The media’s role in lying about Amsterdam violence just keeps getting darker
Jonathon Cook, 13 November 2024, https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2024-11-13/media-lying-amsterdam-violence/
News outlets didn’t make a mistake. They knowingly aired disinformation and peddled fake news. Admitting that requires a troubling recalibration of perspective if we’re ever to make sense of the world.
The media’s role in peddling disinformation over last week’s violence in Amsterdam just keeps getting darker.
Owen Jones has interviewed a Dutch woman who shot the footage used by major outlets – from Sky News and the BBC to the Guardian and New York Times – to suggest that locals in Amsterdam carried out “antisemitic attacks” on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans.
In fact, as she has noted on social media, her footage shows the exact reverse: Israeli fans attacking local Dutch residents.
As I noted in my article yesterday, despite her efforts to get these outlets to correct their mistake and issue apologies, none has done so, apart from a German news programme, Taggeschau.
Jones’ interview offers insights as to why.
We know that an early report from the scene by Sky News’ reporter was one of the only ones to correctly describe the video as showing Israeli hooliganism, not antisemitism.
But Sky quickly took down that report, saying it wasn’t “balanced”. The channel then heavily re-edited the segment and issued a new version that presented the footage – quite wrongly – as evidence of Dutch locals attacking Israeli fans.
That was crucial to shoring up the false “antisemitism” and “pogrom” narratives spread by western politicians and the establishment media.
Here’s where it gets even more disturbing. The Dutch photographer interviewed by Jones says she was interviewed by Sky News about her footage before the second, re-edited report was aired.
In other words, not only was Sky’s reporter correct in her first account of the events in Amsterdam, but Sky’s news editors back in London knew exactly what the footage showed too – because the Dutch woman who filmed it had told them.
And yet Sky’s news team still edited a truthful news report to make it untruthful.
The only conclusion one can draw is that they did so to mislead their audience. They didn’t make a mistake. They didn’t act out of ignorance. They knowingly aired disinformation. They intentionally peddled fake news.
That’s something very hard for most of us to accept. It requires a troubling recalibration, a shift of perspective, if we are to understand the world we live in. But doing that is the only way to make sense of some of the most significant events that have unfolded over the past two decades.
Remember the lies we were sold by the western establishment media about “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq to justify a US-UK invasion and get western troops into a key oil-rich Middle Eastern state in gross violation of international law?
Remember the years of evidence-free claims from the entire British establishment media about the most prominent anti-racist politician of his generation, Jeremy Corbyn, who suddenly was outed as an unhinged antisemite the moment he became leader of the Labour party? Corbyn also just happened to be the first democratic socialist to head the party in 40 years.
Remember the entire western media establishment telling us that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was completely “unprovoked” – memory-holing years of warnings from leading western foreign policy advisers and analysts that the West was playing with fire: that Nato’s relentless military advance towards Russia’s borders; its meddling to overthrow in 2014 a Ukrainian government sympathetic to Moscow; and Washington’s tearing up of nuclear arms treaties with Russia leaving the latter exposed to Nato’s expansion to its borders would inevitably trigger a backlash – and Ukraine would be its epicentre?
Remember the entire western media insisting that Israel’s slaughter and maiming of many tens of thousands of children in Gaza, the systematic bombing of the enclave’s hospitals, and the mass starvation of the 2.3 million people there was not textbook genocide? Rather, it was “self-defence”. It was a legitimate war against Hamas.
None of those things should have sounded like they made any sense at the time.
And if they did, we should have noticed that the media’s presentation of the “facts” just happened to coincide precisely with Washington’s interests to prop up its most important client state in the oil-rich Middle East and isolate its one potential military rival, Russia, as part of a strategic policy of “global full-spectrum dominance” – or, expressed another way, its project to be the world’s sole imperial power, to run the planet like some untouchable godfather.
The problem wasn’t, as you feared, you. You weren’t going mad. Your suspicions were justified. You were being lied to. The media was gaslighting you.
The challenge is to find a way to liberate other minds still desperately clinging to a comforting illusion: that the establishment media can be trusted, that it is free, honest and moral.
Media Coverage of Amsterdam Soccer Riot Erases Zionist Hatred and Violence
Elsie Carson-Holt 15 Nov 24, https://fair.org/home/media-coverage-of-amsterdam-soccer-riot-erases-zionist-hatred-and-violence/
When violence broke out in Amsterdam last week involving Israeli soccer fans, Western media headlines told the story as one of attacks that could only be explained by antisemitism. This is the story right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants them to tell: “On the streets of Amsterdam, antisemitic rioters attacked Jews, Israeli citizens, just because they were Jews” (Fox News, 11/10/24).
Yet buried deep within their reports, some of these outlets revealed a more complicated reality: that many fans of Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv Football Club had spent the previous night tearing down and burning Palestinian flags, attacking a taxi and shouting murderous anti-Arab chants, including “Death to the Arabs” and “Why is there no school in Gaza? There are no children left there” (Defector, 11/8/24).
As Marc Owen Jacobs of Zeteo (11/9/24) wrote, the media coverage revealed
troubling patterns in how racial violence is reported; not only is anti-Arab violence and racism marginalized and minimized, but violence against Israelis is amplified and reduced to antisemitism.
Buried context
“Israeli Soccer Fans Attacked in Amsterdam,” announced NBC News (11/8/24). That piece didn’t mention until the 25th paragraph the Maccabi fans’ Palestinian flag-burning and taxi destruction, as if these were minor details rather than precipitating events.
Similarly, the Washington Post (11/8/24)—“Israeli Soccer Fans Were Attacked in Amsterdam. The Violence Was Condemned as Antisemitic”—didn’t mention Maccabi anti-Arab chants until paragraph 22, and didn’t mention any Maccabi fan violence.
James North on Mondoweiss (11/10/24) summed up the New York Times article’s (11/8/24) similar one-sided framing:
The Times report, which started on page 1, used the word “antisemitic” six times, beginning in the headline. The first six paragraphs uniformly described the “Israeli soccer fans” as the victims, recounting their injuries, and dwelling on the Israeli government’s chartering of “at least three flights to bring Israeli citizens home,” insinuating that innocent people had to completely flee the country for their lives.
Also at Mondoweiss (11/9/24), Sana Saeed explained:
Emerging video evidence and testimonies from Amsterdam residents (here, here and here, for instance) indicate that the initial violence came from Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, who also disrupted a moment of silence for the Valencia flood victims.
But despite that footage and Amsterdammer testimonies, coverage—across international media, especially in the United States—has failed to contextualize the counter-attacks against the anti-Arab Israeli mob.
Misrepresented video
Several news outlets outright misrepresented video from local Dutch photographer Annet de Graaf. De Graaf’s video depicts Maccabi fans attacking Amsterdam locals, yet CNN World News (11/9/24) and BBC (11/8/24) and other outlets initially labeled it as Maccabi fans getting attacked.
De Graaf has demanded apologies from the news outlets and acknowledgement that the video was used to push false information. CNN World News‘ video now notes that an earlier version was accompanied by details from Reuters that CNN could not independently verify. BBC’s caption of De Graaf’s footage reads “Footage of some of the violence in Amsterdam—the BBC has not been able to verify the identity of those involved.”
The New York Times (11/8/24) corrected its misuse of the footage in an article about the violence:
An earlier version of this article included a video distributed by Reuters with a script about Israeli fans being attacked. Reuters has since issued a correction saying it is unclear who is depicted in the footage. The video’s author told the New York Times it shows a group of Maccabi fans chasing a man on the street—a description the Times independently confirmed with other verified footage from the scene. The video has been removed.
‘Historically illiterate conflation’
Jacobin (11/12/24): “Far from acting like tsarist authorities during a pogrom, the police in Amsterdam seem to have cracked down far harder on those who attacked Maccabi fans than the overtly racist Maccabi hooligans who started the first phase of the riot.”
It is undoubtedly true that antisemitism was involved in Amsterdam alongside Israeli fans’ anti-Arab actions; the Wall Street Journal (11/10/24) verified reports of a group chat that called for a “Jew hunt.” But rather than acknowledging that there was ethnic animosity on both sides, some articles about the melee (Bret Stephens, New York Times, 11/12/24; Fox News, 11/10/24; Free Press, 10/11/24) elevated the violence to the level of a “pogrom.”
Jacobin (11/12/24) put the attacks in the context of European soccer riots:
There were assaults on Israeli fans, including hit-and-run attacks by perpetrators on bicycles. Some of the victims were Maccabi fans who hadn’t participated in the earlier hooliganism. In other words, this played out like a classical nationalistic football riot—the thuggish element of one group of fans engages in violence, and the ugly intercommunal dynamics lead to not just the perpetrators but the entire group of fans (or even random people wrongly assumed to share their background or nationality) being attacked.
But Jacobin pushed back against media using the word “pogrom” in reference to the soccer riots:
Pogroms were not isolated incidents of violence. They were calculated assaults to keep Jews locked firmly in their social place…. Pogroms cannot occur outside the framework of a society that systematically denies rights to a minority, ensuring that it remains vulnerable to the violence of the majority. What happened in Amsterdam, however, bears no resemblance to this structure. These were not attacks predicated on religious or racial oppression. They were incidents fueled by political discord between different groups of nationalists….
Furthermore, using that designation to opportunistically smear global dissent against Israel’s atrocities in Gaza as classically antisemitic only serves to trivialize genuine horrors. This historically illiterate conflation should be rejected by all who truly care about antisemitism.
Breaking with the Netanyahu government’s spin, former Israeli President Ehud Olmert said that the riots in Amsterdam were “not a continuation of the historic antisemitism that swept Europe in past centuries.” Olmert, unlike Western media coverage of the event, seemed to be able to connect the violence in Amsterdam to anti-Arab sentiment in his own country. In a more thoughtful piece than his paper’s news coverage of the event, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (11/13/24) quoted Olmert extensively:
The fact is, many people in the world are unable to acquiesce with Israel turning Gaza, or residential neighborhoods of Beirut, into the Stone Age—as some of our leaders promised to do. And that is to say nothing of what Israel is doing in the West Bank—the killings and destruction of Palestinian property. Are we really surprised that these things create a wave of hostile reactions when we continue to show a lack of sensitivity to human beings living in the center of the battlefield who are not terrorists?
The events in Amsterdam called for nuanced media coverage that contextualized events and condemned both anti-Jewish and anti-Arab violence. Instead, per usual, world leaders and media alike painted Arabs and Pro-Palestine protesters as aggressors and Israelis as innocent victims.
How Trump Will Seek Revenge on the Press
Ari Paul, 14 Nov 24,https://fair.org/home/how-trump-will-seek-revenge-on-the-pres
“Revenge—it’s a big part of Trump’s life,” Mother Jones‘ David Corn (10/19/16) wrote just before Trump was elected to the presidency the first time:
In speeches and public talks, Trump has repeatedly expressed his fondness for retribution. In 2011, he addressed the National Achievers Congress in Sydney, Australia, to explain how he had achieved his success. He noted there were a couple of lessons not taught in business school that successful people must know. At the top of the list was this piece of advice: “Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.”
Knowing this about Trump, Democrats and liberals worry that he will use the Department of Justice, especially if Matt Gaetz is confirmed as attorney general, as an unrestrained vehicle to pursue the prosecution of political enemies.
But given Trump’s constant attacks on media—“the opposition party,” as his ally Steve Bannon called the fourth estate (New York Times, 1/26/17)—journalists fear that he will use the power of the state to intimidate if not destroy the press.
Defunding public broadcasting
Trump called for defunding NPR (Newsweek, 4/10/24) after a long-time editor accused the radio outlet of liberal bias in the conservative journal Free Press (4/9/24). Rep. Claudia Tenney (R–NY) introduced legislation to defund NPR because “taxpayers should not be forced to fund NPR, which has become a partisan propaganda machine” (Office of Claudia Tenney, 4/19/24). With Republicans also holding both houses of congress, bills like Tenney’s become more viable.
Trump has previously supported budget proposals that eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (Politico, 3/27/19).
The infamous Project 2025, a conservative policy agenda many see as a blueprint for the second Trump term, calls for the end to public broadcasting, because it is viewed as liberal propaganda:
Every Republican president since Richard Nixon has tried to strip the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) of taxpayer funding. That is significant not just because it means that for half a century, Republican presidents have failed to accomplish what they set out to do, but also because Nixon was the first president in office when National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which the CPB funds, went on air.
In other words, all Republican presidents have recognized that public funding of domestic broadcasts is a mistake. As a 35-year-old lawyer in the Nixon White House, one Antonin Scalia warned that conservatives were being “confronted with a long-range problem of significant social consequences—that is, the development of a government-funded broadcast system similar to the BBC.”
All of which means that the next conservative president must finally get this done, and do it despite opposition from congressional members of his own party if necessary. To stop public funding is good policy and good politics. The reason is simple: President Lyndon Johnson may have pledged in 1967 that public broadcasting would become “a vital public resource to enrich our homes, educate our families and to provide assistance to our classrooms,” but public broadcasting immediately became a liberal forum for public affairs and journalism.
PBS and NPR, as FAIR (10/24/24) has noted, has for decades caved in to right-wing pressures—PBS by adding conservative programming, NPR by trying to rid itself of political commentary altogether. But the right will never let go of its ideological opposition to media outlets not directly owned by the corporate class.
‘Whether criminally or civilly’
Trump also has a well known track record of revoking the credentials of journalists who produce reporting he doesn’t like (Washington Post, 2/24/17, 5/8/19; New Republic, 11/5/24). It is realistic to assume that a lot more reporters will be barred from White House events in the years ahead.
While a bill that would grant the secretary of the treasury broad authority to revoke nonprofit status to any organization the office deems as a “terrorist” organization has so far failed (Al Jazeera, 11/12/24), it is quite possible that it could come up for a vote again. If this bill were to become law, the Treasury Department could use this ax against a great many progressive nonprofit outlets, like Democracy Now! and the American Prospect, as well as investigative outlets like ProPublica and the Center for Investigative Reporting.
The department could even target the Committee to Protect Journalists, which has already said in response to Trump’s victory, “The fundamental right to a free press, guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, must not be impaired” (11/6/24).
Margaret Sullivan (Guardian, 10/27/24), an avid media observer, said there is no reason to think Trump will soften his campaign against the free press. She said:
In 2022, he sued the Pulitzer Prize board after they defended their awards to the New York Times and the Washington Post. Both newspapers had won Pulitzer Prizes for investigating Trump’s ties to Russia.
More recently, Trump sued ABC News and George Stephanopoulos for defamation over the way the anchor characterized the verdict in E. Jean Carroll’s sexual misconduct case against him. Each of those cases is wending its way through the courts.
She added:
There is nothing to suggest that Trump would soften his approach in a second term. If anything, we can expect even more aggression.
Consider what one of Trump’s most loyal lieutenants, Kash Patel, has said.
“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel threatened during a podcast with Steve Bannon. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”
Trump has already gone after the New York Times and Penguin Random House since Sullivan wrote this. CJR (11/14/24) said:
The letter, addressed to lawyers at the New York Times and Penguin Random House, arrived a week before the election. Attached was a discursive ten-page legal threat from an attorney for Donald Trump that demanded $10 billion in damages over “false and defamatory statements” contained in articles by Peter Baker, Michael S. Schmidt, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner.
It singles out two stories coauthored by Buettner and Craig that related to their book on Trump and his financial dealings, Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, released on September 17. It also highlighted an October 20 story headlined “For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment” by Baker and an October 22 piece by Schmidt, “As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator.”
And just before his victory, Trump sued CBS News, alleging the network’s “deceitful” editing of a recent 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris “misled the public and unfairly disadvantaged him” (CBS News, 10/31/24).
Expect more of this, except this time, Trump will have all the levers of the state on his side. And whatever moves the next Trump administration makes to attack the press will surely have a chilling effect, which will only empower his anti-democratic political agenda.
A comprehensive review of the revolving door between Fox and the second Trump administration
Trump has picked 5 former Foxers — so far
by Matt Gert, 11/13/24
Incoming president Donald Trump’s unprecedented relationship with Fox News is once again creating a revolving door between the right-wing propaganda network and his administration. Trump has named three current or former Fox employees to high-ranking positions in the week since he was elected president — and more seem sure to follow.
Trump, an obsessive Fox viewer whose worldview is shaped by the network’s programming, stocked his first-term White House and federal agencies with familiar faces from the network. At least 20 people with Fox on their resumes joined his administration over the course of his tenure, including Cabinet secretaries, top White House aides, and ambassadors.
Trump also consulted privately with an array of Fox stars, creating a shadow Cabinet of advisers with immense influence over government affairs whose key credential was their ability to attract attention via right-wing bombthrowing. And he frequently made important decisions based on what people were telling him on his favorite network — at times with disastrous results.
As Trump ramps up his second term, he is once again plucking top administration officials from the network’s stable.
The list below will be updated as additional former Fox employees join or leave the Trump administration.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/comprehensive-review-revolving-door-between-fox-and-second-trump-administration
Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia’s Sovereignty, book by Murray Horton
Global Peace and Justice Aotearoa, 12 Nov 24, Reprinted from Covert Action Magazine
Andrew Fowler’s book Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco That Sank Australia’s Sovereignty (Melbourne University Press, 2024) was not written by a member of the peace movement. That is both a strength and a weakness. A strength, because Andrew Fowler is an award-winning investigative journalist, who has worked in mainstream Australian current affairs TV. So, it can’t be dismissed as “anti-American, anti-military” propaganda.
But it is a weakness because the author never questions the basic tenet of the book’s subject—why does Australia need any submarines at all, regardless of whether they are conventionally powered or nuclear powered. The book’s focus is a forensic analysis of who won the highly lucrative battle to supply Australia’s new subs—it was all set up to be France but then, after hidden, sub-surface maneuvering worthy of one of the book’s subjects, Australia and the U.S. torpedoed the French and did a deal among themselves.
This book is about AUKUS (Australia, UK, U.S.), the new kid on the “Indo-Pacific” block—although it should be pointed out that the UK is an awfully long way away from either the Indo or the Pacific. It is an attempt to build a new Western military alliance, initially between those three countries but with the prospect of other countries (including New Zealand) joining the ill-defined AUKUS Pillar Two at some unspecified time in the future. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The book is about the birth of AUKUS, which is all about submarines.
AUKUS
I’ve written about AUKUS previously in Covert ActionMagazine, so I refer you to that for the back story. In 2016 Australia signed a $A50 billion contract for France to build it 12 state of the art conventionally powered submarines for the Australian Navy. It was the largest defence contact in the history of both France and Australia. The right-wing Liberal Party was in Government in Australia, headed by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The book names names—the man who fronted the deception and betrayal of France was Scott Morrison, who replaced Turnbull as the Liberal Prime Minister in 2018, in an internal Party coup (a common occurrence in Australian politics). Behind the scenes, the key man was Andrew Shearer, “a vehemently pro-American China hawk” who went on to become Director-General of National Intelligence. Right up until just before AUKUS was announced in 2021, Morrison’s government continued to assure France that it was proceeding with the contract to buy French submarines.
Dumping France For the U.S.
Instead of 12 diesel-powered French subs, Australia signed up to have the U.S. and UK build eight nuclear-powered (but not nuclear-armed) subs for its Navy. The cost is astronomical—up to $A368 billion by 2055. Yes, that’s right—those eight subs will not be ready for more than 30 years. The first of them is unlikely to be ready until the 2040s so, to fill that gap, Australia will buy three existing U.S. subs from the early 2030s, at a cost of up to $A58b, with an option to buy two more. This is a staggering amount to spend on one military project from a country with a population of just under 27 million people.
“(AUKUS) was a clear victory for Washington, which had been concerned for some time that France had a different view on how to deal with the rise of China… There was barely a murmur of opposition from the media. Morrison had pulled off a major achievement of what U.S. public intellectual Noam Chomsky describes as the political art of ‘manufacturing consent’…”.
“How did it happen that the bulk of analysis and criticism of the submarine deal came from two former Prime Ministers, Paul Keating (Labor) and Malcolm Turnbull (Liberal) who, though on opposing sides of politics, were united in warning that the submarine deal stripped away Australia’s sovereignty……………………………..
Australia Expected To Fight Alongside U.S. In War With China
There is only the feeblest pretense that these nuclear submarines (still decades away from reality) will be used to defend Australia. Their role will be to patrol close to the Chinese coast, to hem in the Chinese Navy and, in the event of war, to attack China with cruise missiles. That’s the theory, anyway. The advantage of their being nuclear-powered is that they don’t have to return to port to refuel. U.S. hawks expect Australia to fight on its side in any war with China over Taiwan………………………………………………………………………………………..
Integration With U.S. Military
There is a lot more to the U.S.-Australia military relationship than some exorbitantly expensive nuclear submarines that may or may not ever materialise. There is the top-secret Central Intelligence Agency/National Security Agency Pine Gap spy base near Alice Springs, in central Australia, which is crucial to the global warfighting abilities of the U.S. There is the North West Cape facility on the westernmost point of mainland Australia, which the US Navy uses to communicate with its nuclear attack subs. There is Australia’s increasing involvement with the U.S. military and intelligence satellite programme, in preparation for war in space.
“Australia’s integration with the U.S. military was, of course, well underway before the AUKUS agreement. As already noted, Pine Gap and North West Cape are part of this. But there is also the basing of thousands of U.S. Marines in Darwin (northern coast), the stationing of nuclear-capable B-52s at Tindal (Australian Air Force base, northern Australia), and the stationing of U.S. military throughout the Australian Defence Force, including from the National Reconnaissance Office at the military headquarters in Canberra… Though Defence Minister Richard Marles has ruled out automatic support of the United States in any war over Taiwan, it is difficult to see how Australia won’t be involved. Pine Gap, Tindal, North West Cape and Perth (Western Australia’s biggest city) will all be integral to the battle.”
Change Of Government; No Change Of Foreign Policy
Scott Morrison’s Liberal government was voted out at the 2022 Australian election and was replaced by Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party. But Australia’s commitment to AUKUS remained unchanged………………………………………………………………………………
“Nuked” specifically attributes Labor’s fervent desire not to be seen as “anti-American” to the events of 1975, when the Central Intelligence Agency and its local collaborators, succeeded in getting Gough Whitlam’s Labor government overthrown in a bloodless coup. The U.S. covert state was particularly concerned about Whitlam’s revelations about its Pine Gap spy base and possible threats to close it. Jeremy Kuzmarov has recently written about this in CovertAction Magazine (15/11/23), so I refer you to that.
For half a century the Australian Labor Party has lived in fear of the same thing happening again, and has bent over backwards to prove its loyalty to the U.S.
………The consequences of the fear that drove the ALP leadership to embrace AUKUS with barely a second thought will haunt them for years to come. Just as Morrison was only too willing to trade Australian’s independence for the chance to win an election, so too was Labor. Now it is left to make work a deeply flawed scheme that, more than ever before, ties Australia’s future to whoever is in the White House.”
Jobs For The Boys
And what has happened to Scott Morrison, who retired from politics in 2024? “Along with Trump’s former CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, Morrison became a strategic adviser to U.S. asset management firm DYNE Maritime, which launched a $157 U.S. million fund to invest in technologies related to AUKUS. ………
“Morrison also became Vice-Chair of American Global Strategies (AGS), headed by former Trump National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien. AGS, stacked with former Pentagon, White House and State Department officials, boasts that it ‘assists clients as they navigate U.S. government processes,’ a useful addition to any company wanting to boost profits in the burgeoning area of military spending.”
New Zealand & AUKUS
…………………………………………………………………………… There are plenty of similarities between Australia and New Zealand but also significant differences. Whereas Australian governments of either party fall over themselves to loyally serve the U.S. empire, New Zealand has been nuclear free by law since the 1980s (and it was an Australian Labor government, on behalf of the U.S., which tried to pressure New Zealand to drop the policy. That pressure backfired).
……………………………………………………………….But there is a constant push to get New Zealand further entangled in the U.S. war machine, including Pillar Two of AUKUS (which has been, thus far, only identified as involving “advanced military technology”). New Zealand currently has a very pro-American Government, which is already a non-member “partner” of NATO and which is eager to serve the U.S……………………………………..
Not All New Zealand Politicians Lining Up To Grovel To Uncle Sam.
For a refreshing contrast, here’s an extract from a recent (2/10/24) press statement from Te Pāti Māori, the indigenous party, which has six Members of Parliament (out of 123). “Meanwhile the New Zealand Government is in talks with the United States about joining AUKUS to further support their war efforts. This represents the next phase of global colonisation, and it is being negotiated behind closed doors,” Co-Leader Rawiri Waititi said.
“The U.S. wants to use Aotearoa as a Pacific spy base. This could mean the end of our longstanding nuclear free policy to allow their war ships into our waters. AUKUS threatens our sovereignty as an independent nation, and the Mana Motuhake of every nation in the Pacific. It threatens to drag Aotearoa into World War 3,” said Waititi.
“The New Zealand government is putting everyone in Aotearoa at risk through their complicity. They must end all talks about joining AUKUS immediately. They must sanction Israel and cut ties with all countries who are committing and aiding war crimes,” said Co-Leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer………………………………. more https://gpja.org.nz/2024/11/12/nuked-the-submarine-fiasco-that-sank-australias-sovereignty-by-murray-horton/
How a Secluded 1984 Conference Forged Israel’s Unprecedented Influence Over US Media
Buoyed by its success, the operation soon expanded to include school and university students worldwide, training them to act as vigorous advocates for Israel in classrooms and on campuses. Graduates of these Israeli-funded programs frequently enter influential fields, including journalism, where they continue to promote Hasbara narratives and defend Israel’s actions. The impact on Western media coverage of Palestine has been profound.
Mint Press News, November 11, 2024
As Israel’s October 1 invasion of Lebanon unfolds, the media’s complicity in shaping public perception raises urgent questions, particularly when viewed through the lens of a controversial 1984 conference where influential advertising and media figures gathered to refine Israel’s narrative strategies. This conference laid the groundwork for a sophisticated propaganda campaign—Hasbara—that sought to sanitize Israel’s actions and cast its military operations in a favorable light. Today, as Western journalists whitewash, distort, and conceal Israel’s the realities of Israel’s deadly campaign of violence, the enduring legacy of this meeting becomes alarmingly clear, revealing how narratives crafted decades ago continue to shape the coverage of a conflict that claims countless lives.
…………………………………………………………………………… The mainstream media’s systematic use of distancing and evasive language, omission and other duplicitous chicanery to downplay or outright justify Israel’s murder of innocent civilians while simultaneously dehumanizing their victims and delegitimizing Palestinian resistance against brutal, illegal IDF occupation is as unconscionable as it is well-documented. Amazingly though, ‘twasn’t ever thus. Once upon a time, mainstream news networks exposed Israel’s war crimes without qualification, and anchors and pundits openly condemned these actions on live TV to audiences of millions.
The story of how Western media was transformed into Israel’s doting, servile propaganda appendage is not only a fascinating and sordid hidden chronicle. It is a deeply educational lesson in how imperial power can easily subordinate supposed arbiters of truth to its will. Comprehending how we got to this point equips us with the tools to assess, identify, and deconstruct lies large and small – and effectively challenge and counter not only Israel’s falsehoods but the entire settler colonial endeavor.
‘Neighborhood Bully’
On June 6, 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon. The effort was ostensibly intended to drive Palestinian Liberation Organization freedom fighters away from their positions on Israel’s northern border. But, as the IDF savagely pushed ever-deeper into the country, including Beirut, it became clear that ethnic cleansing, massacres, and land theft were – as in Palestine – the true goal. Throughout the Lebanese capital, news crews from major networks and reporters from the West’s biggest newspapers were waiting.
Israel’s rapacious bloodlust and casual contempt for Arab lives had hitherto been, by and large, successfully concealed from the outside world. Suddenly, though, scenes of deliberate IDF airstrikes on residential housing blocks, Tel Aviv’s trigger-happy soldiers running amok in Beirut’s streets, and hospitals overflowing with civilians suffering from grave injuries, including chemical burns due to Israel’s use of phosphorus shells, were broadcast the world over, to nigh-universal outcry. As veteran NBC news anchor John Chancellor contemporarily explained to Western viewers:
What in the world is going on? Israel’s security problem, on its border, is 50 miles to the south. What’s an Israeli army doing here in Beirut? The answer is we are now dealing with an imperial Israel, which is solving its problems in someone else’s country, world opinion be damned.”
Global shock and repulsion at Israel’s conduct would only ratchet during the IDF’s resultant illegal military occupation of swaths of Lebanon. …………………………………………………………..
To say the least, Israel had an international PR disaster of historic proportions on its blood-soaked hands…………………………………………………..
So it was that in the summer of 1984, the American Jewish Congress – a major Zionist lobby organization – convened a conference in Jerusalem, Israel’s Public Image: Problems and Remedies. It was chaired by U.S. advertising supremo Carl Spielgovel, who a decade earlier provided pro bono advice to the Israeli government on strategies for publicly communicating why Tel Aviv refused to adhere to the terms of the Henry Kissinger-brokered 1973 Sinai Accords. Spielgovel later recalled:
It occurred to me then that the Israelis were doing a good job at training their military people, and they were doing a relatively good job at training their diplomatic corps. But they weren’t spending any time training information officers, people who could present Israel’s case to embassies and TV anchormen around the world. Over the years, I made this a personal cause celebre.”
The 1984 Jerusalem conference offered Spielgovel and a welter of Western advertising and public relations executives, media specialists, editors, journalists, and leaders of major Zionist advocacy groups an opportunity to achieve that malign objective. Together, they hammered out a dedicated strategy for ensuring the “crisis” caused by news reporting on the invasion of Lebanon two years earlier would never be repeated. Their antidote? Ceaseless, methodical, and wide-ranging “Hasbara” – Hebrew for propaganda – for “changing people’s minds [and] making them think differently.”
‘Big Scoop’
The AJC subsequently published records of the conference. They offer extraordinarily candid insight into how multiple Hasbara strategies, which have been in perpetual operation ever since were birthed. …………………………………………………………
There was extensive discussion of how to present “unpalatable policies” to Western populations…….. ” The necessity of training the Jewish diaspora in countering criticism of Israel was considered paramount.
………………….. media framing on Israel’s actions needed to be determined in advance…………………
It was also suggested that on an individual and organizational level, Zionist activists serve as a rapid reaction force, deluging news outlets with complaints en masse should their coverage of Israel be at all critical. One attendee boasted of their personal success in this regard:
“One day CBS News Radio reported that an American soldier had been hurt by stepping on an Israeli cluster bomb at the Beirut airport. I called CBS to point out that no one had established the bomb was an Israeli one. One hour later CBS reported that an American soldier had stepped on a bomb; this time the report omitted any reference to Israel.”
‘Frequent Violations’
Another significant recommendation came from Carl Spielgovel: creating a “training program” to bring carefully selected Israeli information specialists into U.S. advertising, PR agencies, and major news outlets. The initiative aimed to equip them with industry insights, ensure Hasbara efforts were maximized, and establish close relationships between Israeli officials and the organizations to which they were assigned.
These “specialists” would operate under the guidance of a U.S.-Israeli council described as “wise persons who can project different scenarios and how to cope with them” on complex issues like “annexation and Jerusalem.”
……………………………………………………………….. Since then, a dedicated Hasbara program aimed at cultivating skilled Zionist advocates in the U.S. has operated continuously.
Buoyed by its success, the operation soon expanded to include school and university students worldwide, training them to act as vigorous advocates for Israel in classrooms and on campuses. Graduates of these Israeli-funded programs frequently enter influential fields, including journalism, where they continue to promote Hasbara narratives and defend Israel’s actions. The impact on Western media coverage of Palestine has been profound.
To a significant degree, the portrayal of Tel Aviv as “the gallant little underdog democracy fighting for survival against all the odds” has been firmly reestablished. Despite the ongoing crisis in Gaza, mainstream outlets seldom provide context for Palestinian resistance to Israel’s policies of annexation, occupation, and military actions. Coverage nearly always frames Israel’s actions as “self-defense” against “terrorist” threats, with Western journalists keenly aware of potential repercussions for diverging from this narrative.
The rapid reaction force proposed at the 1984 AJC conference remains highly active. An extensive network of Hasbara-trained individuals and Israel lobby organizations is always on standby, ready to pressure and intimidate news outlets if coverage diverges from favorable framing or casts Israel in a critical light. As a senior BBC producer once confided to veteran media critic Greg Philo:
“We wait in fear for the telephone call from the Israelis. The only issue we face then is how high up it’s come from them. Has it come from a monitoring group? Has it come from the Israeli embassy? And how high has it gone up our organization? Has it reached the editor or director general? I have had journalists on the phone to me before a major news report, asking which words can I use – ‘is it alright I say this’?”
An October exposé by Al Jazeera, citing testimony from BBC and CNN whistleblowers, detailed “pro-Israel bias in coverage, systematic double standards, and frequent violations of journalistic principles” at both networks.
Were it not for the persistent investigations by outlets like MintPress News, The Grayzone, and Electronic Intifada, unfounded allegations promoted by Israel since the outset of the Gaza conflict—such as claims of Hamas committing mass rape or beheading infants—might never have been thoroughly debunked and might still shape the “context” for Israel’s actions against Palestinians. Meanwhile, countless concerned citizens have actively challenged Western narratives on the conflict in real-time across social media, a groundswell of critique that may be fueling pushback within some mainstream newsrooms. ……………………………………. https://www.mintpressnews.com/1984-hasbara-conference-israel-influence-us-media/288534/
A massacre within a massacre: How journalists reporting on Gaza deaths are being targeted
Over 160 media workers have been killed and 60 detained as the methodical destruction of the brutalized Strip continues.
Eva Bartlett, 9 Nov 24 https://www.rt.com/news/606860-journalists-killed-reporting-gaza/
In spite of experiencing two Israeli wars on Gaza, I never imagined the horrific scenes coming out of northern Gaza now: Israel is exterminating the population in broad daylight, broadcast for all the world to see.
And no one is doing a damn thing to stop it.
Israel has besieged northern Gaza for weeks, preventing most humanitarian aid from entering, putting the population of 400,000 already starving Palestinian civilians in the north at severe risk of full starvation. The Israeli parliament has voted to ban UNRWA, the United Nations agency for humanitarian aid, which has been the sole lifeline for many Palestinians.
Israeli forces have also bombarded water stations and wells, as well as cutting off communications with the outside world, depriving people of access to water, and leaving them trapped and isolated.
According to Euro-Med Monitor, in the last two weeks, 500 Palestinians have been confirmed dead in northern Gaza, “and thousands more have sustained injuries. Many remain unaccounted for, either in the streets or buried under the debris.”
As they have done elsewhere throughout the Gaza Strip during more than one year of genocide, Israeli forces are targeting hospitals in Gaza’s north. Euro-Med reported that, “Israeli army forces surrounded the Indonesian Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia. They fired two artillery shells at the hospital, cut off its electricity, and targeted anyone moving in the area.”
The army is firing on medics and other rescuers, as they’ve done throughout 2023-2024, and as they did in 2009, when medics I was with came under Israeli sniper fire, and another medic I knew was killed by a flechette (dart) bomb. By killing the rescuers and destroying the hospitals, Israel ensures maimed Palestinians will go without medical care and probably die.
This is, of course, illegal under international law. But as Israel’s genocidal actions have shown the world, the Israeli government, army and settlers believe laws don’t apply to them. Take the horrific video of an Israeli drone precision-targeting a Palestinian child, killing it, and then bombing the civilians who ran to try to rescue the child. Par for the course for the Israeli army. Were the perpetrator one of the United States’ enemies, there would be calls for no-fly zones, sanctions and corporate media howling 24/7
Not content to merely murder Palestinian civilians by bombing, sniping and starvation, the Israeli army has reportedly been deploying robots with explosives and leaving booby trapped barrels to remotely detonate.
The scenes which journalists have been able to publish are surreal, like science fiction, with quadcopters policing the streets. A week ago, a friend told me in a message that he had to choose between starving or risking being shot dead by Israel soldiers or quadcopters if he tried to get bread.
Some days ago, he messaged me at 4 in the morning: Israeli tanks were outside his home, the audio he sent was terrifying. He chose to stay in his home rather than endure another Nakba.
I don’t know if he is alive now.
War on journalists
Earlier this month, Palestinian cameraman Fadi al-Wahidi was shot in the neck by an Israeli quadcopter, leaving him paralyzed. Aside from Al Jazeera, for which Fadi worked, most Western media and journalist projection organizations are unsurprisingly silent.
Reporters Without Borders, which I previously wrote about for its downplaying the number of Palestinian journalists killed by Israel, has no entry on Fadi. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CJP), at least, does. Its entry notes:
“Al Wahidi was critically injured in the neck by a bullet fired from an Israeli reconnaissance aircraft while Al Wahidi and correspondent Anas Al-Sharif were covering an Israeli siege on northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp. Both men were wearing “Press” vests and clearly identifiable as journalists.”
Anas al-Sharif – who continues to courageously report from northern Gaza – told CJP they’d been in an area “completely far from the areas of operations of the Israeli occupation forces,” and full of residents when, “an Israeli reconnaissance drone fired at us. After the shooting, we tried to move to another safer place and hide from any danger, but a bullet from the plane hit our colleague Fadi Al-Wahidi in the neck, which led to his complete paralysis.”
Wahidi has since fallen into a coma. His colleagues and friends are pleading for some sort of international intervention to allow him to be taken abroad for medical care, to save his life.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported, citing the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), that between 7 October 2023 and 10 October 2024 168 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed in the Gaza Strip, including 17 women, 360 were injured, and 60 were detained.
The extermination campaign continues
It’s absolutely devastating to watch every day pass with alarming new updates from or on northern Gaza. Like Anas al-Sharif, Palestinian journalist Hossam Shabat courageously reports apocalyptic scenes of Israeli bombarding in northern Gaza.
In a live update on X recently, he said:
“We are witnessing genocide and ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, specifically in Jabalia, which is under siege from all directions. Israeli occupation forces are bombing displaced civilians, detaining them, and attempting to ethnically cleanse them. They are targeting shelters for displaced civilians, and bodies are scattered everywhere in the north, along the roads. Thousands of civilians are being forcefully displaced (ethnically cleansed) from the north.”
Meanwhile, in a bout of meaningless theatrics, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin have “demanded Tel Aviv improves the humanitarian situation in Gaza within 30 days or risk losing US military aid and face possible legal action.”
But clearly Israel’s biggest backer is spouting nonsense: there will be no cut to military aid, there will be no legal action, the US will never take a position to force Israel to cease the massacre in Gaza. In fact, giving Israel one month before any supposed repercussion is, in my opinion, giving Israel a green light to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza as quickly as possible.
Israel seems hell-bent on implementing former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s ‘Five Fingers’ project, which envisioned carving Gaza into segments, all under Israeli security control. If this is Israel’s intent, we will see the same bloody scenes from northern Gaza repeated block by block Israel all over the rest of the already brutalized Strip.
Prepping Readers to Accept Mass Slaughter in Lebanese ‘Strongholds’
Belén Fernández, November 9, 2024, https://fair.org/home/prepping-readers-to-accept-mass-slaughter-in-lebanese-strongholds/
Back in May 2015, the New York Times’ Isabel Kershner decided to moonlight as an Israeli military propagandist by penning an alleged exposé (5/12/15)—headlined “Israel Says Hezbollah Positions Put Lebanese at Risk”—in which she diligently conveyed all that Israel had to say about Hezbollah’s infrastructure in south Lebanon.
The minuscule hamlet of Muhaybib, for example, was said to contain no fewer than “nine arms depots, five rocket-launching sites, four infantry positions, signs of three underground tunnels, three anti-tank positions and, in the very center of the village, a Hezbollah command post.” In the village of Shaqra, home to approximately 4,000 people, the Israeli army had meanwhile identified some “400 military sites and facilities belonging to Hezbollah.”
Only after 11 full paragraphs of transmitting the Israeli line did Kershner manage to insert the disclaimer that “the Israeli claims could not be independently verified.” But by that time, of course, the damage had been done, the reader having already been persuaded that south Lebanon was one big Hezbollah military installation, where Israel could not afford to concern itself with civilian lives in any future conflict. Driving the point home was former Israeli national security adviser Yaakov Amidror, who informed Kershner that “many, many Lebanese will be killed” in the next showdown with Hezbollah.
I happened to be in south Lebanon at the time of the article’s publication, and drove over to Muhaybib and Shaqra to check out the fearsome landscape. Though I did not encounter any Hezbollah command posts, I did see some schoolchildren, elderly folks, bakeries, farms, clothing shops and, in Shaqra, a colorful establishment offering “Botox filling.”
Legitimizing destruction
Nine years have now passed since Kershner’s bout of weaponized journalism, and Amidror’s words have certainly rung true: Many, many Lebanese have been killed in Israel’s latest war on Lebanon.
From October 2023 through November 5, more than 3,000 people have been slaughtered in the country—among them 589 women and at least 185 children. The vast majority were killed in September through November of 2024, when Israel ramped up its assault on Lebanese territory as a sideshow to the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip.
More than 800,000 people have been displaced. Muhaybib has literally been blown up in its entirety, and much of Shaqra has been pulverized as well. Israel has damaged or destroyed nearly a quarter of all buildings along the entire southern border.
And while the United States newspaper of record and other Western corporate media outlets have not exactly been preemptively calling in the strikes, à la Kershner, they have nonetheless done a fine job of legitimizing mass killing, displacement and destruction in other ways.
For starters, as FAIR has written about recently (10/10/24), there’s the insistence on following the US/Israeli lead in branding Hezbollah a “terrorist” organization and a “proxy” for Iran. Never mind that the Shia political party and armed group emerged as a direct consequence of the 1982 US-backed Israeli invasion of Lebanon that killed tens of thousands of people and constituted a textbook case of terrorism, including the cold-blooded murder of thousands of Palestinian refugees and Lebanese civilians in the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
When Israel in September staged an unprecedented terrorist attack in Lebanon by detonating personal electronic devices across the country — killing 12 people, including two children—CNN (9/17/24) spun the episode thusly: “Exploding Pagers Injure Members of Iran-Backed Terror Group.”
Converting communities into targets
Then there is the matter of the term “Hezbollah stronghold,” to which pretty much every corporate media outlet has proved itself hopelessly addicted when describing the densely populated neighborhood of Dahiyeh in the Lebanese capital of Beirut.
The Guardian (10/4/24) was one of numerous outlets that referred to Dahiyeh, a densely packed Beirut suburb, as a “Hezbollah stronghold”—painting the entire community was a legitimate military target.
Devastated in Israel’s 2006 war on Lebanon, Dahiyeh is now once again under maniacal bombardment by the Israeli military, which on September 27 leveled a whole residential block in order to assassinate Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah. Sure enough, the New York Times (9/27/24) was standing by with the headline: “Israel Strikes Hezbollah Stronghold in Attempt to Kill Leader.”
Just google “Hezbollah stronghold” and you’ll see what I mean — that the press is apparently incapable of talking about Dahiyeh any other way. Or, if you’re not in the mood for googling, here are some illustrative links to the Washington Post, Guardian, Wall Street Journal, ABC News, NBC News, Reuters and Associated Press. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
To be sure, there is substantial public support in Dahiyeh for Hezbollah—not that support for an anti-Zionist resistance organization should make anyone fair game for extrajudicial slaughter. There is also support for numerous other Lebanese parties and groups in this neighborhood of nearly 1 million people, although the “stronghold” designation tends to erase the diversity that exists.
But the real problem with the terminology is that, when deployed in the context of war, a “stronghold” is more likely to be interpreted as “a fortified place”—the first definition of the word appearing in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. In that sense, then, Dahiyeh is effectively converted into a legitimate military target, its inhabitants dehumanized by the linguistic arsenal of a media establishment that is ultimately committed to validating Israeli massacres of civilians.
And it’s not only Dahiyeh. The press has now expanded its obsessive use of the “stronghold” descriptor in accordance with Israel’s current killing spree in south Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley in the east of the country, both of which regions we are now continuously reminded are also “Hezbollah strongholds.” When the Lebanese health ministry reported 60 killed in airstrikes in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley on October 29, the BBC noted that “rescue efforts were still under way in the valley, which is a Hezbollah stronghold.”
Back in July, the same outlet had warned that the south Lebanese city of Tyre would “be in the firing line in the event of all-out war, along with the rest of southern Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold.” Four months later, Tyre and the rest of southern Lebanon are an unmitigated horrorscape, blunted for a Western audience by media euphemism.
The Government-Media-Academia Misinformation Machine and “Ukraine’s Victory”
Russian and Eurasian Politics, by Gordonhahn, November 9, 2024
The U.S. government’s infiltration into mass media and academia may finally become exposed and its enormous misinformation and divisive effect on the American body politic perhaps diminished as a result of its massive overeach in a matter of war and peace – specifically the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War.
Those who comprise the government-media-academia complex have teams of researchers, access to government data, vast funding and other resources. They know or can learn the facts but choose to relay to the public fake realities. In short, what I describe below are not mistakes but intentional and well-worked out lies designed to manipulate the public contrary to its interests. If the reality were offered to the public, it would see how it runs counter to its interests and would seek policy changes.
This is what we heard from the flagship propaganda organ of said complex – the New York Times – in July as Russia’s offensive gained steam: „Russia is unlikely to make significant territorial gains in Ukraine in the coming months as its poorly trained forces struggle to break through Ukrainian defenses that are now reinforced with Western munitions, U.S. officials say“ (www.nytimes.com/2024/07/09/us/politics/russia-ukraine-nato.html). At the same time, the axis in the persons of such ‚observers‘ as former U.S. General David Patraeus and former US ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul was feeding the American public quite the same line: that Ukraine was winning and would win (even as it said that Russia threatened all of Europe with military conquest).
There are alternative, if ostracized and little known sources for gathering real facts. Not to toot my own horn, but I noted in January 2024 on Glenn Diessen’s and Alexander Mercouris’s podcast that Russia would be very gradually increasing its territorial gains in hunting and ultimately defeating the Ukrainian armed forces: „There will be a very, very gradual acceleration, intensification of the offensive, the Russian…‚aggressive attrition‘ will gradually become more successful in that more and more territory will be taken each month, a few square kilometers more each month in the winter and spring, and then the big question becomes: Will Russia decide to turn that gradual succes into a major offensive…“ (https://youtu.be/P_MJi5H6HKU?si=rxRiaE0EglSgbclw, at the 1:00:45 mark).
In February 2024, I wrote: „This winter, with the demonstrated failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive obvious by autumn, we have begun to witness Russian forces’ transition to attrit and advance across the entire front, except on the Krynki foothold on the southern Dniepr in Kherson. In November, Russian forces occupied an addition some 13 kilometers and tripled that result in December. We can expect in January a multiple of December’s 40+ kilometers, evidencing the second ‘advance’ aspect of ‘attrit and advance’.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………….Now, as Ukraine’s defense lines are dissolving and its forces are retreating to the Dnieper River, the propaganda complex’s deceptive narrative has come in grave danger of being utterly exposed. This and nothing else, except perhaps a command from Pennsylvania Ave. or Langley, the complex flagship New York Times is coming clean in order to cover its ass, albeit. And it demonstrates what I — a lone, unknown, fully ostracized researcher — was writing early this year.
The intellectual universe in the US is so spoiled that the NYT had to turn to a foreign institute to provide data for its belated, truth-telling, coming clean article. It cites Finnish mapper and analyst Pasi Paroinen. Citing Paroinen, the NYT admits now Russian forces have been making large gains for three months: „Half of Russia’s territorial gains in Ukraine so far this year were made in the past three months alone, according to Pasi Paroinen, a military expert with the Finland-based Black Bird Group.“ „In August, Ukraine’s defensive lines buckled, and Russia rapidly advanced 10 miles“ In October, Russia made its largest territorial gains since the summer of 2022, as Ukrainian lines buckled under sustained pressure. October’s gains amounted to “more than 160 square miles of land in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region”(www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/31/world/europe/russia-gains-ukraine-maps.html). But the However, NYT nor any other US mainstream media source or expert mentioned Russia’s August gains.
Moreover, the NYT came clean on something even more important: the im pending, if not imminent collapse of the Ukrainian frontline defense and army: NYT reported in a different piece that „Ukraine has enough soldiers to fight for six to 12 more months, one official said. After that, he said, it will face a steep shortage” (https://archive.is/QgomM). Collapse can occur well before the ‚steep shortage.‘
The NYT article only cites Poinenen regarding Russian gains in Donetsk, but Russian gains are being made all along the front line from the north in Kharkiv to the south in Zaporozhe. Paroinen’s measurement of overall Russian gains so far in 2024 confirms my own expectation of gradually increasing Russian territorial gains:………………………………………………………………………………………..
Naturally, the NYT tries to cover up the fact that all during this period of mounting Russian gains until the last day in October, it as the rest of the U.S. and Western mass media told readers that there was a stalemate in Ukraine…………………………………………………
The NYT and other organs of the government-media-academia do one thing somewhat effectively: glossing over its presentation of fables over fact, covering its ass, its tracks and the dripping Ukrainian blood (not to mention that of Russians and others). Will Americans see state apparat and its media-academic complex now? https://gordonhahn.com/2024/11/09/the-government-media-academia-misinformation-machine-and-ukraines-victory/
101 BBC journalists say it is biased against Palestine
Sat 2 Nov 2024, https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/101-bbc-journalists-say-it-is-biased-against-palestine/
JVL Introduction
The BBC has been accused of bias against Israel but here over 230 people, including 101 BBC journalists have argued that there is a strong bias towards Israel and certainly the Israeli narrative. The letter was sent to the Independent arguing that Broadcaster bias is failing to hold Israel to account.
It is noteworthy that only 72 of the 230 signatories felt able to sign openly and this included none of the BBC journalists. Distrust of mainstream media is growing but there is a real need for unbiased reporting. The BBC has previously claimed that the fact it receives complaints from those in support of Israel as well as those in support of Palestine shows its impartiality. This letter, and many other articles and letters before, show this to be nonsense.
LL
This article was originally published by Digi on Fri 1 Nov 2024. Read the original here.
Hundreds of journalists and personalities accuse BBC of bias in favor of Israel and call for a return to “fairness and impartiality”
More than 230 members of the media industry and personalities, including 101 BBC employees, accuse the British media outlet of providing favourable coverage of Israel and call on the public broadcaster to “recommit to fairness, accuracy and impartiality” in its reporting on the Gaza Strip.
Digi
In a letter sent to Tim Davie, signed by more than 230 members of the media industry, including 101 anonymous BBC employees, the corporation is criticized for failing to enforce its own editorial standards by lacking “fair evidence-based journalism in its coverage of Gaza.”
Seen exclusively by The Independent, the letter, which was also signed by Baroness Sayeeda Warsi and actress Juliet Stevenson, calls on the BBC to report “without fear or favour” and “to recommit to the highest editorial standards – with an emphasis on fairness, accuracy and due impartiality.”
The letter also calls on the broadcaster to implement a number of editorial commitments, including “reiterating that Israel does not offer foreign journalists access to Gaza; clarifying when there is insufficient evidence to support Israeli claims; clarifying where Israel is the perpetrator in article titles; including the usual historical context before October 2023; and firmly challenging the Israeli military and government in all interviews.”
The BBC denied these claims, insisting that it “strives to live up to our responsibility to provide the most reliable and impartial news”.
“When we make mistakes or have made changes in the way we report, we are transparent. We are also very clear with our audience about the limitations imposed on our reporting – including the lack of access to Gaza and restricted access to certain parts of Lebanon, as well as our continued efforts to attract reporters to those areas,” a spokesperson said.
Other signatories on the list include historian William Dalrymple, Dr. Catherine Happer, lecturer in sociology and director of media at the University of Glasgow, Rizwana Hamid, director of the Centre for Media Monitoring, and broadcaster John Nicolson.
This is not the first time the BBC has been criticised for bias during the Gaza war. In September, the BBC rejected claims that it had violated its own guidelines more than 1,500 times following a controversial report that claimed some BBC correspondents had excused or downplayed Hamas’ activities. A BBC spokesperson said at the time that it would “carefully consider” the complaint, but denied the allegations of bias.
However, the signatories of the letter insist that the BBC favors Israel. A current staff member who signed the letter told The Independent that some of their colleagues had left the institution because of its cover-up. “I have never witnessed, in my entire career, such low levels of confidence,” they said. “I have colleagues who have left the BBC in recent months because I simply don’t think our reporting on Israel and Palestine is sincere. Many of us feel paralyzed by fear.”
Another said they were “losing faith in the organisation they work for” after seeing a “huge difference” in the BBC’s approach to Israel. They added: “I really care about the future of the BBC and every day I see that we are losing the trust of audiences around the world. People change the channel to find the reality of what’s going on because we just don’t give it to them.”
Examples provided by staff include “dehumanizing and misleading headlines,” including the one given to an article about a six-year-old girl who was shot by the Israeli army in Gaza in January 2024. Speaking about the headline “Hind Rajab, 6, found dead in Gaza days after phone calls for help,” a signatory of the letter said: “This was not an act of God. The perpetrator, Israel, should have been on the front page and it should have been clear that she was killed.”
“Palestinians are always treated as an unreliable source and we consistently prioritise Israel’s version of events, despite the IDF’s well-documented history of lying,” says another BBC employee, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“It seems that we often prefer to drop Israel from the title, if possible, or question who might be to blame for the airstrikes. The level of verification expected for anything related to Gaza far exceeds what is the norm for other countries,” he said.
Other concerns raised by staff include coverage omissions, such as the failure to livestream the plea of South Africa’s genocide case against Israel to the International Court of Justice on January 11, but the choice to livestream Israel’s defense the next day.
Of the 237 signatories, 72 signed publicly, including former British Foreign Secretary and Baroness Warsi and actress Juliet Stevenson, as well as dozens of academics. The letter, while focusing on the BBC, also highlights the shortcomings of other media outlets, including ITV and Sky.
“This conflict is one of the most polarizing stories that people are reporting on, and we know that people feel very much about how it is presented, not only on the BBC, but in all media. The BBC holds itself to very high standards and we strive to fulfil our responsibility to provide the most reliable and unbiased news – weighing and measuring the words we use, fact-checking and seeking a wide range of interviews and expert opinions,” the BBC said.
While acknowledging that “the BBC does not and cannot reflect any worldview”, a spokesperson insisted that it receives an almost equal measure of complaints alleging bias against Israel. “This does not mean that we assume that we are doing something right and continue to listen to all criticism – from inside and outside the BBC and reflect on what we can do better,” the institution also said.
Israel kills the journalists. Western media kills the truth of genocide in Gaza
Western publics are being subjected to a campaign of psychological warfare, where genocide is classed as ‘self-defence’ and opposition to it ‘terrorism’
Jonathon Cook, Middle East Eye – 25 October 2024
Israel knew that, if it could stop foreign correspondents from reporting directly from Gaza, those journalists would end up covering events in ways far more to its liking.
They would hedge every report of a new Israeli atrocity – if they covered them at all – with a “Hamas claims” or “Gaza family members allege”. Everything would be presented in terms of conflicting narratives rather than witnessed facts. Audiences would feel uncertain, hesitant, detached.
Israel could shroud its slaughter in a fog of confusion and disputation. The natural revulsion evoked by a genocide would be tempered and attenuated.
For a year, the networks’ most experienced war reporters have stayed put in their hotels in Israel, watching Gaza from afar. Their human-interest stories, always at the heart of war reporting, have focused on the far more limited suffering of Israelis than the vast catastrophe unfolding for Palestinians.
That is why western audiences have been forced to relive a single day of horror for Israel, on October 7, 2023, as intensely as they have a year of greater horrors in Gaza – in what the World Court has judged to be a “plausible” genocide by Israel.
That is why the media have immersed their audiences in the agonies of the families of some 250 Israelis – civilians taken hostage and soldiers taken captive – as much as they have the agonies of 2.3 million Palestinians bombed and starved to death week after week, month after month.
That is why audiences have been subjected to gaslighting narratives that frame Gaza’s destruction as a “humanitarian crisis” rather than the canvas on which Israel is erasing all the known rules of war.
While foreign correspondents sit obediently in their hotel rooms, Palestinian journalists have been picked off one by one – in the greatest massacre of journalists in history.
Israel is now repeating that process in Lebanon. On Thursday night, it struck a residence in south Lebanon where three journalists were staying. All were killed.
In an indication of hiw deliberate and cynical Israel’s actions are, it put its military’s crosshairs on six Al Jazeera reporters this week, smearing them as “terrorists” working for Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They are reportedly the last surviving Palestinian journalists in northern Gaza, which Israel has sealed off while it carries out the so-called “General’s Plan”.
Israel wants no one reporting its final push to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza by starving out the 400,000 Palestinians still there and executing anyone who remains as a “terrorist”.
These six join a long list of professionals defamed by Israel in the interests of advancing its genocide – from doctors and aid workers to UN peacekeepers.
Sympathy for Israel
Perhaps the nadir of Israel’s domestication of foreign journalists was reached this week in a report by CNN. Back in February whistleblowing staff there revealed that the network’s executives have been actively obscuring Israeli atrocities to portray Israel in a more sympathetic light.
In a story whose framing should have been unthinkable – but sadly was all too predictable – CNN reported on the psychological trauma some Israeli soldiers are suffering from time spent in Gaza, in some cases leading to suicide.
Committing a genocide can be bad for your mental health, it seems. Or as CNN explained, its interviews “provide a window into the psychological burden that the war is casting on Israeli society”.
n its lengthy piece, titled “He got out of Gaza, but Gaza did not get out of him”, the atrocities the soldiers admit committing are little more than the backdrop as CNN finds yet another angle on Israeli suffering. Israeli soldiers are the real victims – even as they perpetrate a genocide on the Palestinian people.
One bulldozer driver, Guy Zaken, told CNN he could not sleep and had become vegetarian because of the “very, very difficult things” he had seen and had to do in Gaza.
What things? Zaken had earlier told a hearing of the Israeli parliament that his unit’s job was to drive over many hundreds of Palestinians, some of them alive.
CNN reported: “Zaken says he can no longer eat meat, as it reminds him of the gruesome scenes he witnessed from his bulldozer in Gaza.”………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The media do not want their reporters to become chief witnesses for the prosecution in the future trials of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, at the International Criminal Court. The ICC’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, is seeking arrest warrants for them both.
After all, any such testimony from journalists would not stop at Israel’s door. They would implicate western capitals too, and put establishment media organisations on a collision course with their own governments.
The western media does not see its job as holding power to account when the West is the one committing the crimes.
Censoring Palestinians
Journalist whistleblowers have gradually been coming forward to explain how establishment news organisations – including the BBC and the supposedly liberal Guardian – are sidelining Palestinian voices and minimising the genocide.
…………………………………………………………………………………………… Even officials from one of the biggest rights group in the world, the New York-based Human Rights Watch, became persona non grata at the BBC for their criticisms of Israel, even though the corporation had previously relied on their reports in covering Ukraine and other global conflicts.
Israeli guests, by contrast, “were given free rein to say whatever they wanted with very little pushback”, including lies about Hamas burning or beheading babies and committing mass rape.
An email cited by Al Jazeera from more than 20 BBC journalists sent last
……………………………………………………………………………………... Crushing dissent
Israel is the one dictating the coverage of its genocide. First by murdering the Palestinian journalists reporting it on the ground, and then by making sure house-trained foreign correspondents stay well clear of the slaughter, out of harm’s way in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
And as ever, Israel has been able to rely on the complicity of its western patrons in crushing dissent at home. …………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2024-10-25/israel-kill-journalists-genocide-gaza/
Despite History of Fabrication, Press Uncritically Covers IDF-Provided Documents on Hamas
a pattern of Israel engineering misleading narratives to shape public opinion, and fabricating the evidence needed to do so.
Bryce Greene, FAIR, 1 Nov 24
Earlier this month, the New York Times (10/12/24), Washington Post (10/12/24) and Wall Street Journal (10/12/24) each published front-page articles based on different sets of documents handed to them by the Israeli military.
Israel claims it seized all the documents—in the form of meeting minutes, letters and planning documents—in its ground invasion of Gaza, and that they reveal insights into Hamas’s operations prior to the October 7 attacks. The documents include alleged evidence of Hamas’s pre-10/7 coordination with Iran, plans to blow up Israeli skyscrapers, and even a scheme to use horse-drawn chariots in an attack from Gaza.
Documents received directly from intelligence agencies should always be treated with skepticism, and that’s especially true when their government has a well-documented history of blatant lying. Yet leading newspapers took these Israeli document dumps largely at face value, advancing the agenda of a genocidal rogue state.
A history of lying
Israel’s use of fabrications to shape public perception is well known, and was put on display early in the assault on Gaza that began last October. After an explosion at Al Ahli hospital killed and injured hundreds (misreporting of which caused a great deal of confusion), the media naturally pointed the finger at Israel. The Israeli government, concerned about the public backlash, denied responsibility, claiming that the explosion was caused by a misfired rocket from Palestinian Islamic Jihad. (See FAIR.org, 11/3/23.)
To back up their claims, Israel released a recording allegedly capturing two Palestinian militants discussing Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s responsibility for the strike. However, an analysis by the firm Earshot found that the audio was the result of two separate channels being edited together (Channel 4, 10/19/23). In other words, Israel engineered a phony audio clip in an attempt to clear itself of war crimes in the public mind.
Investigations based on open sources have since come to various conclusions about the attack (Guardian, 10/18/23; Bellingcat, 10/18/23; Human Rights Watch, 11/26/23; AP, 11/22/23; Michael Kobs, 2023; New Arab, 2/19/24), but Israel’s fraudulent attempt to manipulate evidence certainly suggests that they had something to hide, and demonstrates their lack of reliability as a media source. Recently, the UN released a report accusing Israel of systematically targeting healthcare infrastructure in Gaza, making their denials of this earlier attack far less credible.
In another instance, Israel presented 3D renderings of a supposed Hamas “command center” beneath Al Shifa hospital, claiming it was based on intelligence. However, no such command center was ever found (FAIR.org, 12/1/23). Upon storming the hospital, Israel staged scenes in order to bolster claims that the facility was used by militant groups. The deception was so blatant that mainstream outlets were openly calling it out.
Recently Israel was caught actually providing fabricated documents to the press with the aim of manipulating public opinion. Earlier this year, the Israeli government provided documents to both the Jewish Chronicle (9/5/24) and the German paper Bild (9/6/24) that purportedly showed that Hamas had no interest in a ceasefire, and had a plan to sneak the late Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar out of Gaza to Iran, along with some of the remaining hostages. The reports were then uncritically repeated in outlets like the Times of Israel (9/6/24).
Shortly after these documents were published, the Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronoth (9/8/24) reported on an internal IDF investigation that found that they had been leaked to foreign media as part of a campaign to “shape public opinion on Israel.” The documents were determined to be forgeries, after a comprehensive search of all databases containing documents found in the wake of Israel’s operations. The IDF told the paper that an investigation was underway to determine the origin of the leak.
This non-exhaustive list of examples demonstrates a pattern of Israel engineering misleading narratives to shape public opinion, and fabricating the evidence needed to do so.
Questionable authenticity
Whether they are authentic or not, it is clear that the documents leaked to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post serve the same purpose of propagandizing on behalf of Israel. In an attempt to preserve some journalistic integrity, the Post and Times both gave separate justifications for why they believed the respective documents leaked to them were authentic.
The Post was quick to note that “the documents’ authenticity could not be definitively established,” but gave readers the impression there was reason to believe they were real. First, it claimed that the contents of the documents it received were
“broadly consistent” with US and allies’ post–October 7 intelligence assessments about Hamas’s long-range planning and complex relationship with Iran.
…………………………………………..While Haaretz made no note of the leaked documents provided to the Wall Street Journal, the article ironically acknowledged that
having them published by Fox News or even the Wall Street Journal would have looked like an Israeli public diplomacy operation rather than a legitimate journalistic investigative report.
Haaretz noted that the documents promote narratives that “Israel would be happy to burn into the world’s consciousness,” namely the well-known propaganda effort to equate Hamas with organizations that are universally reviled by Americans. The Post documents purportedly outlined a Hamas plan to blow up a skyscraper in Tel Aviv, evoking the September 11 attacks against the World Trade Center:
The Hamas documents are supposed to bolster Netanyahu’s claim that Israel isn’t fighting against a liberation movement seeking to free the occupied Palestinian people, or even against a paramilitary organization that is poorly funded and trained and lacks planes, the Iron Dome anti-missile system, tanks and artillery….
Rather, it is fighting a terrifying “axis of evil” led by Iran that threatens to destroy Western culture as a whole.
Haaretz also argued that this kind of propaganda campaign was designed to ensure that the violence continues to escalate:………………………………………………………….
………………….Israel’s campaign of genocide in Gaza and greater war in the Middle East has been successful in part because the Israeli government can count on Western press to present and contextualize facts in a way that advances their narrative. Despite Israel’s long history of fabrications, the corporate media will dutifully republish documents, statements and explanations with complete credulity. https://fair.org/home/despite-history-of-fabrication-press-uncritically-covers-idf-provided-documents-on-hamas/
Atomic Reaction – a highly recommended feature-length documentary film.
Atomic Reaction (90 minute documentary film)
Gordon Edwards. 30 Oct 24
This feature-length documentary film tells the story of how Canada supplied uranium for the World War II Atomic Bomb Project by using the leftovers from a radium mine on the shore of Great Bear Lake, just south of the arctic circle, and – of central importance – the radium refinery in Port Hope Ontario several thousand miles away. When uranium from the Congo entered the picture in December 1942, it too was refined at Port Hope for the Bomb program.
The film also tells the story of the most expensive and extensive environmental cleanup of any municipality in Canadian history, a cleanup of 1000 radioactively contaminated buildings (including homes and schools) in Port Hope that is costing 2 and a half billion dollars. The “cleanup” has been going on for forty years and just got a 10-year extension in 2023. The result of the cleanup will be an enormous engineered earthen mound of about one million tonnes of radioactive waste material that will remain dangerous for many thousands of years.
The gigantic “engineered mound” for Port Hope waste is situated in a marshy area just north of the town, on land that slopes down through the town to Lake Ontario. Incidentally, this small mountain of radioactive waste is not intended to be permanent but only good for the first 500 years, after which further decisions will have to be made. On the other hand the Chalk River mound (the so-called “Near Surface Disposal Facility”, which I call “the megadump”), although inspired by the Port Hope mound, is intended to be permanent. While the Port Hope mound is primarily built to hold highly dangerous naturally-occurring radioactive materials, associated with uranium ore processing, the Chalk River mound is designed to hold mainly human-made post-fission radioactive materials that were not found in nature before 1939. There are three court challenges to the CNSC 2022 approval of this “megadump” that are currently underway.
Atomic Reaction has been shown at the Uranium Film Festival in Rio de Janeiro, where it was given honourable mention, and more recently at the Durham Region International Film Festival in Ontario. On October 27 and 29 it was aired on the CBC Documentary TV Channel, where I saw it for the first time and was favourably impressed by how well the film-makers tell a complicated story in a clear and understandable way, with powerful visuals. The film will be available on GEM TV (streaming online) starting in January.
Look for it early in the New Year. It is well worth watching, once or even twice or more.
Meltdown nightmares: silent spring for climate change
“Dirty Secrets of Nuclear Power in an Era of Climate Change,” strips away the myth that nuclear energy solves climate change
By Choi Hee-jin, October. 29. 2024, Korea Times: https://m-koreatimes-co-kr.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.amp.asp?newsIdx=384891—
Asia is buzzing with the 2024 Nobel Prize announcements. The Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to a Korean author, Han Kang, and the Peace Prize to the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, formed by Hibakusha in 1956 to improve support for victims and lobby governments to abolish nuclear weapons. Today, I would like to introduce a timely book that came out this summer on the topic of the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1962, Rachel Carson published “Silent Spring,” a landmark book that ignited the modern environmental movement by exposing the hidden and devastating effects of widespread pesticide use. Her message raised public awareness about the harmful effects of DDT and led to the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. Consequently, it contributed to banning DDT in the United States in 1972 and internationally in 2004.
Like Carlson’s book, the recently released “Dirty Secrets of Nuclear Power in an Era of Climate Change,” strips away the myth that nuclear energy solves climate change and calls our attention to nuclear power. Its authors are Doug Brugge, professor and chair of the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Connecticut, and Aaron Datesman, visiting professor at the University of Virginia and engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Before delving into the book, some fundamental questions about climate change should be addressed. Is climate change real? Yes, it is happening. As temperatures continue to rise swiftly, the melting of glaciers and polar ice is becoming more pronounced, serving as a visible and reliable sign of climate change. What is the cause? There is much debate on this topic, but human activity — particularly our reliance on fossil fuels in built environments, cities, and infrastructure — is the main culprit. What is crucial in addressing climate change? Time. It depends on how quickly we switch from fossil fuels to other energy sources. Nuclear power, even in “highly developed” countries, takes a significant amount of time to implement as a solution.
Hidden Costs
Brugge and Datesman conclude that the effects of nuclear power may be more severe and longer lasting because some radioactive materials have such long half-lives, and nuclear accidents are so catastrophic. It exposes the hidden problems of the nuclear industry by looking at its impacts on people and the environment, with a focus on uranium mining, waste management and the dangers of nuclear proliferation.
Uranium mining disproportionately impacts Indigenous communities, leaving a legacy of pollution and health problems. The waste dilemma poses another challenge, with no permanent storage solution for high-level nuclear waste, potentially poisoning water, food chains and ecosystems for thousands of years.
The history of Fukushima and Chernobyl still haunts us and reminds us of the danger of nuclear accidents. The authors say even well-designed reactors are prone to failure due to human error, natural disaster or terrorism. These types of accidents would be a national security issue and would require massive long-term clean-up, and the communities affected would continue to live with the effects.
Economic realities of nuclear power
The economics of nuclear are also covered. Supporters point to the financial benefits of nuclear. But the book shows that the actual costs still need to be added in. Recent numbers bear this out: between 2010 and 2020, the cost of utility-scale solar and onshore wind fell 85 percent and 56 percent, respectively, while nuclear costs increased. The economics are shifting and making nuclear look less and less like a solution to climate change. The authors argue that renewable energy technologies offer a safer and more viable path to a decarbonized future.
A call for responsible energy choices
Nuclear power is being promoted as a solution in many countries and regions. Still, its inherent risks and unsolved problems mean there are better options for achieving net zero emissions and a carbon-free world. “Dirty Secrets of Nuclear Power in the Age of Climate Change” calls for global action to transition to more sustainable and equitable energy solutions. No one knowingly leaves a ticking time bomb in their house when there are safer alternatives.
In industrial history, miners would take small canaries deep into the earth, their delicate respiratory systems acting as an early warning system for toxic gases. A canary’s song, or its silence, could mean the difference between life and death for miners. While we continue to grapple with the ever-present dangers of invisible nuclear radiation and the consequences of its hazardous waste, we seem to treat future generations as unwitting canaries.
Perhaps the debate over nuclear power is outdated. It is essential to envision a completely new society with a carbon-free economy that ensures sustainable prosperity. We need to invest boldly in new alternatives and develop innovative technologies that harness nature’s limitless energy before it’s too late.
Choi Hee-jin is the author of “Future Cities” in The Routledge Handbook for Sustainable Cities and Landscapes in the Pacific Rim (2022), Salzburg Global Seminar Fellow (2023), and founder and CEO of RestFullness(restfullness.net), a platform for rest. She leads vocational formation and leadership sessions and coaches young leaders at METES Institute(metes.io).
Media Hawks Make Case for War Against Iran
This depiction of Iran as an aggressor that has victimized the United States for 45 years, causing “suffering for thousands of Americans,” is a parody of history. The fact is that the US has imposed suffering on millions of Iranians for 71 years, starting with the overthrow of the country’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. It propped up the brutal Pahlavi dictatorship until 1979, then backed Iraq’s invasion of Iran, helping Saddam Hussein use chemical weapons against Iranians (Foreign Policy, 8/26/13). It imposes murderous sanctions on Iran to this day (Canadian Dimension, 4/3/23).
What Stephens is deploying here is the tired and baseless propaganda strategy of hinting that World War II redux is impending if America doesn’t crush the Third World bad guy of the moment.
Gregory Shupak, FAIR, 25 Oct 24
The media hawks are flying high, pushing out bellicose rhetoric on the op-ed pages that seems calculated to whip the public into a war-ready frenzy.
Just as they have done with Hezbollah (FAIR.org, 10/10/24), prominent conservative media opinionators misrepresent Iran as the aggressor against an Israel that practices admirable restraint.
Under the headline, “Iran Opens the Door to Retaliation,” the Wall Street Journal editorial board (10/1/24) wrote that Iran’s October 1 operation against Israel “warrants a response targeting Iran’s military and nuclear assets. This is Iran’s second missile barrage since April, and no country can let this become a new normal.”
The editors wrote:
After April’s attack, the Biden administration pressured Israel for a token response, and President Biden said Israel should “take the win” since there was no great harm to Israel. Israel’s restraint has now yielded this escalation, and it is under no obligation to restrain its retaliation this time.
‘We need to escalate’
The New York Times‘ self-described “warmongering neocon” columnist Bret Stephens (10/1/24), in a piece headlined “We Absolutely Need to Escalate in Iran,” similarly filed Iran’s April and October strikes on Israel under “aggression” that requires a US/Israeli military “response.” And a Boston Globe editorial (10/3/24) wrote that Iran “launched a brazen attack,” arguing that the incident illustrated why US students are wrong to oppose American firms making or investing in Israeli weapons.
All of these pieces conveniently neglected to mention that Iran announced that its October 1 missile barrage was “a response to Israel’s recent assassinations of leaders of [Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], Hezbollah and Hamas” (Responsible Statecraft, 10/1/24). One of these assassinations was carried out by a bombing in Tehran, the Iranian capital. But we can only guess as to whether the Globe thinks those killings are “brazen,” Stephens thinks they qualify as “aggression,” or if the Journal believes any country can let such assassinations “become a new normal.”
Likewise, Iran’s April strikes came after Israel’s attack on an Iranian consulate in Damascus that killed seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers (CBS, 4/14/24). At the time, Iran reportedly said that it would refrain from striking back against Israel if the latter agreed to end its mass murder campaign in Gaza (Responsible Statecraft, 4/8/24).
‘Axis of Aggression’
A second Stephens piece (New York Times, 10/8/24) claimed that “the American people had better hope Israel wins” in its war against “the Axis of Aggression led from Tehran.” The latter is his term for the coalition of forces resisting the US and Israel from Palestine, Yemen, Lebanon and Iran, which refers to itself as the “axis of resistance.” Stephens’ reasoning is that, since Iran’s 1979 revolution, the country has meant suffering for thousands of Americans: the hostages at the US embassy in Tehran; the diplomatsand Marines in Beirut; the troops around Baghdad and Basra, killed by munitions built in Iran and supplied to proxies in Iraq; the American citizens routinely taken as prisoners in Iran; the Navy SEALs who perished in January trying to stop Iran from supplying Houthis with weapons used against commercial shipping.
The war Israelis are fighting now—the one the news media often mislabels the “Gaza war,” but is really between Israel and Iran—is fundamentally America’s war, too: a war against a shared enemy; an enemy that makes common cause with our totalitarian adversaries in Moscow and Beijing; an enemy that has been attacking us for 45 years. Americans should consider ourselves fortunate that Israel is bearing the brunt of the fighting; the least we can do is root for it.
This depiction of Iran as an aggressor that has victimized the United States for 45 years, causing “suffering for thousands of Americans,” is a parody of history. The fact is that the US has imposed suffering on millions of Iranians for 71 years, starting with the overthrow of the country’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. It propped up the brutal Pahlavi dictatorship until 1979, then backed Iraq’s invasion of Iran, helping Saddam Hussein use chemical weapons against Iranians (Foreign Policy, 8/26/13). It imposes murderous sanctions on Iran to this day (Canadian Dimension, 4/3/23).
Given this background, suggesting—as the Journal, the Globe and Stephens do—that Iran is the aggressor against the US is not only untenable but laughable. Furthermore, as I’ve previously shown (FAIR.org, 1/21/20), it’s hardly a settled fact that Iran is responsible for Iraqi attacks on US occupation forces in the country. Stephens’ description of the Navy SEALs who died in the Red Sea is vague enough that one might be left with the impression that Iran or Ansar Allah killed them, but the SEALs died when one of them fell overboard and the other jumped into the water to try to save him (BBC, 1/22/24).
Stephens went on:
Those who care about the future of freedom had better hope Israel wins.
We are living in a world that increasingly resembles the 1930s, when cunning and aggressive dictatorships united against debilitated, inward-looking, risk-averse democracies. Today’s dictatorships also know how to smell weakness. We would all be safer if, in the Middle East, they finally learned the taste of defeat.
What Stephens is deploying here is the tired and baseless propaganda strategy of hinting that World War II redux is impending if America doesn’t crush the Third World bad guy of the moment. More realistically, the “future of freedom” is jeopardized by the US/Israeli alliance’s invading the lands of Palestinian and Lebanese people and massacring them. These crimes suggest that, in the Journal’s parlance, it’s the US/Israeli partnership that is the “regional and global menace.” Or, to borrow another phrase from the Journal’s editorial, it’s Israel and the US who are the “dangerous regime[s]” from which “the civilized world” must be defended.
‘A global menace’
Corporate media commentators didn’t stop at Iran’s direct strikes on Israel, casting Iran as, in the Journal‘s words (10/1/24), “a regional and global menace”:…………………………………………………………………
Painting Iran as the mastermind behind unprovoked worldwide aggression helps prop up the hawks’ demands for escalation. But the US State Department said there was “no direct evidence” that Iran was involved in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel, “either in planning it or carrying it out” (NBC, 10/12/23)…………………………………………………………………………………..
Propaganda goes nuclear
As usual, those who are itching for a war on Iran invoke the specter of an Iranian nuclear weapon. Stephens (New York Times, 10/1/24) wrote:
This year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Iran was within a week or two of being able to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb. Even with the requisite fissile material, it takes time and expertise to fashion a nuclear weapon, particularly one small enough to be delivered by a missile. But a prime goal for Iran’s nuclear ambitions is plainly in sight, especially if it receives technical help from its new best friends in Russia, China and North Korea.
Now’s the time for someone to do something about it.
That someone will probably be Israel.
By “something,” Stephens said he also meant that “Biden should order” military strikes to destroy the “Isfahan missile complex.” “There is a uranium enrichment site near Isfahan, too,” Stephens wrote suggestively.
The LA Times published two guest op-eds in less than two weeks urging attacks on Iran based on its alleged nuclear threat. Yossi Klein Halevi (10/7/24) wrote:…………………………………..
‘Threshold’ is a ways away…………………………………………………….
Recent history shows that Iran has been willing to “stop itself” from acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran abided by the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), popularly known as the Iran nuclear deal, under which Iran limited its nuclear development in exchange for a partial easing of US sanctions. It stuck to the deal for some time even after the United States unilaterally abandoned it.
Just before President Donald Trump ripped up the agreement in 2018, the IAEA reported that Iran was “implementing its nuclear-related commitments” under the accord. The year after the US abrogated the agreement, Iran was still keeping up its end of the bargain.
‘Provocative actions’ from US/Israel
Iran subsequently stopped adhering to the by then nonexistent deal—often advancing its nuclear program, as Responsible Statecraft (5/7/24) noted, “in response to provocative actions from the US and Israel”:
In early 2020, the Trump administration killed Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and soon after Tehran announced that it would no longer abide by its enrichment commitments under the deal. But, even so, Tehran said it would return to compliance if the other parties did so and met their commitments on sanctions relief.
In late 2020, Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated near Tehran, reportedly by Israel. Soon after, Iran’s Guardian Council approved a law to speed up the nuclear program by enriching uranium to 20%, increasing the rate of production, installing new centrifuges, suspending implementation of expanded safeguards agreements, and reducing monitoring and verification cooperation with the IAEA. The Agency has been unable to adequately monitor Iran’s nuclear activities under the deal since early 2021.
However, situating Iranian policies in relation to US/Israeli actions like these would get in the way of the Journal’s campaign, which it articulated in another editorial (10/2/24), to convince the public that “If Mr. Biden won’t take this opportunity to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, the least he can do is not stop Israel from doing the job for its own self-preservation.”
Of course, the crucial, unstated assumption in the articles by Stephens, Halevi, Heilman and the Journal’s editors is that Iran’s hypothetical nuclear weapons are emergencies that need to be immediately addressed by bombing the country—while Washington and Tel Aviv’s vast, actually existing nuclear arsenals warrant no concern. https://fair.org/home/media-hawks-make-case-for-war-against-iran/
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