As is often said, history is written by the victors. The comparison between the U.S. and Israel in this regard is enlightening and reveals notable differences.
The U.S. has lost every war it has fought since 1944 (not to mention that Hitler’s major defeat was decided above all at Stalingrad). The list is long and would span an entire section, including Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and the South American wars. The millions of deaths—whether direct or indirect—are beyond count. The CIA has had more “success” in facilitating the rise of South American dictatorships in Chile, Brazil, and Argentina, among others, and the U.S. President, with the help of his buddy Musk, are demonstrating a remarkable talent for replacing democracies with dictatorships or quasi-dictatorships just about everywhere. Still, when it comes to wars, the problem with U.S. propaganda is that its goal is to give the impression that they’ve won wars they’ve actually lost! It works—just ask anyone for their assessment of the U.S. military, and you’ll get the answer “the most powerful army.” While this is true in terms of budgets, the value for money isn’t really there. The main weapon of this propaganda is Hollywood, where—with a few exceptions—the Americans win every war thanks to superheroes.
The situation in Israel is entirely different! They have won every war without exception—the list is long: 1947, 1956, 1967, 1973, the numerous incursions and massacres in Lebanon, the occupation of Syrian territories, not to mention Palestine and Gaza, which have been ravaged by the forces of the Jewish state. The Mossad is certainly the most effective intelligence agency in the world, and the IDF would withstand any attack, being likely better equipped and certainly better trained than any other army. This is hardly surprising, given that it is the only country in the world with access—as if at a supermarket—to all the latest-generation U.S. weapons, and for free at that!
Consequently, the “Hasbara”—or the Israeli state’s propaganda machine—is the exact opposite of its American counterpart. Here, the goal is not to boast about won wars but to hide them in order to portray Israel as a victim. They manage, with a mastery that would make any advertising executive jealous, to present themselves as the victim rather than the aggressor. An army equipped with several hundred nuclear missiles, one of the best air forces in the world, which attacks Iran to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear bomb and to block the prospect of a powerful neighboring state capable of challenging its dominance. Yet the country is supposedly “in danger” of being destroyed or wiped out by “soldiers” in rags armed with a few Kalashnikovs and weapons so outdated that it’s hard to even call them missiles. Israel’s bombings have killed more than 120,000 people in Gaza, including at least 25,000 children, while Hamas, with its missiles, has killed at best a few dozen (or rather, at worst). An aggravating factor, as shown by the testimonies of Israeli soldiers (see the film *Naza*, which received the Jury Prize at Venice). “We are the victims; the proof is the massacres of October 7,” as if there hadn’t been 80 years of occupation marked by massacres and unjustified imprisonment—including that of 7-year-old children who could one day be hanged under new laws if they threaten or injure a soldier.
The comparison with the U.S. from a legal standpoint is also enlightening. The U.S. has always had a policy of bombing without concern for “collateral damage.” In 1956, as a young child in Cairo, I admired the RAF’s mastery when they would announce what they were going to destroy the next day and destroyed only that building…. The IDF, however, possesses unparalleled data on Gaza, particularly through the 40,000–50,000 cell phones they monitor. So, as some soldiers say off the record, they know that a “suspect” lives on the 2nd floor of a certain house with X children and neighbors. They destroy the entire building, knowing full well how many innocent people they are killing. In legal terms, this means that the U.S. is committing un premedited manslaughter, not the Israelis, who are killing innocent people with premeditation.
And the effectiveness of Israel’s propaganda machine in portraying itself as a victim reaches a sublime level of efficiency. “Since we’re Jewish, anything you say amounts to anti-Semitism.” In short, I kill my neighbors because I can’t stand them, but since I’m Jewish, no one has the right to judge me—lest they be accused of anti-Semitism. In Palestine, in the West Bank, the settlers—most often young immigrants from the West who have no business being there—destroy everything, kill with the help of the IDF, massacre, occupy homes after expelling and—often killing—the occupants, burn or cut down olive groves, and confiscate crops and even flocks of sheep! In any language, this is a full-fledged pogrom. All of this is justified because “God gave us this land.” Certainly, the Old Testament, like the Gospels and the Quran, sometimes contains universal truths—but that’s not all! The Chosen People—the People of the Book—apparently have every right to this land according to a decree dating back some 3,000 years, for which neither the land registry nor the notarized deed is accessible or documented, especially since they were written decades after the events took place! If we follow other sacred texts to the letter, massacres are largely justified, and the alliance between the sword and the cross is by no means a recent invention.
Here, however, there is an exceptional circumstance.
Throughout history, the Jewish people have been massacred—from the pogroms carried out by Catholics and Orthodox Christians in all the colonial powers for ages, right up to the Holocaust. But does this grant special rights to a country that claims to be the sole representative of the Jews? How are the Palestinians responsible? Muslims in general have been far less effective than Christians at massacring Jews: no pogroms, no massacres, no witch trials, and no accusations of drinking children’s blood at Easter. Our main punishment—for Jews living in Muslim countries—was the imposition of additional taxes (the dlimi). On what grounds, then, can a country proclaim itself the heir to the millions of Jews killed by the Nazis? Israel has, in fact, already profited handsomely from this; the country’s shipping fleet (Zion Lines) was built, among many other fundings, with German reparations. Furthermore, experience shows that when given the choice to flee Nazism, Holocaust survivors preferred to emigrate to Western countries, which unfortunately refused to open their doors to them. In short, no one has the right to speak on their behalf—except perhaps their descendants, who are increasingly criticizing the Jewish state, saying, “Not in our name.”
And Western “democracies” are falling for it. I have the right to write here—without being censored by LinkedIn—that there is a genocide in Sudan, but when it comes to Israel, at best I can speak of a massacre but not of g…i.e.; that’s forbidden. Yet it is the most well-documented and widely seen event in history, thanks to social media and films that have won awards at the Oscars, Venice, etc. (“No Other Land,” “Naza,” etc.). In Great Britain, you’re thrown in jail if you carry a “Free Palestine” sign; in France, they recognize the State of Palestine, which is now restricted to a few km2 around Ramallah and Bethlehem—for the time being, before the final occupation openly promised by Israeli leaders. In fact, the most unbelievable thing is that Israeli hasbara works: those responsible for the massacres and g….i.e. in Gaza have their place settings in all the French media, and when an actress dares to say “Free Palestine” in an “open” comment, she is censored. And the politicians who govern us trust that this will have no consequences not linking the relation with the rise of the far right all over; unless the rise of the far right is actually desired and being orchestrated. Despite all this, there are moments of beauty that bear witness to the resilience of the children who have been massacred and orphaned in Gaza—for fans of Umm Kulthum.
https://lnkd.in/p/eagWx-fE
https://lnkd.in/p/ePyXU4sU
https://lnkd.in/p/eJC5MZKJ
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/khaled-hammad-3a168722_israeli-settlers-steal-palestinian-water-ugcPost-7495447537651240960-KDeD
Photo Jeff Kingma – Unsplash
