Palestine And Western Hypocrisy
Some thoughts from this weekend
I touched on the concept of hypocrisy when I wrote Endless War recently. And it has been at the forefront of my mind as I read press articles about the genocide taking place against Palestine. The newspapers just refer to how bad things are in Gaza, as if there's some major (but unspecified) natural disaster taking place. They make it seem like people are just randomly starving. Just dying. Just walking into bombs. There's no mention of the fact that Israel is the one dropping the bombs and slaughtering civilians, or blockading food trucks to create famine within the largest concentration camp ever devised.
For example, take this CNN piece (fixed by me in the header image) “At least 13 killed, including 7 children, after strike on Gaza’s Al-Maghazi refugee camp”. A strike by who? The article doesn’t say. It’s just a strike, you know, one of those random bomb things from nowhere. Shucks, they keep happening! Only in the final, twelfth paragraph is there any mention of Israel, and just that they’ve been asked for comment as if they are sports commentators. It’s an article designed to protect the identity of the culprit. Even the wording is there to mislead you, because if you kill children intentionally (for example, by bombing a playground), it is called murder.
As we saw recently, the press avoids criticising Israel, regardless of what Israel does, so that even when Israel bombs an embassy and kills a number of people (another illegal act) it hardly gets covered, but when Iran retaliates the press makes out that Iran just did it for no reason.
Here are some other examples of hypocrisy I have been thinking about this week.
Western governments often say there’s no money for things the citizens want or need. In the US that would include basics like free healthcare. Yet in the last week Western countries spent billions shooting down drones and missiles for Israel. The US congress wants to give another $14 billion dollars of weapons to Israel, which brings the total up to almost $300 billion dollars to Israel, just from the US. The extra level of hypocrisy is that the weapons aren’t for defence, they are to kill Palestinians.
Those kind of linguistic contortions by our government and tame media were brought to the fore again this week, when the New York Times gave directives to only talk about Palestine and Israel in ways that demonise the former and shield the crimes of the latter. Laura K lampooned this brilliantly. Jonathan Cook has written a lot about media manipulation, such as How the Western media helped build the case for genocide in Gaza, and We were lied into the Gaza genocide. Al Jazeera has shown us how.
Caitlin Johnstone’s post "Rules-Based Order" Means Rules For Thee But Not For We highlights a number of hypocrisies we are seeing from our disgraceful politicians.
Another piece by Jonathan Cook says it all about the hypocrisy of our so-called leaders: The West now wants 'restraint'- after months of fuelling a genocide in Gaza.
History gets skewed by those defending Israel’s genocide. Just for contrast, here’s an interesting piece by Joe Mayall: History Unknown: The Palestinian Regiment of WWII. It shows the bonkers Israeli leader Netanyahu now claiming Arabs were responsible for the Holocaust, and Israeli attempts to insinuate that Arabs were Nazis. Joe’s post is a wonderful explanation of how Palestinians and Jews fought side by side in the same regiment against fascism. Obviously the Israeli leaders won’t admit that before Zionist terrorism led to the artificial state of Israel in 1948, Jews and Palestinians lived at peace on the same land. The UK and US have a lot to answer for in taking more than half of Palestine away from the people who lived there, and then creating a Western outpost from which to wage war.
On top of all the other atrocities being committed by Israel, they are now using armed drones that play recordings of crying babies and women screaming in distress, in order to lure people out into the open, and then shoot them. That’s the kind of thing our government enables and turns a blind eye to. It brings to mind the way Israel targetted Palestinians at food aid trucks (there were multiple flour massacres).
Here’s another one which beggars belief: “The official Twitter account of Israel has declared that all pro-Palestinian protesters are “terrorists” now. Saying genocide is wrong is terrorism. Disagreeing with land grabbing is terrorism. Calling for peace is terrorism. Being a compassionate human being is terrorism. Hands up everyone who is guilty of this new form of terrorism?”
We’re often told defence is justified for Israel, when international law really says it is not an acceptable argument because Israel is an illegally occupying force. As Joe Mayall says: “The United Nations has repeatedly affirmed two principles in regard to the Occupied Territories:
1. Occupied people (Palestinians) have a right to fight their occupiers, and
2. Israel is illegally occupying the West Bank and Gaza.That means attacks on Israel originating from the occupied Palestinian Territories are legitimate forms of Palestinian self-defense.”
Politicians always downplay how much they are receiving in bribes. You wonder why Joe Biden is so pro-Israel? Is it a coincidence that he has been given $5,376,701 so far by pro-Israeli lobbying organisations? And how much have UK politicians been given?
Here’s a quote by Ricky: “Israeli politicians can make comments about nuking Gaza and that’s fine, but the moment a student chants ‘Free Palestine’, that’s a call for genocide. The double-standards are at parody levels.”
If people ever wondered what they'd do if a genocide was taking place, it's what we're doing now. What you're doing now. This is why so many Western countries are hated around the world, because we arm terrorists, we fund and defend genocide and apartheid and illegal occupation and colonialism, then lie about it, because it is what we've always done. We send our armies into other countries to kill, disrupt, replace governments, and steal resources. We are the terrorists, but we call anyone who resists us a terrorist.
I shouldn’t have to repeat this point, but organisations like Jewish Voice For Peace (I'm a member - they are heroes!) are wonderful examples of why this is nothing to do with religion. The peace demos I go on have Muslims, Jews, Christians, Pagans, atheists all standing side by side and reading works by people from the other belief systems.
So no, not about religion. It is about Western foreign policy. It's why our governments defended colonising America and Australia, and slavery, and endless wars, and controlling countries. It's why I wouldn't vote red or blue in the UK or US as both parties are almost the same nowadays in terms of supporting genocide.
Just as we can become someone new whenever we want, and apologise for past mistakes, and work to be better people, so countries could do that if they wished. We could stop killing, and invading, and colonising. We could focus on cooperation and support, and improving things at home. Maybe we should say goodbye to NATO and join BRICS instead.
Here’s me at the peace demo yesterday, reading The Amputated Limbs Of Children by Caitlin Johnstone:
Okay, that was an angry rant. Here’s something different: if you like computer games, Itch.io have a Palestinian Relief Bundle packed with interesting things.
Peace and love, my friends.
2024-04-22 I’ve just had a Zionist argue with me about this on another forum.
They tried to equate Israel with all Jewish people (one of their most common lies).
Said it was Palestinians committing genocide (which beggars belief about how dishonest or stupid the commenter was - I can’t decide which).
Said Hamas hides in schools and hospitals so they have to be blown up (not acknowledging that collective punishment is an international war crime).
That Israel is just defending itself.
Oh, and warned me that God would curse me for not supporting Israel.
My answer:
“Israel is an illegal occupying force. They took more than half of the Palestinian's land in 1948 (helped by the US and UK) and have been grabbing more land ever since. They're armed by the UK and US, regularly receiving weapons and money to enable them to act as a military outpost for the US. 20 billion from the US this week alone? 300 billion USD in total. The terrorists are the UK, US and Israel. The illegal occupiers are Israel. They have been committing endless crimes against the Palestinians for 75 years.
Israel the state has nothing to do with historical Israel from 2000 years ago. It just used that name to try and look like there was a connection. First the Zionists considered taking African land in Uganda (offered by the British).
God's word? Which god? Every religion has different gods and different words.
The enemy isn't Jewish people. I'm a member of Jewish organisations such as Jewish Voice For Peace, who are heroes. The enemy is the West-created apartheid government of Israel. Jews, atheists, Christians and people from every other belief who care about justice are united on that.
It's always a pleasure to hear pro-Zionists repeating the same things which grow weaker and more silly-sounding with the repetition. What next? Say me and my Jewish friends are anti-Jewish? That all Arabs are primitive? That after enduring 75 years of violence and illegal occupation, and being blocked and ignored, the Palestinians should have just continued to be slowly wiped out and forced away from their country? Talking to Israeli supporters reminds me of talking to those who supported South African apartheid.”
Promoted by Karl Drinkwater (Green Party) at The Gate, Keppoch Street, Cardiff CF24 3JW.
Disclaimer.
The world is so depressing.