Reality and media reports

In early October 2024, Professor Joseph Massad of Columbia University gave an interview to an online news site Electronic intifada. In it, he explained that there is a “huge gap” between the academic (fact-based) understanding of aspects of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (such as the Jewish racist nature of Israeli society and the resulting apartheid policies) and the assumptions of the mainstream media. about (“democratic” and “progressive”) Israel. The latter define popular and official reports about this country and its Zionist ideology.

Massad’s observation describes a problem that distorts more than just views of Israel. The United States has a popular and official view, again perpetuated by the mainstream media, about itself and the world, encapsulated in catchphrases such as freedom, capitalism, progress, individualism, morality, etc. Other countries develop their own fanciful views about myself. However, in the case of the United States and Israel, these two images have merged in a storyline conveyed to US citizens by the media for at least the last hundred years*.

This fusion is so strong that in the case of President Joe Biden and his government, this shared identity requires unconditional support for Israel’s “right of self-defense,” even when “defense” covers a crime, and the crime amounts to ethnic cleansing and the mass murder of Palestinians. The end product of this remarkable act of collective self-deception is the US government’s complicity in the ongoing Israeli genocide in the Gaza enclave and domestic American approval of the suppression of pro-Palestinian protests – in violation of America’s own free speech standards.

The world of Israel shaped by the media

However, there is a growing, but still small, segment of US citizens who want to go beyond the mainstream media. For those who do this, it is relatively easy to spot the discrepancy between popular belief and evidence-based reality. This is because there are alternative sources of information on the fringes (not all of them reliable, of course), and combined with a dash of critical thinking skills, one can learn to evaluate evidence.

This is much more difficult for Israeli Jews. In the Zionist state, not only the national media, with few exceptions, but also all schools, colleges and universities were used to promote popular mythology. Much information related to the conflict with the Palestinians is censored, and as a result the closed information environment has become increasingly restrictive. Indeed, over the past twenty years (gaining momentum since October 2023), views that contradict official ones are considered seditious. And this, in turn, paved the way for today’s popular Zionist endorsement of barbarism. This is how the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy (one of the last critical voices in the media in the country) describes Israel’s current state of mind:

“Over the past year, Israel has coalesced around several assumptions: first, that the October 7 massacre had no context and occurred solely because of the innate bloodthirstiness of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Second, all Palestinians bear the burden of guilt for the massacre of Israeli citizens committed by Hamas. Third, after this terrible massacre, Israel is allowed to do whatever it wants. No one anywhere has the right to try to stop this. (For example) wreaking havoc indiscriminately throughout (Gaza); and killed more than 40,000 people, including many women and children. Barbarism became institutionalized both in Israeli discourse and in the behavior of the army. Humanity has been left out of the public conversation.”

The facts to support Levy’s judgments are readily available. in English on websites around the world such as Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, Electronic Intifada, Palestine Chronicle and others. But these are not the major broadcasters, and so most Americans and almost no Israeli Jews ever see full and accurate reporting of what is really happening in the Occupied Territories, southern Lebanon and other regions under Israeli attack. Ignorance in this regard is not bliss, it is equivalent to living a lie.

From an evidential point of view

Let’s look at an example of how this internal propaganda creates a delusional state of consciousness, first in Israel and then in the United States. This was reported by the British publication Sky News. interview with a 29-year-old Israeli pilot who flies F-15s against targets in the Gaza Strip. The pilot, who comes across as a personable guy, told an interviewer: “Every civilian casualty is tragic, whether in the Gaza Strip or in Israel.” However, he added that “the Israeli air force stops attacks if civilians are found on the ground.” The pilot insists that “every operation, whether in the air or on the ground, is 1. linked to Hamas and 2. approved to avoid civilian casualties.” Under the circumstances, this pilot carries out every order with a clear conscience. Why not? He lives in a world where he is part of “the most moral army in the world”, where “all military operations are legal and proportionate, and all civilian casualties are unintentional.”

There is no doubt that the pilot believes what he says. Indeed, he sounds far less heartless than the Israelis described by Gideon Levy. Of course, the pilots fly fast and high enough that they never clearly see the carnage they cause. With the Israeli infantry things are different. On the ground, the demoralizing force of continuous combat is likely to lead to deteriorating morale. Today, this trend is largely countered by the fact that these soldiers were raised and educated in a world shaped by the media (only now confronted with the world of evidence). However, cracks are forming, and there are reports of refusal to return again and again to an increasing number of Israeli front lines.

Viewed through the window of the real world of evidence, the pilot and his fellow citizen soldiers are now emulating the behavior of the Jews’ past oppressors. In doing so, they are helping to destroy international law and human rights standards. In fact, they all contribute to a nationwide display of barbarity.

Let’s take another look through the window into the world of evidence. This time we will compare reality with the activities of Matthew Miller, who has served as a representative of the US State Department since 2023. His job is to rationalize US actions, and his specialty is half-truths. He has a tougher job than the pilot because many of those he talks to, primarily the Washington press, have access to information (sometimes first-hand) that contradicts the worldview promoted by Miller. However, reporters can’t do anything about it other than snort and roll their eyes. Most of their editors are under enormous cultural and political pressure to pursue a course that supports—and opposes—the pro-Israel line. evidence be damned.

Here is an example of the misleading half-truths that Miller and his bosses are spreading. September 19, 2024 Miller was asked to respond to criticism that “US calls for calm (in Gaza) while continuing to arm Israel are not a successful strategy for reducing tensions in the Middle East.” The contradiction presented was obvious, so how did Miller manage to resolve it? He responded: “We are mandated—we are required by law to ensure that…Israel has a qualitative military advantage over its rivals in the region. This is not a discretionary issue.” What Miller misses here is that in lawthis mandate conditional. There are at least three US laws that make it this way:

+ The Leahy Act, which prohibits the US government from using funds to assist foreign security forces if there is credible information that they are involved in gross human rights violations.

+ The Genocide Convention Implementation Act provides criminal penalties for individuals who commit genocide or incite others to commit genocide.

+ The Foreign Assistance Act, which prohibits assistance to a government that “has a pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.” The law also prohibits military assistance to states that interfere with U.S. humanitarian assistance.

In September 2024, according to UN sources, 90% of all humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, including American aid, was delayed or rejected by the Israelis. Israel’s violation of all these US laws has been confirmed by every credible human rights organization on the planet. The Biden administration and Congress have ignored evidence and humanitarian laws.

Ironically, this overall situation has given rise to anti-Zionist sentiment around the world, which Israel calls anti-Semitism and then uses it to drum up support for its barbarity.

Another example of our world shaped by the media

While the US’s handling of the current situation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, particularly the genocide in Gaza, is the most striking example of how Americans live in a world largely shaped by the media, it is not the only ongoing case. The devastating war in Ukraine was also distorted – again because the full story was not presented.

Full story Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would inform the public that, contrary to the advice of American diplomats and experts on relations with Russia, American policymakers pushed NATO’s eastward expansion after the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991. This was easy to do at the time, since the new Russian Republic was in political and economic chaos. Today the disorder has passed, and Russians have repeatedly said they feel threatened by an “invading NATO.” By the way, they tried to agree on this issue, since Ukraine turned to the West and sought to join both the European Union and NATO. Western rejection of Russia’s attempts to negotiate helped provoked the Russian invasion.

Conclusion

The mainstream media in the US has been co-opted to such an extent that, at least on foreign policy issues, it is little more than a vehicle for government agitprop. How Jonathan Cook talks about it“They are not journalists. They are propagandists for their governments.”

Can most of us tell the difference between biased reporting and what actually happens? If such a message is consistent with the generally accepted cultural worldview, the answer may well be no. The problem is compounded when most of our friends, neighbors and family members actively perceive media reports as true.

By now it should be obvious how dangerous this situation can be. America’s wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine (to name just a short list) gained popular support through selectively biased reporting and government deception. The willingness of Israeli Jews to become like the past oppressors of their European ancestors, with the full support of numerous American administrations, is also based on an incomplete and biased history that has been reported time and time again, to the point that until recently it was found to be prima facie true.

One would hope that a good liberal arts education would instill in most citizens the ability to recognize and resist this flaw in the media and political chatter, but this has not happened. The purpose of education has always been to produce loyal citizens, not independent thinkers. And now even the fact that liberal education exists is dying out.

There is no simple answer. We are victims of our culture, the manipulative power of our media-connected leaders, and our genetic roots that push us in the direction of tribalism. Those who resist all this may be more intelligent in their efforts, but they are also considered “social failures.”

*Cm. Lawrence Davidson, “America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Views from Balfour to Israeli Statehood” (2001).