The Economist's racist, deceitful spiel on Gaza taken apart

This is a case study in Western media complicity in genocide

Without the Western media, Israel’s genocide would have not have been possible. Here is a case study. It’s a from The Economist, a mainstream, Establishment, so-called ‘centre-right’ publication.

They’ve published a Leader - that is, an article which expresses the official position of the magazine - which on social media is trailed as follows:

Israel seems to have drawn the conclusion that cruel tactics work. In Gaza it is preparing what may become a huge ground operation. Shameful plans for ethnic cleansing are gaining currency

It is easy to respond with contempt. It’s taken The Economist 18 months of utter depravity and the best they can come up with is Israel “seems to have drawn the conclusion that cruel tactics work”, itself a gruesome euphemistic description of flagrant war crimes, with ‘seems’ acting to turn what is straightforward undeniable fact into a contestable matter of opinion.

The article itself is morally wretched and racist. The headline is ‘Israel’s expansionism is a danger to others—and itself’, followed by the subheading: ‘It risks turning hubris into disaster’.

This is a genre of article which goes along the lines of - ‘look, we speak here as a friend of Israel, and we’re worried that you’re hurting yourself. We’re only trying to protect you from yourself with some good friendly advice.’

This is a state whose leader is a wanted man, by virtue of an arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity issued by the International Criminal Court. There is a genocide case lodged against at the International Court of Justice. There is a consensus stretching from pre-eminent human rights organisations like Amnesty International to genocide scholars such as Israeli-American professor Omer Bartov that Israel is committing genocide. None of that is mentioned here, of course, because those facts would hardly reflect well on a publication posing as a critical friend of the state in question.

The article begins: “It is hard to believe today, but 18 months ago Israel was in grave peril.”

These very first words are abject nonsense. There’s no question that grave crimes were committed on 7th October. The idea that there was any existential threat to Israel is beyond risible, and indeed it is a convenient fiction conjured up to justify the genocidal onslaught which Israel went on to commit. Indeed to back up this fiction the Economist says:

“Surrounded by enemies, bickering with its main ally in Washington.”

To which the polite response here is: “I beg your pardon?” Ah yes who can forget the ruckus between the US government and Israel, as Joe Biden handed $26bn worth of military aid to Israel to facilitate its genocide, whilst offering endless diplomatic support, use the presidential bully pulpit to spread false claims to justify Israel’s genocidal onslaught - like the false claims of beheaded babies on 7th October - whilst relentlessly deflecting from actual atrocities committed by Israel, we could go on. Does The Economist really think that occasional handwriting indulged by the Biden administration purely for domestic consumption posed an existential threat to Israel? No, it does not. This is deceit.

Today, the Economist says, “Israel is rampant”, adding that “this time Israel is fighting on its own terms and with full American backing,” and that rather than making Israel safe, Israel “risks turning hubris into disaster”.

Here is an obvious example of Western media racism which is so normalised that those guilty of it couldn’t even begin to understand the charge. The argument here is that there hasn’t been a disaster. Gaza has been wiped from the face of the earth, its civilian infrastructure - homes, hospitals, schools, libraries, universities, mosques, churches, agriculture, food production - all destroyed. Countless tens of thousands of mostly children, women and elderly people have been murdered. Gaza has been deliberately starved. Its people have been repeatedly violently displaced. We could go on.

That is without mentioning the murderous pogroms of the West Bank, or the murderous ruin in Lebanon and beyond.

Does this unimaginable violence, human suffering and ruin not qualify as “a disaster” for The Economist? Why no, because whatever catastrophe is unleashed against Palestinians and Arabs, it does not qualify as “disaster”, because their lives don’t matter. It only qualifies as a “disaster” if the victims are perceived to be “us”, the West, which Israel is counted as belonging to.

Indeed the article says “The improvement in Israel’s security has been remarkable, and welcome”. No mention here at what this so-called improvement in Israel’s security has meant in terms of mass slaughter, injury, displacement and apocalyptic destruction of civilian infrastructure. If the same number of Israelis had been slaughtered, The Economist would quite rightly be judging that as one of the worst obscenities of our age. It would correctly regard anyone welcoming anyone else’s supposed “improvement in security” with such a cost as monstrous.

The Economist continues in that vein: “Military action in Lebanon has decapitated Hizbullah”. Nothing about the thousands of Lebanese killed.

Let’s be fair, because The Economist does then separately refer to the grotesque human cost in Gaza:

However, the Israeli government has drawn two worrying conclusions from this success. One is that cruel tactics work. Having killed tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza, it has again withheld aid and shut off basic services, in what looks like a violation of international law.

Firstly, the mass slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians is alluded to here not as a crime in of itself, but simply because of the fear it might set a bad precedent.

The following line - ‘it has again withheld aid and shut off basic services, in what looks like a violation of international law’ - is straightforward deceit.

Israel has imposed a total blockade on anything entering Gaza since the beginning of March, which The Economist knows because Israel publicly announced it, and then instituted it. So why not mention it? This act doesn’t “look” like a violation of international law. It is objectively a violation of international law. That is a straightforward fact. There is no legal interpretation of international law that says otherwise.

The Economist says “Shameful plans for ethnic cleansing are gaining currency,” which it links to Trump’s open plan to remove all Palestinians from Gaza. Note how it claims such plans are only “gaining currency”, even though it is literally Israel’s official plan - Netanyahu has publicly declared “This is the plan. We are not hiding this.” How much more explicit is he supposed to be?

The article then discusses Israel’s “rapid de facto annexation of the West Bank, expanding Israeli settlements, forcing tens of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and allowing violent settlers to rampage unchecked”. Welcome though it is that The Economist mentions all of this - the bar truly is on the floor - none are described as the literal crimes that they are.

The Economist then discusses Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, which it doesn’t critique because of the war crimes committed, but because of a fear that they’re counterproductive - that they may discredit “Lebanese groups who are working to shut Hizbullah out of power”. Similarly, Israeli military aggression against Syria is discussed in the context of being counterproductive.

And here’s the key point for The Economist - it says “This is a dangerous path for Israel”.

The magazine’s fear is what all of this means for Israel, rather than the barbarism being unleashed against Palestinians and Arabs as crimes in their own right. It goes on to warn Israel that, well, Trump isn’t a “dependable ally”, Arab leaders may go on to “reflect their people’s hostility”, Israel’s regional alliances may be threatened.

Again, unapologetic racism. Israel’s murderous actions aren’t critiqued because of their impact on those The Economist clearly struggles to see as human, but because of the strategic threat to Israel. Here, the magazine plainly explains whose lives it believes matter, and whose don’t.

It mourns that “After the horrors of October 7th most Israelis oppose the creation of a Palestinian state.” Note how the atrocities of 7th October are “horrors” but the far deadlier atrocities committed by Israel every day since do not qualify as such: no no, they are merely strategic missteps as far as the Economist are concerned.

But wait until you read this paragraph:

Formal annexation of Palestinian land would lead either to ethnic cleansing, or the creation of non-citizens without full rights, or to further cooping up Palestinians in tiny non-viable statelets. If those policies are enacted, it will be an affront to the values on which Israel was founded.

Here is a prime example of how the Western media will turn reality on its head if it protects Israel. The Economist suggests that the formal annexation of Palestinian land, that ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, that the creation of non-citizens without full rights, would be an affront to the values on which Israel was founded.

What values are those, then? Here is a question I’d like to ask The Economist - have their journalists read a book? Frankly, they could just skim read Wikipedia. The foundation of Israel involved the so-called Nabka, in which 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their land, and around 15,000 Palestinians butchered in the process. The vast majority of people living in Gaza are the family members of those driven from their homes in what is now Israel, as Palestinian land was not only annexed, but 400 Palestinian towns and villages were emptied of their populations, and most of them destroyed.

How can a publication which clearly takes itself very seriously indeed write such a straightforward perversion of historical reality?

The article goes on: “Overextension may be most corrosive within Israel. The trauma of October 7th ought to have united Israeli society.”

I’m sorry to say that Israeli society is pretty united according to the polling, with very courageous exceptions - in terms of wiping Gaza from the map, starving its people, and around 80% of Jewish Israelis support the removal of Gaza’s entire population. Israel is in the grip of genocidal mania. The main division in Israeli society is those who believe the genocide should be paused until the hostages are all returned, and those who don’t. If you believe that Palestinian life is of equal worth, or indeed even a fraction of the worth of Israeli life, then sure, this is not a substantive division. Well, we know where The Economist stands.

Towards the end of the article, The Economist stumbles upon the real horror:

Meanwhile, the most dynamic part of the Israeli economy, its tech sector, is highly mobile. Before October 7th tech workers dismayed at political divisions and erosion of the rule of law threatened to move abroad. They may one day make good on those threats.

Look, I know many of you are concerned about trivialities like the mass slaughter of children and babies, massacring paramedics and throwing their bodies in mass graves, deliberate starvation, industrialised torture and rape - but have you spared a moment to worry about Israel’s tech bros look for work elsewhere?

It ends as follows:

For many years Israel depended on its American ally to tell it when to stop fighting. With Mr Trump in the White House, those days are over. Israel now needs the wisdom to practise self-restraint.

Ah yes who can remember Joe Biden getting Israel to stop fighting rather than, say, facilitating Israel wiping Gaza from the face of the earth? If we’re really going there - it was Trump who got Israel to stop fighting when he became president, even if that was only a cynical ruse so the genocide could be continued?

After this laughable historical revisionism, what The Economist then suggests is that a state which has committed some of the most heinous atrocities of the 21st century, all facilitated by the West and specifically the US government, under both Biden and Trump, could plausibly show “self-restraint”, when its leaders and officials have made clear their genocidal intent from day one, statements of genocidal intent that The Economist has overwhelmingly failed to even cover, let alone frame their coverage around - even though it was the most accurate predictor of what Israel would in fact go on to do?

Here is a case study of a Western media industry which throughout this genocide has resorted to deceit, to gaslighting, to turning reality on its head, to erasing and whitewashing reality - we could go on.

This empty handwringing is not The Economist absolving itself of its own complicity. It is instead deepening its complicity in one of the gravest crimes of our age. One day, it will be made to account for what it has done.