Fake News
This week the Israeli government invaded the Al Shifa hospital. This marks a new level of brutality and has shaken the world. It is being described even in mainstream media as “a watershed moment.” Images of Israeli soldiers walking past babies in incubators, in a hospital room in shambles, have been seen by people around the globe.
These images are galvanizing people, forcing even reluctant governments to condemn the cruelty of Israel and to call for prosecution for war crimes.
One of the reasons for this outcry is that the US propaganda war machine has used the images of babies in incubators being killed as the ultimate definition of depravity. In October of 1990 as the US was preparing for the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, a fifteen-year-old Kuwaiti girl testified before the US Congressional Human Rights Caucus that Iraqi troops were removing babies from incubators and putting them on the floor to die. Her graphic testimony was widely broadcast in the mainstream media. Then president George Bush, as well as several members of congress, used this testimony to justify the first war against Iraq.
Later, the story was proven to be “fake news.” The young girl was revealed to be no ordinary citizen, but the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the U.S. Still, nearly 50 million people had seen the tear-filled broadcast and the idea that Iraqi people and Saddam Hussein were somehow “monstrous” was deeply implanted in the US mindset. It made the second Gulf War, that much easier to justify.
Now it is the actions of the Israeli military that are forcing Americans to confront how much we have lied to ourselves about what we are doing around the globe. Since the end of World War II, the US has systematically presented its military efforts as justified actions to protect people. These propaganda efforts are unravelling in the face of the brutality we are witnessing in Gaza.
It is widely understood that Israeli aggression is made possible by US support. And Israel is justifying its invasion of Gaza by comparing its tactics to those of the US in Afghanistan and Iraq. But instead of serving to justify Israel, this comparison is exposing the depth of US criminal behavior. Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies recently explained the hollowness of the comparison, saying:
Michael Crowley and Edward Wong have reported in the New York Times that Israeli officials are defending their actions in Gaza by pointing to U.S. war crimes, insisting that they are simply interpreting the laws of war the same way that the United States has interpreted them in Iraq and other U.S. war zones. They compare Gaza to Fallujah, Mosul and even Hiroshima.
But copying U.S. war crimes is precisely what makes Israel’s actions illegal. And it is the world’s failure to hold the United States accountable that has emboldened Israel to believe it too can kill with impunity.
The United States systematically violates the UN Charter’s prohibition against the threat or use of force, manufacturing political justifications to suit each case and using its Security Council veto to evade international accountability. Its military lawyers employ unique, exceptional interpretations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, under which the universal protections the Convention guarantees to civilians are treated as secondary to U.S. military objectives.
At some point this bombing will stop. At some point we will be faced with questions of the kind of world we are trying to create. We are learning that if we are to have a future at all it will require an honest look at the lies we have been told, and the lies we have told ourselves. The truth of the violence embedded in empire is clear.