After a year and a half of genocidal atrocities, the editorial boards of numerous British press outlets have suddenly come out hard against Israel’s genocidal onslaught in Gaza.
The first drop of rain came last week from The Financial Times in a piece by the editorial board titled “The west’s shameful silence on Gaza,” which denounces the US and Europe for having “issued barely a word of condemnation” of their ally’s criminality, Then came The Economist with a piece titled “The war in Gaza must end,” which argues that Trump should pressure the Netanyahu regime for a ceasefire.
It is odd that it has taken all these people a year and a half to get to this point. I myself have a much lower tolerance for genocide and the mass murder of children. If you’ve been riding the genocide train for nineteen months, it looks a bit weird to suddenly start screaming about how terrible it is and demanding to hit the brakes all of a sudden.
These people have not suddenly evolved a conscience, they’re just smelling what’s in the wind. Once the consensus shifts past a certain point there’s naturally going to be a mad rush to avoid being among the last to stand against it.
This is after all coming at a time when the Trump administration is beginning to rub Netanyahu’s fur the wrong way, recently prompting the Israeli prime minister to say “I think we’ll have to detox from US security assistance” when Washington went over Tel Aviv’s head and negotiated directly with Hamas to secure the release of an American hostage. The US is reportedly leaving Israel out of more and more of its negotiations on international affairs in places like Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. Something is changing.
So if you’re still supporting Israel after all this time, my advice to you is to make a change while you still can. There’s still time to be the first among scoundrels in the mad rat race to avoid being the last to start acting like you always opposed the Gaza holocaust.
Israel is having a Ukraine moment.
Probably for the same reasons: they see that Israel is on a path toward irreversible and unavoidable defeat and want to cut their losses by scraping everything they can while on their way to bail out of the sinking Zionist boat.
My understanding is that the Israeli economy relies very heavily on US support. If Netanyahu begins to turn away from the US, he’ll have to call on European nations for support, and at least in some places those populations are more aware of and disgusted by the behavior in Gaza. If Israel can’t get other foreign investment to continue propping up their economy, all those Israeli companies that have been attractive investments for the last 4-6 decades are going to tank hard. Along with trumps idiocy, an Israeli collapse could be a complete disaster for the industrialized world.
Only time will tell however I suspect this is strategic dishonesty and narrative manipulation. Specifically planting these seeds of ‘honesty’ and doubt they can reference back to in 15 years to claim they were impartial and not totally rags of the bourgeoisie and Anglo-American imperialism. They know if they get caught just being stridently wrong for years that hurts public trust in them which lowers their propaganda value to the bourgeoisie and empire planners. But if they can pivot like this, even if they don’t stick it out they can point to this and claim, oh we got that one wrong but we had dissenting opinions and we can change, we can change, which is the same kind of narrative America uses to convince its population it’s not an amoral evil empire and hasn’t been since inception. Admit to crimes in the past or when they’re already mostly done, say you’re sorry for the crimes or they were wrong. Claim to have changed and learn from them, continue committing new crimes, repeat the cycle forever and the poor saps, the indoctrinated children will believe they live in a country that can change and was flawed but constantly improving instead of just constantly inventing new crimes and victims and excuses.
This is also what is so foolish about the conservative rage about schools allegedly teaching kids to “hate America” by teaching about past crimes and atrocities. They don’t understand that it’s a relief valve. That it teaches those but also whitewashes the crimes and allows new ones by constantly apologizing for the past but never changing the present. And without that kind of valve if you have any kind of educated population you have problems as people start connecting the present to the past. Probably why they also want to gut education entirely and replace it with Evangelical fundamentalism.
So IMO, no forgiveness. This is a cynical ploy, if you weren’t condemning ‘israel’ as an apartheid occupation settler state before Oct 7th and you were in a position to have an educated and informed opinion like being a journalist then you’re scum. If 8 months after Oct 7th deep into the accelerated phase of the open genocide which has been continuing at various tempos for half a century you were not against them then you’re scum, you’re an apologist for genocide, you’re Goebbels. If you weren’t acknowledging the legitimate right of Hamas to violent resistance and therefore the legality of Oct 7th after a year you were on the side of the genocidal oppressors in muddying the waters at the least.
This is also I think part of the pivot to heap blame for all of this on Netanyahu, to basically put this all in his lap. To say yes atrocities against humanity (they’ll waffle on genocide as the right term) were done but they’re all the fault of this one guy, not ‘israel’ as a whole which has always been and will always be a settler colonial project built on genocide and land theft and religio-racial supremacy. And certainly that the west is blameless and didn’t know. Absolutely at all costs that it wasn’t the west doing anything wrong. That way once they kick Bibi out of office there they can claim the zionist project has changed because that one uniquely bad man is gone, ignoring the massive support his genocidal policies have, ignoring the massive documented racism and hatred and genocidal intent among the entirety of ‘israeli’ society. They will do this to save the greater project of ‘israel’ as a western colonial outpost by sacrificing one leader and a few other usual suspects in the sphere of public opinion condemnation. And they will do this to pretend their own hands are and always were clean and that they were just duped, misled by this scheming Jew and oh wait they’re doing classic anti-semitism but they’re allowed to do that because it’s been redefined as being against ‘israel’ and anything else including literal Nazi salutes is liable to be defended by the zionist entity and their western backers.
It’s about time.
Good. I saw an article the other day that kept referring to protesters against Palestinian genocide as “agitators.” They already lost conservatives to thinking mainstream news media was corrupt. Maybe they shouldn’t operate in a way where leftist also abandon them and possibly get hostile like conservatives
The conservatives are right: mainstream media are corrupt. This genocide is not an outlier; it’s not an exception to the rule.
Just corrupt ???
Basically all of mainstream media is owned by the 1%
This is a point more people need to understand. One thing I would love to see more of is journalist-owned news outlets, ideally in a co-op model (so the writers can agree to bring on, say, editors and photographers as the income warrants it). This is the only way to guard against the wealthy just buying the press and thereby dictating the narrative.
Anyone who still doesn’t believe the mainstream media is corrupt, will never do so. What’s different is that the agenda of its owners seems to have changed from unconditionally supporting and apologizing for Israel to critiquing it.
It’s also possible that their numbers dropped so badly that they had to shift gears.
The media beforehand:
“Claiming Israel is killing innocent people is antisemitic.”
“Claiming Israel is is committing genocide is antisemitic.”
“Claiming Israel is starving people is antisemitic.”
“Claiming Israel is planning on taking Gaza is antisemitic.”
So they’re all waking up finally ???
Absolutely not. Probably divested from Israel, so now they can move on to the next thing.
Israel can’t survive without US backing. I’m surprised they’re giving it up
