COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone
They’re really going to try to pin all the blame for the incineration of Gaza on Benjamin Netanyahu so that nothing has to change when this is over. The Western empire has chosen a single scapegoat to carry away its sins so the status quo can march on unhindered by guilt or consequence.
They want everyone to pin all the blame for the Gaza genocide on Netanyahu, but this is not all the fault of Netanyahu. It’s the fault of the entire Israeli state. It’s the fault of Joe Biden. It’s the fault of the Democrats. It’s the fault of all the Israel supporters on Capitol Hill.
It’s the fault of the Western press. It’s the fault of the Israel lobby. It’s the fault of the unelected empire managers in US government agencies. It’s the fault of the entire US empire and all its imperial member states like Australia, the UK, the EU, and Canada.
By trying to make this mass atrocity solely the fault of Netanyahu and not the giant, sprawling network of immensely powerful institutions which made it possible, they’re working to ensure that no changes will need to be made to any of those institutions.
It’s just like how they made a scapegoat of Judith Miller for the entire mass media’s war propaganda in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion and let all the blame for the war hang on Bush (before completely rehabilitating Bush’s image during the Trump administration and deciding he’s a pretty great guy after all).
No meaningful changes were ever made to ensure that the US power alliance never repeats its horrible crimes after Iraq, which is why it keeps repeating horrible crimes.
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The trouble with Israel apologia on Gaza is that at first glance its talking points sound legit if you don’t know much about Israel-Palestine. “Israel has a right to defend itself”, “They need to get rid Hamas because of October 7” etc would sound entirely reasonable if you didn’t know that Israel is a settler-colonialist apartheid state which has been murdering, abusing and stealing from the indigenous population of the land for generations.
The amount of energy needed to see through the talking points is far greater than the amount of energy needed to speak them — it’s one of those “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth even gets its pants on” kind of deals. Which is why it’s miraculous that so many people around the world are getting educated enough to see through the lies and support the Palestinians.
How are they getting educated enough? Mostly through online content which sums up the situation quickly and concisely enough for them to understand easily. That’s the only way the truth can move quickly enough to catch up with the lies. And that’s the role TikTok has played here, which is why we’ve seen Israel lobbyists and the ADL shrieking their lungs out about it for months.
Probably worth bumping this clip to the top of public awareness at this time. https://t.co/HwKPORUO82
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) March 13, 2024
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It would never have occurred to any American to think TikTok is a five-alarm foreign enemy threat until their government told them to think that, and then when they did the biggest bootlickers in the world started acting like it’s just a common sense fact they’ve always believed.
Americans who’d trust their own government to oversee their communications more than they’d trust China have missed all the most important lessons about the US government that have come out in their lives. Even if China really is getting data from TikTok (and there’s currently no evidence that it is), only a groveling empire simp would object to it.
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Saying TikTok must be suppressing pro-Israel content because pro-Palestine content is more popular is like saying they’re suppressing flat earth content because round earth content is more popular. Pro-Israel content is just less popular in general, which is why the gap is the same on Facebook and Instagram.
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The US government is like “No no it’s not censorship, we’re just using state power to ensure that popular speech platforms are only allowed to exist if they can be controlled by US government agencies.”
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Israel has done so much shit in the last few days we’ve already forgotten the news that they literally tortured UN staff to extract false statements about UNRWA having Hamas connections.
They. Tortured. UN. Staff. If we had anything remotely like objective news reporting in the western press, this would have been the top story everywhere for days.
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Once you see how evil Israel’s actions are you start to understand why its defenders need to resort to just calling anyone who criticizes Israel a Jew-hater.
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When Israel apologists say “antisemite” it’s just a meaningless noise made to hurt the feelings of the person it’s said to. Once you realise this it starts to land in exactly the same way as any other infantile name-calling from anyone else who’s lost the argument.
Caitlin Johnstone is an independent Australian journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article was first published here as part of her Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix series and is republished under a Creative Commons licence.
