The Fall of the Israeli Narrative in Gaza

The Israeli media narrative was launched before the establishment of the State of Israel on the land of historical Palestine, and for seventy-six years it has been proclaiming alone that it is the only democratic state in the Middle East, existing among backward countries inhabited by backward people and monsters who want to eliminate it. This narrative was adopted by the West and defended with all its might, at all levels, and it used the means of the global media system funded with imaginary financial figures for it, and built centers that held conferences, seminars, workshops and studies in the color of dollars in order to integrate Israel into its surroundings and dominate the Middle East. The second pillar that Israel and the West relied on is represented by the inferiority complex and weakness, the suppression of freedom of opinion, the arrest and killing of opponents, the rigging of elections, inheritance, corruption and corruption among the Arab countries, which viewed themselves as authoritarian, backward and weak countries, and Israel as the civilized and strong country. This leads us to the basic question: Why the rapid and continuous adoption by the Western media of the Israeli narrative? And how did the Israeli media narrative collapse after October 7?

There is no doubt that the Western adoption of the Israeli media narrative through various media networks towards the Palestinian issue has abandoned all known ethical, professional and neutral media controls and rules, because the issue is related to Israel, and at the same time it has adopted hostility towards the Arabs. In issues that are not related to Israel, the Western media becomes ethical and professional and uses double standards. If we look at how the world deals with the Ukrainian issue and the issuance of two warrants on November 21, 2024, to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Galant, the court said that there are logical reasons that they committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. At the same time, when an arrest warrant was issued by the same International Criminal Court against Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 17, 2023, regarding allegations of war crimes related to the deportation and "illegal transfer" of children from Ukraine, support and demands were made by the Western media and leaders to arrest Putin. As for Netanyahu's arrest, it has become questionable and illegitimate, and accusations were leveled at the court. Although what Putin did in Ukraine cannot be compared to the atrocities taking place in Gaza, the United States, represented by US President Joe Biden and his Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, refused to accuse and punish Israeli leaders.

Despite the massacres, wars and all their practices that make the word state lose its international political meaning, it is a state of settlers who killed the indigenous people, seized their homes and lands and established their state on the ruins of more than 500 villages and cities in occupied Palestine in 1948, and then on what remained of Palestine in 1967, and then the cancellation of the Oslo Agreement that was signed in 1993, and was replaced by the rule of the “coordinator”. All that remained for the Palestinians in this state that claims democracy and civilization is the pockets and residential cities besieged by the settlements and settlers who storm the villages and cities and wreak havoc, destruction and burning in them.

The ongoing war on the Strip, which has been classified as a war of genocide and ethnic cleansing, has claimed the lives of more than fifty thousand martyrs, most of whom are children and women, and more than one hundred thousand wounded in an incomplete toll, as thousands of victims are still under the rubble, 85% of Gaza has been destroyed and the population is starving, and there are daily killings through the bombing of shelters, schools, displaced persons’ tents, and hospitals, and even bakeries have not been spared from the American missiles that have been used in killing and destruction for more than a year in the Strip.

This is confirmed by the statement of Moshe Ya'alon, the former Chief of Staff and Minister of War, on December 1, 2024, that Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing in the Strip, demolishing the homes of residents and displacing them to establish settlements. Israel is not a democratic state today, and is on its way to becoming a rogue state with metaphysical ideas. Arrest warrants should have been issued against Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir as well long ago, as they want to deport the Palestinian people or exterminate them if they can, or confine them to ghettos and within the policy of apartheid, and refuse to condemn the warrants against Netanyahu, which were issued by the International Criminal Court to arrest him and the dismissed Minister of War Galant on charges of committing crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza. Ya'alon adds that the state is not classified as a democratic state, and the judiciary is not independent. We are in a transition from a liberal, democratic Jewish state in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence to a messianic, racist, fascist, corrupt and outcast dictatorship.

These statements expose the West, specifically America, who lie about the arrival of humanitarian aid to the Strip to cover up the war of extermination and the war of starvation that aims to pressure the Palestinian people in the Strip, and to force the resistance to accept Netanyahu's conditions regarding the deal. Ya'alon's statements were able to refute Israel's theory that the war that Israel is waging is in defense of Israel and not a war of extermination and ethnic cleansing.

Based on the above, we see that Israeli society rejects Ya'alon's statements despite its full knowledge that the statements are true. However, society does not want these statements and others to be evidence against political and military leaders that can be used to prosecute them and the occupying state.

It is worth noting that Israeli society is going to extremes, and if Netanyahu does not agree to solutions to the Palestinian issue, he will take the occupying state towards a major contradiction with the international system, and this is the plan of the martyr leader Yahya Sinwar, meaning that Netanyahu may be able to preserve himself and his coalition, but that would be a mistake and a strategic defeat, which may push the deep state to take measures to end these policies according to the law, of course, according to the opinion of the expert on Israeli affairs, Firas Yaghi.

It must be emphasized that "Hasbara", the Israeli propaganda apparatus and the engineering of the Western public through Israeli media narratives, is not just simple plans, but rather a strategy based on deliberate colonial settlement policies to attract and direct world public opinion to support Israel and improve its image on the international and global levels.

The media narrative began since the occupation of Palestine through deliberate statements aimed at beautifying Israel's image locally, regionally and internationally, and attracting the sympathy of Western peoples with its narratives that began with it supporting peace and not objecting to negotiating with the Palestinians to sign peace agreements, but the Arabs reject peace despite signing the Oslo Accords and many agreements with the Arabs. The Israeli narrative attempts to remove the accusation of occupation and racism from the Israeli state, and impose a narrative of religious freedoms, civil rights, justice, civil rights and equality between Jews and Arabs of 1948, and that it is the only democratic state in the Middle East, enjoying freedom of the press and free elections. Through victimhood, it attempts to link the history of the Jewish people and the persecution they have been subjected to throughout history with the current situation, to confirm the need for a strong state, and to invoke religious and historical narratives related to the Jews' right to the land of Palestine, and to promote the idea that the Jewish people have a historical right to the land it occupies. The narrative of focusing on Israeli victims is used to spread human stories about the suffering of Israelis as a result of the conflict, and to highlight the human aspect of Israeli losses, to attract sympathy for it, and that it is a state that defends humanity in the face of terrorism to justify security measures, such as checkpoints, arrests and military operations, and to focus on the resistance of the Palestinian people and paint it with the color of terrorism and extremism and demonize it in order to justify military and security decisions, in order to undermine the legitimacy of any resistance against it, Israel portrays itself as facing constant threats from its surroundings, and uses them to justify many security and military policies.

October 7 was able to move the Palestinian cause from a state of oblivion and inactivity to a state of international presence. The flood was able to reveal the true image of Israel and all Western and Israeli media narratives were disrupted. Even the United States, with all its power, was unable to impose its narratives supporting Israel. Israel's image became associated with the image of genocide, starvation, massacres, the International Criminal Court, international courts, the killing of tens of thousands of children and women in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, demolition and settlement in the West Bank, and it disregarded international resolutions and the two-state solution. It can be said that the flood constituted a qualitative leap in global popular and student interaction, demonstrations in various countries, and other indicators that can be worked on to understand more deeply.

Gaza clearly thwarted the deception and misleading methods that the Israeli Hasbara apparatus tried to use to gain global sympathy for what happened on October 7, in its quest as part of the Western colonial system. Many of the narratives put forward by the Western media and adopted by US President Joe Biden and his Zionist administration were quickly exposed as false, which weakened the Western public’s confidence in the Western narrative, and the Palestinian cause was brought back to the forefront of the world, receiving rare popular support worldwide, and increasing pressure on governments, NGOs, and the media to acknowledge and confront the ongoing genocide committed by Israel.

But what happened in Syria from the beginning of December until the 8th and beyond, serves and benefits Israel at all levels, starting with the media blackout on the war of extermination and starvation in Gaza and directing the zoom of global, international and even local cameras to the most prominent event in Syria. Despite the devastating blow to the Palestinian cause and Lebanon and the despicable victory of Israel, this will not last at all, and the occupation must leave.