[News] Polishing genocide: Israel’s desperate war to erase history

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Comments <https://english.palinfo.com/opinion_articles/>


  Polishing genocide: Israel’s desperate war to erase history


      // Ramzy Baroud <https://english.palinfo.com/authors/ramzy-baroud>

Friday 14-November-2025

Israel’s allies worldwide are desperately scrambling to help Tel Aviv 
re-establish a convincing narrative, not only concerning the Gaza 
genocide, but the entire legacy of Israeli colonialism in Palestine and 
the Middle East.

The perfect little story, built on myths and outright fabrications — 
that of a small nation fighting for survival amid ‘hordes of Arabs and 
Muslims’ — is rapidly collapsing. It was a lie from the start, but the 
Gaza genocide has made it utterly indefensible.

The harrowing details of the Israeli genocide in Gaza were more than 
enough for people globally to fundamentally question the Zionist 
narrative, particularly the racist Western trope of the ‘villa in the 
Jungle’ used by Israel to describe its existence among the colonized 
population.

Not only have people across the globe, but even Americans have 
decisively turned against Israel. What began as an alarming trend — from 
the Israeli viewpoint, of course — is now the irrefutable new reality. 
National polls indicate that support for Palestinians among US adults 
has risen, with 33 per cent now saying they sympathize more with the 
Palestinians — the highest reading so far and an increase of six 
percentage points from last year.

Even the once unshakeable pro-Israeli majority among Republicans is 
softening in favor of Palestinians, with 35 per cent of Republicans 
favoring an independent Palestinian state, a significant increase from 
27 per cent in 2024, demonstrating a clear shift in a segment of the 
Republican base.

The Israeli government is now fighting with every resource at its 
disposal to dominate the information war. It is focused on injecting 
calculated Israeli falsehoods into the discourse and aggressively 
blocking the Palestinian viewpoint.

Latest reports of an Israeli campaign to win social media by granting 
millions of dollars to TikTok and other social media influencers is only 
a fraction of a massive, coordinated campaign.

The war is multifrontal. On 4 November, news reports revealed that 
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales personally intervened to block editing 
access to the page dedicated to the Gaza Genocide. He claimed that the 
page fails to meet the company’s “high standards” and “needs immediate 
attention.” According to Wales, that specific page requires a “neutral 
approach” — meaning, in practice, that blatant censorship is required to 
prevent the genocide from being accurately described as the “ongoing 
intentional and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people.”

Israel has long been obsessed with controlling the narrative on 
Wikipedia, a strategy predating the current Gaza genocide. Reports 
dating back to 2010 confirm that Israeli groups established specific 
training courses in ‘Zionist editing’ for Wikipedia editors, with the 
explicit goal of injecting state-aligned content and shaping key 
historical and political entries.

The censorship campaign against Palestinians and pro-Palestinian voices 
is as old as the media itself. From the very start, mainstream media in 
the West has been structurally aligned with corporate agendas that are 
naturally allied with money and power; thus, the prominence of the 
Israeli view and the near-complete erasure of the Palestinian perspective.

Years ago, however, Israel began realizing the existential danger of 
digital media, particularly the open spaces in social media that allowed 
ordinary individuals to become independent content creators. The 
censorship, however, took an ugly and pervasive turn during the 
genocide, where even the use of words like ‘Gaza’, ‘Palestine’, let 
alone ‘genocide’, would result in shadowbanning or outright closure of 
accounts.

In fact, very recently, YouTube, which was previously known for being 
less severe in censoring pro-Palestinian voices than META, shut down the 
accounts of three major Palestinian human rights organizations (Al-Haq, 
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Center for Human 
Rights), erasing more than 700 videos of crucial footage documenting 
Israeli violations of international law.

Sadly, though not surprisingly, not a single mainstream social media 
platform is innocent of censoring any criticism of Israel. Thus, it 
becomes a daily practice that references to Palestine, the Gaza 
genocide, and the like must be written in coded language, where, for 
example, the Palestinian flag would be replaced by an image of a watermelon.

Many pro-Palestine activists are now highlighting the direct complicity 
of Western media, especially in the UK, in attempting to whitewash the 
rape accusations against Israeli soldiers. Instead of using the 
unequivocal word ‘rape’, mainstream outlets refer to the horrific Sde 
Teiman episodes merely as ‘abuses’. While Israeli politicians and other 
war criminals are openly celebrating the so-called ‘abuses’ and the 
rapists as national heroes, mainstream British and French media are 
still refusing to accept that the widespread torture, rape, and 
mistreatment of Palestinians is part of a centralized, systemic agenda, 
not mere individual ‘abuses’.

Compare this to the wall-to-wall, sensationalized coverage of alleged 
‘mass rape’ by Palestinians in southern Israel on 7 October — despite 
the fact that no independent investigation was ever conducted, and that 
the claims were made by the Israeli army without credible evidence.

This is not mere bias and hypocrisy, however, but direct complicity, as 
stated by the Gaza Tribunal’s final statement on 26 October 2025. “The 
Jury finds a range of non-state actors to be complicit in genocide,” the 
verdict read, including “biased media reporting in the west on Palestine 
and under-reporting of Israeli crimes”.

The final reckoning unfolds in the information warzone. The coming 
months and years mark the most critical fight for truth in the 
conflict’s history. Israel, relying on censorship, intimidation, and 
manufactured consent, will use every method to secure a victory. For 
Palestinians and all who champion justice, this battle for history is as 
consequential as the genocide itself. Israel must not be allowed to 
sanitize its image, because polishing genocide guarantees its repetition.

/-Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The 
Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His forthcoming 
book, ‘Before the Flood,’ will be published by Seven Stories Press. His 
other books include ‘Our Vision for Liberation’, ‘My Father was a 
Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior 
Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA)./

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