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<\/a>A bombed vehicle carrying World Central Kitchen aid workers killed by an Israeli attack in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on 2 Apr 2024 [Ali Jadallah \u2013 Anadolu Agency]<\/p><\/div>5 Apr 2024<\/em> – A key function of the state-corporate media is to deny reality. They do<\/em> supply news. But it is no accident that they supply news of a type that covers up the crimes of elite power.<\/p>\n However, the appalling violence and destruction being inflicted in Gaza by Israel are simply too great to conceal.\u00a0 We may well be living through an unprecedented era where the vast crimes of the West, and the complicity of major news organisations, have never been more exposed to the public.<\/p>\n Professor Jeffrey Sachs, the US economist and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, said in a recent interview<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018We are seeing a massacre in front of our eyes\u2014it is absolutely inhumane; it is absolutely war crimes; it is arguably, I personally think, likely genocidal according to the legal standards of the 1948 Genocide Convention.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n He continued:<\/p>\n \u2018We haven\u2019t had genocides captured by video feed day by day.<\/p>\n \u2018We have IDF forces standing with their thumbs up as they blow up universities, mosques, hospitals, and apartment buildings\u2014it\u2019s unbelievable. We have members of the Israeli cabinet preaching hate.<\/p>\n \u2018We\u2019ve seen these religious nationalist extremist rabbis talk about killing all the people in Gaza. \u201cAnd do you mean the children?\u201d the Rabbi is asked. \u201cYes, the children. They can grow up to be terrorists.\u201d\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The indescribable horror of Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza has elicited little more than anguished hand-wringing from Western leaders who have continued to send weapons to the apartheid state<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sachs made the point that matters which is so often ignored or glossed over by \u2018responsible\u2019 media, notably BBC News:<\/p>\n \u2018It could end by the United States government saying, \u201cWe are not providing the munitions for slaughter, period.\u201d\u2019 That would end it. Israel cannot do this one day without the United States.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Likewise, the daily Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, the country\u2019s most widely distributed newspaper, recently carried a key quote from its lead correspondent [cited in an interview<\/a> with former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy at around 6 mins : 25 secs] that:<\/p>\n \u2018Israel could not continue this war were it not for US military support.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Indeed, a clear-cut historical example of US leverage over Israel was provided<\/a> by Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute, an American think tank specialising in US foreign policy:<\/p>\n \u2018In 1982, President Ronald Regan was \u201cdisgusted<\/a>\u201d by Israeli bombardment of Lebanon. He stopped the transfer of cluster munitions to Israel and told Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in a phone call that \u201cthis is a holocaust.\u201d Reagan demanded that Israel withdraw its troops from Lebanon. Begin caved. Twenty minutes after their phone call, Begin ordered a halt on attacks.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Five British prime ministers have stopped arms to Israel<\/a> in the past, including Margaret Thatcher when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, and Tony Blair who stopped the export of UK weapons that could be used to suppress Palestinians during the Second Intifada in 2002. But not Rishi Sunak, so far, in 2024.<\/p>\n Australian writer Caitlin Johnstone wrote<\/a> this week:<\/p>\n \u2018Israel has ended its assault on the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, because there is nothing left to assault. The facility\u200a\u2014\u200athe largest medical complex<\/a> in Gaza where hundreds of civilians had been sheltering\u200a\u2014\u200ais now an empty, unusable<\/a>, burnt-out husk<\/a>. Witnesses report hundreds of corpses<\/a> in and around the complex, with video footage<\/a> showing human body parts protruding from the earth<\/a> and bodies with zip ties<\/a> on their wrists.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah, who spent over a month treating patients at Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli Baptist hospitals in Gaza, told Amy Goodman in a Democracy Now! interview<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018I blame the Western journalists, who perpetuated the narrative that militarized the [Al-Shifa] hospital as a justifiable and an acceptable target to the Israelis. These genocide enablers, these Western journalists, from the very beginning, peddled these stories that the Israelis were feeding them about Shifa being on top of this massive complex of a command-and-control center. And their job was to enable the genocide to take place. And the genocide can only take place if the health system is destroyed.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Dr Abu-Sittah paid tribute to Dr. Ahmad Maqadmeh, a fellow surgeon who was killed by Israeli forces at Al-Shifa alongside his mother:<\/p>\n \u2018And so, they have the blood of my friend \u2014\u00a0the blood of Ahmad Maqadmeh is on the hands of the CNN journalists and the BBC journalists and the ITV journalists, who, from the very beginning, were peddling this narrative.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n These news organisations, and others, have routinely downplayed Israeli atrocities by serially publishing deceptive headlines that mask Israel\u2019s responsibility. For example, when seven aid workers, three of them British, were killed in an Israeli drone attack this week, targeted in three separate strikes<\/a> along a supposed \u2018approved\u2019 Israeli route, the New York Times (NYT) headline<\/a> was:<\/p>\n \u2018Founder of World Central Kitchen says several workers killed in Gaza airstrike\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The word \u2018Israel\u2019 was glaringly absent from the NYT headline. Middle East historian Assal Rad said<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018Covering up Israel\u2019s crimes enables them to commit more, name the attacker.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If something similar had happened in Ukraine, the headline would have prominently featured the words \u2018Russia\u2019 and \u2018Putin\u2019.<\/p>\n Similarly, the NYT last month shielded Israel with the headline<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018Deaths of Gazans desperate for food prompt fresh call for ceasefire\u2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The phrase \u2018Israeli massacre of Gazans\u2019 was missing from the headline.<\/p>\n Rad pointed out<\/a> yet another egregious example: an Economist article titled, \u2018Gaza could face a famine by May\u2019:<\/p>\n \u2018An entire Economist article on famine in Gaza doesn\u2019t say the word \u201cIsrael\u201d once. Not even when describing damage to farmland and water facilities or severely restricted aid deliveries.<\/p>\n \u2018Saying *who* is destroying the farmland and restricting aid seems like basic info to include.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Presumably stung by public exposure and criticism, the Economist later updated its piece<\/a> to include mention of Israel\u2026by including the propaganda claim: \u2018Israel insists it is not obstructing aid lorries.\u2019 Days later, this lie \u2013 because that is simply what it is \u2013 was highlighted by the Israeli murder of the seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen.<\/p>\n Craig Mokhiber, a former senior UN official in New York who resigned last year over Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza, tweeted<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018The murder of @WCKitchen staff is only the latest.\u00a0 The genocidal Israeli regime has sealed the border & destroyed crops, wells, bakeries & food stores, murdered 200 aid workers, targeted security for aid, blocked aid trucks & massacred starving people lined up for aid. #genocide\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n A Guardian website headline declared:<\/p>\n \u2018Israeli military investigating after foreign aid workers killed in Gaza airstrike\u2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As former UK diplomat Craig Murray noted<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018Beyond satire from @Guardian<\/a>. Who killed them?<\/p>\n \u2018The Israeli military are the good guys apparently, investigating it.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Chris Doyle, Director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, observed<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018Israel makes allegations against UNRWA but provides zero evidence. What happens? UK suspends funding pending investigation Israel carries out three strikes against known aid worker vehicles. What happens? UK says \u2013 Israel please investigate yourself, and we\u2019ll still sell you arms\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It is clear that Israel\u2019s destruction of Gaza\u2019s healthcare system, and Israel\u2019s starvation of Gazans, are deliberate. Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories said<\/a> via X (formerly Twitter):<\/p>\n \u2018Knowing how Israel operates, my assessment is that Israeli forces intentionally killed #WCK workers so that donors would pull out & civilians in Gaza could continue to be starved quietly. Israel knows Western countries & most Arab countries won\u2019t move a finger for the Palestinians.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Israel\u2019s intention, made clear in multiple public statements<\/a>, is to get rid of Palestinians from Gaza and to impose Israeli sovereignty<\/a> \u2018from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea\u2019.<\/p>\n It is significant that even establishment-friendly figures on prominent platforms are finally speaking out. Richard Madeley of ITV\u2019s Good Morning Britain, clearly appalled by Israel\u2019s killing of seven aid workers, described<\/a> it as an \u2018execution\u2019 while Nick Ferrari of LBC called<\/a> for the suspension of UK arms sales to Israel, adding:<\/p>\n \u2018It could\u2019ve been our missiles that killed them.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n One could rightly argue that such outrage is long overdue. At the time of writing, the death toll in Gaza is 33,000, including more than 13,000 children. There is even overwhelming evidence that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted<\/a> by Israeli snipers in Gaza. In a dramatic front-page spread under the stark headline, \u2018Enough\u2019, the Independent loudly declared<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018It may seem wrong that, after more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza<\/a> have perished, it took the deaths of just seven international aid workers<\/a> to stir Western governments into a sense of outrage<\/a>, but that is the reality.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u2018It may seem<\/em> wrong\u2019? It is<\/em> wrong. It is damning evidence that Palestinian lives are deemed by those in power to be less valuable than the lives of Westerners. But it is right<\/em> that so many are now saying, \u2018Enough\u2019, regardless of the motivation.<\/p>\n Dr Fozia Alvi, a Canadian physician who founded the US-based charity Humanity Auxilium<\/a>, left Gaza in the third week of February as Israeli forces were threatening a ground assault against Rafah. She said<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018This is not a normal war. The war in Ukraine has killed 500 kids in two years and the war in Gaza has killed over 10,000 in less than five months. We have seen wars before but this is something that is a dark stain on our shared humanity.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Claudia Webbe, the independent MP for Leicester East, summarised<\/a> where we are:<\/p>\n \u2018Israel is out of control.<\/p>\n \u2018Israel is deliberately killing International aid workers. It has now passed a law to ban journalists.<\/p>\n \u2018Israel is killing Palestinians in Gaza. Murder and genocide in plain sight. They don\u2019t want you to know the truth. Our political leaders are complicit\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But the complicit role of the media also needs to be highlighted. Des Freedman, a professor of media and communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, believes<\/a> that:<\/p>\n \u00a0\u2018We need journalism that is committed to accurate and uncompromising investigation and not a spurious \u201cimpartiality\u201d that hides brutal facts of occupation and genocide.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Freedman noted that the BBC, along with other major news outlets, largely ignored growing claims of Israeli genocide until the South African government brought evidence to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in January 2024. The ICJ then found that there was a \u2018plausible\u2019 case that genocide was taking place.<\/p>\n Freedman continued:<\/p>\n \u2018Since then, references to genocide on broadcasters\u2019 \u2018X\u2019 (formerly Twitter) feeds \u2013 a sign of their editorial priorities \u2013 have virtually disappeared. While there are 54 mentions of genocide in Al Jazeera\u2019s feed since 1 February, there is not a single one in the feeds of @BBCNews, @BBCWorld or @Channel4News.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The BBC actually made the rare concession of a \u2018mistake\u2019<\/a> in their live coverage of the ICJ genocide case against Israel. BBC editorial policy director David Jordan made the admission to MPs after BBC editors had chosen to show Israel\u2019s defence against genocide charges in full, while only showing clips of South Africa\u2019s case arguing Israel is committing genocide.<\/p>\n Despite Jordan\u2019s denial, the unequal coverage was<\/em> indicative of serious BBC bias on Israel and Palestine, as has been demonstrated over many years by the Glasgow University Media Group<\/a>, for example, and by a recent report<\/a> from the Centre for Media Monitoring.<\/p>\n One glaring aspect of the crisis in what passes for \u2018democracy\u2019 in this country is that there is no real party of opposition in Westminster. Labour under Sir Keir Starmer has done its best to divest itself of anything that smacks of socialism, cleaving as closely as possible to the establishment, and not daring to ruffle the feathers of the billionaire-owned press.<\/p>\n Peter Oborne, former Telegraph chief political writer, observed<\/a> recently that:<\/p>\n \u2018From the suffragettes to Gandhi, those who challenged the British state and were labelled extremists ended up being vindicated. The pro-Palestine protesters will be too.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n He warned that the real extremists are those running the country or who wish to do so:<\/p>\n \u2018I am coming to believe that the real extremists can be found in Downing Street, the Conservative Party, and in Starmer\u2019s Labour Party.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In a scathing column explaining why he was rescinding his Labour party membership, Owen Jones wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018<\/strong>The assault on Gaza, the great crime of our age, adds moral indecency to the pile of dishonesty and vacuity. When Starmer declared Israel had the right<\/a> to cut off energy and water to Palestinian civilians, he did so as a human rights lawyer who understands the Geneva conventions. After letting shadow cabinet ministers defend him, he claimed<\/a> it \u201chas never been my view that Israel had the right to cut off water, food, fuel or medicines\u201d. We all have political red lines: mine is supporting what would amount to war crimes against innocent civilians, toddlers and newborn babies among them, then gaslighting the public over doing so.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There are now belated and sporadic calls<\/a> from Westminster demanding British arms be \u2018suspended\u2019. Insufficient media attention has focused on the damaging revelation that the Tory government has been told<\/a> by its lawyers that Israel is in breach of international law and that the UK \u2018has to cease all arms sales to Israel without delay\u2019 or it could be found to be complicit in genocide. The government wishes to bury these truths.<\/p>\n But pressure continues to mount on Downing Street: more than 600 lawyers, academics and retired senior judges, including three former supreme court justices, have signed a letter to the prime minister warning<\/a> that the UK government is breaching international law by continuing to arm Israel. Neither the Tory government nor the Labour \u2018opposition\u2019 have yet agreed to stop selling arms to Israel. \u2018Shameful\u2019 hardly sums it up.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Department for Business and Trade civil servants who administer licenses for arms exports to Israel have raised concerns with their trade union that they could be complicit in war crimes in Gaza. They wish to cease such work \u2018immediately\u2019. As reported<\/a> by Sky News, the Public and Commercial Services Union, which represents civil servants, has requested an urgent meeting with the department to discuss \u2018the legal jeopardy faced by civil servants who are continuing to work on this policy.\u2019<\/p>\n What does it say about the state of British society, and indeed democracy itself, that the public is being denied a realistic political choice to dissociate itself from mass slaughter and to stop the genocide in Gaza?<\/p>\n Noam Chomsky has often pointed out that \u2018the ideological system is bounded by the consensus of the privileged\u2019 and that \u2018elections are largely a ritual form.\u2019 In other words, the public is technically allowed to participate in \u2018democracy\u2019 by pushing buttons every few years. But we have \u2018essentially no role in formulating policy\u2019. Our function is largely reduced to ratifying decisions made by the people in power. (Quoted in \u2018Between Thought and Expression Lies a Lifetime: Why Ideas Matter\u2019, Noam Chomsky and James Kelman, PM Press, 2021, pages 103 and 159).<\/p>\n If public awareness of this reality becomes widespread, then, and only then, is there hope of real progress in society.<\/p>\n __________________________________________<\/p>\n\u2018Nothing Left To Assault\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\u2018Not A Normal War\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/a> Media Lens is a UK-based media watchdog group headed by David Edwards and David Cromwell. In 2007,<\/em> Media Lens was awarded the <\/em>Gandhi Foundation International Peace Prize<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0We have written three co-authored books<\/em>:\u00a0Guardians of Power-The Myth of the Liberal Media <\/a>(Pluto Press, 2006),<\/em> Newspeak-In the 21st Century<\/a> (Pluto Press, 2009), and<\/em> Propaganda Blitz<\/a> (Pluto Press, 2018)<\/em>. Contacts: David Edwards: <\/em>editor@medialens.org<\/em><\/a> – David Cromwell: <\/em>editor@medialens.org<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n