Israel's PR Problem, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com
Listen to a reading of this article: ❖ Israel's mounting PR crisis boils down to the fact that its violence and oppression isn't happening in some far off land as in the case with US wars, it's happening right at home surrounded by video cameras and enforced by police and soldiers who are not adept PR spinmeisters.
Yes, yes, those mourners are dangerous. Beat them mercilessly. The US seems to have unlimited capacity to prop up regimes at odds with their stated values. Can anyone explain why the US gives Israel money while Israelis outlive them by several years and the US leads the Western world in poverty especially child poverty - see UN rankings?
"'The Squad' isn't a political faction, it's a soundtrack to an empire." Beautifully expressed, thank you. I might add that that the soundtrack emerges from a culture whose speakers have torn cones and provide a background buzz that degrades other ambient sounds such as those of the singing of birds and the breeze gently rustling aspen leaves. Let us never forget that this "God-given right to control everything that happens in the world" is underpinned by the same basic attitude toward Nature — a hubris of monumental proportions that a 200K-year-old smart ape with manual dexterity can baldfacedly pronounce its superiority (and its right to violate) three-billion year old cybernetic complex adaptive systems. Until or unless that natural magnificent intelligence becomes deeply appreciated by a far larger fraction of our insane species, that biblical stupidity of degrading the biosphere will continue to fuel the "control everything" approach.
By tacit agreement, since 1945, due to the horrors exacted on Europe's Jewish population during World War II, Isreal's behavior toward its Arab neighbors has been off-limits in the US media: shame!
With the greatest respect, a little more than a "PR problem".
I am pleased that Caitlin has directed her powerful pen to the subject of Palestine, following a video of their actions at a funeral.
Palestine, inhumanely occupied by Israel, a country that controls up to 80% of the US politicians through media control and political funding, a country driven by "an Israel fantasy called Eretz Israel", the ownership and control of lands between the Euphrates and the Nile, meaning all of Palestine and Lebanon and Jordan, parts of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria and Egypt.
With the exclusion of the current US proxy war in Ukraine, where are all the problems in the world today?
In the Middle East, as above, the US having made its contribution to the sponsored crimes in Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan by supporting Israel for 55 years with Iran as the next proposed target. A little history…..
On June 8, 1967, 34 American servicemen were killed and 174 were wounded during an Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. According to former US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moore, “Those men were then betrayed and left to die by our own government.” The survivors are still awaiting justice.
From that day on, Israel has owned the USA in every possible way. Just before that, in 1963. John Kennedy was assassinated, coincidentally after he proposed to investigate Israel's Nuclear facility in Dimona. The incoming President of the US, Johnson, cancelled that idea entirely, the same President who called back US fighter aircraft from saving the same USS Liberty, as mentioned above, from protecting the US vessel. Add them all up.
Israel’s daily activities against Palestinians is to seize lands, demolish Palestinian homes, the murder of women and the imprisonment of children, restricting medicines, foodstuffs, freedoms, water, electricity, every day of every week. Search it out, independent of the corrupted media, mainly owned by Israel or Israeli connected shareholdings. A fact.
Palestine is a country inhumanely occupied by Israeiis, the same Israelis having just shot a woman journalist, the subject of this article today.
I respectfully have to ask….what’s new? This is a daily occurrence following on from a history of Israeli massacres and the bombing of Palestinian people over decades.
Seventy long years, watched over by a feeble United Nations which has done nothing but submit to the pressures of the USA and its blatant support for all things Israel. The world tolerated apartheid in South Africa until 1994 but has allowed this crime to be almost scrubbed from the minds of all people, still rampant and very real in 2022. SHAME ON ALL.
Are you sure you devote same amount of resources to studying Israeli-Palestinian conflict as to American Empire shenanigans? Because you sound like echo-chambering and citing the very same MSM outlets you shit on in your other articles.
Remove US from the picture and you'll see how Israel-Palestine has a lot similarities with Russia-Ukraine, respectively. If Israel leaves Palestine, the next day Iran will be there with its missiles and decades-long official cries for death to jews. If it's not obvious, this is yet another proxy war. And Israel has no Siberia to retreat to, all it has is 100km wide stripe of soil between Palestine and Mediterranean Sea. This IS survival issue.
And reporters in war zones know the risk and take it willingly.
Last week—the same day Israeli forces shot and killed journalist Shireen Abu Aqla—an Israeli soldier shot and killed 16-year-old Thaer Khalil Mohammad Maslat with live ammunition in the occupied West Bank city of Al-Bireh. Thaer was watching confrontations between Israeli forces and Palestinian youth 200 yards away just after leaving school for the day, a few hundred meters away. Thaer did not pose any threat to Israeli forces when he was shot dead.
So, the emphasis over the past week may have been on the death of a journalist, but there are Palestinian deaths every day of every week by mindless murdering apartheid Israelis, supported by the good old US Congress....all the way. Such is the power of the Israeli Shekel in Washington.
So try to be alarmed, very alarmed. This has been going on for 55 years with not a squeak from the well greased political palms in Washington.
I wish I'd thought to say this sooner, but better late than never.
For years, I wondered why the Israeli government thought that "We had to blow up that hospital because terrorists were in there. It's a shame about all those civilians, but that's on Hamas for being in the hospital. What were we supposed to do, NOT bomb it?" was an acceptable excuse. An excuse that would make everybody not getting paid by the Israel lobby and/or not propagandized to be pro-Israel from birth to go "Oh, well, that's all right then."
I suppose I finally have an answer: they've been taught their entire lives that Palestinians are inferior, not worth worrying about, and they stupidly assumed that the rest of the world would feel the same way.
By the way, this is one thing that bothers me about certain people's takes on Ukraine. I won't name names, but one guy's retort to the statement "Russia is bombing hospitals" is "Yeah, because Azov Battalion guys are in there."
Huh? This very same person, and everyone far enough left to have a problem with Israel's M.O., would say that Israel bombing hospitals in Gaza was inexcusable because it would kill civilians along with combatants. I agree. But somehow, bombing hospitals that have bad guys in them becomes acceptable when Russia does it?
Bombing hospitals containing civilians is either never acceptable, or it's always acceptable. Pick one and apply that standard consistently, FFS.
I don't know someone on my Facebook put up that video about the funeral and many (I assume trolls, either paid or idiots) jumped to argue that maybe there wasn't a body in the casket or the Palestinians should not have had the funeral at that time and the IDF was justified.
One of the reasons Israel is reluctant to condemn Putin's Russia for its invasion of Ukraine is precisely because it opens the door and sets a precedent for the opposite considering Putin's notion of Ukraine and Ukrainians is very much the same notion Israel has of Palestine and Palestinians. Putin claims Ukraine isn't really a nation and Ukrainians aren't really a people. The only difference I see is, the Israelis view Palestinians as subhuman or another species entirely much as their Nazi mentors viewed Jews and Stalin had no problem with that apparently. When you view something as not existing or rightfully as your own, well, you don't have to respect its wishes if its notion differs from your notion, do you?
Note the use of the passive voice and similar constructions.
"A journalist was killed..."
"Violence erupted..."
As if these things all just fell out of the sky.
Yes, yes, those mourners are dangerous. Beat them mercilessly. The US seems to have unlimited capacity to prop up regimes at odds with their stated values. Can anyone explain why the US gives Israel money while Israelis outlive them by several years and the US leads the Western world in poverty especially child poverty - see UN rankings?
"'The Squad' isn't a political faction, it's a soundtrack to an empire." Beautifully expressed, thank you. I might add that that the soundtrack emerges from a culture whose speakers have torn cones and provide a background buzz that degrades other ambient sounds such as those of the singing of birds and the breeze gently rustling aspen leaves. Let us never forget that this "God-given right to control everything that happens in the world" is underpinned by the same basic attitude toward Nature — a hubris of monumental proportions that a 200K-year-old smart ape with manual dexterity can baldfacedly pronounce its superiority (and its right to violate) three-billion year old cybernetic complex adaptive systems. Until or unless that natural magnificent intelligence becomes deeply appreciated by a far larger fraction of our insane species, that biblical stupidity of degrading the biosphere will continue to fuel the "control everything" approach.
By tacit agreement, since 1945, due to the horrors exacted on Europe's Jewish population during World War II, Isreal's behavior toward its Arab neighbors has been off-limits in the US media: shame!
"unseeing" is easy.
Rachael Corrie
USS Liberty
9/11
Lebanon
Syria
Iraq
Iran
Cover it all up with a huge serving of Ukraine.
With the greatest respect, a little more than a "PR problem".
I am pleased that Caitlin has directed her powerful pen to the subject of Palestine, following a video of their actions at a funeral.
Palestine, inhumanely occupied by Israel, a country that controls up to 80% of the US politicians through media control and political funding, a country driven by "an Israel fantasy called Eretz Israel", the ownership and control of lands between the Euphrates and the Nile, meaning all of Palestine and Lebanon and Jordan, parts of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria and Egypt.
With the exclusion of the current US proxy war in Ukraine, where are all the problems in the world today?
In the Middle East, as above, the US having made its contribution to the sponsored crimes in Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan by supporting Israel for 55 years with Iran as the next proposed target. A little history…..
On June 8, 1967, 34 American servicemen were killed and 174 were wounded during an Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. According to former US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moore, “Those men were then betrayed and left to die by our own government.” The survivors are still awaiting justice.
From that day on, Israel has owned the USA in every possible way. Just before that, in 1963. John Kennedy was assassinated, coincidentally after he proposed to investigate Israel's Nuclear facility in Dimona. The incoming President of the US, Johnson, cancelled that idea entirely, the same President who called back US fighter aircraft from saving the same USS Liberty, as mentioned above, from protecting the US vessel. Add them all up.
Israel’s daily activities against Palestinians is to seize lands, demolish Palestinian homes, the murder of women and the imprisonment of children, restricting medicines, foodstuffs, freedoms, water, electricity, every day of every week. Search it out, independent of the corrupted media, mainly owned by Israel or Israeli connected shareholdings. A fact.
Palestine is a country inhumanely occupied by Israeiis, the same Israelis having just shot a woman journalist, the subject of this article today.
I respectfully have to ask….what’s new? This is a daily occurrence following on from a history of Israeli massacres and the bombing of Palestinian people over decades.
Seventy long years, watched over by a feeble United Nations which has done nothing but submit to the pressures of the USA and its blatant support for all things Israel. The world tolerated apartheid in South Africa until 1994 but has allowed this crime to be almost scrubbed from the minds of all people, still rampant and very real in 2022. SHAME ON ALL.
Without exception, the crime of the century.
God's chosen psychopaths strike again! How any thinking and feeling person can support these criminal parasites is beyond my understanding!
Are you sure you devote same amount of resources to studying Israeli-Palestinian conflict as to American Empire shenanigans? Because you sound like echo-chambering and citing the very same MSM outlets you shit on in your other articles.
Remove US from the picture and you'll see how Israel-Palestine has a lot similarities with Russia-Ukraine, respectively. If Israel leaves Palestine, the next day Iran will be there with its missiles and decades-long official cries for death to jews. If it's not obvious, this is yet another proxy war. And Israel has no Siberia to retreat to, all it has is 100km wide stripe of soil between Palestine and Mediterranean Sea. This IS survival issue.
And reporters in war zones know the risk and take it willingly.
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Last week—the same day Israeli forces shot and killed journalist Shireen Abu Aqla—an Israeli soldier shot and killed 16-year-old Thaer Khalil Mohammad Maslat with live ammunition in the occupied West Bank city of Al-Bireh. Thaer was watching confrontations between Israeli forces and Palestinian youth 200 yards away just after leaving school for the day, a few hundred meters away. Thaer did not pose any threat to Israeli forces when he was shot dead.
So, the emphasis over the past week may have been on the death of a journalist, but there are Palestinian deaths every day of every week by mindless murdering apartheid Israelis, supported by the good old US Congress....all the way. Such is the power of the Israeli Shekel in Washington.
So try to be alarmed, very alarmed. This has been going on for 55 years with not a squeak from the well greased political palms in Washington.
Wake up, world.
I wish I'd thought to say this sooner, but better late than never.
For years, I wondered why the Israeli government thought that "We had to blow up that hospital because terrorists were in there. It's a shame about all those civilians, but that's on Hamas for being in the hospital. What were we supposed to do, NOT bomb it?" was an acceptable excuse. An excuse that would make everybody not getting paid by the Israel lobby and/or not propagandized to be pro-Israel from birth to go "Oh, well, that's all right then."
I suppose I finally have an answer: they've been taught their entire lives that Palestinians are inferior, not worth worrying about, and they stupidly assumed that the rest of the world would feel the same way.
By the way, this is one thing that bothers me about certain people's takes on Ukraine. I won't name names, but one guy's retort to the statement "Russia is bombing hospitals" is "Yeah, because Azov Battalion guys are in there."
Huh? This very same person, and everyone far enough left to have a problem with Israel's M.O., would say that Israel bombing hospitals in Gaza was inexcusable because it would kill civilians along with combatants. I agree. But somehow, bombing hospitals that have bad guys in them becomes acceptable when Russia does it?
Bombing hospitals containing civilians is either never acceptable, or it's always acceptable. Pick one and apply that standard consistently, FFS.
I wrote about violence today, 15 May, 2022. https://johnallenakatheolhippy.substack.com/p/sundayviolence?r=5o912&s=w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I do believe I mentioned the Palestinians as an outgroup in specific instances. Imperialism is violence. It must end. Peace
Please find a new narrator. This guy sounds like he's lying in bed reading a script.
I don't know someone on my Facebook put up that video about the funeral and many (I assume trolls, either paid or idiots) jumped to argue that maybe there wasn't a body in the casket or the Palestinians should not have had the funeral at that time and the IDF was justified.
I’d say human rights is too new a concept to understand in a practical way as Israel creates a walled city as in medieval days for protection
Human rights seems a novel concept with Israel as they’ve erected a walled city as in medieval days for protection
One of the reasons Israel is reluctant to condemn Putin's Russia for its invasion of Ukraine is precisely because it opens the door and sets a precedent for the opposite considering Putin's notion of Ukraine and Ukrainians is very much the same notion Israel has of Palestine and Palestinians. Putin claims Ukraine isn't really a nation and Ukrainians aren't really a people. The only difference I see is, the Israelis view Palestinians as subhuman or another species entirely much as their Nazi mentors viewed Jews and Stalin had no problem with that apparently. When you view something as not existing or rightfully as your own, well, you don't have to respect its wishes if its notion differs from your notion, do you?