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The media aren’t failing us. Journalism is not what the media are there to do. They are propagandists for their governments. And their governments are enabling a genocide
Over on social media, @zei_squirrel has another of his excellent threads on the western media’s use of deceptive language to manipulate how readers think about what has been unfolding in Gaza over the past year.
This time he is incensed by the way the Associated Press agency, or AP, stresses in its reporting a supposed failure to distinguish between Palestinian “militants” and “civilians” in Gaza’s official death toll – by any reckoning, a massive undercount – to insinuate the Israeli talking-point that most of the dead in Gaza are likely to be “evil Hamas”.
He rightly refers to this as genocide-laundering.
But I want to address a parallel point about the language used by western media he doesn’t raise here, but that is equally misleading and compounds the very problem he’s examining.
The double standard should be glaring. While AP and other outlets are keen to highlight a distinction between civilians and militants among Palestinian casualties to suggest that a significant proportion of the dead are actually militants, they do the exact reverse when reporting on the Israelis taken into Gaza by Hamas during its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
That point is illustrated by this paragraph, taken from @zei_squirrel’s post:
Hamas, once again, is cited as having “abducted” 250 Israelis on October 7. Those Israelis are always described as “hostages”. But we know a significant proportion of them were actually soldiers – soldiers seized that day from military bases that have been enforcing a brutal occupation and 17-year medieval-style siege on Gaza. None of those soldiers were “abucted”. They were “captured”.
No one in the media has made the slightest effort to distinguish in the coverage between Israeli civilians seized that day, and Israeli soldiers. All the Israelis taken into Gaza on October 7 have been automatically accorded civilian status through the use of the word “abducted”, even though we know that is not true – not by a long stretch.
Similarly, no effort has been made to explain that the Israelis released by Hamas were civilians, in contrast to many of those who are still held in Gaza – presumably because Hamas has preferred to use soldiers as its main bargaining chips in negotiations rather than civilians.
What is Hamas negotiating for, beyond a ceasefire? For the return of many thousands of Palestinians who truly have been abducted – dragged off into Israeli torture camps like Sde Teiman.
(Remember, Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories has been declared illegal by the International Court of Justice, the world’s highest court. In international law, Israel is the undoubted aggressor. Hamas didn’t “start it” on October 7. Israel has been “starting it” for decades with its illegal occupation. The judges recognised that the Palestinians have a legal right to resist their occupation through violence to liberate themselves. Yes, when Hamas targets Israeli civilians, it is committing a war crime. But Israel, as the indisputable aggressor, is no position to act as any kind of law enforcer in the occupied territories.)
So why is the media failing to note the difference between “abducted” Israeli civilians and “captured” Israeli soldiers in its reporting? Because language strongly shapes how we feel emotionally about news events.
If most of the remaining Israelis in Gaza are actually soldiers, not civilians, western publics might feel even less receptive to the argument that the mass slaughter of Palestinians, the erasure of their homes and infrastructure, and their starvation is necessary to secure the Israelis’ return. They might insist instead that their governments stop arming Israel’s genocide and impose a ceasefire.
Which is precisely what Israel doesn’t want. It is precisely what western governments don’t want. And so it is precisely what the western media don’t want.
That is why the media make no effort to find out how many of the Israelis in Gaza are, in fact, soldiers. Even the suggestion that they have a duty to find out would outrage them. They would regard it as justifying “terrorism”.
So while the media insist on making a distinction between Palestinian civilians and militants, between women and children, on one side, and men on the other (as though every man in Gaza is a combatant and therefore a legitimate target), they keep referring to all Israelis held in Gaza as “abducted”, as civilians.
The media aren’t failing us. This is what they are there to do. They are not journalists. They are propagandists for their governments. And their governments are enabling a genocide.
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No they are not committing a War Crime.
Every Single Israeli, in fact EVERY SINGLE JEW in the World is a fair target for the Palestinian Resistance.
Jews universally (99%+) are supporters of Israel.
If Jews do not want to be included in the legitimate position of being Occupying Genocidaires, they can be like the Orthodox Group in NYC Neturei Karta… and declare their opposition to Israeli Crimes.
Jews cannot have it both ways… 99% support the most criminal enterprise ever (Tribal Demonics) but say… “Oh! Oy Vey! Not Me! I am Civilian!!!”
The media of jUSA cannot be trusted. Propaganda unlimited from the “tribe” i.e. ju that runs it!
Canada outlaws Palestinian prisoner solidarity group Samidoun to appease Israel lobby.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/canada-u-s-impose-sanctions-on-a-palestinian-organization-1.7074073
Supporting the Oct 7th Israeli POWs detained in Gaza is legal in Canada.
Supporting Palestinian POWs and civilian detainees in Israeli prisons is “support for terrorism”.
Canada isn’t a sovereign country. The Jewish lobby owns the media and government.
Its not the media…its the comfort and kill strategy that make people placid.
Comfortable and not willing to lose a position people sell their morality, its then easy to kill any resistance they may have had living in tougher times…we are well fed cattle. If you want to kill large amounts of pest birds you first feed them to win trust and to bring in numbers of them then you poison them.
Take note of what is happening in Gaza…its all our futures…the Zionist have decided to ethnically cleanse the world because they perceived that was done to them so they won’t leave anyone who can threaten them…so its Palistinians turn first.
The tactics the Zionists are using is the classic round-up “feeding frenzy” model. Like large sea predators can coordinate to concentrate prey in a tightening circle for the maximum benifit for effort then the Zionist are moving the Palistinians time and again to small areas to increase density…then they claim (like all evil liars) that Hamas is reforming then they bomb the area of concentration maximizing the killing per bomb, like over this weekend where 200 killed.
The Palistinians should be spreading themselves to the four corners of Gaza so Bombs are to costly to use to get just one or two, they should booby trap everything and exert a cost on as many Zionist as possible for their genocide since the Palistinians are going out anyway because their so-called brother Arabs won’t lift a finger, oh well their turn will come…and so will all of ours…in time.
Iran is the most bamboozling? Why are they waiting, like Lebanon did, for the Zionist to put everything in place to maximize the damage of their eventual strike? Get in first. If your afraid of the U.S well that’s who Israel is…Iran has being earmarked as the weekest link so attack by the U.S proxy is inevitable, so get in first!
Why doesn’t Mr. Cooke mention the fact that Jews own and manage the media and Western governments? That’s why there’s is such a pro-Israel bias among the Jew-owned politicians and Jew-owned media.
Half 9f Palestinians in Gaza are children, add the women and elderly a d it’s mostly non-combatants.
As for Iran, they can’t give America and excuse to intervene directly by being more aggressive.
I don’t think it’s that high. But younger Jews are certainly less pro-Israel.
Anyway, being pro-Israel isn’t grounds to be physically targeted, I figure.
Which gives the terrorists more candidates to hide behind and among. If Israel has to kill the civilians to get to Hamas, then so be it.
The media is owned by the same misanthropes who control the governments, the political parties the politicians and bureaucrats thus the information we are feed is always tainted and tilted in favor of their interests and objectives. This is fascism, regulatory capture, bribery, extortion and “honey traps” in action. Sadly the masses are suffering the consequences of the actions of these miscreants.
There are no hostages , it was all a staged false flag. Nothing but car fires, smoke bombs, crisis actors and outrageous media lies. Remember their motto “ By way of deception thou shall do war “.
Bingo! Wait until people realize that “war” is complete fakery as well…. Heads will pop.
But but the “military” complex is just another hollywood production?
They use C4 explosives that they have to plant inside to destroy buildings, and then record it right before setting it off and claim it’s “airstrikes”. Both sides (lebanon, palestine) are in with the establishment (satanic jews). There are no “jet fighters”, or “carrier ships”, or an “iron dome”.
lebanese soldiers and palestinian soldiers both plant c4 inside their own people’s building, and just follow orders for direct deposits every two weeks.
It’s all a fugazi. I really don’t understand what these clowns were thinking when they released the internet onto the public. If half of our reality was fake, I could understand the propaganda bonuses would outweigh the exposure of truth, but if our reality is 90-95% staged and fake, didn’t they foresee that the internet (liberalization of information) would shatter the matrix?
Atmospheric electricity and the fact that metals aren’t even mined but created from carbon matter (charcoal or lignin) is the end boss of fakery. You mean gold and diamonds are created in industrial settings and not “mined” like the rot childs claim? Ouff…. It went from an open secret to common knowledge within the past few years that so many things we are “thought” in “school” is for indoctrination into the matrix, but now even normies are asking questions about where our electricity actually comes from. Plenty of places around the world have electricity 24/7 and not a “power plant” in sight.
Fake oil wells, fake “viruses”, fake bombs, fake “power plants”, fake milk, fake everything….
The world’s a stage, just ask trump the diddler.
It’s close to 99% of jews supporting project Israel.