COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone
There was another IDF massacre in Gaza on Saturday, reportedly killing dozens of Palestinians.
Israel as usual claimed it was responding to a ceasefire violation by Hamas, but of course there’s absolutely no evidence for this to be found. AP reports that according to the IDF the strikes were launched after a Hamas fighter “shot at troops in southern Gaza,” but that “no soldiers were hurt” in this alleged attack.
Not so much as a scratch. So I guess we’re just expected to take Israel’s word for it.
Now check out these Western media headlines about the massacre and notice the disgusting spin they are placing on the narrative to normalise the continued slaughter of Palestinians:
- “Israel launches strikes in Gaza ceasefire’s latest test as hospitals say 24 killed,” by AP.
- “Israel launches strikes in Gaza ceasefire’s latest test as hospitals say more than 20 killed,” by NBC News.
- “Israel launches strikes on Gaza in further test of fragile ceasefire,” from Sky News.
- “Israel launches strikes on Gaza in latest test to fragile ceasefire,” from France 24.
- “Israeli Strikes Kill at Least Two Dozen in Gaza Amid Fragile Ceasefire,” from Newsweek.
Do you see what they’re doing here?
The Western press see the killing of Palestinians as such a baseline norm that Israel can massacre dozens of people in Gaza and they’ll go, “Gosh I sure hope this doesn’t lead to any violations of the ceasefire!”
When Israel violates Trump’s ceasefire, the mainstream media calls it “testing” the ceasefire.
There is no circumstance in this or in any other universe in which Hamas could kill 24 Israelis and the media would reduce it to Hamas “testing” the ceasefire. https://t.co/QfaJh2N8bR
— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) November 22, 2025
It’s never a ceasefire violation to commit mass murder against Palestinians. It’s only ever a “test” of the ceasefire, or something that happens “amid a fragile ceasefire”.
If Hamas suddenly attacked and killed dozens of Israelis, these empire propagandists wouldn’t be saying “Hmm I sure hope the fragile ceasefire holds up amid this challenging test.” They’d just call it what it is. And it would be the main news story in the world.
You don’t hate the mass media enough Audio/video: Caitlin Johnstone
The imperial media have been framing Israel’s ceasefire violations like this the entire time. Just the other day NBC News ran a report about a different IDF massacre in Gaza titled “Israeli airstrikes kill 25 Palestinians in Gaza, rattling fragile ceasefire”. Last month CNN ran a headline claiming “US-brokered ceasefire appears to survive first major test” after Israel killed at least 44 people, when Israel had been violating the ceasefire every single day up to that point.
The mass media have been running egregiously misleading headlines throughout this entire genocide, which has an overwhelmingly distorting effect on public perception in an information environment where skim-reading has become the norm and most social media users share news stories after just reading the headline.
Killing Palestinians is so normalized and accepted as a baseline expectation in the western press that CNN calls this the “first major test” of the ceasefire after Israel killed people in Gaza every single day since the ceasefire agreement was signed. https://t.co/wTSEKzsDCN
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) October 19, 2025
It almost feels silly to point out that the mass media are wildly biased in favor of Israel two years into a genocide which they’ve actively run propaganda cover for in brazen acts of journalistic malpractice from the very beginning.
But we can’t let it slip from our attention how evil these imperial spinmeisters are. How racist they are. How mendacious and manipulative they are. However much you hate them, you don’t hate them enough.
These are the people who are informing Western perspectives about what’s going on in our world. They aren’t just deceiving the public with dishonest headlines and precipitously slanted reporting which gets loudly amplified by Silicon Valley algorithms, they are writing the stories which get used and cited by AI chatbots and online platforms like Wikipedia which people are increasingly turning to for information about world events.
They are polluting the entire information ecosystem with a deluge of propaganda they are churning out day after day, year after year.
These freaks are attacking our minds. They are attacking humanity’s ability to understand its waking reality. They are continuously indoctrinating the public into an ignorant, Western supremacist worldview which only values human life when it lives in the correct part of the world, speaks the correct language, practises the correct religion, has the correct skin color, and aligns with the correct geopolitical agendas.
They make everything worse. It’s impossible to have enough disdain for these mass media propagandists.
Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent 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 is republished with permission.
