On Israel & Propaganda
Dispatch two
On Tuesday, October 17th, the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza was bombed. Images of children’s body remains strewn across the hospital made the rounds via Signal, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and as a receiver of this carnage, I wondered, dumbstruck; how would the international community respond, would it finally condemn Israel? Would celebrities come together to mourn? Would brands finally show support for the protection of Palestinian life, as well?
According to The Washington Post, “Hundreds are believed dead after what Palestinian officials say was an Israeli airstrike on the hospital courtyard where displaced Gazans were taking shelter.” The world stood in shock as the images of the hospital came out, the distraught look of parents fearing the worst, the father who found his children’s body parts that he placed in a plastic bag, holding on to them with pained reverence, openly mourning an incomprehensible grief. All Tuesday I felt sick, like I might throw up, comprehending the totality of the loss made my blood boil and my stomach concave inward. According to people on the ground, close to 500 people died due to the bomb blast, and many of them were children. If you didn’t know, half the population of Gaza are children, because of the low life expectancy of the population. These are the realities of living under occupation.
After the bombing, Hananya Naftali, who “is a leading Israeli Jewish influencer and human rights activist in the fight against antisemitism, antizionism, and the BDS Movement,” according to The Jerusalem Post Tweeted, “BREAKING: Israeli Air Force struck a Hamas terrorist base inside a hospital in Gaza. A multiple number of terrorists are dead.”
Just a note here that people within the Israeli government (this is a link to the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, who said there are no innocent civilians in Gaza; he knows half of Gaza’s population are children) have inferred that all Palestinians (this is a link to an interview with Tzipi Hotovely, Israeli Ambassador to the UK) are terrorists, and thus worthy of death. MK Merav Ben-Ari, a member of Lapid’s party, announced in Israel’s parliament just this week: “The children in Gaza brought it upon themselves.” Earlier this year, at a conference hosted by Haaretz, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that “the village of Hawara needs to be wiped out. I think that the State of Israel needs to do that—not, God forbid, private individuals.” Even the 95-year-old Ezra Yachin, former Israeli soldier, tells IDF soldiers just a few days ago in this video, “Erase their families, their mothers and their children. These animals can no longer live.” I think all of this is very important to understand the way propaganda is utilized in Israel, and also, what we mean when we say it’s a fascist country.
So when the gruesome images kept coming out of the hospital, including the gruesome fatalities, and the international community started to challenge Israel, Naftali backtracked, deleted the Tweet, and pronounced that it was actually Islamic jihad that was at fault.
Now Israel and America are both claiming that the rockets were Hamas misfires. Yet, the interesting thing is that CNN reported that Israel had warned Al-Alhi Hospital to evacuate days before, and even the Times of Israel published that as well. In fact, The Washington Post reported, “An Israeli rocket hit al-Ahli on Saturday, according to the Anglican Communion’s news service. It landed on the cancer treatment center, severely damaging two floors where the ultrasound and mammography wards are. Four hospital staff were injured.”
So an Israeli rocket had already hit the hospital, only days prior. Despite this, the New York Times reported, “Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, said that Islamic Jihad fired 10 rockets at 6:59 p.m. local time. One of the rockets, he said, fell to earth prematurely, hitting a parking lot outside the hospital.” This was reported, even though the Palestinians on the ground have vehemently said it was an Israeli rocket. But, I’ve surmised that Western media outlets, like the BBC and NYT, are perhaps purposely contributing to the obfuscation of events, by documenting the back-and-forth whodunnit speculation, to justify the ugliness of what is happening in Palestine right now. MSNBC reporter Raf Sanchez, who is in Israel right now, explained: “This is a classic fog of war issue,” emphasizing that because the Israeli military isn’t providing any evidence of its claims that it was a misfire, nothing can be verified on the ground because international media is not being allowed in to do so.
All of these things are generally red flags in any humanitarian crisis. Why? Well: 1. If media is not being let onto the ground, it means whoever is blocking it is usually trying to control the narrative. 2. The fact that Western media is contributing to this proliferation of mass disinformation, is a genocidal tactic. Bassam Bounenni, the BBC's North Africa correspondent, a day after the bombing, tweeted: “This morning, I submitted my resignation from BBC, as required by professional conscience.” Josh Paul, former director of congressional and public affairs at the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, resigned from the State Department for similar reasons. I added the full statements below if you want to read it. 3. According to International Law, you cannot bomb hospitals. Under the Geneva Conventions, Article 12 it clearly states: “Medical units shall be respected and protected at all times and shall not be the object of attack.” However, Israel has been breaking International Law basically since its conception as a state.
Just as I’m writing this, the Palestine Red Cross Society tweeted: “Palestine Red Crescent Society has just received a threat from the occupying authorities to bombard Al-Quds Hospital, and has demanded the hospital’s immediate evacuation. The hospital currently accommodates more than 400 patients and approximately 12,000 displaced civilians who sought refuge there as a safe haven, in addition to the medical staff. We call upon the international community to take immediate and urgent action to prevent another massacre similar to what occurred at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.”
Just a few hours ago, Israel bombed Church of St Porphyrius. “Palestinian officials said at least 500 Muslims and Christians had taken shelter in the Greek Orthodox Church from Israeli bombardments,” according to Reuters. It’s supposedly the third oldest church in the world, so the impact is extra devastating. In a statement, the Church officials wrote: “The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem expresses its strongest condemnation of the Israeli air strike that has struck its church compound in the city of Gaza.” Yet, the international media is still confused about who exactly to condemn. Which I find very, very interesting!
It’s important to note that this behavior of deferring blame is a tactic Israel uses often to delay evidence by faulting the other side, or how Biden recently referred to Palestinians as, “the other team” (this is subtle propaganda) to deny accountability. Then, by the time the evidence fully supports what Palestinians have been saying, the news cycle has already moved on. We saw this with the murder of American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot dead by an Israeli soldier last year. After initially denying these claims, the IDF finally took accountability. Yet, as you can see, even at her funeral, while the pallbearers took her dead body to be buried, IDF soldiers kicked and beat the men holding the coffin, no doubt so that her body would fall.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) there have been at least 20 journalists killed by Israeli military fire since 2001, adding 18 of those killed were Palestinian, like Abu Akleh. “No one has ever been charged or held accountable for these deaths,” CPJ said in the press release.”
In 2014, Israel bombed a school. The Irish Times reported “At least 15 people, mostly children and women, died when the school in Jabaliya refugee camp was hit by five shells during a night of relentless bombardment across Gaza. More than 100 people were injured.” The UN called it, “outrageous and unjustifiable” and demanded “accountability and justice.” The Guardian reported:
“At the UN school the first shell came just after the early morning call to prayer, when most of those taking shelter were asleep, crammed into classrooms with what few possessions they had managed to snatch as they fled their homes.
About 3,300 people had squashed into Jabaliya Elementary A&B Girls' School since the Israeli military warned people to leave their homes and neighbourhoods or risk death under intense bombardment. Classroom number one, near the school's entrance, had become home to about 40 people, mostly women and children.”
At the time, Israel also denied accountability, and later when it was confirmed that it had been them, the international community had, again, already moved on. Dead Palestinians are just more dead Palestinians.
I keep witnessing the desensitized, disassociative ways people talk about Palestinians. The detachment is palpable. I can understand, how unlearning privilege, when generationally that history is intertwined with the terror and dehumanization of the Holocaust… can be a difficult reality, but I do think that is the power in the act of healing, you can learn how to hold both. Israel is the perfect example that you can both be abused and the abuser. And, in fact, what we’re seeing, is perhaps that there’s a specific kind of sadism that brews within the denial of the already abused.
In a piece published on Human Rights Watch in 2018, entitled:
“Don’t Blame Hamas For Gaza Bloodshed” they reported: “Israeli soldiers have shot and killed more than 100 Palestinian protesters inside the Gaza Strip, near the border fence separating Gaza from Israeli territory. Israel’s government is responding to international criticism of the killings in Gaza with a line of argument it has used since the 2007 takeover of Gaza by Hamas. We regret the harm to Palestinians in Gaza, Israel is saying, but it’s unavoidable, because Hamas controls everything in Gaza, and we can’t act against Hamas without also harming protesters.”
That’s the response Israel uses to explain why it still blocks travel and prevents most of Gaza’s outgoing goods from leaving for external markets, two of the many restrictions that have driven unemployment in Gaza to 49 percent. And that’s the response that Israel has given, with official U.S. backing, to rebuff condemnation of its killing thousands of Palestinians and the maiming and wounding of thousands more, not to mention the unlivable and inhumane realities of the last 75 years of occupation.
Back in 2018, when the United Nations Human Rights Council voted 29-2 to create an independent investigation into the above shooting, Israel rejected the resolution stating that it reflected what it calls “an anti-Israel bias of the council.”
BT Newsroom and Kei Pritsker just published this (above) video documenting how many hospitals, schools and refugee camps Israel has bombed in the last ten years, noting that if it’s ever pointed out, it’s called out as Anti-Israel bias.
What we’re witnessing right now is mass censorship. The amount of people reaching out to me to say that they’re being silenced in the workplace — CAA agent Maha Dakhil, who is Libyan American, was forced to apologize after saying on her IG stories, “You’re currently learning who supports genocide.” She had to take it down and write, “I made a mistake with a repost in my Instagram story, which used hurtful language. Like so many of us, I have been reeling with heartbreak. I pride myself on being on the side of humanity and peace. I’m so grateful to Jewish friends and colleagues who pointed out the implications and further educated me. I immediately took the repost down. I’m sorry for the pain I have caused.”
Meanwhile, Lord Aleem, a British influencer, was thrown out of music venue for wearing a Free Palestine shirt, British TikToker Cara Watson was bribed to post pro-Israeli videos, so she posted this, which TikTok later took down. Vigils in Germany are being stamped out by Police, and pro-Palestinian protestors from Australia to France are being quashed. Prof Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British Surgeon treating patients in Gaza through Medecins Sans Frontier says police in London ‘harassed’ his family after a video of him went viral. And let’s not forget, just a few days ago, 6-year-old Palestinian-American Wadea Al Fayoume was stabbed 26 times to death by his Landlord, Joseph Czuba in Chicago.
In the last few days, the amount of people — from Nike to Netflix — who have revealed to me that their emails have been searched for the word “Palestine” or that companies are sending out emails that shed “appropriate language to use” adding in that the only side to be on is the Israeli side. In a piece for n+1, entitled In a Surge of Suppression, Dylan Saba writes that the growing movement for Palestine, “has been met with new forms of suppression from Israeli advocacy groups, who have increasingly turned to blacklists, doxxing, and harassment to stifle dissent.” Adding, “The leaders of Harvard University student groups were doxxed and smeared for signing a statement also expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people. Their names and faces were plastered on a mobile billboard truck that roamed around campus for days, and a “College Terror List” circulated online accusing them of antisemitism. Several also lost job offers.” It must be noted that these students are Black, so again — anti Blackness is proliferating. Saba even explained shah a Berkeley law professor published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal “imploring legal employers not to hire his own students and smearing them as antisemitic.”
The same thing happened to Ryna Workman, the student body president of NYU Law School, who wrote “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.” They also affirmed their solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle against oppression, and almost immediately, “faced a torrent of backlash in the form of online disparagement and right-wing media attention.” And in response to pressure, the dean of the law school publicly condemned Workman’s remarks. “By the evening, the law firm Winston & Strawn, where Workman had planned to work after graduating, publicly withdrew their job offer.”
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In the above video (you can watch the whole video here) Gideon Levy, an Israeli journalist and author, quotes the famous Golda Meir (the former Israeli prime minister) quote, “We will never forgive the Arabs for forcing us to kill their children.” She had also once said, “There were no such thing as Palestinians” which was a part of a widely repeated statement in her second month in office, made in an interview with Frank Giles, then deputy editor of The Sunday Times on June 15, 1969, to mark the second anniversary of the Six-Day War.
So as Biden shows his support for Israel, while people in the U.S. government call for Israel to “flatten” and “finish” the Palestinians, U.S. senators call Palestinians savages, who need to be leveled to the ground it’s important to remember that there is a history here. Both between the American and Israeli alliance, but also within the language with how they describe and speak about themselves, and how they speak about Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians. In the next dispatch, I will try to unpack the American obsession with Israel, but the current mass propaganda being thrown around is beyond concerning, and something I thought I needed to address first. I know I’m very resourced, so I want everyone who wants to know more, to be as well. I want folks to know that there’s something systematic that’s unraveling here. They thought they could destroy us, they didn’t know we were planting seeds.
They think we aren’t watching and that we aren’t paying attention to everything that they are doing. These dispatches are an act of resistance, a bid to get the facts straight. I’m reminded of why it’s important for journalistic integrity, but also why it’s so important to speak factually. My father recently told me: Speak about Palestine and speak with facts. So I come to you with a commitment I made to my father, and one I made to God. To tell the truth about who Palestinians are, who Muslim are, to shed light to the West a different interpretation of our presumed monstrosity.
“This is the heart of Israel’s problem—not one of Palestinian savagery but of Palestinian life,” writes Palestinian writer, Sarah Aziza in The Baffler. “It is a scourge on the Zionist project, our century-long refusal to disappear. It will remain a scourge so long as the state of Israel exists as a structure predicated on our death. The moment we face now is apocalyptic, the engines of destruction roaring at our gates and in our skies. Each moment is an atrocity. Genocide has begun. But Israel is mistaken if it believes this will be the final word. Palestine will live.”
I believe this, too. No matter how dark it feels right now, liberation is amidst us. We owe Palestinians our attention, we owe them our diligence, and our willingness to fight for justice and for truth. There is an information war happening, they’re using all the old tricks in the book, but during the Iraq War and post 9/11 we didn’t have the internet to catch your lies in real-time. Now we do, now we have an entire global society witnessing and ready to fight. Palestine will not only live, she will be free.
October 20th, 2023.
❤️🇵🇸❤️