Media enable ignorance in the service of genocide

 Media enable ignorance in the service of genocide

Roddy Keenan The Electronic Intifada 18 October 2023

People sift through the rubble of a UN school that was struck by an Israeli missile, killing eight, in the Maghazi camp in the central Gaza Strip.

 Naaman OmarAPA images

As Israeli carpet-bombing rains death and destruction on the civilians of Gaza, the promise of more military support from the US and its Western allies betrays true savagery and inhumanity on behalf of the West.

Yet as a genocide unfolds in front of our eyes, it is ignorance that has proven to be the greatest weapon against the people of Gaza. As Western governments and Western media cheerlead for the genocide of an entire people by Zionist fanatics, the most chilling aspect of all this is the ease with which Western populaces have bought into the frenzy.

It is ignorance which has facilitated this barbarism and even encouraged it. Ignorance of the history of a 75-year occupation, ignorance of the daily injustice and persecution faced by Palestinians, ignorance of the arbitrary murder and detention of Palestinian men, women and children, all of which register little if any coverage in western media.

It is this historical ignorance that subsequently facilitates the rewriting of history, the racism that celebrates brutality and violence against those deemed inferior and the hatred that abets the genocide of an entire people with relative ease. It allows governments and media of the West to fabricate stories about mass rapes and the beheading of babies, in the knowledge they will be swallowed whole by their gullible publics.

Across the West, we are told that Palestinians are the embodiment of evil while their Israeli occupiers and jailers, who have had their iron heel on the neck of Palestinians for 75 years, are innocent victims of an inexplicable and irrational hatred.

And we know this because the leaders of Western governments, those bastions of democracy, freedom, and humanity, have told us so, while simultaneously, their media allies have obediently repeated these mendacious charges with a consistent and criminal complicity.

The powerful effect of this propaganda machine is undeniable. As we watch the barbarism unleashed on Gaza, the fact that this is being cheered on by so many across the West demonstrates the Western establishment’s successful conditioning of its citizens, and is a disquieting reminder as to how unconsciously indoctrinated the Western public is.

This was highlighted in a CNN opinion poll taken on 12-13 October in the US, which showed that 50 percent of the American public believes the Israeli government’s military assault on Gaza to be fully justified, with another 20 percent believing it to be partially justified. Only 8 percent said that the murderous bombardment was unjustified.

And, while many millions have demonstrated across European cities in solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinian people, it is evident that there is also a significant layer of the European population that sympathizes with and supports Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

Mass delusion

This mass delusion has not happened overnight. The ground has been carefully laid over many years.

Bias is reflected not only in the media’s presentation of stories, but in the very choice of what stories to comment on. And the establishment’s adherence to this deceit ensures their citizens can be convinced that the victim is the bully, that the morally repugnant are honorable innocents, and that the inhumane and the murderous are the merciful and the virtuous.

It also explains Western governments’ determined efforts to retain their self-appointed role as gatekeeper of all that we should know, as they shut down any alternative voices or social media that exposes their lies.

For many, the Israeli-Palestinian war started on 7 October.

There is no history, no context, no background. It is simply an unprovoked attack, without right nor reason, perpetrated by those who are evil, and who the media tells us are animals.

And once these unpeople are dehumanized, the Western populace is further desensitized, and the greenlighting of genocide is assured, with little opposition. A history of 75 years of occupation, of brutalization and murder, is buried under the hellscape of thousands of tonnes of rubble and the crushed bones of the occupied, while the West clamors for more.

By any measure, the facilitation, the acceptance, and indeed the celebration of genocide across so-called “democratic” Western nations, will surely rank as the most nefarious achievement of Western governments. Years of consistent and relentless propaganda have led to the virtual brainwashing of vast swathes of its population. Consequently, and disturbingly, the fomenting of widespread and enthusiastic support amongst its citizens for genocide proved relatively easy. Ignorance had seen to that.

So, as leaders of the West and their media stenographers watch their Israeli allies ethnically cleansing Gaza, they will doubtless feel a huge sense of satisfaction and pride that a significant proportion of their populace is fully behind the butchery. After years of effort, the normalisation of genocide has been accomplished. Their propaganda, distortions and omissions have led to this day.

For Palestinians are unpeople. Our governments have told us so. Our media has confirmed it. And consequently, they deserve to die.

Roddy Keenan is an Irish freelance journalist and author based in the UK.