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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Another expert report finds Israel is committing genocide. The West yawns</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Jonathan Cook</div>
<div class="gmail-meta-data">
<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time">December 24, 2024<br></div>
</div>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="gmail-content">
<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><p>Three
separate reports published this month by leading international human
rights and medical groups have detailed the same horrifying story: that <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel" target="_blank">Israel</a> is well advanced in its genocide of the <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine" target="_blank">Palestinian</a> population in Gaza.</p>
<p>Or, to be more accurate, they have confirmed what was already patently clear: that, for the past 14 months, <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/israel-war-gaza" target="_blank">Israel has been slaughtering</a>
tens of thousands of Palestinians with indiscriminate munitions, while
at the same time gradually starving the survivors to death and denying
them access to medical care.</p>
<p>Genocides can happen with gas chambers. Or with machetes. Or they can
be carried out with 2,000lb bombs and aid blockades. Genocides rarely
look the same. But they are all designed to arrive at the same endpoint:
the elimination of a people.</p>
<p>Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Medecins Sans
Frontieres (MSF) agree that Israel is striving for extermination. It has
not hidden its intent, and that intent is confirmed by its actions on
the ground. </p>
<p>Only the wilfully blind, which includes western politicians and their
media, are still in denial. But worse than denial, they continue to
actively collude in this, the ultimate crime against humanity, by
supplying Israel with the weapons, intelligence and diplomatic cover it
needs for the extermination.</p>
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<p>Last week, MSF <a href="https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/life-death-trap-gaza" target="_blank">issued its report</a>, titled Life in the Death Trap That is Gaza, concluding that Israel was intentionally “unravelling the fabric of society”.</p>
<p>The medical charity observed: “The violence unleashed by Israeli
forces has caused physical and mental damage on a scale that would
overwhelm any functioning health system, let alone one already decimated
by a crushing offensive and a 17-year-long blockade [by Israel].” </p>
<p>MSF added: “Even if the offensive ended today, its long-term impact would be unprecedented, given the scale of the destruction.”</p>
<p>Rebuilding the society and dealing with the health consequences will “span generations”. </p>
<h3>Intention proven</h3>
<p>MSF’s findings followed hot on the heels of an <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2024/12/19/extermination-and-acts-genocide/israel-deliberately-depriving-palestinians-gaza" target="_blank">185-page report</a> by Human Rights Watch, which concluded that Israel was committing “acts of genocide”.</p>
<p>The organisation limited its focus to one Israeli policy: its
systematic effort to deprive the population of access to water - a clear
measure of intentionality, the critical yardstick for judging whether
mass killing has crossed into genocide.</p>
<p>At a news conference, Lama Fakih, HRW’s Middle East director, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/19/israel-committing-acts-of-genocide-by-cutting-off-water-in-gaza-hrw-says" target="_blank">said their research</a> had proved Israel was “intentionally killing Palestinians in Gaza by denying them the water that they need to survive”.</p><p>Israel had done so in four coordinated moves. It had blocked
pipelines supplying water from outside Gaza. It had then cut off power
to run the pumps that Gaza’s own supplies from wells and desalination
plants depended on.</p>
<p>Next, it had destroyed the solar panels that were the backup to deal
with such power cuts. And finally, it had killed crews trying to repair
the supply system and aid agency staff trying to bring in water
supplies.</p>
<p>“This is a comprehensive policy preventing people from getting any
water,” HRW’s acting Israel and Palestine director, Bill Van Esveld,
concluded. He added that the group had made “a very clear finding of
extermination”.</p>
<h3>‘Pattern of conduct’</h3>
<p>HRW echoed a much wider-ranging report by Amnesty International, the
world’s best-known international human rights organisation. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/8668/2024/en/" target="_blank">296-page report</a>
published in early December, Amnesty concluded that Israel had been
“brazenly, continuously” committing genocide in Gaza - or “unleashing
hell” as the organisation phrased it more graphically.</p>
<p>The period of Amnesty’s research ended in July, five months ago.
Since then, Israel has further intensified its destruction of northern
Gaza to drive out the population. </p>
<div>
<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-genocide-israel-burning-alive-destroying-world-as-we-know-it" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/images-story/palestine-gaza-israel-strike-al-aqsa-hospital-october-2024-unrwa-afp.jpg.webp?itok=9v2SeXCW" width="400" height="250" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img">
</a></p><p>The West's support for Israel's genocide is destroying the world as we know it</p>
<p><br>
</p></div>
<p>Nonetheless, Amnesty described a “pattern of conduct” in which Israel
had deliberately obstructed aid and power supplies, and detonated so
much explosive power on the tiny enclave - equivalent to more than two
nuclear bombs - that water, sanitation, food and healthcare systems had
collapsed.</p>
<p>The scale of the attack, it noted, had caused death and destruction
at a speed and level unmatched in any other 21st-century conflict.</p>
<p>Budour Hassan, Amnesty’s researcher for Israel and the occupied
Palestinian territories, said Israel’s actions went beyond the
individual war crimes associated with conflicts: “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/05/israels-war-in-gaza-amounts-to-genocide-amnesty-international-report-finds" target="_blank">This is something deeper</a>.”</p>
<p>Agreeing with major Holocaust and genocide scholars, Amnesty
concluded that the high bar needed to prove genocidal intent in law was
crossed last May when Israel began destroying Rafah, the area in
southern Gaza that it had herded Palestinian civilians into as a
supposedly “safe zone”.</p>
<p>Israel had been warned not to attack Rafah by the world’s highest
court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), but went ahead anyway. </p>
<h3>‘Mass denial’</h3>
<p>For some time, leading Holocaust and genocide scholars - among them
Israelis - have been speaking up to warn not only that a genocide is
unfolding, but that it is nearing completion.</p>
<p>Last week, <a href="https://vivo.brown.edu/display/obartov" target="_blank">Omer Bartov </a>even managed to get his message out on CNN. He <a href="https://x.com/amanpour/status/1869818758501675259" target="_blank">told Christiane Amanpour</a>
that Israel was carrying out “a war of annihilation” on the Gaza Strip.
“What the IDF [Israeli military] is doing there is destroying Gaza,” he
said.</p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="https://www.ushmm.org/research/about-the-mandel-center/all-fellows-and-scholars/amos-goldberg" target="_blank">Amos Goldberg</a>, another Israeli Holocaust expert, <a href="https://x.com/ByDonkeys/status/1864248466278318427" target="_blank">noted that</a> Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish-Polish scholar who <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/coining-a-word-and-championing-a-cause-the-story-of-raphael-lemkin" target="_blank">coined the term “genocide”</a>, described its two phases.</p>
<p>“The first is the destruction of the annihilated group and the second
is what he called ‘imposition of the national pattern’ of the
perpetrator. We are now witnessing the second phase as Israel prepares
ethnically cleansed areas for Israeli settlements.”</p>
<p>Goldberg added: “Like in every other case of genocide in history,
right now we have mass denial. Both here in Israel and around the
world.”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The soldiers describe shooting dead anyone who moves inside
undeclared so-called 'kill zones', even children, and then claiming them
to be 'terrorists'. The dead are left to be eaten by packs of dogs</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Bartov’s invitation by CNN appeared to have been provoked by <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-12-18/ty-article-magazine/.premium/idf-soldiers-expose-arbitrary-killings-and-rampant-lawlessness-in-gazas-netzarim-corridor/00000193-da7f-de86-a9f3-fefff2e50000" target="_blank">an article in Haaretz</a>,
Israel’s most liberal newspaper. It published last week testimonies
from Israeli combat soldiers, in which they described committing and
witnessing war crimes in Gaza. They paint a picture of systematic
erasure that, even from their limited perspective, looks ominously like
genocide. </p>
<p>The soldiers describe shooting dead anyone who moves inside
undeclared so-called “kill zones”, even children, and then claiming them
to be “terrorists”. The dead are left to be eaten by packs of dogs.</p>
<p>The only words one Israeli reservist found to describe Israel’s
repeated and intentional killing of children in Gaza was “pure evil”. </p>
<p>According to a senior reserve commander recently returned from the
enclave, the Israeli army has created “a lawless space where human life
holds no value”.</p>
<p>Another says units compete to see who can kill the greater number of
Palestinians, indifferent to whether they are Hamas fighters or
civilians.</p>
<p>Others describe these units as operating like “independent militias”, unrestrained by military protocols.</p>
<h3>‘Everyone is a terrorist’</h3>
<p>How the Israeli army implemented the Gaza genocide is alluded to in
the Haaretz article. After the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, the
military leadership devolved normally centralised decision-making to
local field commanders.</p>
<p>Many of those commanders live in the most religiously extreme of the
illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Not only are they Jewish
supremacists, but they follow rabbis who believe all Palestinians, even
babies, pose a threat to the Jewish people and must be exterminated.</p>
<p>Notoriously, a group of influential settler rabbis formalised their genocidal teachings into a book called <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/2009-11-09/ty-article/west-bank-rabbi-jews-can-kill-gentiles-who-threaten-israel/0000017f-e28c-d38f-a57f-e6deda480000" target="_blank"><em>The King’s Torah</em>.</a> </p>
<div>
<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/us-failing-empire-so-blind-cheer-netanyahu-and-his-genocide" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/images-story/Pro-Palestinian%20demonstrators%20burn%20an%20effigy%20depicting%20Israeli%20Prime%20Minister%20Benjamin%20Netanyahu%20in%20Washington%2C%20DC%2C%20on%2024%20July%202024%20%28Nathan%20Howard%3AReuters%29.jpg.webp?itok=2FW9lkp2" width="400" height="250" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img">
</a></p><p>Only a failing US empire would be so blind as to cheer Netanyahu and his genocide</p>
<p><br>
</p></div>
<p>One senior commander identified by Haaretz is <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hundreds-indiscriminately-shot-dead-israeli-soldiers-gaza-kill-zone" target="_blank">Brigadier General Yehuda Vach</a>, a settler from Kiryat Arba, possibly the most extreme of all Israel’s West Bank settlements.</p>
<p>For many years, Vach headed the military’s officers training school,
passing on his extreme views to a new generation of officers, presumably
some of whom are now making decisions in Gaza.</p>
<p>Today, he heads Division 252, in which many of the soldiers who spoke to Haaretz have served.</p>
<p>One of his officers recounted how, after Hamas’ military leader <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-confirms-sinwars-death" target="_blank">Yahya Sinwar was killed</a>
in October, Vach held an official meeting to determine what to do with
his body. He wanted to strip Sinwar’s corpse naked, put it in a public
square, dismember it and pour sewage over the remains.</p>
<p>In an address to soldiers, he is reported to have echoed a genocidal
view widely shared in Israel, that "there are no innocents in Gaza”.
Even Israel’s supposedly liberal President Isaac Herzog <a href="https://x.com/SprinterFamily/status/1713064886027063584" target="_blank">has said as much</a>.</p>
<p>But according to one officer, Vach has made this view an “operational doctrine”. </p>
<p>Vach’s view of Palestinians is that “everyone's a terrorist". And
that means, given Israel’s current, explicit aims in Gaza, everyone must
be killed.</p>
<h3>Nothing sticks</h3>
<p>None of this should surprise us. Israeli leaders from the very start
announced their genocidal intent. And more than a year ago, Israeli
soldiers serving in Gaza <a href="https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/" target="_blank">began telling us</a> of the <a href="https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/" target="_blank">systematic nature</a> of Israel’s war crimes.</p>
<p>But like everything about this genocide, those accounts made no
impact on the western political and media consensus. Nothing has stuck,
even when it is the soldiers themselves documenting their atrocities,
and even when it is Israeli Holocaust experts concluding that these
crimes amount to genocide.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>How is this permanent condition of mass denial possible? There is
nothing normal or natural about it. The denial is being actively and
furiously manufactured</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It has been nearly a year since the ICJ, comprising more than a dozen internationally respected judges, decided that a <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/icj-rule-israel-allies-put-on-trial-genocide" target="_blank">“plausible” case had been made</a> that Israel was carrying out a genocide in Gaza.</p>
<p>The judiciary is amongst the most conservative of professions. </p>
<p>The situation in Gaza is incalculably worse than it was last January when the court issued its ruling.</p>
<p>But the wheels of justice are required to turn slowly, even though Gaza does not have time on its side. </p>
<p>How is this permanent condition of mass denial possible? There is
nothing normal or natural about it. The denial is being actively and
furiously manufactured.</p>
<p>Only because we live in a world where billionaires own our
politicians and media do we need courts and human rights groups to
confirm what we can already see quite clearly being live-streamed to our
devices.</p>
<div>
<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/western-foreign-policy-friends-everything-enemies-law" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/images-story/Saudi%20Arabia%27s%20Crown%20Prince%20and%20Prime%20Minister%20Mohammed%20bin%20Salman%20%28L%29%2C%20India%27s%20Prime%20Minister%20Narendra%20Modi%20%28C%29%20and%20US%20President%20Joe%20Biden%20at%20the%20G20%20Leaders%27%20Summit%20in%20New%20Delhi%20on%20September%209%2C%202023.%20AFP.jpg.webp?itok=ViJkCvMt" width="400" height="250" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img">
</a></p><p>Western foreign policy: 'For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law'</p>
<p><br>
</p></div>
<p>Only because we live in a world owned by billionaires do those same
courts and rights organisations spend long months weighing the evidence
to protect themselves from the inevitable backlash of smears aimed at
discrediting their work.</p>
<p>And only because we live in a world owned by billionaires is it
possible, even after all those delays, for our politicians and media to
ignore the findings and carry on as before.</p>
<p>The system is rigged to favour the imperial hub of the <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/us" target="_blank">United States</a> and its client states.</p>
<p>If you are an African dictator, or an official enemy of the so-called
West, the most minimal evidence suffices to prove your guilt.</p>
<p>If you are under the protection of the US godfather, <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/western-foreign-policy-friends-everything-enemies-law" target="_blank">no amount of evidence</a> will ever be enough to put you behind bars.</p>
<p>It is known as realpolitik.</p>
<h3>Always another story</h3>
<p>For many months, the western media’s role has been to gaslight us by pretending the genocide is something else.</p>
<p>First, the mass slaughter of Palestinians was presented simply as a
natural desire by Israel to eliminate “terrorism” on its doorstep
following the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023. </p>
<div>
<p><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/protesters-Palestine-London-November-2024-afp-carlos-jasso.jpg" width="466" height="310" alt="Pro-Palestinian protesters run into a group of counter-protesters waving Israeli flags in London, on 30 November 2024 (Carlos Jasso/AFP)" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">
</p>
Pro-Palestinian protesters run into a group of
counter-protesters waving Israeli flags in London, on 30 November 2024
(Carlos Jasso/AFP)
</div>
<p><span></span></p>
<p>It was chiefly a story of Israeli "self-defence" that conveniently
overlooked the preceding decades in which Israel had driven Palestinians
off their land, either out of their homeland entirely or into ghettoes,
then colonised the land illegally with apartheid-style Jewish
settlements, and subjected the Palestinian ghettoes to brutal Israeli
military rule. </p>
<p>In the coverage after 7 October, the Palestinians - long the victims
of an illegal occupation - were viewed as squarely to blame for their
own suffering. To suggest anything else - to worry that a genocide was
unfolding - was a sure sign of antisemitism.</p>
<p>Then, as the slaughter intensified - as Gaza was levelled, hospitals
wrecked, the population collectively punished with an aid blockade - the
official story faltered.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We were back to the familiar framework of an intractable conflict, in
which both sides were to blame - though, of course, the Palestinians
more so</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So a new narrative was advanced: of international efforts to reach a
ceasefire ending “the cycle of violence”, of the focus on securing the
release of the hostages, of Hamas intransigence. </p>
<p>We were back to the familiar framework of an intractable conflict, in
which both sides were to blame - though, of course, the Palestinians
more so. </p>
<p>Now, as it becomes impossible to continue pretending that Israel
wants peace, to ignore the fact that it is expanding the slaughter, not
reining it in, the media strategy has shifted once again. </p>
<p>As the genocide reaches its “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/06/we-are-witnessing-the-final-stage-of-genocide-in-gaza" target="_blank">final stage</a>”
- as the Israeli Holocaust scholars Omer Bartov and Amos Goldberg warn -
the media have largely lost interest. If there is no way to both-sides
the genocide, then it must be disappeared.</p>
<p>And in media-land, there is always another story that can be
promoted. There will always be another front-page lead rather than the
most disturbing one of all, in which western leaders and the media are
full participants in the live-streamed extermination of a people.</p>
<h3>BBC buries the news</h3>
<p>That is the context for understanding the media’s collective yawn as
the three genocide reports dropped one after another this month.</p>
<p>Israel’s accusations that Amnesty’s report was antisemitic were
entirely expected. What should not have been was the media’s largely
indifferent response.</p>
<p>The BBC was a case study in how to bury bad news. Its flagship
television news programmes - the dominant news source for Britons -
ignored the story completely. </p>
<div>
<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/bbc-lebanon-israel-reporting-weaponising-crimes-pagers" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/images-story/Wounded%20Lebanese%20child%20Haidar%20Hijazi%2C%205%2C%20rests%20at%20hospital%20in%20Sidon%20on%20September%2027%2C%202024%2C%20after%20he%20was%20injured%20following%20an%20Israeli%20airstrike%20that%20targeted%20his%20home%20village%20of%20al-Sharkiyah%20in%20southern%20Lebanon%20%28AFP%29.jpg.webp?itok=S6LTRYSt" width="400" height="250" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img">
</a></p><p>The BBC is weaponising its Lebanon reporting to help disguise Israel's crimes</p>
<p><br>
</p></div>
<p>Meanwhile, its poor cousin, the 24-hour news channel, which draws a far smaller audience, did mention the Amnesty report, <a href="https://x.com/Hamza_a96/status/1864650545765499149" target="_blank">but captioned it</a>: “Israel rejects ‘fabricated’ claims of genocide.”</p>
<p>In other words, when the BBC did offer very limited coverage, it
skipped the news story of Amnesty’s findings and went straight to
Israel’s predictable, outraged reaction. </p>
<p>In an <a href="https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/bbc-civil-war-gaza-israel-biased-coverage" target="_blank">investigation for Drop Site News</a>
last week, Guardian columnist Owen Jones spoke to 13 current and
recently departed BBC staff. They said the corporation’s coverage of
Gaza was heavily skewed to present Israel’s actions in a favourable
light.</p>
<p>In a WhatsApp chat for senior BBC Middle East editors, correspondents
and producers, one participant - incensed by the “fabricated claims”
caption - wrote: “FFS! - It’s an open goal for those who say we’re frit
[afraid] of upsetting the Israelis and keep on couching our stories in
an ‘Israel says’ narrative’.”</p>
<p>The BBC’s website, by far the most influential English-language online news source, <a href="https://x.com/PulaRJS/status/1864704295444074638" target="_blank">inexplicably ignored</a> the Amnesty report for 12 hours after the embargo was lifted.</p>
<p>Even then, it appeared as the seventh item. For the following week,
it was not included in the “Israel-Gaza” index on the website’s front
page, making it unlikely it would be found. </p>
<p>This pattern has long been true in the BBC’s coverage of Israel and
Palestine, but it has become far more glaring since the stakes were
raised for Israel by its genocide. </p>
<p></p>
<p>As Jones’s investigation discloses, BBC management has tightly
restricted control over the Gaza coverage to a small number of
journalists known to hew closely to Israel’s view of events - and
despite their editorial role provoking what Jones calls a “civil war” in
the BBC newsroom.</p>
<p>Notably, Jones did not publish his investigation in the Guardian, where there have been similar <a href="https://novaramedia.com/2024/10/18/discontent-deepens-among-guardian-staff-over-palestine-double-standard/" target="_blank">reports of staff indignant</a> at the paper’s failure to give proper weight to the genocidal nature of Israel’s actions.</p>
<h3>Rigged algorithms</h3>
<p>What the BBC has been doing is not exceptional. As soon as a light is
shone into the dark recesses of the state- and billionaire-owned media,
the same picture always emerges.</p>
<p>Last week, an investigation revealed that Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, intentionally <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c786wlxz4jgo" target="_blank">rigged its algorithms</a> to suppress reports from the biggest Palestinian news sources after the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023.</p>
<p>Palestinian news outlets saw their views on Meta platforms fall
significantly after the attack - on average by 77 percent - when they
should have expected to see far greater interest. By contrast, views of
Israeli news outlets rose sharply.</p>
<div>
<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/new-york-times-antisemitism-name-genocide-does-not" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/images-story/2024-05-18T165234Z_424426537_MT1SIPA000JQSBO0_RTRMADP_3_SIPA-USA%281%29.jpg.webp?itok=eLGEmtG_" width="400" height="250" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img">
</a></p><p>For The New York Times, antisemitism has a name but genocide does not</p>
</div><div><br></div>
<p>Paradoxically, the investigation was published by the BBC, though
notably the research was initiated and carried out by the staff of its
Arabic news service. </p>
<p>Also last week, more than a dozen whistleblowers from Deutsche Welle, Germany’s equivalent of state broadcaster the BBC, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/19/as-gaza-war-rages-deutsche-welle-insiders-accuse-outlet-of-pro-israel-bias" target="_blank">revealed to Al Jazeera</a> that a culture of fear reigns in the newsroom when it comes to critical coverage of Israel.</p>
<p>Similar reports from whistleblowing staff have exposed the rigged
nature of the coverage - always in Israel’s favour - in other major
outlets, <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/cnn-israel-bias-laid-bare-norm-not-exception" target="_blank">from CNN</a> to the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/01/09/newspapers-israel-palestine-bias-new-york-times/" target="_blank">New York Times</a> and the Associated Press news agency.</p>
<p>In reality, the same skewed news agenda can be found in every
newsroom in every corporate media outlet. It just requires
whistleblowers to come forward, and for there to be someone willing to
listen and in a position to publish.</p>
<p>Why? Because a genocide unfolding in plain sight cannot be made to
appear normal without an enormous expenditure of effort from
institutional media to close the eyes of their audiences. To hypnotise
us into indifference.</p>
<h3>State of anxiety</h3>
<p>Too many of us are susceptible to this process - and for a number of reasons.</p>
<p>In part, because we still trust these institutions, even though their
chief function is to persuade us that they are there for our benefit -
rather than the reality that they serve the interests of the larger
corporate structures to which they belong.</p>
<p>Those western structures are invested in resource theft,
asset-stripping and wealth concentration - all, of course, pursued at
the expense of the global south - and the war industries needed to make
this pillage possible.</p>
<p>But also, it is part of our psychological makeup that we cannot sustain attention on bad news indefinitely.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We cannot sustain attention on bad news indefinitely. To watch a
genocide unfold week after week, month after month, and be unable to do
anything to stop it, takes a terrible toll on our mental health</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To watch a genocide unfold week after week, month after month, and
be unable to do anything to stop it, takes a terrible toll on our mental
health. It keeps us in a permanent state of anxiety.</p>
<p>The corporate structures that oversee our media understand this only
too well. Which is why they cultivate a sense of powerlessness amongst
their audiences.</p>
<p>The world is presented as a baffling place, where there are
inexplicable forces of evil that act without any comprehensible
causation to destroy all that is good and wholesome.</p>
<p>The media suggest international affairs are little different from a
game of whack-a-mole. Whenever the good West tries to solve a problem,
another evil mole pops up its head, whether it be Hamas terrorists,
Hezbollah terrorists, Syria’s former dictator Bashar al-Assad, or the
mad mullahs of Iran.</p>
<p>With this as the framework for the Gaza genocide, audiences are left
sensing either that what is happening to Palestinians, however
horrifying, may be deserved or that investing too much concern is a
waste of energy and time. Another crisis will be along in a moment
equally demanding of our attention.</p>
<p>And so it will. Because that is precisely the way the corporate media
works. It offers a conveyor belt of bad news, one bewildering event
after another - whether it be another disgraced celebrity, or murdered
schoolgirl, or an outbreak of war.</p>
<p>The media’s role - the reason states and corporations keep such a
tight grip on it - is to stop us from gaining a wider picture of the
world, one on which our hands look far more bloodied than the
"terrorists" we sit in judgment on. One where a powerful western elite,
its corporate empire headquartered in the US, runs the planet as nothing
more than a wealth-extraction machine.</p>
<p>And so we, the publics of the West, shrug our shoulders once again:
at “man’s inhumanity to man”, at “the cycle of violence”, at “the
barbarians at the gate”, at “the white man’s burden”.</p>
<p>Nearly 15 months on, the Gaza genocide has become entirely normal, it
has become just another minor, routine news item to be buried on the
inside pages. </p>
<p><i>The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.</i></p>
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