Netanyahu: "We are not hiding" our plan

Once again, the Western media deliberately hides the criminal reality of Israel's depravity

“This is the plan. We are not hiding this.”

This is what was said by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu - wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity - about the forcible removal of the entire Palestinian population of Gaza.

Ever since Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people began, you’ve heard me say something along these lines - why isn’t this headline news in the Western media? Why is the Western media failing to cover this either properly, or at all?

When I say this, there are two purposes. One is rhetorical: I’m fleshing out the outrageous pro-Israel bias of the Western media, driven by Israel being a key all of the West, and thus treated as “us”, and shameless, unapologetic, undisguised racism towards the Palestinians, who are “them”.

The other is a desperate plea to never, ever stop being shocked, that without being naive or ignorant about the power dynamics - to never evrer stop screaming inside, I cannot believe this is really happening

As Israel continues to unleash utter depravity against the Palestinian people in full view of the world, it equally does nothing to hide its intentions. In Netanyahu said in this speech, which received almost no coverage of any significance in the Western media, he says the following:

The second claim – that we are unwilling to discuss the final stage. This is also incorrect. We are willing. Hamas will lay down its weapons. Its leaders will be allowed to leave.

We will see to the general security in the Gaza Strip and will allow the realization of the Trump plan for voluntary migration. This is the plan. We are not hiding this and are ready to discuss it at any time.

To be clear, the use of the term ‘voluntary migration’ is a disgusting Orwellian affront to language.

When you raze an entire land from the face of the earth, damaging or destroying 93% of all homes, when you wipe out its hospitals and slaughter its medics, when you besiege the basics of life - from food to medicine - while destroying its agriculture and livestock, when you attack its fresh water supply, when you repeatedly drive the traumatised survivors from place to place under threat of violence and death, when you kidnap thousands of innocent people and torture and rape them, when you incessantly rain down missiles and bombs and shoot bullets so that the civilian population live under the constant fear that this will be their last moment alive, and every day, it is the last moment alive of countless civilians - when you do all of this, when you make life completely and utterly unbearable in what is now 542 days of apocalyptic misery, and when you also make it clear that there will be no reconstruction or attempt to make Gaza liveable again for Palestinians, then the idea of ‘voluntary migration’ is an obscene, nauseating deceit.

As genocide scholars have pointed out, this proposition is a genocidal act. Genocide means acts driven with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group - and the intent here is to erase the Palestinians of Gaza from the earth. You can only do this through the hideous slaughter of the kind we are seeing on full display.

That by definition includes all the worst crimes imaginable, committed in full view of the world. Like attacking a convoy of ambulances and civil workers, handcuffing them, executing them by shooting them, one by one, in the head and the chest, then tossing them into a mass grave, and then even trying to bury their ambulances and fire trucks.

This is the latest atrocity the Israeli state has committed - an atrocity that could hardly be more depraved and as far as the Western media is concerned, this does not qualify as a war crime that can be spelled out for what it is.

On Sky News, British-Palestinian writer Hamza Yusuf, the presenter descrbed this massacre as an “alleged killing” and “then uncritically repeated Israel’s version and justification as fact” - “deliberate misinformation”, as he calls it.

As for the BBC’s coverage, which also presented Israeli claims as credible, the award winning journalist Richard Sanders rightly says:

“Classic BBC.

Everything that happens in Israel is presented as some sort of hopeless puzzle we'll probably never resolve.

This isn't journalism. A case study in why Israel gets away with it.”

Exactly this. Every time Israel commits an atrocity so obscene and so depraved that the BBC actually has to cover it, the BBC reduces it to a game of “he says, she says”, or along the lines “in the fog of war, who’s to know what the truth is?”

Did they play this game with Hamas atrocities on 7th October? No they did not, and as well as rightly accepting crimes that did happen on 7th October without equivocation, I would note that on the BBC website, contrary to the Corporation’s claims that they correct errors when they make them, there are still false claims about atrocities which did not happen on 7th October.

Do they play this game with Russia and Ukraine? No, they do not. They do not treat claims by the Russian authorities as credible or trustworthy. So why do they do this with Israel even though it has been proven over and over and over and over and over again that the Israeli authorities lie and lie and lie and lie about the crimes they commit?

What the BBC has done all the way through this conflict is protect Israel as it commits in full view of the world heinous atrocities, while its leaders and officials flagrantly announce they’re committing war crimes, by preserving a narrative along the lines of - Israel is fighting a war of self-defence and let’s have a debate about whether that response is proportionate or not, with both claims being legitimate, which is a bit like treating both sides of an argument about whether the earth as flat as legitimate, with the rather substantial difference that this is about the mass slaughter of innocent people facilitated by Western governments, including - notably for the BBC - the British government that it is supposed to be holding to account.

As self-described liberal Zionist academic Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, who has increasingly repudiated his support for the Israeli onslaught since it began, writes:

“However, an IDF source admitted to me that there is evidence that soldiers executed the workers. It is also not IDF practice to bury Palestinian bodies, this source confirmed, suggesting they knew they had something to hide.

This confirms reports that some of the ambulance staff was still alive after the IDF hit them. Then they were murdered. This is a new low for the IDF. Those responsible must face justice.”

Well good luck with that one, Shaiel! Given Israeli soldiers have committed every crime under the sun, whilst in many cases boasting about it on social media, without facing justice, I’m fascinated to hear how that goes.

Meanwhile the Israeli state has ordered the evacuation of Rafah, the main city in southern Gaza where Palestinians had previously been ordered by Israel to flee. Today they bombed an clinic belonging to Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, slaughtering 19 people including 9 children.

There is footage of a Palestinian man holding the torso of a baby, beheaded by the Israeli strike. We should note how false claims about beheaded babies on 7th October were used to justify an onslaught which has slaughtered so many babies, including being burned alive and actually beheaded by Israeli weapons.

Israel Katz, the Israeli defence minister, has announced that Israel will “capture extensive territory that will be added to the State of Israel’s security areas.” In other words, Israel is openly committed to annexing more and more of Gaza, a wantonly illegal act. All of this is in the service of the plan announced in the Financial Times, to drive the surviving population of Gaza, already a tiny strip of land no bigger than east London, into an even tinier swathe of it, all with the intent of removing the population from Gaza altogether, as Netanyahu has made very clear.

Indeed, Israel has imposed a total siege on Gaza now for over a month. Nothing is allowed to get in, and at the same time they have systematically destroyed agriculture, livestock and food production.

Yesterday the World Food Programme announced that all 25 of its bakeries have now closed in Gaza because of a lack of fuel and flour. Hot meals, they say, are continuing, but supplies will last two weeks maximum, and its last food parcels will be distributed in the next two days.

What does this mean? It means Palestinians cannot eat and they will starve to death.

Deliberately starving an entire people is an unambiguous, straightforward crime - yet where is the coverage reflecting this obvious fact? The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for this very crime - why isn’t this integrated into Western media coverage as standard, just as ‘Hamas-run health ministry’ has been a default addition to their style guide?

As Israel’s leaders commit these shameless crimes in full view of the world, what of the Western politicians in governments which continue to arm and facilitate these atrocities? Labour minister Bridget Phillipson was asked about Katz’s commitment to annex Gaza’s territory.

Phillipson fell back on claiming she could not respond without more detail, and falls back on stating how we all want an end to the “conflict” and “moving towards a two-state solution.” The only civilians she mentions are Israeli hostages - and then adds for the need for humanitarian aid “to continue to get into Gaza”, even though Israel has instituted a total blockade.

Embarrassing. Pathetic. Morally bankrupt. Even if it wasn’t the first time she’d heard those words, she would have refused to condemn this straightforward war crime, and she knows it. If this was a similar statement issued by the Russian authorities, would Bridget Phillipson say - oh sorry I couldn’t possibly comment I’d need to look into the details further? No she wouldn’t, and she knows it, she would denounce Russia’s war crimes without hesitation.

Here’s a really important point that needs emphasising. In British politics, the two state solution exists solely as a crutch to get British ministers through an interview so they don’t have to denounce or even address Israeli war crimes.

They know that the Israeli state has less than zero intention of accepting any form of Palestinian state - Labour itself hasn’t even committed officially to a Palestinian state. They know that unless there is massive pressure on Israel - arms embargo, sanctions, the whole works - from Western countries, then Israel is never going to accept any form of Palestinian state and will keep committing the crimes that the Labour government not only refuses to denounce, but keeps facilitating with British weapons.

Phillipson might as well say, we all want a rainbow made of cupcakes on which golden ballerina fairies dance and sing for peace and love. The two state solution is just a rhetorical deflection, an attempt to wriggle out of having to actually answer anything, and if we had journalists who actually did their job, they would note that this and pin them down, but alas the Western media is full of journalists who have quite literally allowed Israel to get away with industrialised murder.

A crime more evidenced than any other crime in history as it actually happened, a crime more confessed to than any other crime in history as it actually happened - and yet the Western media continues to protect Israel from its criminal culpability. Here is a lesson we are forced to relearn over and over again - a lesson paid with limitless Palestinian blood.