Do you understand the facts of Israel’s wars?
Do you understand the facts of Israel’s wars? The way they are being reported here in the UK, anyone would think that country was the victim, rather than the aggressor.
For example: here‘s a BBC report on the latest attacks on Lebanon, claiming that large explosions in Beirut were part of a “night of air strikes targeting Hezbollah”.
If you read on, you discover that these strikes focused on Dahieh – a residential area said to be Hezbollah’s stronghold in the capital. It was also reported that 37 people have been killed and 151 wounded in Lebanon over the previous 24 hours – and it is unlikely that all, or even most, of them were members of Hezbollah.
But then, the BBC said the strikes were targeting the terrorist group Hezbollah, so what are we to think?
How about the following, from the Muslim Council’s Miqdaad Versi:
Astonishing front page
8 Israeli soldiers’ deaths is a headline, whilst an Israeli strike on a school for orphans in Gaza City and Israel’s recent killing of 1400 in Lebanon are ignored
Some lives matter more for newspapers like The Timeshttps://t.co/WewHsbE1Ld pic.twitter.com/OBVFWyxeKG
— Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) October 2, 2024
Why are the deaths of eight Israeli soldiers considered more important than those of orphans and non-combatants? Is it because the UK is supplying Israel with support, while the Gazan and Lebanese civilians are automatically assumed to be friends of terrorists? If so, why is that assumption made – and why should (and do) we accept it?
Look at the language used here by Tom Tugendhat – as called out by Owen Jones:
If an attack which killed no Israeli civilians was “barbaric”, what word exists to describe the mass slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them children? https://t.co/83oF88fcRU
— Owen Jones (@owenjonesjourno) October 2, 2024
Indeed. American doctors and medical workers have told US President Joe Biden that the number of people killed or wounded in Gaza now totals almost 119,000 – 5.4 per cent of that territory’s population.
Owen Jones (again) has said this killing rate is equivalent to Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. That has long been regarded as a genocide by a brutal, outlaw regime. When will the slaughter in Gaza receive the same infamous recognition?
Or will it not count because we are allied with Israel?
Here’s another perspective on the attacks against Lebanon:
Strikes killing hundreds of women and children were applauded. An Iranian strike aimed at military bases and with no victims in Israel was called barbaric. Impossible not to see here a collapse of the Western mind, a wilful embrace of madness https://t.co/nZJvZeFtnS
— Bruno Maçães (@MacaesBruno) October 2, 2024
Is that what we’re seeing here – a “wilful [having or showing a stubborn and determined intention to do as one wants, regardless of the consequences] embrace of madness”? Are we deliberately ignoring the obvious facts about what is being paraded before us every day?
Owen Jones (yet again) says Israel has been told clearly by Western politicians and media outlets that no threshold exists when it comes to its atrocities – Benjamin Netanyahu and his colleagues may give their troops free rein to kill, pillage and plunder in any way they want.
In another message, he adds: “How could so many people who regard themselves as decent, humane, ‘moderate’ become complicit in unspeakable atrocities? It’s something I’ve always wondered. After all, only a tiny proportion of any society are actually sociopaths.
“Well, this great crime of our age offers the answers. The British media and political elites are full of people who aren’t even pretending. Their worldview is clear. Israelis are “us”. Palestinians are “them”.
“Accordingly, every Israeli life has meaning and value – it is inherently precious. A Palestinian life is worth virtually nothing. It is less than cheap. A bag of rats drowned in a lake is likely to elicit more sympathy.
“Violence against a single Israeli life – “us” – is therefore seen as intolerable and unbearable. Endless violence against countless Palestinians, on the other hand, doesn’t even produce a genuine emotional response.
“We’ve seen this tested to destruction. It doesn’t matter what the atrocity is.
“Newborns cooked alive in rubble, or left to suffocate and rot in bombed hospitals.
“6 year olds shot in the head by snipers.
“Terrified children deliberately blown apart in their families’ cars by tanks, the paramedics sent to save them butchered, too.
“Entire family bloodlines exterminated in moments.
“Detainees gang raped.
“Bodies thrown from roofs.
“Civilians riddled with bullets while trying to get food.
“The worst imaginable atrocities committed over and over again, but because the victims are Palestinian, no outrage or horror or anguished demands that this must stop, whatever it takes.
“There is, at best, empty handwringing and platitudes, while our government continues to arm the perpetrators.
“But when an attack is launched against Israel in which not a single Israeli is killed, then there is wall to wall horror, disgust, outrage from our political and media elites.
“So if you’re wondering how so many who regarded themselves as decent, modest, upstanding, morally sophisticated citizens actively made themselves complicit in all the horrors of the past you read about in books – well, now you know. What mattered to them was who was “us” and who was “them”.
“I used to passionately disagree with these elites – I work, after all, in the British media, and have now for 13 years: even hold them in contempt.
“But it took this genocide to make me realise: I don’t live in the same moral universe as these people. They now disgust me: I am repulsed by them.
“It is what it is: my job is to be honest about my opinions, and I could pretend this isn’t how I feel, but for what moral reason?
“I’m not telling you because it’s cathartic, even though it is. It’s because what I feel is felt by many others, and that matters – a lot.
“Millions of people in every country, on every continent, are feeling this, and it gets stronger with every passing day, The consequences will be felt for many, many generations.”
This Writer was saying much the same in a conversation on the same subject with close friends, only yesterday – that despite the constant pro-Israel propaganda, those of us with the intelligence to understand that there is a difference between what the media and politicians say and what we see are growing in number.
I wonder what difference it can make in the long run, though. Are we reaching a flashpoint, where we refuse to accept the lies that are pumped out of the TV, radio and computer screen at us every day?
Or will we just switch over and watch something else?
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Most Western governments are well aware their citizenry are against what Israel are doing to innocent civilians. They are well aware that their citizens don’t want their governments to support them in word or deed and definitely NOT to send either weapons or other materials that contribute to genocide. For some reason these governments are in lock-step with the same words being used to excuse the same actions. This is regardless of party or affiliation. I don’t believe that all of these leaders, their parties or politicians support these actions or want them. I can only assume that the US is strong-arming them to comply with what it says. I mean, someone must have SOMETHING on them to make them act like this, right??
https://news.sky.com/story/lebanese-emergency-workers-say-they-are-under-specific-attack-by-israelis-but-wont-be-intimidated-to-leave-13227484
This article for me showed the sadism, desperation and recklessness of the Right-Wing Israeli Government.
Openly targetting Ambulances and Emergency Workers without fear of retribution is indicative of time running out, so they are killing all they can before inevitably being reined in.
“Grab all the Land you can, Kill all you can…… Netanyahu’s Time is Up Soon !”
Israel cannot ban Journalists from Lebanon so a lot more is being seen and eventually that overwhelming evidence cannot be ignored (unlike Gaza).