News Analysis
Massimo A. Alberizzi
These days we are witnessing something of an abomination: the more public opinion shifts towards an unequivocal condemnation of the genocide in Gaza and Palestine, the more Israeli propaganda, which denies the evidence, becomes obsessive and relentless. Social media is filled with insults and abuse directed at those who are the most vocal critics of the government. Among them, of course, is the UN rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese. The attacks are peppered with false accusations, unsupported by a shred of evidence.
They slander Albanese as follows: she is funded by Hamas, she is married to or is the lover of a Palestinian, she has a stratospheric salary (instead, her position is unpaid), she is a supporter of terrorists. These are the most common lies: a meticulous and methodical denigration.
The latest horrendous lie concerns the five Al Jazeera journalists, plus a freelancer, killed in a targeted bombing on August 10. They were part of a Hamas cell. This is yet to be proven, of course, and the extrajudicial executions we are being asked to accept are more reminiscent of death squads and fascist and Nazi gangs organized to kill opponents than a country that claims to be democratic. (Another historical falsification. A country where racial segregation exists cannot be called democratic.)
Chinese general
Wars, wrote the Chinese general and philosopher Sun Tzu in his treatise “The Art of War,” are won by force or by deception (the Trojan War being a prime example). Since Israel cannot win by force, deception is its only option. So it has put together a media campaign full of lies and falsehoods, whose goal is to try to sway a public opinion that is increasingly reluctant to justify the genocide that is taking place.
I repeat: genocide. A concept that is denied because it likens its perpetrators to Nazism, responsible for heinous crimes against the Jews. It is impossible and unbearable for Jews to even think that some of their leaders could be associated with such a horrific crime. And so they deny it.
List of lies
Making a list of the lies that are constantly and obsessively repeated is complicated because there are so many of them that it is easy to lose count. I will limit myself to explaining just a few, recalling how Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister who codified the rules of propaganda for the Nazis, explained that a lie repeated incessantly becomes the truth.
Chronologically the first is “everything began on October 7th 2023. This is not true. The Palestinians have been subjected to violence and oppression since 1948, when the United Nations established a state on religious grounds in a territory that belonged to a population that wanted nothing to do with it. It is as if they had granted a building permit to construct a building on someone else’s land.
Colonial-style operation
It was a colonial-style operation, justified by the desire of the great powers of the time, the victors of the world war, to compensate the Jewish population who were victims of the Shoah. It was an understandable decision, but a short-sighted one, given the results: eighty years of war, violence, and trampled rights.
Another lie repeated obsessively is the definition of terrorists given to the entire Palestinian population, identified without distinction with Hamas. We must be very careful. Hamas, few point out, is a liberation movement similar to many others that fought fifty years ago with ideals of democracy and freedom (often betrayed, I know!). At the time, they were called ‘guerrillas’, a term that is not as derogatory as ‘terrorists’.
From ‘terrorist’ to Nobel Prize winner for peace
One of the first protagonists of those guerrilla wars was Nelson Mandela, who was branded a terrorist along with his organization, the African National Congress.
As Netanyahu did a few days ago with Hamas, Mandela, who was in prison in South Africa, was offered the chance to regain his freedom in exchange for renouncing armed struggle. He rejected the proposal and remained in prison, but history proved him right. With South Africa pacified, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. A beautiful parable: from terrorist in prison for 27 years to Nobel laureate.
We should therefore not be surprised that Hamas has decided, in the name of democracy and freedom, to reject Netanyahu’s peace plan, which, with its policy of muscle without brains, calls for the annihilation and ethnic cleansing of a people denied their most basic rights.
The delegitimization of those who try to stop the genocide in Gaza is evident when, now lacking arguments, Israel’s defenders launch unproven accusations of anti-Semitism.
Zionist claim
The responsibility for the resurgence of anti-Semitism lies with Israel and its policy of exterminating the Palestinians. Israel claims to identify all Jews with its Zionist policy.
Zionism is a nationalist and supremacist political ideology. Criticizing Zionism and Israel’s policies does not mean hating Jews. Criticizing fascism does not mean that one is anti-Italian, much less that one hates Italians and wants to exterminate them. This is the deception. People are persuaded to defend Israel because anti-Semites want to wipe Jews off the face of the Earth. False.
This mendacious practice serves only to justify genocide with a deceptive equation: in order not to be massacred, Jews must massacre.
This is a technique that admirers of Israel use with ease. Thus, with disturbing cynicism, they exploit the inhuman and ignoble massacre perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023, to legitimize the ongoing genocide: a culpable and conscious mystification that equates the violence of the oppressed with that of the oppressors.
But expecting the world to make a distinction on this level is perhaps asking too much: for eighty years, it has been bombarded by Israeli propaganda.
Massimo A. Alberizzi
massimo.alberizzi@gmail.com
X: @malberizzi
This article was translated from Italian using Deepl, and the English was edited by Ellie Spring.
La versione italiana di questo articolo la trovate qui