Let’s be clear: Israel lies. The Israeli government — backed by the United States — murders Palestinians with genocidal impunity, while at the same time running a sophisticated disinformation apparatus, the sole purpose of which is to cover up its unspeakable atrocities. While the Israeli military rains bombs indiscriminately over Gaza, it simultaneously wages an information war, spewing falsehood after falsehood that defies all logic, all facts on the ground, and demands of us to disbelieve what we see with our very eyes and what we know to be true. This propaganda campaign would not be possible without the U.S. corporate media, which acts as Israel’s mouthpiece, amplifying its lies.
On the evening of Oct. 17 at around 7:00 p.m. local time, a bomb hit Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City. There is no reason to believe the perpetrator behind the attack was anyone other than the Israeli military — the actor behind the genocidal aerial bombardment campaign currently being waged on the Gaza Strip.
Because Al-Ahli was already treating so many civilians who had sustained injuries from Israel’s aerial bombardment campaign, because so many of its patients had been evacuated from other Gaza hospitals already targeted by the IDF, and because the hospital had become a center of refuge for those who had lost their homes due to Israel’s indiscriminate bombing, the death toll was tremendous. The Gaza Health Ministry reported at least 500 dead. The mainstream media, quick to fall into lockstep with the pro-Israel narrative, prefaced this number as coming from the “Hamas-run Health Ministry,” as if to cast doubt on its veracity in readers’ minds. This was done by PBS, Associated Press, LA Times, Yahoo News, EuroNews, Business Insider, among many, many others. Every corporate media outlet has also given credence to the Israeli government’s claims of denial.
Immediately after the massacre, Gaza health officials — perhaps anticipating an uphill battle in order to even be believed — held a press conference among a pile of corpses the attack left behind.
The world stands with Palestine
That the Al-Ahli massacre has the Israeli government scrambling to spin a counter-narrative attests to its fundamental weakness: the regime may have the backing of the U.S. government, but the people of the world stand with Palestine. Israel is losing the information war. When it launched its murderous aerial bombardment campaign on Gaza, Israel did not anticipate the full scale of pushback and international condemnation against its genocidal crimes. Over the last few weeks, millions of protestors — including huge numbers in the United States — have hit the streets all over the world in support of the Palestinian struggle and against Israeli colonization and land theft.
The tide is turning, and the days of the Israeli apartheid regime are numbered.
