COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone
A mass grave created by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has been uncovered at a Gaza hospital, where Palestinian civilians appear to have been the victims of a gruesome massacre.
“Bah, that’s old news Caitlin,” you may be saying. “We already know about the massacre and mass graves which were discovered a few weeks ago at the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza.”
No no, that’s a different mass grave from a different IDF massacre at a completely different Gaza hospital. The now completely destroyed al-Shifa Hospital was in Gaza City; I’m talking about the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, where some 210 bodies have reportedly been discovered in a mass grave after Israeli forces withdrew from the city earlier this month.
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Two different massacres, two different hospitals, two different mass graves full of Palestinian civilians.
The IDF are just attacking hospitals and mowing down civilians and trying to bury the evidence of their crimes, so naturally we’re seeing the Western political-media class focus very hard on the problem of antisemitism allegations on college campuses.
MoH: Number of bodies retrieved from Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis rises to 210.
Hundreds are still missing!
First picture from Nasser and the second from Al Shifa Hospital! pic.twitter.com/bI8KsSv2XV
— Motasem A Dalloul (@AbujomaaGaza) April 22, 2024
“Biden denounces antisemitism on college campuses amid Columbia protests,” reads a new headline from The Washington Post.
“As Protests Continue at Columbia, Some Jewish Students Feel Targeted,” The New York Times urgently warns us.
“White House condemns ‘blatantly antisemitic’ protests as agitators engulf Columbia University,” blares Fox News.
“Columbia University faces full-blown crisis as rabbi calls for Jewish students to ‘return home’,” says CNN.
“Columbia University: White House condemns antisemitism at college protests,” the BBC reports.
Getting far less attention than the fact that some Zionist university students are feeling uncomfortable feelings because other students say Palestinians are human beings is the fact that Israel is establishing a pattern of massacring civilians and burying them in mass graves outside hospitals in Gaza, or the fact that the IDF has been butchering children in Rafah, or the fact that the International Criminal Court is reportedly considering charging Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials for war crimes.
Those matters are important, just not nearly as important as how some Western Jews feel emotionally upset about pro-Palestine protests. For that, the world must stop spinning on its axis until this extremely egregious problem has been addressed.
All the Western spin and distortion around Israel’s mass atrocities in Gaza these last six months have revolved around centring feelings over human lives.
How Western Jewish Zionists are feeling about pro-Palestine sentiments. How Joe Biden’s feelings secretly feel about Netanyahu. How Israelis feel about October 7.
How did we get a point where people are more worried that Jewish students at Columbia feel uncomfortable by chants to end Israel’s genocide in Gaza than they are worried about the safety of the people facing a genocide?
Absolutely unreal.
— Zachary Foster (@_ZachFoster) April 21, 2024
Wherever there’s an opportunity to focus the narrative on what feelings are being felt by a politically convenient population, the Western press fall all over themselves to do so with tumescent enthusiasm.
Wherever there’s an opportunity to focus on Israeli atrocities, the Western press are nowhere to be found.
If you belong to a group that isn’t supported by the Western Empire, you can see your entire family murdered right in front of you and the Western political-media class still won’t consider you a victim.
If you belong to a group that the Empire regards as human, then even someone offending your feelings will be viewed as an unforgivable hate crime.
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 and is republished under a Creative Commons licence.
