Its Not Our Media - Tumblr Posts
In this Blog post I‘ll try to clarify whats currently going on Between Israel, Hamas and the Civillian population of Palestine and analysing It because most people get absolutly misinformed by Corporate media Propaganda, so let‘s get into It.
Trigger warning for basically every kind of Violence and dehumanization
Also this blog is in parts extremely Cynical and some parts are ironic in making fun of dumb people having even dumber opinion’s marked in red
Also just a Trigger warning for bad spelling
First of all for all, for people who still need the Clarification: The Palestine state does NOT equal Hamas the Hamas is a fundamentalist Jihadist terror group which engages in Barbarism they are in fact not a Based anti Colonialist movement. The Hamas is only holding Power in the Area known as the Gaza strip and has done so since 2007, the territory of Palestine is much larger than the Gaza Strip but because of actuality reasons im mainly focusing on Gaza in this post.
Also the Israeli state is not and never has been representative of the entirety of Judaism or even a majority of It. Critique directet at the Israeli state thus is not critique against Judaism and not Anti semetic. Calling everyone Anti semectic is just an defense mechanism of the Isreali state being called out on It‘s crimes. But It is also Important to remember that Anti Semitism is a real thing and Jews are disproportionately targets of hate crimes. Also disproportionately the targets of hate crimes are Muslims or just Arabic looking people. I can‘t believe I still have to say this but: No muslim peacefully practicing their Religion (wich is as in every Religion an Overwhelming majority) is at any kind of fault for what some deranged facistoide Terror group does.
So lets start of:
Although it is true that the renewed hostility’s of the last day’s were started of by the Horrific attacks of the Hamas it is all to often not at all or just as a side note mentioned that Israel has been Bombing the Gaza strip more or less consistently for years and years claiming to target underground tunnels or Hospitals in whom of course Hamas had weapon deposits or Rockets or whatever and that every Civillian casualty was just „Colleteral damage“. It‘s just a very convenient coincidence for Israel that those people who It want‘s exterminated from it‘s state anyway die in these bombings. But also part of the truth is everyone knows what has been going on in Gaza the last years but the media mentioned it maybe once every few months so It couldn‘t be that bad right? The truth is people and Goverments in the West just didn‘t give a fuck because there were far worse problems like, like the Economic growth going down by 0.5% My God how terrible! Western Goverments more or less directly enabled the ongoing Genocide with their outspoken support, full solidarity and weapon sells and funds for the Israeli state.
Now Religious fundamentalist terrorist cells like Hamas don‘t just happen, they require a breeding ground of despair and material insecurity which is undeniably the case in the Gaza strip. But in the case of Hamas it would have probably never had a chance to gain dominance over the Fatah If it would not have been funded by the Israeli state, no that‘s not a weird conspiracy it was literally admitted by several former state officials. So now you could just say that the Israeli state harmed itself by funding and building up Hamas but the existence of Hamas really is the best thing that could have happend to the Goverment of Israel, for now they have an enemy who’s violent and barbaric actions mirror those they commit(altough on a much smaller scale) thus (In the eyes of the Public) justifying even more violence against the Civillian population of Palestine and Gaza specifically. For Hamas it is the same thing, If it were not for the genocidal actions of Israel they couldn‘t legitimize their existence they couldn‘t legitimize their heinous crimes. So you could say that on both sides facist goverments of some kind are profiting of off fighting with eachother, you can really see that for the leaders of Hamas it is not an anti colonial fight by the fact that most of them are sitting around in Qatar. The losers on both sides being the Civillian population altough it has to be said that the Palestinian civillians have suffered and will suffer far more because the Conflict mostly takes place in their country not on the land controlled by Israel. So as much as Israeli state officials will in every statement say how much they hate the war and how shocked they are about Hamas killing Civillians (by which they of course mean white Isrealis or foreigners, Arabs don‘t count) so far it has been a best case scenario for them because it helps them to facilitate their power further and seemingly justifys them in their new colonial expansion more than ever backed by the public in Western countries and their own population.
As angry as all this shit may make you it is always important to remember to not fall in generalizations and blaming of entire group’s. Not all of the Israeli citizens are responsible for what their state does and no Palestinian civillian is at fault for what Hamas did, despite a lot of media reports claiming thats the case alla „Yea but they had ONE single election in 2007 where people choose the Hamas over Fatah (mind you this just happend because of Israeli funding) so they should be held responsible for everything happening since“ by the way more than half of the population in Gaza wasn‘t even of age and didn‘t have the right to Vote back then. But even If we ignored that the Election did just turn out the way It did because of Israel you would have to ask yourself why didn‘t the Israeli citizens who had FIVE elections since 2019 alone Vote differently or is this whole thing maybe not about Voter liability at all and just a way to dehumanize and legitimze the killing of Palestinians by letting people think that Hamas has the full and absolut support of the people? (But the Media surely wouldn‘t do this)
But not only is this claim widely accepted but people defending Israel also double down on it and are saying that „If they don‘t support the actions of their Government they could just overthrow it“ I don‘t even know where to start with this, first of all It’s actually not that easy to overthrow an Authoritarian Government which has the backing of the majority of regional powers and is armed to the teeth but even If we pretended like overthrowing the Government was an easy thing to do we could raise funny little questions such as: Why the fuck didn‘t Israel just overthrow their Goverment which is responsible for all of this in the first place? Or: Why didn‘t people in the USA just overthrow their Goverment when it Invaded Iraq or Vietnam which isn‘t even comaprabel because those thing lead to MILLIONS of dead people not a few thousand. But yeah I guess this standard just applies for people in Gaza and not for white people in the western World. Ok ok but let‘s say the people of Gaza overthrow Hamas and have a super duper Democratic state much more democratic than Israel and with more Human rights, do you really think Israel would give a fuck, the only thing that would realistically chance is that it would just be a little bit harder for Israel to justify their war crimes infront of the generall public but Israel has time and time again proven they don‘t care about condemnation of their war crimes and settler policy which basically go hand in hand. There are basically an infinite amount of times Israel has been condemned by the Un, it didn’t change anything. Israel didn‘t start Bombing and expelling because terrorists exist, terrorists exist because Israel started Bombing and expelling.
Other ridiculous claims to legitimise Israel are:
„BUT QuEEr pEOplE aRe LiTerALlY KiLeD IN GaZa“ ok and how is Israel (which itself does discriminate LGBTQ+ people) helping the situation by funding terror groups and Bombing and entire Region in to the Stoneage? Or could it be that you really don‘t give a fuck about Queer rights and just wan‘t to, again dehumanize and legitimize the Killing of Palestinian people in the Gaza.
And:
„But Jewish people lived their for longer they were just expelled by the Romans and only after that Arabs settled there“ ok and now what? Throughout history so many ethnic groups lived on so many different pieces of Land If you go by this principle you’d have to give the biggest part of Anatolia to greece because „Greek“ (in caption because back then ethnicity’s were much less uniformly defined compared to today) people were there before „Turks“ arrived from the middle of Asia and todays Xinjiang region so some of these regions you’d then have to give to Turkey and so on and so on I think you get the point. Also it is pretty similar to the Justification Russia used to kick of the Invasion of Ukraine.
I also wan‘t to Note that you may not have heard all of the listed points people use to defend Israel and probably heard some others I didn‘t, thats fine Im not determined to break down every single shitty Argument people try to justify the ongoing genocide with because it has the same pattern as pretty much all arguments trying to defend Facism. They throw so much shitty arguments at you faster than its possible to disprove them so that at the end something will stick. Of course they don‘t really believe in all of them, for example a lot of American evangelicals believe that Jews have to controll the Holy Land for the great rapture to happen in that all the Jews will be killed and only true Christian believers (they mean themselves of course) will get into Heaven but they know fully well how Antisemetic and badshit insane this sounds so they just use above mentioned Arguments.
Another point I wan‘t to talk about is the Media reporting and Hegemony of discourse which is of course highly dependent on the way the media reports. To make my point I just quickly wan‘t to break down some of the ways news shows like to frame the situation and what implicit Bias they carry. One very easy thing to do is just strait up ignoring things that happen to Palestinians and don‘t mention it at all or when they try not to be super obvious or to avoid allegations of biased reporting they mention like one minute that several hundred or thousand people died in an hospital explosion in Gaza and then talk several minutes about the Hostages taken by Hamas and their Family’s and the jobs and dreams these people had, first of all this leaves the audience in the assumption that because the segment talking about the Hostages was longer this topic is more relevant and second giving the people a real impression of how much a Human life is worth because every individual person has dreams hope etc. but when it‘s Palestinians that are targeted they just talk about numbers thus a large part of the Sympathy victim’s of Hamas (You know one dead man is a tragedy a million dad men are a Statistic) receive is not perceived for the Palestinians. Also as I write this, it isn‘t confirmed who blew up the Hospital but the assumption that it was the IDF which has been blowing up Hospitals multiple times to date and is currently Bombing more than ever before is likely to be true, so what does the news segment give us, it gives us only the assumption of the IDF which is of course saying that it was Hamas and leaving it with that, I don‘t think i need to break down how letting only one side talk about their perspective is manipulative. Also most media really likes to talk about how Israel is „fighting back“ so just narrowly focusing on what happend since the attack of Hamas a few days ago and leaving out years of Bombing, illegal settlements, killing of peacfull protestors and sieging of Gaza as a whole. So if you have the whole pretext you could also say Hamas fought back against Israel (which wouldn‘t be very helpful since AGAIN what they did is unjustifiabble) that would be much closer to the truth. Or a reporting of the BBC that I reposted a few days ago talking about Israelis who have been killed and Palestinians who have died in the conflict, implying that behind every Israeli death was an deliberate effort and Palestinians just so happend to die.
Who‘s having total Hegemony over discourse get‘s really clear if you talk about this conflict in literally any way that isn‘t directly what the Israeli state says, you are constantly asked to clarify that you are not apologizing Hamas, you point out the history of the conflict? Your justifiyng terror. You are saying that the IDF shouldn‘t kill civilians? Yeah but could you please distance yourself from Hamas? You are saying that Israel doesn’t have any right to exterminate Palestinians and ethnically cleanse their country? You are literally an Anti semite and clearly just trying to justify Hamas. And yes even in this Blog I have to condemn Hamas multiple times and will probably still be called Anti semitic, If public discourse would be sane people couldn‘t just say that they are in Solidarity with Israel and not point out that they condemn the ongoing Genocide and it would be Impossible for a Politician to say that Israels actions are appropriate. But in the world we live in it is not just basically Impossible for Politicians to say that they stay with Palestine but any position other than full and unconditional support for Israel is critically looked upon and you can probably hear a Voice in the backround of a press conference, asking: „so you publicly embrace Hamas?“. That about summs up the state of discourse at least in my and many other western countries and most online spaces, which are really dominated by western countries.
It all really is just the result of:
1. A new far right stronger than ever in western countries and bringing with them an environment in whom It‘s okay to talk shit about „foreigners“ (meant are of Course the scarry brown people not other whites even when they come from the other end of the world) and Muslims just for practicing their religion and using them as Scapegoats for everything bad happening. If you learned anything from History (which seems Increasingly uncommon) you probably heard of a group being treated in a similar way before. Of course some factors differ because History doesn‘t just repeat and I am definitely not saying that Gaza is literally a Concentration camp, but does It have to become that obvious for people to finally see that this is in fact an ongoing Genocide? Out of the Blue a something of the likes happening in Gaza would be unthinkable but if you have years and years of normalization of the mistreatment of Arabs and specifically Palestinians and Muslims and seeing people first of all always as members of a certain group(again only applies for Muslims or Arabs) is it really that surprising that we have reached a point were people can openly talk about having no sympathy for the Civillian victims in Gaza without lossing their teeth? (which of course I wouldn‘t suggest to do because muh violence bad)Also it should be noted that killing and smoothering Victims of war trying to escape the horrors has become a Normal part of EU border enforcement it is in fact so normalized no one ever talks about it, it is just accepted that people are going to die when they try to come here, they probably should have used a better Boat or something like that.
2. The deliberate effort of the Israeli state to blame all people living in Gaza for what Hamas did and cleverly using their Status as a Jewish state to smear everyone not supporting their genocide as a Nazi and Anti semite, going so far as to say that Palestine is the reason the Holocaust happend, thus proving that they really don‘t give a fuck about the History of Jewish suffering.
In the end I can say nothing but stay Informed by independent sources for example Indymedia, listen to the Victims and don‘t ever believe the Israeli state. Also stay aware of the fact that basically all media is owned and operated by some Billion dollar Conglomerate most of them don’t care about the truth but about you thinking what they want you to think. For everyone interested in the details of why media is so dishonest and biased just go read Manufacturing consent by Noam Chomsky or look at an summary of lt. And take everything you hear with a pinch of Salt.
How Israel helped to create Hamas: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/