The Walkout, the Empty Seats, and the Story Sold

Hiram Johnson, the American senator — not Aeschylus, as often claimed — is credited with saying that truth is the first casualty of war.

Nowhere has that seemed more apt than in Gaza.

We have had the absurdities about genocide; fairy tales about mass famine, complete with staged images of starving people of Turkish inspiration; and the old antisemitic fixation on the “bad Jews.”

All this while Hamas kept civilians as human shields, operated command centers beneath hospitals and schools, fired rockets from refugee camps, and disappeared into tunnels longer than the London Underground. Humanitarian aid was stolen at gunpoint and resold to its rightful recipients — a criminal practice openly condemned by the Palestinian Authority.

Much of the responsibility lies with us. The media.

Too many “progressive” journalists have spent these years performing virtue and advertising moral credentials, with little interest in the consequences. Whether from calculation, fashionable left-wing orthodoxy, or ignorance, the result was fuel on the fire of antisemitism and water on the mill of Hamas, Erdoğan, and what I regard as the greatest threat to democracy and civilization: Islamism.

A few days ago, our profession failed again.

The departure of delegations during Benjamin Netanyahu’s UN address was presented as an earthquake.

It was nothing of the sort.

The Palestinian mission had asked sympathetic states to bring as many delegation members as possible. The purpose was obvious.

The General Assembly has 193 delegations, six seats each: 1,158 in total. During UN week, leaders hold bilateral meetings, ministers come and go, and some countries leave one diplomat or skip the chamber.

Still, we were told that 70 countries had “walked out.” They had not. Even if they had, that would still be barely more than one third of UN membership.

Actually, it was Israel that circulated the number, but with qualifications later “lost” in coverage.

The absences of the Bahamas, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Trinidad and Tobago — all friendly with Jerusalem — were folded into the spectacle. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, hardly an Israeli ally, clarified that its delegation had been elsewhere.

Who actually left? Turkey, Tunisia, Syria, Algeria, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iran, Qatar, Lebanon, Malaysia, Indonesia, Kuwait, Mauritania and Somalia; in Europe, Spain and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Even Ireland remained.

Brazil left. Colombia, despite being listed by Anadolu and Al Jazeera, was present. Peru remains unclear; Venezuela and Chile were elsewhere.

Cuba and North Korea walked out, as did Libya, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Oman, Sudan, the Maldives, Brunei, Pakistan, Niger, Chad, Nigeria, Djibouti and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Around thirty-five countries were confirmed to have departed, 31 Muslim-majority. The UAE, Bahrain and Morocco stayed.

The five permanent Security Council members remained represented, as did virtually all of Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, India and almost all non-Muslim Asia.

This does not mean they support Netanyahu. That would be ridiculous.

Islamism, the remnants of Real Socialism—responsible for tens of millions of deaths via execution, mass killing, and starvation, with estimates approaching 100 million—along with traditional fascism, are increasingly finding common enemies. Democracies are not required to participate in their political spectacle.

Suppose 40 countries walked out, each with six delegates present: 240 people.

Impressive in television terms. I couldn’t identify nearly 240 in the footage, but let’s accept that figure. Even then, it’s 240 out of about 1,158 seats, with most countries maintaining some form of representation.

The Palestinian communications operation succeeded. That was its job.

There has never been a war without propaganda, distortion and lies by the sides involved.

But there is a vast difference between propaganda and its conscious reproduction by people whose professional obligation is supposed to be the opposite.

I understand why the mullahs in Tehran do it. I understand Erdoğan, Lula’s Brazil, the Taliban, North Korea and fascists of every despicable shade.

What I do not understand is why so many journalists can watch a well-orchestrated event involving a few hundred people, report it as if the entire world had stood up — and then return to work as if nothing had happened.