[News] Condemn first, ask questions never? Israeli propaganda and the crimes the West chooses to believe

[Anti-Imperialist News]

peoplesdispatch.org
<https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/12/06/condemn-first-ask-questions-never-israeli-propaganda-and-the-crimes-the-west-chooses-to-believe/>
Condemn first, ask questions never? Israeli propaganda and the crimes the
West chooses to believe
Tanupriya Singh - December 6, 2023
------------------------------
[image: Joe-Biden-Karine-Jean-Pierre-1024x576.jpg]

President Joe Biden and Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre ahead of a daily
press meeting. Photo: Wikimedia

On December 4, Josh Paul, a former US State Department official who resigned
<https://www.thenation.com/article/society/josh-paul-resignation-interview/>
in October in protest against Washington’s “expanded and expedited”
provision of lethal arms to Israel, appeared
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5106v4b05I> on *CNN*.

Host Christiane Amanpour brought up the “savage” and “barbaric” events of
October 7. “We’ve heard the stories of rape and gang rape…how does a nation
[Israel]…get to feel that it is being supported and that it then doesn’t
have to do what is going in Gaza right now?”

These comments echo a set of stories that have come to dominate the news
cycle in the west in recent days as Israel has escalated its bombardment of
Gaza.

As part of his response to these allegations, Paul brought up the
“atrocities that happen everyday to Palestinians in the West Bank.” On the
issue of sexual violence in particular, he referred to an instance where,
during the human rights vetting process
<https://www.state.gov/key-topics-bureau-of-democracy-human-rights-and-labor/human-rights/>
for arms transfers to Israel, Defense for Children International Palestine
(DCI-P) had drawn the US’ attention to the rape of a Palestinian child in
an Israeli prison.

According to the DCI-P, this is a reference
<https://twitter.com/MirandaCleland/status/1731791073263878289> to a
February 2021 report
<https://www.dci-palestine.org/israeli_interrogator_sexually_assaults_palestinian_child_detainee>
that the organization had published, detailing the severe physical and
sexual assault of a 15-year-old child by an Israeli interrogator at a
detention facility in Jerusalem.

“We examined these allegations, we believe they were credible, we put them
to the government of Israel. Do you know what happened the next day? The
IDF went into the DCI-P offices and removed all their computers and
declared them a terrorist entity,” Paul told *CNN*.

In an interview
<https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/state-department-official-explains-why-he-resigned-over-u-s-response-to-israel-hamas-war>
with *PBS News Hour* in October, Paul had also noted that the vetting
process for Israel had “never found an Israeli unit to be guilty of a gross
human rights violation,” adding that though many violations had been
identified, no conclusion was reached because it required “senior-level
sign off” within the State Department.

*CNN*’s sole follow-up question to Paul towards the end of the interview
was if he believed “that in order to have some kind of peaceful
resolution…Hamas has to be removed from power?”
*Manufacturing consent*

As unsurprising as this line of questioning from corporate-controlled
western media has now become, Amanpour’s reference to the “stories of rape
and gang rape” requires scrutiny amid a litany of news reports of alleged
“mass rapes” perpetrated by Hamas’ armed fighters during the Al-Aqsa Flood
operation launched on October 7.

During a press briefing
<https://www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-december-4-2023/>
on December 4, when asked about the US’ response to reports of sexual
violence, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller—while noting that
the US had not made an independent assessment— said, “We’ve obviously seen
the reports that Hamas has committed sexual violence. They’ve committed
rape. We have no reason at all to doubt those reports.”

“[t]he fact that it seems one of the reasons they don’t want to turn women
over that they’ve been holding hostage and the reason this pause fell apart
is they don’t want those women to be able to talk about what happened to
them during their time in custody…”

When pressed on his use of the phrase “the fact that it seems” and asked if
he had any evidence to believe that Hamas was deliberately holding female
hostages, Miller simply backtracked and said “not fact seems is a better
way to say it,” then adding that Hamas had broken the ceasefire deal.

This is despite the fact on December 2, senior Hamas official, Osama
Hamdan, had told news organizations including *Associated Press* that a
list of 10 female hostages proposed by Israel had been rejected
<https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-12-1-2023-c944c736efdf8993c7a17cf683d6e364>
because they were soldiers who had been detained from military posts.

Meanwhile, Israeli journalist Neria Kraus also shared a video
<https://twitter.com/NeriaKraus/status/1731728607322484801> of former US
secretary of state Hillary Clinton in which she repeated the allegations
that “many women and girls were attacked brutally by Hamas on October 7th.”

Miller’s comments are instructive in understanding the callousness with
which Israel’s allegations of atrocities have been unquestioningly accepted
and parroted by the US government and media over the past two months to
justify the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

On December 3, Israeli newspaper, *Haaretz*, published a report
<https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2023-12-03/ty-article-magazine/.premium/0000018c-2036-d21c-abae-76be08fe0000?utm_source=App_Share&utm_medium=Android_Native&utm_campaign=Share>
which once again refuted
<https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1731302039378882594> some of
the most horrific claims coming from Israel of what happened on October 7.
These allegations include: 40 beheaded babies, a baby being burned in an
oven, babies being hung from a clothesline, and of the killing of a
pregnant woman who was found with her stomach split open with the fetus
still attached via the umbilical cord.

However, the damage had already been done. What price did President Joe
Biden pay for repeating Zionist lies while rushing weapons to Israel? What
price did any of the “journalists” in the west pay for not practicing the
basic principles of their profession?

By the time that a temporary pause came into place on November 24, Israel
had already massacred over 14,800 Palestinians in Gaza.
*Lies to fuel an unpopular genocide*

As Israel resumed its genocide in Gaza, successive news reports emerged
alleging that rapes had been systematically used as a “weapon of war”
against Israeli civilians on October 7. On November 18, *CNN* aired
<https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/11/16/the-lead-israel-investigates-sexual-violence-claims-on-october-7-jake-tapper.cnn>
one such video report.

Citing Israeli police superintendent Dude Katz, *CNN* reported
<https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/17/world/israel-investigates-sexual-violence-hamas/index.html>
that Israeli officers had collected “more than 1,000 statements and more
than 60,000 video clips related to the attacks that include accounts from
people who reported seeing women raped,” adding that “investigators do not
have firsthand testimony, and it is not clear whether any rape victims
survived.”

On December 1, *Mondoweiss* published a detailed analysis
<https://mondoweiss.net/2023/12/cnn-report-claiming-sexual-violence-on-october-7-relied-on-non-credible-witnesses-some-with-undisclosed-ties-to-israeli-govt/>
of *CNN*’s November 18 report.

*CNN* had interviewed Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, the Chair of a “civil
commission on Hamas’ October 7 crimes against women.” However, what *CNN*
did not acknowledge, and what *Mondoweiss* pointed out, was her previous
roles in Israel’s Attorney General’s Office and as founder and director of
the “Dvora Institute” which is a “close advisory body” to the Israeli Prime
Minister’s National Security Council.

The commission headed by Elkayam-Levy has not taken direct testimony from
“relevant witnesses,” as per a November 30 report
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-30/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/hamas-campaign-of-rape-against-israeli-women-is-revealed-testimony-after-testimony/0000018c-2144-da36-a1de-6767dac90000>
in *Haaretz*. She went on to say that when asked by a foreign journalist if
the estimated number of victims was in the “Tens? Hundreds? Thousands?,”
she responded “I’m sorry. No. It would be irresponsible of me to cite a
number.”

It further notes inconsistencies in the statements provided to CNN by an
Israeli soldier, identified as “G” and allegedly a paramedic from an
Israeli special forces unit “669,” who had claimed to have found the bodies
of two girls who had been killed in the Kibbutz Be’eri.

Importantly, the *CNN* report also included information about a police
press conference during which “one witness said she saw a gang rape,”
following which a typed quote is presented on the screen.

Again, what was not included, and what *Mondoweiss* pointed out, was that
the woman in question was not in fact present at the briefing and the
police had instead played a recording, that the witness had described what
she saw while she was in hiding, and she had been accompanied by a
paramedic who said he did not see what she saw.

Over the past few days, news publications including the *BBC* have
published their own reports detailing similar testimonies of alleged mass
rapes, often repeating what has already been published or even found to be
false.

The *BBC* stated <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67629181> it
spoke to one man who was reportedly at the festival site and had said in a
statement “made through a support organization” that he had heard “noises
and screams of people being murdered, raped, decapitated.”

“To our question about how he could be sure — without seeing it — that the
screams he heard indicated sexual assault rather than other kinds of
violence, he said he believed while listening at the time that it could
only have been rape,” the BBC notes.

Further down, the publication adds that Israeli police “say they have
multiple eye-witness accounts of sexual assault, but wouldn’t give any more
clarification on how many. When we spoke to them, they hadn’t yet
interviewed any surviving victims.”

Once again, the *BBC* repeats testimony from “one of the body-collectors
volunteering with the religious organization Zaka” describing a “pregnant
woman whose womb had been ripped open before she was killed and her fetus
stabbed while it was inside her,” then adding that some Israeli media
reports have raised questions about some of the accounts.

It further states that Israeli investigators had admitted that
opportunities to document the crime scene and collect forensic evidence
were “limited or missed.”

Analysis of such reports, including by independent online news publication *The
Electronic Intifada*, has pointed
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMqRK5LpGy4> to a lack of forensic
evidence and first hand testimonies from survivors of the alleged acts of
sexual violence. Moreover, certain reports
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-30/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/hamas-campaign-of-rape-against-israeli-women-is-revealed-testimony-after-testimony/0000018c-2144-da36-a1de-6767dac90000>
have cited alleged confessions made in interrogation videos obtained from
Shin Bet, the Israeli intelligence agency notorious for its use of torture,
or sources from within the Israeli military— “the accuser here is the army
committing genocide,” stated
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMqRK5LpGy4> *Electronic
Intifada*’s director Ali Abunimah.

The independent outlet has also pointed to the contents of the 47-minute
video compilation assembled by the Israeli Occupation forces of the October
7 attack, which Israel has screened for selective audiences.

British journalist Owen Jones was among those who attended the screening.
He stated in a video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc5iG3DX7ho> posted
on November 28 that “if there was rape and sexual violence committed, we
don’t see this on the footage…a clip of an Israeli women inspecting a badly
burned woman’s corpse to see if she was a relative and she had no
underwear, this has been offered as evidence of rape.”

On November 30, a three-member independent UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) —
which was established in 2021 to “investigate in the occupied Palestinian
territory, including East Jerusalem and in Israel all alleged violations of
international humanitarian laws and all alleged abuses of international
human rights law leading up to and since 13 April 2021” — announced last
week that it would investigate alleged sexual violence by Hamas fighters on
October 7.

Israel has declared
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-commission-investigate-hamas-sexual-violence-appeal-evidence-2023-11-29/>
that it will not cooperate with the commission. Hamas has repeatedly denied
all allegations of sexual assault. Taher al-Nono, media advisor to the
organization’s polit bureau has also called
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/accounts-sexual-violence-hamas-attack-mount-justice-is-remote-israels-victims-2023-12-05/>
for a “serious and impartial international investigation into the matter.”

Since October 7, claims made by Israel have been reproduced and published
without question, the most egregiously false of which are then retracted
quietly
<https://twitter.com/sarasidnerCNN/status/1712415116363169884?lang=en>.
Meanwhile, questions
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/biden-says-he-has-no-confidence-palestinian-death-count-2023-10-26/>
are raised on whether or not the Palestinian civilian casualty figures are
accurate, or “Hamas-run” is added as a prefix to the Palestinian Health
Ministry when talking of death tolls to somehow still raise doubts about
the scale of the carnage unfolding in Gaza.

There is a denial of dignity to the Palestinian people— in life, in death,
and even in grief as family members in Gaza have been forced to hold up the
bodies of killed children up to news cameras. They are either “crisis
actors” <https://twitter.com/zoo_bear/status/1717622466498240925> or “human
shields.”
<https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-at-a-press-availability-43/>

Moreover, the readiness with which Israeli claims of alleged atrocities by
Hamas are accepted, no matter how outrageous, speaks to the blatant racism
against Palestinian, and broadly Arab people, and the specific way this is
used against boys and men to portray them as inherently criminal or
“savage.”

Little attention has been paid to the systematic abuse and torture of
Palestinians political prisoners held in Occupation prisons, even as Israel
has escalated its mass abduction campaigns and violent raids in the West
Bank. Palestinian human rights organizations have also filed urgent appeals
<https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/22076.html> to UN human rights mechanisms
and the COI including affidavits submitted by Palestinians detailing
horrific physical and sexual abuse by Israeli settlers.
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