murdoch sold to Comcast in 2018, has been working overtime to spin Israel’s surging criminality in a positive light these last couple of days. Its Sunday evening report on the Hezbollah attack which killed the four soldiers made not one single mention of the fact that the attack was on a military base throughout the entire segment, leaving the audience with the impression that Hezbollah had attacked an Israeli shopping center or something.

A Sky News write-up on London’s response to Iran’s missile strikes on Israel came under fire for using a photo of the burning medical center in Gaza where al-Dalou was killed as its feature image, implying that the burning building was caused by Iran and not Israel.

The massive disparity between the way the mainstream press report on Israeli deaths versus Palestinian deaths is evidence that the mainstream press are propaganda services for the U.S.-centralized power alliance. But it is also evidence that Palestinians are not viewed as human beings by the Western political-media class. 

As Lebanese writer Lina Mounzer recently wrote, “Ask any Arab what the most painful realization of the last year has been and it is this: that we have discovered the extent of our dehumanization to such a degree that it’s impossible to function in the world in the same way.”

As active-duty U.S. airman Aaron Bushnell said before he himself burned to death, “This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

* * *

One of the dumbest things we are asked to believe about Israel’s genocide in Gaza is that all these civilians are being butchered because the Palestinians are evil and not the Israelis. That it’s the victims doing evil things and not the perpetrators.

That’s all this gibberish about “human shields” and “self-defense” is meant to do, you know. To make it look like the victims of siege warfare and carpet bombing are the ones responsible for all the death and destruction we are seeing and not the people who are actually doing it.

Can you think of anything more insulting to your intelligence? So self-evidently counter to common sense? They’re seriously asking you to believe that the people who are being starved, shot and bombed to death are the perpetrators of their own genocide, and that the side which has attacked every hospital in Gaza are just the innocent bystanders responding to unprovoked acts of aggression in the most ethical and responsible way they can manage.

Off the top of my head I really can’t think of anything more absurd.

* * *

Everyone who reacted with more sympathy or outrage over October 7 than they have over the last year of Israeli atrocities has just spent a year confessing that they don’t see Palestinians as human beings.

I am not a dog person or a cat person, but if I saw dogs or cats being treated the way Palestinian human beings are being treated I would care more than the average western liberal cares about Palestinians.

* * *

A liberal is someone who thinks the moderate position between being pro-Israel and being pro-Palestine is giving Israel everything it needs to genocide the Palestinians and then watching the genocide and saying “Oh how heartbreaking and tragic, this is all very complicated.”

Israel to continue blocking humanitarian aid from Gaza on the grounds that the aid could fall into the hands of Palestinian civilians.

* * *

Imagine getting into journalism school thinking you’ll change the world for the better, finally graduating and making your family proud, getting into a prominent news outlet, spending years working your way up to editor, only to wind up spending your days writing headlines like “Gaza children perish after chance encounter with missile.”

* * *

Here’s what it would look like if the media had used the same methods they use to report on Israel’s crimes to report on WWE star Chris Benoit strangling his wife and son to death in 2007:

Model and professional wrestling manager Nancy Benoit has been found deceased in her residence in Fayetteville, Georgia, along with her son Daniel, a seven year-old man.

Police report that both Nancy and Daniel appear to have perished from asphyxiation as a result of some tremendous force having been applied to their throats, obstructing their breathing and leading to their demise.

Authorities report that the body of Nancy Benoit was found with her legs bound with duct tape and her arms tied behind her back with coaxial cables. Toxicologists say a sedative agent was found in Daniel Benoit’s system.

Nancy Benoit worked in various professional wrestling promotions prior to her untimely demise, first with World Championship Wrestling from 1989 to 1990, with Extreme Championship Wrestling from 1993 to 1996, then returning to World Championship Wrestling for a year before departing from the promotion in 1997.

Also found on the scene was the body of World Wrestling Entertainment superstar Chris Benoit, who law enforcement officials claim appears to have committed suicide by hanging himself in the weight room.

* * *

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When all you have is an arsenal of military explosives and the unconditional support of a globe-spanning empire, everything looks like a problem that can be solved by mass murder.

* * *

Probably doesn’t help matters that the Old Testament is chock full of stories about Jews being at war with their neighbors all the time. Jewish Israelis and their Christian Zionist backers in the U.S. have been conditioned by religion to expect all this military violence and see it as normal.

* * *

The Iraq invasion was about more than just advancing geostrategic objectives; it was also an information-gathering operation. It answered a lot of questions. What happens when we do this? What happens when we completely obliterate international law in front of everyone to do something extremely evil?

Are there any consequences? Do we lose any allies? Does the world turn against us? Can we continue advancing our stranglehold of this planet by any means necessary, with any amount of violence and depravity necessary, without having to pay any meaningful price?

The answers to those questions explain why the U.S. empire has continued to behave in the way it’s behaved in the years since.

Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes.  For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.

This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com.au and re-published with permission.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

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