CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, OCT 03, 2024

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

The US and Iran are on the brink of war. Israel and the United States are planning a major attack on Iran, which according to Biden himself could entail strikes on Iranian oil sites. Iran is now saying that its days of “individual self-restraint” are over, and it is prepared to go all-in if the US and Israel keep ramping up escalations.

The IDF continues to slaughter civilians in Lebanon with US-backed airstrikes as news surfaces that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had agreed to a 21-day ceasefire with Israel shortly before Israel assassinated him. The US reportedly knew about the deal.

And of course Israel is still killing dozens of civilians a day in its daily massacres in Gaza. Ninety-nine American healthcare workers who volunteered in the enclave have published an open letter to their president detailing the horrors that they have witnessed, and estimating the current death toll from this onslaught is over 118,908.

And at this juncture in history, I think it would be good for us to give the western press their due credit for helping to take us here by manufacturing consent for the political environment in which such western-supported atrocities are possible.

All the mass media personnel who’ve been lying and manipulating for Israel helped pave the way to this.

All the pundits and reporters who’ve been assigning far more weight to the Israeli deaths on October 7 than to the vastly greater number of Arab deaths before and since.

All the editors who’ve been running “Gaza child walks into bullet” passive-language headlines designed to mask Israel’s responsibility for the killings.

Everyone who uncritically reported fake atrocity propaganda about beheaded babies and mass rapes as real news stories.

Everyone who uncritically parrots every claim made by the IDF and the Israeli government but refuses to report what Palestinians have been saying unless Israel confirms it.

Everyone at the press galleries in Washington who fail to forcefully interrogate US officials for the lies and spin they’ve been spewing about Palestine, Lebanon and Iran.

Everyone who publishes White House press releases disguised as news stories about how angry and upset Biden is about the Israeli war crimes he knowingly refuses to prevent.

Everyone who reports on starvation and sickness in Gaza like it’s some kind of natural disaster and not the inevitable consequence of deliberate siege warfare by Israel.

Everyone who treated Iranian missiles targeting Israeli military facilities without killing anybody as more horrific and significant than Israel’s daily massacres of civilians.

Everyone who uncritically regurgitates the phrase “Hamas-run health ministry”.

Everyone who uncritically calls Hezbollah a “terrorist organization”.

All the high-profile opinion columnists who’ve been running nonstop apologia for Israel’s criminality and encouraging the west to support even further aggressiveness.

Reporters who refer to Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Shia militias in Iraq and Syria as “Iran-backed” but never refers to the Israeli military as “US-backed”.

Everyone who helps frame the Biden administration as a passive and reluctant witness to Israel’s mass atrocities instead of a willing and active participant.

Everyone who called Israel’s invasion of Lebanon a “limited ground operation” after ridiculing Russia for calling its invasion of Ukraine a “special military operation”.

Everyone who framed the pager bombings and assassination strikes in Lebanon as heroic achievements of extraordinarily sophisticated intelligence when they’d be shrieking their lungs out if a nation like Iran or Russia did anything similar.

Everyone who helps lend credence to the false narrative that opposition to Israeli murderousness is indicative of an epidemic of “antisemitism” in our society.

All the mass media staff who helped manufacture public consent for the horrors we’ve been watching in the middle east are just as responsible for what happens there as the people who are physically inflicting the violence.

They may as well have dropped the bombs and launched the missiles themselves.

They may as well have pulled the triggers on the sniper rifles that shot all those Palestinian children in the head.

They may as well have personally inserted those iron rods into the anuses of Palestinian prisoners.

The propagandists of the western press are just as essential to maintaining the western-backed atrocities that Israel is committing as the Israeli military itself.

No matter how much you despise these psychopathic manipulators, it’s less than they deserve.

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