The Western media: drenched in Palestinian blood

You are more likely to read the truth about Israel's crimes in an Israeli newspaper than you are in a Western media outlet.

That you are more able to learn about the atrocities being committed by the Israeli state in an Israeli newspaper than a Western media outlet: well, that tells its own story.

An article in Haaretz underlines what a genocidal rampage means in practise. It is based on the testimonies of Israeli soldiers about one of the worst crimes of ourage.

In one case, Israeli soldiers machine gunned four unarmed Palestinian civilians who posed no threat. Three were killed.

The survivor was then trapped in a cage, stripped naked, and spat at by passing soldiers.

Civilians are massacred by Israeli soldiers, who are then officially classified as "terrorists".

There are many reasons that the official death toll in Gaza is a grotesque underestimate. One is that Israeli troops massacre innocent Palestinians who are then buried without the knowledge of their loved ones, or indeed those attempting to record deaths. That was the fate of these Palestinians.

Army divisions compete over how many Palestinians they can butcher.

"If Division 99 kills 150 [people], the next unit aims for 200."

An invisible line exists in Gaza, where civilians are massacred.

Their bodies are left to be devoured by the starving dogs of Gaza.

The testimonies make clear there are no excuses: that soldiers “know exactly what we’re doing”, and that Gaza is “a lawless space where human life holds no value.”

The article reveals that “standard military protocols” do not apply to Israeli soldiers, and their units operate “like independent militias”.

This should be no surprise to anyone who took seriously the pronouncements of former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who told Israeli troops on 10th October that he had “released all the restraints'“, adding, “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything.” Two days later, Gallant announced that he had “removed every restriction” on Israeli troops.

Total dehumanisation has consequences. Israeli soldiers actively enjoy - literally gain pleasure - from butchering innocent 16-year-olds.

The mentality at play here is straightforward. No-one in Gaza is to be treated as ‘innocent’. Therefore, anyone is fair game.

The article refers to Yehuda Vach, born in an illegal West Bank settlement, who became brigadier general in charge of Division 252, who addressed commanders at a corridor outpost to declare “there are no innocents in Gaza.” The notion that “everyone’s a terrorist” became an “operational doctrine”, according to one soldier.

Palestinian civilians are being slaughtered because of this doctrine. After being murdered, they are then added to the tally of 'Hamas militants’ killed by the Israeli state, underlining that this number is a fiction. In one case, of 200 Palestinians butchered and then described as “militants”, only 10 were confirmed as “known Hamas operatives”.

But this mentality came from the very top. At the very beginning of Israel’s genocidal onslaught, Israeli President Isaac Herzog publicly declared that the people of Gaza had collective guilt. Herzog is not a right-winger in Israeli terms: he hails from the Labor party.

This dehumanisation did not begin on 7th October 2023, but was merely placed on steroids. Another Haaretz article written by an Israeli psychologist details how an Israeli commander brutally murdered a 4-year-old boy as he played in the sand in his yard during the First Intifada, which began in 1987.

Israeli television has repeatedly featured discussions about how Palestinian are legitimate targets, because one day they will be come “terrorists”, and dozens of US-based medics have testified that Israeli snipers are deliberately choosing little children in the head and chest.

Gaza is now in the deepest chamber of Hell. Its starving cats are videoed feasting on freshly killed Palestinian victims of Israeli air strikes. Israeli forces continue to relentlessly massacre a starved population with bombs and bullets, despite the Israeli defence minister declaring “we defeated Hamas”, thereby announcing that there is no military value in continued attacks on Gaza. Here is a confession of war crimes.

As my brilliant colleague Nesrine Malik - one of the only British newspaper columnists to take a stance against this historic crime - puts it, there is no a consensus emerging amongst human rights’ organisations and aid agencies that Israeli is committing ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Here an abomination which was made possible by the Western media throughout. They whitewashed and ignored crimes. They failed to frame coverage around the stated intentions of Israeli leaders and officials - that is, stated commitments to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. They instead deferred to Israeli claims to abide by international law, almost exclusively delivered to Western audiences and which have no credibility - not something these outlets would rightly dream of doing when it comes to Russian statements. When they did detail Israeli crimes, such revelations were orphaned from the overall narrative of what Israel is doing.

What is even more disturbing is that the revelations in Haaretz have passed a military censor. Not only does that mean we have no idea what is being stopped by the censor, it means that you are more able to read Israel’s crimes in outlets being censored than the Western media.

Without Western media outlets, Israel’s genocidal mayhem would have been impossible. They function in states which arm and facilitate Israel’s crimes. They thus protected Western governments from taking action. Don’t forget, and don’t let them get away with it.