Over the past 3 weeks, the Middle East has been witnessing what could be regarded as one of the most traumatizing events in its history; a blatant rebuttal of humanitarian principles in an act that will have ripples across the globe in the years to come. In the doctrine of Joseph Goebbels “repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”. This was the Nazi modus operandi during their attempts of ethnic cleansing of the world in the times of World War II. It is no surprise that this has been an integral part of politics over the past decades, though its magnitude and extent of use changes from time to time.
Modern warfare starts with a massive wave of cybersecurity. This is split into cyber terrorism and a gargantuan, coordinated disinformation campaign. Disinformation campaigns do not aim to make you believe a certain agenda, they are rather targeted to exhaust your critical thinking and to assassinate the truth.
However, the fact that during this ongoing crisis and horrific intentional disregard to lost human lives, the West still chooses to take Israel’s claims at face value. This is not because Israel is tricking them, but because they choose to blatantly disregard the truth (the whole truth and nothing but the truth) for their own political agenda. Let us, however, go down memory lane a while back and see for ourselves what history tells us about information and media warfare tools, for the fools learn from experience, the wise from history.
The last time the world saw such a clear disregard for the truth and relentless propagation of lies with some journalists acting as glorified parrots was in the wake of the Iraq war. By some mystical force, the American, British, and Israeli intelligence agencies had the global public convinced of a fictional picture that Saddam Hussein was harboring weapons of mass destruction, a picture that was clearly aided by the Mossad. This single lie caused the death of nearly half a million civilians and after years of combing through Iraq no WMDs were found. After such a failed effort and the dismantling of the Iraqi police, army, and intelligence apparatus in arguably the worst foreign policy decision ever by the US, a vacuum was created that allowed ISIS to be born and thrive. That is ok though as we now know that not all lives are created equal and not every civilian death is as important as the next on the international stage. An apology of “sorrow and regret” was issued by Tony Blair 16 years and hundreds of thousands of deaths later.
In the information warfare, Israel has clearly won. In an article published by the Guardian, an Israeli company tied to the IDF was exposed to have meddled in over 30 elections and made its bread and butter by confusing the narrative and spreading lies and disinformation to achieve political agendas across the West and the EU. This is not the first instance of the matter, in the 2021 conflict with Hamas Israel admitted the use of social media to try and alter public opinion using comments such as “Why are buildings still standing in Gaza?” which clearly tells you the state of mind of the IDF. It will not be the last but Israel is the first state that has documented use of paying social media platforms to spread it messages in an act to sway the public opinions in the West and EU as reported by Politico.
Now cyberbullying is not something that Israel has never used before. It has used mainstream media and social media several times to run interference on western political figures that did not show sufficient support for Israel and dared to question its motives or actions. This is outlined in a written evidence to the UK parliament by Patrick Darnes was used to weaponize antisemitism against former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. The evidence quotes “there is a campaign orchestrated by the State of Israel and its supporters to silence legitimate criticism of Israel’s objectives and illegal behavior by labelling it as “anti-Semitic””. This is a new meaning for the word Hasbara, the Hebrew word for explaining the justice of the Israeli and Zionist cause. Hasbara campaigns and agents are now covertly linked to the Israeli state as explained by Haaretz back in 2013. It is becoming clear that PM Netanyahu has convinced Israel that all they need to change was their communication and messages and not how they conduct their affairs.
The Israeli state’s Hasbara now has quite the overdose of fantasy and you can read more about their digital diplomacy in Foreign Policy and how Israel trades college funding for students who are willing to take up digital Arms for her defense. This is precisely how the terms “right to defend itself” and “beheaded babies” found their ways into speeches of the leader of the free world, only to be retracted later by the White House, though the right to defend itself has not been retracted.
Israel is currently carpet-bombarding Gaza in an attempt to level it to the ground with the blessing of the Western leaders. There are so many oxymorons going around that the mind can hardly comprehend. Words like “hostages are a priority” and “this is about the amount of destruction” bring back memories of the Moscow theatre hostage crisis of 2002 where Russian special forces used sleeping gas which ended up killing a lot of the hostages. Statements such as “this is not about the Palestinian people, this is about Hamas” present an oxymoron to the death of upwards of 8000 people so far over 40% of whom are children. The blatant disregard for international organizations on the ground, hospitals, aid and the basic, fundamental right to survive, all this is happening around us while the leaders of the “free world” stand stupefied.
In an attempt to justify its barbaric response, Israel has pushed the narrative of the right to self defense whereby it shifts the rhetoric from colonial crimes against the Palestinians to the harm inflicted upon Israel on October the 7th. The foundation of Israel’s self-defense theory is incorrect for two fundamental reasons. First, Israel’s war against the Palestinians does not fall under the category of self-defense, which does not apply to conflicts waged by an occupying state against its enemies. Second, Israel’s actions in Gaza go against every established norm for self-defense, including the need for war when peace is readily attainable, the distinction between civilians and troops, and the proportionality of harm caused in pursuit of military objectives.
In hindsight it seems kind of foolish to ask why there is a strong resentment for the current Israeli administration; an extremist, racist, and obnoxious government that is hated by its own people. Led by a clinically dead politician who is clinging to power with all his remaining might in order to avoid prison and scandalous charges. All this while is happening while being backed up by the US which has failed in every single endeavor it has begun to tackle terrorism as a topic and has displayed that it has zero understanding of how the Middle East works.
This would be the perfect time to tackle the world’s most ridiculous question by Piers Morgan on proportionality and what would be a proportionate response. It is hard to believe that the West with all their intelligence agencies never came up with the idea of dealing with Hamas as an insurgency. If you want to get rid of Hamas, then get rid of the reason for their existence; alleviate the oppression, develop the economy, create jobs. People are not extremists by nature, they are driven to extremists by unresolved grievances; and that is why Palestinians will never choose Israel, the main reason for their suffering. But going down this path of genocidal acts is only going to breed more violence if not by Hamas, then by other groups that will be formed due to the unresolved grievances. You really cannot question why some people hate the government of Israel when it is the source of this hatred and continues to bully its way through the lands of Palestine.
Twelve babies have died by the time I was done with this article. Twelve. Please pause on this note. It brings back memories of the final scene of Schindler’s List where Oskar Schindler looks at his watch and car and thinks how many he could have saved with those. The fact remains though that today’s Israel is far away from Oskar Schindler’s teachings and even from the teachings of Judaism in the Talmud “whoever saves one life saves the world entire”. Today, we witness a state whose religion is Zionism, whose motives are greed and whose morals point only towards its own political agenda, utilizing tools of deceit and lying to create a false sense of victimization. At the end of the day the most important question remains, “Do you condemn Hamas?”
