The stark contrast between Israel’s claim to right and morality on the one side, and the utter savagery of its genocidal actions in Gaza are simply too vast to be reconciled, writes Dr Max Hicks.
NEVER BEFORE have the smoke and mirrors of the Western propaganda machine been so active, immediate and obvious to the entire global population.
On the one hand, hundreds of millions around the world see genocide, savagery, racism and a psychopathic rogue state.
On the other hand, most Western journalists continue to report on Gaza with no use at all of the English words that were historically coined to describe precisely this kind of event: holocaust, genocide, extermination, war crimes, crimes against humanity, racism, ethnic cleansing, forced diaspora, colonialism, apartheid — and, of course, final solution.
Yet despite Western distortion, disavowal and self-censorship, this latest war on Gaza has nevertheless seen a massive worldwide level of protest and outcry, including a whole new generation of social and political activists, many of whom have not been active before.
So, why are so many nations and countless millions of individuals now calling out Israel’s mass murder and colonial savagery?
Why is it that seventy successful years of powerful Western Israeli propaganda and PR are finally collapsing before our eyes?
Firstly, the new media and a range of alternative news outlets have been able to ensure that at least some of the "taboo" words listed above have been applied.
In particular, the word 'genocide', which is now widely used for Israel’s actions in Gaza by online media outlets as well as a large number of legal, welfare, aid, human rights and medical organisations — not to mention many national governments around the world.
Then, beyond the traditional "war of words" – and endless counterclaims – there is also another far more powerful global media phenomenon at work.
New and highly portable communications technologies have ensured that alongside the competing verbal narratives about the war, there is a parallel and continuous visual stream of real-time images and video that impacts and informs viewers worldwide with the uncompromising realism of the photographic image.
We are all, unfortunately, now witnessing a relentless and inhumane theatre of cruelty, racism, savagery and terror, in which Israel defiantly, even proudly, displays to the whole world what Joseph Conrad named the Heart of Darkness at the core of colonialism.
Images from Gaza – and the direct perceptions they convey – directly invalidate the storylines and agendas of Israel and its allies, while exposing the pure horror of the most televised genocide in history.
The French media analyst Roland Barthes made three very important observations about photographic images.
Firstly, whatever they show us, they always also convey what he called the "rhetoric of the image" — the compelling belief that the camera did indeed catch something very concrete and real in the frame.
Secondly, although media images in themselves are often quite open to interpretation, they are nearly always accompanied by a verbal caption that dictates and pins down their exact meaning.
In this way, the caption specifies and controls the meaning of the image for the viewer – assigning the image to a particular chosen narrative or explanation – while the strong reality effect of the image in its turn seems to prove, or illustrate, the verbal meaning proposed by that caption.
Thirdly, Barthes then pointed out that – unlike other media images – traumatic images are uniquely immune from having their meaning colonized in this way by a verbal caption.
This is because they effectively speak to us directly – at a bodily and pre-conceptual level – with a compelling meaning and impact that cannot be contained, adjusted, justified, politicized or rationalized by any accompanying text.
They produce a deep, instinctive, gut-level understanding that is highly charged with feeling, emotion, and powerful personal identification.
The Western-Israeli narrative of "right to self-defence", "protection of citizens", "abiding by the international rules of war" and "the only democracy in the Middle East" just cannot survive the direct portrayal of murdered babies.
Nor can it survive the direct portrayal of untreated patients in devastated hospitals, executed medical staff, dead or dismembered children, homeless families, countless bodies wrapped in cloth, amputated toddlers, targeted aid workers, thousands of grieving families, unending hunger, grief — and heartbreak or the terror on the faces of Palestinians who either stand or run for their lives in an endless sea of rubble and destruction.
The stark contrast between Israel’s claim to right and morality on the one side, and the utter savagery of its genocidal actions in Gaza are simply too vast to be reconciled.
So, we viewers are faced with a kind of informational schizophrenia in which traumatic images force us to dive down to the very level at which ideas and concepts are formulated – to dismantle the prevailing Western-Israeli narrative – and replace it with the story that can actually fit with and hold those images.
That narrative is the historical story of the theft of Palestine — the mass murder and expulsion of Palestinians, the creation of a window dressing "democracy" atop an apartheid in which one race is systematically privileged and advantaged over another, and a series of wars and merciless massacres against an imprisoned Palestinian population.
At this point, as the thick smog of Western-Israeli propaganda clears away, two critically important principles become very apparent.
The first is that Israel’s massive attack on Gaza can in no way be considered "self-defence" – and in addition that as an occupying power – Israel actually does NOT, in any case, have the legal right to defend itself in this setting.
The second is that if Hamas is in fact hiding among civilians, which remains unproven, this in NO WAY justifies the endless daily civilian "lateral damage" in which 10, 30, 70 or sometimes even hundreds of unarmed civilians are slaughtered in so-called pursuit of one or several "Hamas operatives".
This is an abhorrent war crime.
From day one Israel – and its supporting allies – absolutely needed to find another way to confront Hamas, rather than proceeding to slaughter many thousands of civilians who were claimed to be located nearby to so-called "military" targets.
Right now Western nations would do well to consider the possibility that Israel has become far more of a liability than an ally, that it takes no notice, offers no collaboration, accepts no counsel, has no respect for innocent human life, slaughters women and children in their tens of thousands, has all but destroyed the moral leadership and credibility of the West, and has become a huge danger to world peace.
Israel today is a highly destabilising rogue state — with a blatant terrorist agenda that sees it pursuing its political goals by means of illegal warfare and acts of genocide against unarmed civilians on a massive scale.
Western and other nations must urgently bring Israel into line with international consensus and law, by ensuring that it is sanctioned, diplomatically isolated, starved of weaponry, occupied by ‘the allies’ (as happened with Japan and Germany at the end of WW2), dismantled, internationally administered, and finally reconstituted in a form consistent with collective human values, international law and respect for other ethnicities.
Dr Max Hicks is a retired lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies and has a PhD in Social Science.
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