Israel at War—Propaganda

Hamas has mastered four things: 

1. Jew hatred—like their Nazi predecessors, they have inscribed Jew hatred into their governing documents and teach it in their schools, beginning the curriculum in kindergarten.
2. Atrocities—they revel in torturing and murdering civilians, raping and then murdering young women, killing and then beheading infants, and kidnapping civilians to use as bargaining chips.
3. Human sacrifice—they enthusiastically use their own population as human sheilds, encouraging them to remain in harm's way and then using every death that results as evidence of "war crimes."
4. Propaganda—they stage fake deaths (lots and lots of them with children their primary props), claim that Israel is responsible for bombing when they or their internal enemies plant bombs that kill palestinian, and make wildly exaggerated claims about deaths due to Israeli military action.

Its the last thing that is today's topic.

Common sense indicates that one should question the claims of a group of psychopaths that is giddy about murder, rape, infanticide, and kidnapping. If they can do those things—and there is absolutely no question that they did those things—does any sane person believe they might not blame Israel for deaths they caused or grossly inflate the numbers of their own dead to make their propaganda more effective. 

Why, a critical thinker might ask, does the mainstream media report Hamas' propaganda claims without any cynicism? The narrative, baby, the leftist narrative!

Early yesterday afternoon, a number of mainstream media sources reported that Israel bombed a Gaza hospital and 500 people died. Oh ... the humanity! War Crimes!! Although a few labeled this story as a "claim" by Hamas, they were happy to leave the impression that it was Israel's fault, until ...

A few hours later ... Turns out an Islamic Jihad rocket hit the hospital—Israel was not to blame. Of course, the correction is never as powerful as the breaking news. BTW, Islamic Jihad is yet another Jew-Hating Islamist terror group. [1]

But waiting even a few hours to verify the original (obviously false) claim by a terror group was too much for two members of the U.S House of Representatives, anti-Semites Rashida Talib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN). They scurried to social media and reinforced Hamas's blatant lie by announcing that Israel had bombed a hospital. 

An important aside: You'd think that Democrat leaders in both the House and the Senate would comment on Talib's and Omar's direct promulgation of terrorist propaganda. At a minimum, you'd think that a statement correcting their blatant lies would be offered, or maybe a somewhat stronger statement stating concern about their pro-Hamas propaganda, or maybe a suggestion (from fellow supposedly pro-Israel Democrats in the House) that censure should be considered. Nope. Crickets. 

Maybe American Jews (a majority of whom are Democrats) might consider exactly where their political party stands, given that it refuses to respond to its own members blatant lies and terrorist propaganda.

You'd further think that mainstream media sources would learn from the hospital lie and be more cynical in their reporting when Hamas is the source.  You'd think that by playing into Hamas propaganda, they'd realize that their headlines reporting fake news inflame the Muslim street and lead directly to anti-Semitic violence.  Nope, the mainstream media narrative is largely controlled by leftists who are pro-palestinian. Their first headline is always anti-Israel, even when a correction ultimately proves that the first story was untrue.

The master propagandists within Hamas understand that it's only the first headline that matters, so they use their lies to propagandize with impressive effect. In the coming days there will be unverified reports of "thousands" dead, child care centers obliterated by air strikes, children murdered by Israelis—all false, and all designed to allow the Western Left and Arab apologists to screech about moral equivalence and "atrocities on both sides."

Hamas propagandists along with main stream and social media propagandists terrorize the truth. They use disinformation as an effective weapon of war—but it only works if you believe the garbage lies they spread. Don't.

FOOTNOTE:

[1]  It is likely that Islamic Jihad was in the process of launching multiple missiles at civilians in Israel when one went awry and hit the hospital. It's curious actually that a single missile did so much damage and cost so many lives (there are increasing questions about the size of the death toll claim, but why should that be a surprise?). Hamas has been known to store munitions in the basement of hospitals and other civilian buildings, thinking them safe because they know Israel will NOT target a medical facility. It is possible that the damage and deaths at the site were caused by an Islamic Jihad missile and Hamas munitions that exploded after the missile struck the building. Every civilian death that occurs in Gaza is on Hamas, no matter who pulled the trigger.  Every. Single. One.

UPDATE-1:

Brendan O'Neil discusses the propaganda enablers among leftists in the West:

It should be clear to everyone on this grim day that the fashionable rage against Israel is no longer just irrational, it is dangerous. That most peculiar union of woke elites and perma-angry Islamists, wedded together in an implacable loathing for the Jewish State, is not only unsettling, it is also menacing. In the aftermath of the calamity at al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, and the rush to blame it on Israel, we can now see that anti-Israel hysteria poses a palpable threat to regional stability in the Middle East and to the social fabric here in the West.

As I mentioned in an earlier post [Update#4], the hysteria O'Neil refers to is similar to, but far more toxic and dangerous than, the Left's Covid or climate change hysteria. All are based on delusional thinking by perpetually outraged people who reject reality in favor of a fantasy that allows them to virtue signal their own false morality.

O'Neil continues:

The legion loathers of Israel in the woke set happily made themselves into ventriloquist dummies for Hamas’s take on the hospital horror. ‘Israeli air strikes have hit al-Ahli hospital’, said Jeremy Corbyn. It is an ‘atrocious war crime’, he said. Will he say the same if it transpires that Palestinian Islamic Jihad is responsible? Then there were those lowlifes who are notorious for hating Israel. Chris Williamson, the former Labour MP, tweeted: ‘Israel has forfeited any right to exist.’ The rush to judgement becomes a rush to condemnation. A death sentence is essentially issued against the State of Israel for a crime it may not have committed.

The hypocrisy of our right-on rulers stands exposed like never before. ‘Words have consequences!’, they wail if you ‘misgender’ a bloke in a dress, and yet here they are pursuing a furious war of words against Israel at a moment of exceptional volatility. ‘Racism is bad!’, they say, yet here they are repeating the propaganda of a racist movement that carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. ‘We love Palestinians!’, they say, yet they raise barely a word of criticism of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, whose anti-Semitic warmongering exposes the Palestinian people to serious conflict and harm. This is how unhinged virtue-signalling has become: signalling one’s morally correct loathing of Israel now takes precedence over truth-seeking, peacemaking and standing up for the right of both Israelis and Palestinians to live free of the scourge of violent radical Islam. [emphasis mine]

But it's even deeper than all of that. The media work to convince us that Hamas is an outlier, that all other palestinians are peace-loving and kind. That's propaganda—a much bigger lie than the hospital bombing. 

Those same "peace-loving" palestinians elected Hamas twice, with substantial majorities each time. Today, polling indicates that 57% of palestinians support Hamas. Everyday in their schools they teach their children to hate Jews—every single day. The leaders of these peace-loving people rejected generous peace offers from Israel, including significant concessions, multiple times over the past 40 years. Peace-loving? Only a "peculiar union of woke elites" could believe that fantasy.

UPDATE-2:

And since we've mentioned the "peculiar union of woke elites," you know, the group that thinks that the wrong words are "violence," we get this:

Followed by this rather accurate analysis: