In one of the scariest moments in modern history, we're doing our best at ScheerPost to pierce the fog of lies that conceal it but we need some help to pay our writers and staff. Please consider a tax-deductible donation.
In real life, people are being mercilessly butchered in Iran, Lebanon and Palestine by Israel and its allies. The uglier this gets, the more aggressive the trolling about “anti-semitism” becomes.
Caitlin Johnstone Caitlin’s Newsletter
Whenever Israel is killing tons of civilians the Western media always start churning out articles about “anti-semitism” and Jewish feelings.
“Jews Begin to Wonder: Is Anywhere Safe?” blares a recent headline from The Wall Street Journal, subtitled “‘It feels like the 1930s again.’ Hostility against Jews surges in Western countries where they felt safe in recent decades.”
An article for The Atlantic titled “Canada’s Polite Pogrom” bizarrely tries to argue that “tolerance for zealotry” is somehow “purging Jews from public life.”
A Washington Examiner headline proclaims that “Jewish voters feel ‘politically homeless’ as antisemitism rises on both sides.”
A headline for The Telegraph asserts that “Many Jews are sensing frightening echoes of 1930s Germany in 2020s Britain.”
War Criminal Tony Blair writes an article for The Free Press titled “Why the West Fails to Stop Antisemitism.”
Meanwhile, in real life, people are being mercilessly butchered in Iran, Lebanon and Palestine by Israel and its allies. The uglier it gets, the more aggressive the concern-trolling about “antisemitism” becomes.
The Jewish Chronicle has published an article by Maureen Lipman titled “Does the world have any idea of how tired the people of Israel are?,” subtitled “A dear friend told me that his grandchildren have needed to enter their safe room more than 200 times since the current battle began.”
“The BBC and reporters worldwide do not go into the shelters where children are trained to lie on the floor when the sirens go off,” writes Lipman. “Neither do they report on the closure of schools. Most Israeli kids have missed some school every day since Covid. Are the media even aware of the fear of the elderly in Israel?”
Absolutely incredible. She writes as though Israelis are the only people on earth whose country is being bombed. Only Zionists could drop bombs on neighboring populations every single day for years and then go “NOBODY IN THE WORLD CAN IMAGINE WHAT IT’S LIKE TO LIVE IN FEAR OF AIRSTRIKES!”
Western news reporters face so much pressure to pad Israel’s image and advance Israeli information interests that the Associated Press just ran an editorial titled “AP is calling Israel’s attack on Lebanon an invasion. What does that mean and why does it matter?” justifying its decision to call what is self-evidently and indisputably an invasion the thing that it is.
You never saw them do this with Ukraine. You never saw the media holding long internal deliberations about what to label it and then publishing editorials going “We’re going to call this a Russian invasion, we’re pretty sure that’s what this is called, please don’t be mad at us!” That’s how cowed they are by Israel’s supporters, and how much pressure they feel to toe the imperial line no matter what.
At the same time in the Israeli press we’re seeing op-eds like The Jerusalem Post’s “Long-term deradicalization in Gaza faces major hurdles,” which argues explicitly for the total ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian territory.
The article’s author Martin Sherman dismisses claims that the people of Gaza can be “deradicalized”— as though the radicalization of Palestinians is the problem, and not the radical political ideology of the people who’ve been waging an extermination campaign upon them. Instead, Sherman argues, everyone must accept the “harsh reality” that only annexation and ethnic cleansing can lead to a lasting peace in the Gaza Strip.
“The only way Israel can ensure how the Gaza Strip will be governed, and who will govern it, is to govern it itself,” writes Sherman. “Moreover, the only way Israel can govern the Gaza Strip without becoming an external oppressor of ‘another people’ is to remove ‘the other people’ from the confines of the Gaza Strip itself.”
“This is not radical right-wing radicalism. It is merely sound and sober political science,” Sherman writes.
If it isn’t right-wing radicalism to advocate the mass purge of a colonized indigenous population from their homeland for being the wrong ethnicity, then right-wing radicalism does not exist. That’s pretty much as right-wing extremist as it gets.
And this is an entirely mainstream Israeli publication.
If anyone on earth needs to be de-radicalized, it’s the Israelis and their supporters.
* * *
The U.S.-Israel alliance exists to fix the problems created by its existence.
The U.S. and Israel have sown death and destruction throughout the middle east for generations, creating generation after generation of survivors who hate them and want them gone, and then it cites the existence of people who hate them and want them gone as the reason why the U.S. needs to keep supporting Israel.
The U.S. needs to help Israel harm people or else the people who are mad about being harmed might harm Israelis. It’s circular reasoning all the way through.
Ask an American Israel supporter why it benefits the U.S. to defend Israel, and they’ll tell you it advances American interests in the middle east.
Ask them what American interests it helps advance in the middle east and they’ll tell you it counters the malign influence of Iran and terrorist groups.
Ask them to describe exactly what Iran and the terrorist groups are doing which directly harms American interests, and they’ll tell you they threaten American troops in the region.
Ask them why American troops can’t just leave the region to remove the threat, and they’ll tell you they can’t because that would be abandoning Israel.
Ask them why the U.S. can’t simply abandon Israel, and they’ll tell you it’s an important U.S. ally.
Ask them to explain why Israel is an important U.S. ally, and they’ll tell you it’s because it advances American interests in the middle east.
The official narrative about the importance of the U.S.-Israel alliance is self-justifying circular logic the whole way through, no matter what point you start examining it from.
They’ll tell you the west needs to support the poor innocent nation of Israel because it gets attacked by evildoers who want to destroy it for no reason.
In reality Israel is despised by middle eastern populations because the west dropped a brand new ethnostate on top of a pre-existing civilization and has forced it into being through continuous brute military force ever since, and that violence is all Israel’s opponents are ever responding to.
The west created the violence it claims to be countering.
The only argument Israel’s defenders in America make which does not rely on circular reasoning and dishonest obfuscation is “The Bible says we gotta give JDAMs to Benjamin Netanyahu.”
But the argument that permanent war is justified because you think that some book of made-up stories commands you to give military support to a nation that’s younger than Dolly Parton does not deserve to be taken seriously.
If they were honest they’d just admit that it benefits the U.S. empire’s ambitions of total global domination to have a ton of military bases and sympathetic partners in the middle east, which is rich in fossil fuels and critical trade routes.
If you knew absolutely nothing about the middle east but understood global military conquest you’d be able to tell that west Asia would be a critical point of geostrategic control just by looking at a globe, since it’s the only region on our planet which joins three continents.
But they can’t admit that, because it would be admitting that all this violence and suffering isn’t about promoting the interests of Americans or defending Jews or fighting terrorism or spreading freedom and democracy, and is instead about advancing the interests of a few oligarchs and empire managers with the facilitation of crazy religious beliefs held by Jewish Zionists and Christian Zionists.
So they lie and make up stories about why it makes perfect sense for American soldiers to be headed to Iran right now, and why it was entirely reasonable for the U.S. to send genocide weapons to Israel throughout the incineration of the Gaza Strip. It smells like bullshit because that’s what it is.
Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes. For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.
This article is from Caitlin’s Newsletter and re-published with permission.
Editor’s Note: At a moment when the once vaunted model of responsible journalism is overwhelmingly the play thing of self-serving billionaires and their corporate scribes, alternatives of integrity are desperately needed, and ScheerPost is one of them. Please support our independent journalism by contributing to our online donation platform, Network for Good, or send a check to our new PO Box. We can’t thank you enough, and promise to keep bringing you this kind of vital news.
You can also make a donation to our PayPal or subscribe to our Patreon.