'HASBARA' -- The Israeli Lies & Psyops Propaganda Operation To Twist The American Mind

"They play into the propensity of US media to ‘both sides’ everything."

Israeli claims of Hamas committing mass rape and beheading babies traveled far and wide through corporate media before being discredited. Why is our media so susceptible to Zionist propaganda?

By Chris Hedges
The Chris Hedges Report (3/15/24)

The start of Operation of Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7 was accompanied by a deluge of Israeli propaganda. Claims of beheaded babies, infants found in ovens, mass rape, and other heinous atrocities allegedly committed by Hamas circulated far and wide, promoted by a range of interlocutors that included journalists, celebrities, legacy media, and even President Biden himself. Months later, the most outrageous of these claims of Hamas atrocities have been debunked, but the damage has already been done. Ali Abuminah joins The Chris Hedges Report to discuss the Israeli propaganda campaign providing cover for the genocide in Gaza, and the complicity of corporate media in these crimes.

“What the Israelis do is they immediately put out a counter-narrative; Even if it’s false, even if the Israelis know it’s false, and even if they know it will be found to be false in a day, in a week, in a month, in three months, it serves the immediate purpose of muddying the waters so that all the headlines will immediately be Palestinian journalist dies in disputed circumstances. Job done, as far as the Israelis are concerned. They don’t need to go further than that.”

Israel, like all settler-colonial projects, is built on lies. The lie that the land historically belongs to the colonizers. The lie that Palestinians have no national identity. The lie that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. The lie that a peaceful settlement is thwarted by the Palestinians rather than the apartheid Israeli state. This mendacity is especially prevalent when Israel carries out its murderous assaults against the Palestinians, including the current genocide in Gaza. The Hebrew word for this propaganda is hasbara or explanation. Hasbara is a combination of agitprop, propaganda, and censorship; It is designed to ensure unity among the Jews in Israel and abroad, sustain the support of allies, especially the US, discredit and delegitimize critics who are branded – even if they are Jewish – as antisemites, and control the narrative within the media and academia.

Obscure and neutralize reality

Hasbara is designed to obscure and neutralize the gross violations of human rights and international law that define Israel’s occupation. The effort includes the maintenance of websites, social media accounts, and messages under false identities as well as the manipulation of browser functions, search engines, algorithms, and other automated mechanisms to control what information is presented and what is obscured to internet users. Satellite organizations – Including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or AIPAC, the Canary Mission, and CAMERA or the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America – Along with Hillel houses, Jewish campus organizations carry out often vicious, coordinated campaigns of character assassination against those who champion Palestinian rights and denounce the apartheid state.

As much of the world recoils in revulsion over Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, which includes carpet bombing hundreds of dead and wounded – mostly civilians – a day, the weaponization of starvation, and infectious diseases, hasbara has gone into overdrive…

Chris Hedges interviews Palestinian American journalist Ali Abuminah, co-founder of The Electronic Intifada.

Link to transcript and 62-minute video

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LINK TO…

…The Electronic Intifada

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FAR FROM BALANCED: The Question Never Asked By Corporate American Media

“Nobody ever asks how should we respond to Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians for the last 75 years. Nobody ever asks how should Hamas respond to the IDF that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. Nobody ever asks how should the Palestinians respond to the hundreds of deaths in the West Bank that has occurred this year at the hands of army and hands of the settlers the settlers, including the deaths of children, as documented again by Israeli journalists.

“Those questions are not raised. The questions are always how to respond to Hamas. Well, that’s a fair question. But an equally fair question is never asked, how should Hamas and Palestinians respond to Israel and to the historical expulsion and mass killings. Nobody ever asks.”

--Dr. Gabor Mate, Jewish Holocaust survivor. Link to full statement, including essential historical context below. 4-minute video.

Gabor Mate’s son, Aaron Mate, is one of the excellent journalists bringing truth to coverage and commentary on the US/Israeli genocide in Gaza at another great news site, The Grayzone.

Link here

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Cartoon by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink