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Today (2024) the basic method of American propagandistic activity, as in Nazi Germany, is in the omission of important facts, and false presentation of facts: (e.g. Mexican immigrants are rapists, drug dealers and criminals, Palestinians beheaded babies), the dissemination of provocative lies (e.g. America is a white man’s country, Israel is a Democracy,) and the systematic deception of public opinion (Americans want endless wars for national security, Russia is our eternal enemy, and maybe China too).
Such false “media reports” are as necessary to the US for the realization of its plans for military and economic global domination, as are the production of military equipment and the drafting of military plans. “They are coming to get you”: “The Enemy is at the Gate”: “They hate your way of life”: “Better to fight them over there, than here”: and this latest one, I offer, for media: “Palestine has a Right to Defend Itself”.
Without deliberately spreading lies and rumors, attacking freedom of the press and of speech and arresting journalists it would not be possible for American endless wars to pursue its stated goal of “full-spectrum global domination” and to put in practice the war crimes and crimes against humanity of which it is guilty. In this U.S. propaganda system, it is the daily press and television that are the most important weapons and are all as guilty of war crimes as Hans Fritzsche and the propaganda work he did for the Nazis.
Today, the role of the American press in habituating the American people to the suffering of other peoples and, even, urging war crimes, like extrajudicial murder and assassinations of a country’s leader; it is possible that many Americans would never have participated in or tolerated the atrocities being committed throughout the Middle East, had they not been conditioned, inured, goaded, manipulated by constant media propaganda and lies. The media’s very success in manipulating public opinion is one of the strongest proofs of its culpability in the commission of war crimes.
In *Craig Mokhiber's 8/24/24 article in Mondoweiss: “Western Media can be Legally Accountable of Gaza Genocide” Mokhiber punctuates and embellishes my concern here with a focus on Israel/Palestine. He first notes that “the Israeli genocide machine in Palestine, and the direct complicity of the U.S., UK, and other Western governments are two key pillars in the horrors being perpetrated against the Palestinian people.”
He continues: “But there is a third pillar: the role of complicit Western media corporations knowingly disseminating Israeli disinformation and propaganda, justifying war crimes and crimes against humanity, dehumanizing Palestinians, and blocking out information on the genocide in the West.” Lying deliberately and by omission. Providing just enough information for people to think they’re right; but not the knowledge to know they’re wrong.
So, for example, the Democratic National Convention (DNC), this past August 2024, welcomed on stage, a Jewish family of one of the 109 hostages being held by Hamas as the cameras spanned the sniffling, and sobbing general audience. There was not one Palestinian allowed to say a word about the more than 100,000 killed by the (IDF) Israeli Defense Forces (as per recent Lancet numbers).
A Final Solution
Any ordinary, reasonable and prudent person knows that the U.S. cannot be a neutral or objective negotiator for peace when it is supplying literally billions of dollars in military hardware, intelligence, manpower, etc. to the Israeli side of the conflict. In effect, saying to Americans and the world, “We share the Zionists’ view of you, Palestinians, as ‘human animals.’ That is why we are helping them as much as we can to exterminate you – a Final Solution. We support Israel unconditionally.”
Then, out of the other side of their mouths, offering platitudes to the Palestinians about Israel’s right to defend itself; and you, Palestinians, don’t have that right; you must accept your apartheid condition, your ‘inferior’ human status, without complaining and certainly not fighting; perhaps you could sing an updated version of “We Shall Overcome”?
In 1948 the newly established United Nations drafted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), that would declare that: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
Epithets culled from American and Nazi German playbooks
At the same time, in another UN conference room, delegates were gathered to create a new Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. “There too,” Mokhiber states, “the drafters were aware of the danger of speech that dehumanizes and incites. The final convention would criminalize not just genocide, but also incitement to genocide and complicity in genocide – prohibitions that apply not only to states but to private actors as well.” For example, Israeli press and officials consistently refer to the Palestinian people as “human animals.” Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant says of the current conflict, “We are fighting against animals.” Comparisons of Palestinians to “rats or snakes” on Israeli social media are an effort to “dehumanize” them and legitimize civilian deaths. Dehumanizing epithets culled from genocidal American and Nazi German playbooks.
It is worth noting that in 1998, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) convicted three media personalities for their role in inciting the Rwanda genocide. Two worked for the Mille Collines television and radio company and one for the Kanguranewspaper. During sentencing, the ICTR Judge said: “You were fully aware of the power of words, and you used the…medium of communication with the widest public reach to disseminate hatred and violence…Without a firearm, machete or any physical weapon, you caused the death of thousands of innocent civilians.”
The German Nazi media, and the Rwandan media, knew what they were doing. Just as today, CNN, Fox, BBC, the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal know what they are doing, or should know what they are doing. The Israeli genocide taking place in Palestine is being live streamed globally. Again, following Mokhiber, “it is simply not credible to suggest that Western media companies are not aware of the realities on the ground and of what they are doing to obscure them. They have undisputably made conscious choices to hide the genocide from their audiences, so systematically dehumanize the Palestinian victims, and to insulate the Israeli perpetrators from accountability.”
Free speech guarantees do not protect media from their incitement to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. “Those acts can and must be subject to criminal accountability. Both defamation and incitement can also bring accountability in civil courts. Actions in international tribunals for Israel’s crimes against humanity and genocide in Palestine has already begun, and more is certain to follow.”
Not just media, but governments too are complicit in the Israeli genocide through providing military, economic, intelligence, and diplomatic support to Israel, along with the voting public that enables, through their tax dollars, this support.
Finally, to quote Judge Pillay in the Rwanda decision: “The power of the media to create and destroy fundamental human values comes with great responsibility. Those who control such media are accountable for its consequences.”
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Fritz Pointer is a retired professor of English and African American Studies, and a peace and justice activist. His books include: "A Passion to Liberate: La Guma's South Africa -- Images of District 6" (2001); "African Oral Epic Poetry: Praising the Deeds of a Mythic Hero" (2013); "Fairytale: The Pointer Sisters Family Story" (2020); Daniel Kunene "Poems of Exile and Home"(2023); and "Spreading Democracy? A Poetic Requiem" (2023).
*Craig Mokhiber is an international human rights lawyer and former senior United Nations Official. He left the UN in October of 2023, penning a widely read letter that warned of genocide in Gaza, criticized the international response and called for a new approach to Palestine and Israel based on equality, human rights and international law.
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/08/western-media-can-be-held-legally-accountable-for-its-role-in-the-gaza-genocide/
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