Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
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The Israeli hostages deserve far, far less interest and attention than the hundreds of thousands of Gazans who are being starved and murdered as we speak. The only way to believe otherwise is to believe Israeli lives are worth thousands of times more than Palestinian lives.
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The PR campaign for Israel’s destruction of Gaza revolves around encouraging everyone to focus on the feelings of people on the pro-Israel side instead of focusing on facts and evidence. The way Israelis are feeling about October 7. The way Israelis are feeling about the hostages. The way pro-Palestine demonstrations make western Jews feel inside. What feelings Biden is privately feeling toward Netanyahu. The whole thing’s one big fat appeal to emotion fallacy.
Meanwhile the feelings of the two million Palestinians being starved, displaced, dismembered, traumatized, terrorized and having to watch their loved ones die horrific deaths right in front of them never features. We’re discouraged from thinking about their emotions at all. Only the feelings of people who support these atrocities shall draw our attention and sympathy, thereby generating support for the continuation of those atrocities.
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In December a former legal advisor to the State Department named Brian Finucane warned The Washington Post that the first Israeli attack on Al-Shifa Hospital back in November could be used as a precedent to “pre-excuse future operations against hospitals”. Which is exactly what’s ended up happening: Israel has since been obliterating hospitals throughout the enclave, and has attacked Al-Shifa three more times since then.
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The propagandists who’ve been manufacturing public consent for this mass atrocity are just as guilty as the ones dropping the bombs.
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Israel apologists will always have excuses and justifications for every horrible thing that comes out about what Israel is doing in Gaza. There is no testimony, investigative report, statistic or raw video clip that could come out showing horrific criminality on the part of the IDF or the Israeli state that would cause Israel supporters to go “Oh okay now this one really is bad, Israel needs to hold those responsible to account and make some dramatic systemic changes to make sure it never happens again.”
This is because the function of Israel apologia (also known as hasbara) has never, ever been to promote truth or justice; its purpose has always been to promote and defend the information interests of the state of Israel. This is why no matter what Israel is exposed as having done you will always see prominent Israel apologists in politics and media as well as ordinary Israel apologists on social media providing excuses and justifications for it. They’re not there to tell the truth, or to help the public understand what’s happening, or to help create a more just and ethical world — their sole aim is to advance the information interests of their favorite ethnostate to ensure its continued support.
But the fact that so many thousands of people need to be working at this every single day shows how depraved Israel really is. Every genocidal regime in history has always had reasons and justifications for its behavior, and that’s all Israel apologists are providing today. Don’t take their manipulations seriously.
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When I’m criticizing US aggressions toward Russia I get called a Kremlin agent a lot. When I’m criticizing US aggressions toward China I get called a CCP propagandist. Now I’m criticizing US/Israeli aggressions in Gaza and they say I’m an antisemite. At a certain point you figure out that there are just a lot of bootlickers out there who don’t like it when you criticize the world’s most powerful government, so they call you names.
That’s all it ever is: vapid name-calling. It’s what people do when they have no argument. When facts and morality are not on their side.
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Caitlin Johnstone 