Under the rubric “hunting Hamas” anything goes
JVL Introduction
The bubble the American media and political class inhabits when it comes to the Middle East is “born from casual racism, deliberate credulity, and reflexive alignment with the US government’s party line”.
So says Adam Johnson in this report in The Nation.
It applies in equal measure to much of the British media.
In brief, Israel’s leaders have been emphatic from day 1 that their aim was massive population transfers and systematic attempts to depopulate Gaza.
Yet the media constantly frame their actions as “hunting Hamas”.
So, bombing Al Shifa hospital – “hunting Hamas”; evacuation orders – “hunting Hamas”; targeting and destroying courthouses, universities, legislative halls, and countless other government buildings – “hunting Hamas”.
Never mind that Israeli security cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter said on Israeli TV on November 12, “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba. Gaza Nakba 2023.”
They’re only hunting Hamas…
This article was originally published by The Nation on Thu 7 Dec 2023. Read the original here.
The “Hunt for Hamas” narrative Is obscuring Israel’s real plans for Gaza
The US press and politicians are trying to fit the attacks on Gaza into a Zero Dark Thirty mold, but it’s something much simpler—and sinister.
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The MSM of the USA and the UK has been totally complicit with the war crimes that are taking place in Gaza. The willingness to share and promote the Israeli agenda while ignoring or downgrading evidence to the contrary is a shameful abdication of responsibility.
Thanks, JVL, for running these reports.
Somebody will have to pay for all the damage that has been done . Unless pressure is brought to bear , in Gaza as in Mariupol , these war crimes will be swept under the carpet as the war propaganda machines paint the next month’s war crimes as a change of tactic from bombardment of buildings to “more appropriate” weapons for attacking a population without housing , it will be the cleansed Palestinian people who pay in the sufferings of homelessness, and the intention of Zionism is that this cost should be understood as the price Israel can charge for any challenge to the occupation .
It is of little matter who is to blame, when the consequences of this physical annihilation of refugee camps and urban homelands and an ethnic identity are so much greater than either party foresaw, except in apocalyptic wish fulfillment.
The question remains , who will pay , if this isn’t going to “end” in greater injustice , as an injured and traumatised, discarded and dehumanised people disperse or whither away in a hostile ( antisemitic ) world .
This set of negative frames is what I have said from day one of the operation Al Aqsa Flood : Using the opportunity to organize Nakba 3.0, with the premeditated objective of destroying the Gazan Ghetto, in order for the Palestinians, to have no alternative, but transferring themselves to neighboring Egypt and Jordan.
Although you and I do totally agree on this strategic plan of ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from their very own (!) country, I do still have a problem with JVL reporting on the tactical maneuver, which does consist of introducing the “killing and mass-raping by Hamas” narrative, seemingly necessary to achieve overall support of the Jewish-Zionists in Israel and elsewhere for this cleansing strategy.
I have to confess, that I – in the direct aftermath of the 7/10 Hamas raid – seriously did reckon with the possibility, that those claims might have been correct. So I did explain that behavior by referring to the similar behavior of the Irgun, Lehi, Stern / Hagana terror-groups during the forties, that indeed did use terror, murder, rape and mutilation of the indigenous Palestinian population, to trigger the Nakba 1.0. In fact I did use the term “mirroring” to describe the Hamas atrocities. Apart from that, I did elaborate, that another part of the Hamas motivations, might very well be found in the fact that in Israeli prisons, Palestinians are systematically held without trial, being humiliated, tortured and raped by their captives.
However, after the recent publications in the west on the total lack of evidence of the Hamas mass-rape and mass-beheading of baby’s, added by reports, that many Israeli fatalities might have been caused by IDF helicopter gunships, firing indiscriminately on both Hamas members and fleeing Israelis, plus the Hannibal-directive, I wonder what the real share of Hamas-caused fatalities is.