On Saturday, November 11, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari claimed in a press conference that Israel had killed a “terrorist” who had prevented 1,000 civilians from escaping the Shifa Hospital.
The allegations made little sense. Even by the standards of Israeli propaganda, falsifying such a piece of information while providing no context and no evidence further contributes to the deteriorating credibility of Israel in international media and its image worldwide.
Just one day earlier, an unnamed US official was cited by CNN as saying, in a diplomatic cable, “We are losing badly on the messaging battlespace.”
The diplomat was referring to the American reputation in the Middle East – in fact, worldwide – which now lies in tatters due to blind American support for Israel.
Roles Reversed
This credibility deficit can be witnessed in Israel itself. Not only is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu losing credibility among Israelis, according to various public opinion polls, but the entire Israeli political establishment seems to be losing the trust of ordinary Israelis as well.
A common joke among Palestinians these days is that Israeli leaders are emulating Arab leaders in previous Arab-Israeli wars in terms of language, phony victories and unsubstantiated gains on the military front.
For example, while Israel was quickly pushing Arab militaries back on all fronts in June 1967, with full US-Western backing, of course, the leadership of Arab armies was declaring through radio that they had arrived at the ‘gates of Tel Aviv.’
Fortunes seem to have been reversed. Abu Obeida and Abu Hamza, military spokesmen for the Al-Qassam Brigades and the Al-Quds Brigades, respectively, provide very careful accounts of the nature of the battle and the losses of advancing Israeli military forces in their regular, much-anticipated statements.
The Israeli military, on the other hand, speaks of impending victories, the killing of unnamed ‘terrorists’ and the destruction of countless tunnels while rarely providing any evidence. The only ‘evidence’ provided is the intentional targeting of hospitals, schools and civilian homes.
And, while Abu Obeida’s statements are almost always followed by well-produced videos documenting the systematic destruction of Israeli tanks, no such documentation substantiates Israeli military claims.
Beyond the Battlefield
But the issue of Israeli credibility, or rather, the lack of credibility, is not only taking place on the battlefield.
From the first day of the war, Palestinian doctors, civil defense workers, journalists, bloggers and even ordinary people filmed or recorded every Israeli war crime anywhere and everywhere in the besieged Strip. And, despite the continuous shutting down of the internet and electricity in Gaza by the Israeli military, somehow, Palestinians kept track of every aspect of the ongoing Israeli genocide.
The precision of the Palestinian narrative even forced US officials, who initially doubted Palestinian numbers, to finally admit that Palestinians were telling the truth, after all.
Barbara Leaf, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, told a US House panel on November 9 that those killed by Israel in the war are likely “higher than is being cited.”
Indeed, every day, Israel loses credibility to the point that the initial Israeli lies of what had taken place on October 7 eventually proved disastrous to Israel’s overall image and credibility on the international stage.
Rape, ISIS, and Mein Kampf
In the euphoria of demonizing the Palestinian Resistance – as a way to justify Israel’s forthcoming genocide in Gaza – the Israeli government and military, then journalists and even ordinary people, were all recruited in an unprecedented hasbara campaign aimed at painting Palestinians as “human animals” – per the words of Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Within hours of the events and before any investigation was conducted, Netanyahu spoke of “decapitated babies,” supposedly mutilated at the hands of the Resistance; Gallant claimed that “young girls were raped violently”; even former military chief rabbi, Israel Weiss, said he had “seen a pregnant woman with her belly torn open and the baby cut out.”
Even the supposedly ‘moderate’ Israeli President Isaac Herzog made ludicrous statements on the BBC on November 12. When asked about Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, Herzog claimed that the book Mein Kampf, written by Adolf Hitler in 1925, was found “in a children’s living room” in northern Gaza.
And, of course, there were the repeated references to the ISIS flags that, for some reason, were carried by Hamas fighters as they entered southern Israel on October 7, among other fairy tales.
The fact that ISIS is a sworn enemy of Hamas and that the Palestinian Movement has done everything in its power to eradicate any possibility for ISIS to extend its roots in the besieged Gaza Strip seemed irrelevant to Israel’s unhinged propaganda.
Expectedly, Israeli, US, and European media repeated the claim of the Hamas-ISIS connection, with no rational discussion or the minimally-required fact-checking.
But, with time, Israeli lies were no longer able to withstand the pressure of the truth emanating from Gaza, documenting every atrocity and every battle and obfuscating any drummed-up Israeli allegations.
Perhaps the turning point of the relentless series of Israeli lies was the attack on the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City on October 17. Though many adopted, and still, sadly, defend the Israeli lie – that a Resistance rocket fell on the hospital – the sheer bloodiness of that massacre, which killed hundreds, was, for many, a wake-up call.
One of the many questions that arose following the Baptist Hospital massacre is: If Israel was, indeed, honest about its version of events regarding what took place at the hospital, why did it bomb every other hospital in Gaza and continue to do so for weeks?
Israeli Hasbara Canceled
There are reasons why Israeli propaganda is no longer able to effectively influence public opinion, even though mainstream media continues to side with Israel, even when the latter is committing genocide.
Firstly, Palestinians and their supporters have managed to ‘cancel’ Israel using social media, which, for the first time, overwhelmed the organized propaganda campaigns often engineered on behalf of Israel in corporate media.
An analysis of online content on popular social media platforms was conducted by the Israeli influencer marketing platform Humanz. The study, published in November, admitted that “while 7.39 billion posts with pro-Israeli tags were published on Instagram and TikTok last month, in the same period, 109.61 billion posts with pro-Palestinian tags were published on the platforms.” This, according to the company, means that pro-Palestinian views are 15 times more popular than pro-Israeli views.
Secondly, independent media, Palestinian and others, offered alternatives to those seeking a different version of events to what is taking place in Gaza.
A single Palestinian freelance journalist in Gaza, Motaz Azaiza, has managed to acquire more than 14 million followers on Instagram over the course of a single month because of his reporting from the ground.
Thirdly, the ‘surprise attack’ of October 7 has deprived Israel of the initiative, not only regarding the war itself but also the justification for the war. Indeed, their genocidal war on Gaza has no specific objectives but also has no precise media campaign to defend or rationalize these unspecified objectives. Therefore, the Israeli media narrative appears disconnected, haphazard and, at times, even self-damaging.
And, finally, the sheer brutality of the Israeli genocide in Gaza. If one is to juxtapose Israeli media lies with the horrific Israeli crimes committed in Gaza, one would find no plausible logic that could convincingly justify mass murder, displacement, starvation and genocide of a defenseless population.
Never has Israeli propaganda failed so astoundingly, and never has the mainstream media failed to shield Israel from the global anger – in fact, seething hatred – for Israel’s ugly apartheid regime.
The repercussions of all of this will most certainly impact the way that history will remember the Israeli war on Gaza, which has, so far, killed and wounded tens of thousands of innocent civilians.
A whole generation, if not more, has already built a perception of Israel as a genocidal regime, and no number of future lies, Hollywood movies, or Maxim Magazine spreads will ever lessen that in any way.
More importantly, this new perception is likely to compel people not only to re-examine their views of Israel’s present and future but of the past as well – the very foundation of the Zionist regime, itself predicated on nothing but lies.
Feature photo | Israeli President Isaac Herzog holds up an Arabic version of “Mein Kampf” supposedly found on the body of a Hamas fighter in Gaza, during an interview with the BBC, November 12, 2023. Photo | President’s Residence
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is ‘Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out.’ His other books include ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
Romana Rubeo is an Italian writer and the managing editor of The Palestine Chronicle. Her articles appeared in many online newspapers and academic journals. She holds a Master’s Degree in Foreign Languages and Literature and specializes in audio-visual and journalism translation.
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