Time to examine media role in propping up Israel-hate. As well as creating it

A week or so ago, I said in a social-media post that the towering edifice of lies and libels about Israel was collapsing. It certainly should be collapsing given the empirical evidence and irrefutable facts that constantly emerge about the deceptions, illusions and outright lies told about Israel and its actions.

So why isn’t it collapsing? Why isn’t the narrative unravelling? Do we need an investigation?

For example there was an avalanche of facts demolishing the Big Lie, “Genocide”. That allegation should always have been seen as just a heinous blood libel given the vast increase in the Palestinian population in Gaza and The West Bank during the 40 years of Israeli “rule”. But if the population-increase (from 700,000 in 1966 to over  4.75 million in 2024) wasn’t compelling enough, then there was plenty more evidence, such as the fact that the International Court Of Justice (ICJ) never issued a ruling of “genocide” against Israel at all.

In fact, not only did it never issue a ruling of “genocide”,  but it refused even to issue an emergency temporary ruling. But despite that, Israel’s culpability was deliberately insinuated and repeatedly imputed by the selective quoting (and misquoting) of the ruling. That was then reinforced and embedded through a number of strategies designed to deceive: One, obviously was the word “genocide” being endlessly repeated in the social media echo-chamber. We then had the useful confusion between international bodies with similar initials – the ICJ and the ICC (International Criminal Court). Because, while the ICJ unequivocally refused to rule Israel’s actions as “genocide”, the ICC – with great fanfare – issued “arrest warrants” for the “crime” of “genocide.” But of course, the ICC was demonstrably not impartial. Its Lead Prosecutor at the time was an ambitious Lebanese politician who allegedly circumvented ICC rules and procedures to pursue what certainly resembles a politically-motivated vendetta against Israel.

And then there were those “genocide scholars” who so helpfully reinforced the illusion by voting on Israel’s “guilt” and issuing press statements. Except their credibility collapsed entirely when it emerged that very many new “scholars” from Iraq, Iran, Qatar, etc had recently paid the $90 subscription fee to join. And curiously many had the same family names while none had academic qualifications in the appropriate academic discipline – or in many cases, in any academic discipline.

Next, came a cascade of facts to dismantle the allegations of the suffering of women and children, including statistics provided by the US Government’s Bureau of Statistics which, using Hamas’s own figures for deaths, proved that overwhelmingly in Gaza, the dead were men aged under 40. Not women. Not children but men of fighting age. And almost certainly Hamas fighters as Israel claimed. This was followed by another set of figures – this time from the United Nations–  that revealed even more startlingly how the allegation of the deaths of children was a blood libel.

The UN’s figures for vaccination in Gaza revealed that there are now more children in Gaza than there were before October 2023 when Israel’s war on Hamas began. As I said, startling, so allow me to repeat it: THERE ARE NOW MORE CHILDREN IN GAZA than there were before Israel’s war on Hamas began; the war, that is, that began after an unprovoked invasion, slaughter, butchery, rape and hostage-taking by Gaza-based Jihadists funded by extremist Islamists.

Then came confirmation from many sources, including brave, impartial doctors breaking ranks with the actively hostile Doctors Without Borders, that Gaza hospitals were regularly used for a variety of military purposes, including serving as jihadist command posts, to hold hostages and to store weapons.

And of course there were all the revelations that destroyed that other carefully crafted illusion of starvation and famine in Gaza: the faked photos and videos shown to have been created using AI; the staged events where the camera pulled back to reveal a happy, well-fed “audience”; the deliberately misused images (children sick from pre-existing conditions, or starving in other conflicts); and then we saw those UNICEF reports a week or so ago revealing that Gazans are actually better fed than people in neighboring countries. Allow me to also repeat that: GAZANS ARE BETTER FED than people in neighboring countries. More pertinently, the report also stated that Gaza has the lowest rates of acute child malnutrition in the region as well as one of the lowest rates of acute child malnutrition on the planet. Allow me to repeat that, too: GAZA HAS THE LOWEST RATE of acute child malnutrition in the region.

The Jihadists did, of course, callously place some children in harm’s way – for headlines, and photo-opps, They embedded in schools and kindergartens; they only allowed Hamas operatives to shelter in the vast network of tunnels built with stolen aid money; they prevented families evacuating to safe areas; and carefully engineered incidents which would lead to the tragic death of, say, an especially photogenic 5-year-old girl. 

And while it is tragic that any child suffers violence, hunger, privation or displacement in war, the evidence proves that widespread harm to children in Gaza was another elaborate, expensively wrought illusion; another malevolent blood-libel that the Jihadists and their Iranian/Islamist puppet-masters knew would be believed because blood-libels have a long, shameful track-record for inciting murderous Jew-hate.

Seeing all of the above (and much more empirical evidence that there is no space for here) it is clear that for the past 35 months the world has been fed fakery and delusion by the Jihadists and their allies – the actively-hostile UN and its commissions; the actively-hostile NGOs, and the actively-hostile aid agencies. They all simply lied repeatedly knowing that their fake stories – especially those claiming that children were suffering – would grab the headlines and inflame Israel-hate.

None of that, of course is news to anyone on here. Nor that for 35 months the media – an at best, supine, and at worst, actively hostile media – has been the willing accomplice to this deceit and fakery.

I have already covered many aspects of outrageous media bias and have noted the very worst offenders –   The Guardian, Sky News UK, The New York Times with that “pieta” image that went viral and, of course, the BBC including on my Blog.  But one BBC practice has played such a significant role in vilifying Israel (and Jews) that it deserves a special mention here, and by any investigation, it was how, day after day, for months on end, the BBC broadcast “news” probably scripted by – but certainly based on material provided by – Hamas-approved or Hamas-affiliated, correspondents, or from “journalists” who were Hamas fighters who’d donned a Press vest.

We know this because the BBC gleefully told us on a daily basis that Israel “did not allow journalists into Gaza” before claiming in advance of every report that it came from “a trusted correspondent”. And while it was true that Israel didn’t allow journalists into Gaza, it was primarily because protecting independent, impartial Western journalists required resources and manpower that Israel could not spare. But the result of this policy was a double-whammy PR catastrophe for Israel. Not only did it allowed the BBC (and others) to relentlessly imply that Israel feared scrutiny, but most critically, it meant that virtually every journalist working in Gaza was Hamas-approved guaranteeing they were actively hostile to Israel or colluding with Hamas for fear of losing their access (or their life). Or – based on Hamas death-notices and eulogies – they weren’t journalists at all but simply Hamas fighters wearing Press vests.

But the most shameful aspect that deserves scrutiny from an enquiry is that the BBC never once gave the slightest hint to its millions of viewers in the UK and across the globe that that was the reality of Gaza. They just went on piously intoning their “from a trusted correspondent” mantra ad nauseam.

Back to the main topic, which is that now that the wholesale deception is being revealed; now that there is this mountain of evidence of deception, why isn’t the edifice collapsing? Why isn’t the narrative unravelling? Why do we Jews still feel like we’re screaming into a howling gale or, as I asked over a year ago, still feel like we’re standing on the water’s edge with a tsunami of lies and libels crashing onto us?

Partly we know, it’s because you can’t un-ring a bell. Once a lie is out there, it won’t be erased by actual evidence; it just joins the rest of the delusional, baseless beliefs like  “Occupier”, “Colonizer”, “Apartheid state”. Obviously, Social Media is propping up the lies and libels, while new “talking points” and “topics” are put out by the Jihadist comms teams to push back us Zionists and “energize” the narrative. The newest topic is Ali G, while another, obviously, is “West Bank violence” which plays especially well because even some Zionist Jews fail to see that “Settlers” are to them what “Israel” is to the wider community – and for the same reasons; the media (including the Left-leaning Israeli press) reports “Settlers” without context; reports “effect” but not cause, and because the groundwork has been laid, including by the Israeli Left. Oh, and probably because some of the stories about settler violence are true.

But primarily the edifice is refusing to collapse, because media organizations are propping it up with their shameful silence or by disgracefully whispering when they should be shouting. While the original allegations were splashed all over the TV news and were given attention-grabbing headlines, the stories refuting and demolishing the allegations are either not reported at all, or are reported in ways that ensure no-one will notice them.

So while it is shameful that by endlessly replicating and amplifying these Hamas-propagated libels, lies and hoaxes, the BBC, Sky UK, The Guardian and other outlets fueled global Jew-hate, it is completely unforgivable that they continue to prop up the illusions by staying shtum; by failing to set the record straight in any meaningful way. Surely that failure – particularly by the BBC –  deserves an investigation. And unlike the never-published Balen Report in 2004, it deserves an independent one, by say, Ofcom. Or maybe a Judicial Enquiry, or a Government Commission.