COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone
The Biden administration is supposedly planning to set up a temporary pier in Gaza to allow for the large-scale shipment of sorely needed goods into the enclave, which reportedly will take weeks to build and will still be subjected to an Israeli checkpoint.
This is on top of the widely ridiculed airdrops of pitifully small amounts of aid the US has already been making in this continuing charade where Washington pretends Gaza is surrounded by some kind of unassailable invisible barrier between itself and Israel.
And hell, why not? Why not build a pier. Have they considered digging a giant tunnel to get aid into Gaza as well? Or launching aid into Gaza by building a giant slingshot? Or perhaps they could invent some type of portal gun à la Rick and Morty?
Ooh! Hey! Or what about simply making their fully dependent client state let the aid in, or force them to stop the genocidal onslaught that makes it necessary? As Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp rightly notes of the planned pier construction, “The drastic measure is being ordered instead of Biden using the enormous leverage he has over Israel to pressure them to allow in more aid or halt the genocidal campaign.”
Biden to Announce ‘Emergency’ Military Mission to Establish Port in Gaza for Aid
Biden is taking drastic measures to get aid into the Strip instead of using military aid to pressure Israel
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Gaza #Israel #GazaAid #Biden https://t.co/KCMJCnGJ02 pic.twitter.com/x4cj5IYYG4— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) March 7, 2024
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The Grayzone has a new report out featuring leaked slides from a private Israel lobby presentation teaching politicians and prominent figures how to talk about Gaza in ways the public will be receptive to, based on focus group-tested information gathered by Republican political operative Frank Luntz.
Journalist Mark Ames tweeted of the report, “This is an incredible scoop, a direct window into how the genocide-propaganda sausage is made.”
My favorite part of the article is where the author Max Blumenthal writes that Republicans and Democrats were found to be receptive to different words used to describe Israel’s genocidal violence in Gaza, saying “Republican voters prefer phrases which imply maximalist violence, like ‘eradicate’ and ‘obliterate,’ while sanitised terms like ‘neutralise’ appeal more to Democrats.”
That’s pretty much the only difference between Republicans and Democrats right there. That’s it in a nutshell.
The Grayzone has obtained slides from a confidential Israel lobby presentation crafted by Republican pollster Frank Luntz
They contain talking points for politicians and influencers seeking to justify Israel’s rampage in Gaza@MaxBlumenthal reportshttps://t.co/HU8zgCNK58
— The Grayzone (@TheGrayzoneNews) March 7, 2024
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You see Western pundits and politicians criticising settlements in the West Bank more forcefully than the genocide in Gaza, despite genocide plainly being worse. This is because Israel’s approval of West Bank settlements exposes the “two state solution” for the lie that it is and makes it clear that the Western power alliance has no meaningful position on Israel’s abusive treatment of Palestinians.
When Western officials bitch at Israel over settlements, they’re essentially saying “Stop it you guys, you’re giving the game away! Now how are we supposed to pretend we care?” They need to be able to credibly bleat the phrase “two-state solution” once in a while in order to create the impression that they’re not just permanently taking the side of genocide, ethnic cleansing, colonialism, theft and apartheid — even though that is exactly what they are doing.
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I’ve noticed that on social media I’m getting more and more comments from dopey right wingers yelling at me for what I have to say about Gaza, and what’s weird is that most of them don’t even post about Israel-Palestine normally. They appear to be doing it solely because they see opposition to the Gaza genocide as a left-wing issue, and so they’ve reflexively taken the opposite position because that’s just what political engagement looks like in this insipid, brainwashed dystopia of ours.
Until recently most of the hostile responses I’ve been getting have been coming from virulent Israel supporters with Israeli flags and “proud Zionist” in their bios who shriek about Hamas 24/7. Now a lot of the pushback I’m getting is just from standard MAGA chuds and other rightists who tweet mostly about partisan politics in their own country. They’re not pushing back against me because they love Israel, they’re pushing back because I’m a leftist and they automatically push back against lefty-looking things because that’s what they’ve been programmed to do.
It just says so much about the state of western civilization that even genocide has been turned into another vapid culture war wedge issue for people to masturbate their tribal identity constructs on. As though “don’t starve children to death or rip them to shreds with military explosives” is some kind of ideological position that only makes sense through a specific political lens, instead of just the normal human default perspective for anyone who isn’t a psychopath.
But that’s the genius of the empire. Propaganda has been used to split the general population into two warring factions of equal strength, and the propagandists get each faction arguing about which imperial military project should be supported and which should be criticized. A lot of the people you see supporting the US-backed butchery in Gaza today have spent two years criticising the US proxy war in Ukraine (and vice versa), because they took those positions based on what the pundits and politicians in their political faction told them to think. It’s got nothing to do with values or morals, it’s just blind tribalistic herd mentality.
And that’s exactly where the empire wants us. Evenly divided against each other too thoroughly to get anything done, arguing back and forth about WHICH imperial agendas should be advanced instead of IF any of them should be advanced. A bunch of bleating human livestock unknowingly bickering about how best to advance the interests of their owners.
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.
