In theory, state media is more
vulnerable to doing the bidding of its sponsoring government than are privately
owned media companies. In practice, governments are able to pressure even
private news outlets to sway public opinion for political purposes. Even allied
governments can pressure the government of a country in which a private news
company resides in terms of what stories to air and when to air them, in order
to sway that country’s public opinion, and even global public opinion. The
sudden appearances in print, online, and on television news networks of former
Israeli hostages being interviewed just after the International Court of Justice
had announced on December 29, 2023 that Israel would be tried on charges of
genocide in Gaza. Not coincidentally, I submit, emotionally-charged hyperbole was
used to pull emotional “heart-strings” in order to convince the world,
including the justices at international court, that the Hamas attack on
October 7, 2023 had been so bad that even Israel’s extremely disproportionate
military attacks in Gaza were justified and thus should not be considered to be
genocidal. Besides the logic being flawed, for the infliction of such
disproportional harm was not justified, and even a justified genocide would
violate the Convention on Genocide, which Israel had agreed to be bound. In
short, I suspect that much was happening behind the scenes not only in Israel,
but also in the U.S. Government and even private media companies in the U.S.
immediately following the Court’s announcement.
On December 29, 2023, the
International Court of Justice announced that South Africa had filed papers
accusing Israel of being “in violation of its obligations under the Genocide
Convention” because “acts and omissions by Israel . . . are genocidal in
character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent . . . to
destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national,
racial and ethnical group.”[1]
On January 2, 2024, a spokesperson for the Israeli government “announced that
representatives of the country would appear very soon before the court to
defend Israel’s position.”[2]
Being a signatory to the Genocide Convention, which had been adopted by the
UN’s General Assembly in 1948, Israel was not only subject to the court’s
jurisdiction on genocides, but also obligated to send representatives to the
Court when a defendant. In anticipation, Israel unleased a public relations
offensive, which included not only Israeli media outlets, but also American
ones too, perhaps from pressure from Washington, an ally of Israel. Not having
proof of the complicity, I am basing my hypothesis on the very convenient
timing involved, as well as the fact that multiple interviews were published
and aired within days of the Court’s announcement.
Admittedly, the first casualty in
war is truth, but even subjectivity goes only so far before it becomes
hyperbolic or otherwise excessively manipulative (i.e., used as a weapon of
sorts) by twisting the meaning of words beyond recognition. In fact, the 20th
century philosophical phenomenologists, including Jaspers, Husserl, Heidegger,
and Sartre overrated human subjectivity in using it to anchor their respective
philosophies. Those philosophers and others like them may have been unduly pessimistic
on the potential of human reason because the horrors in the Nazi Holocaust had
followed the optimism in the Enlightenment in the 18th century. As
Nietzsche wrote, a philosopher is not a person of one’s day. This means that a
philosopher worth one’s salt thinks outside the box, as it were, and so one’s
philosophy is not unduly delimited by one’s immediate context. In short, the
decadence in the bloodiest century so far had swallowed the philosophical
phenomenologists. Meanwhile, analytic philosophers allowed themselves to become
reductionists in obsessing on language.
Israel’s government responded to being
charged with genocide by exploiting the worst of the 20th century to
stir the world’s emotions against South Africa’s accusation of genocide. In
particular, the Israeli government spokesman announcing that Israel would send
representatives to the court described South Africa’s accusation as “a blood
libel” against what The Times of Israel labeled as “the Jewish state,”
as if the South African ministers were antisemitic.[3]
The intended allusion was to the Jewish origins of the state due to the blood
of the Holocaust, and an implicit claim may have been that the heirs of victims
cannot become victimizers, which is not so. Indeed, vengeance against current
adversaries can be intensified by resentment of the unspent justice against past
aggressors. Such disproportionate vengeance is not fair to the contemporary
enemies unless they were also the past aggressors. The Israeli government
spokesperson suggested such a link in labeling the South African government as
an heir of the Nazis.[4]
In being aided by South Africa, the
Palestinians in Gaza too could be vicariously linked to an old enemy. I would
not be surprised to find press reports of the Israeli government ministers
referring to Hamas as Nazis so as to justify expending even the unrequited
vengeance in the previous century following the collapse of Nazi Germany.
Of course, the Israeli spokesman’s
“heirs of the Nazis” comment was wildly off the mark. Real heirs would not have
waited to see Israel’s wholesale destruction and killing in Gaza before
attempting a genocide against not only Israelis, but Jews anywhere. Also,
filing an accusation in an international court pales in comparison with what
heirs would have done, and is not even close to what the Nazis actually did to
Jews in Europe. In actuality, the South African government had pointed to the
obligation of any signatory to the Genocide Convention to report
possible genocides to the court. With more than 1.8 million Palestinians
displaced from their homes and Gaza residents facing the “highest levels of
food insecurity ever recorded,” according to the UN’s emergency chief, Martin
Griffiths[5],
the natural human sentiment of disapprobation—a visceral emotional reaction of revulsion—had
more than enough stimulus to be activated worldwide, including in South Africa.
Hume refers to such an activation to be what ethical judgment is, underneath—a visceral
emotional reaction rather than a Kantian contradiction of reason. In heeding an
ethical obligation, the officials in the South African government were hardly
heirs to the Nazis.
Another allusion to the Nazis occurred just three days after the court had announced that Israel had been accused of committing genocide. Jake Tapper of CNN headlined a former Israeli hostage, Mia Schem, who had been held in Gaza for a harsh 55 days at the home of a Palestinian family (hence thankfully rape was not committed). Schem, a young, beautiful woman who obviously deserves much sympathy for her ordeal as a hostage, nonetheless shamelessly described her ordeal as incorrectly as “a Holocaust.”
The deliberate misappropriation of such
an emotionally-tinged word—and that an Israeli of all people would
use the word opportunistically and inaccurately beyond recognition—suggests
an underlying motive to manipulate public opinion. Ironically, survivors of the
real holocaust would probably bristle at the attempted comparison. What
you experienced for 55 days is nothing like what we experienced in Nazi Germany,
the retort might insist. The implication that the Palestinians in occupied
Gaza—a “ghetto” so called by Israel’s Finance Minister Smotrich (who also said
on the day after the court’s announcement that “Israel must reduce” the
Palestinian population there to 100,000-200,000 from 2.3 million[6])—are
like Nazis conveniently denies the decades of oppression exacted by Israel on
the residents of Gaza and the obvious difference between the attack by Hamas of
October 7, 2023, including the taking and holding of hostages, and Nazi
Germany’s many atrocities over more than a decade.
Besides exaggerating in furnishing
a label for her ordeal as a hostage, Schem extrapolated in generalizing concerning
the entire population of Palestinians in Gaza. Interviewed on Israeli
television on the day the court announced that Israel had been accused of
committing genocide, she accused every Palestinian in Gaza of being a
terrorist. “Everyone there are(sic) terrorists . . . there are no
innocent civilians, not one,” she said.[7]
She based her empirical claim on the acquiescence of the wife and child of the
man who had held Schem in his home. No auditor would make such a projection to
a population of numbers based on such a small sample size. After Hamas’ attack
of October 7, 2023, in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and 240 were taken
hostage, Israeli President Herzog had claimed, “It is an entire nation out
there that is responsible” as Israel was ordering 1.1 million Palestinians in
Gaza to evacuate their homes.[8]
The implication to be drawn from both
statements is that retribution against every Palestinian there would be
justified. Indeed, reports from the UN suggest that precisely that was
occurring.
Gemma Connell, Gaza team leader for
the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), referred to conditions
in even north Gaza as, “No food, no water, very little medical supplies.”[9]
By January 4, 2024, many people in southern Gaza had been “displaced not once,
not twice, but six or seven times,” according to Connell. With 2.2 million
people in Gaza “in desperate need of help,”[10]
South Africa was on firm ground empirically as well as ethically, whereas Schem’s
attempt to justify the wholesale annihilation of the Palestinians living in
Gaza was empirically and ethically spurious. In outlining plans for Gaza after
the Israeli military attacks, Israeli Defense Minister Yaov Gallant said on
January 5, 2024 that the Palestinian “entity controlling the territory” would “build
on the capabilities” of “local non-hostile actors” already present in Gaza.[11]
Clearly, not every Palestinian in Gaza was a terrorist, and did not deserve the
onslaught of Israeli “collective justice” as if they were.
I contend that Schem’s interviews were part of a coordinated PR offensive by Israel that reached as far as CNN in America. CNN interviewed another former hostage, Doran Asher, days after the Court had announced the accusation of genocide. She was more accurate in labeling the infliction of “psychological warfare” on her during her 50 days of captivity in Gaza.[12] CNN claimed in its headline, "This is what she wants you to know." My question is, who else wanted the world to know? Who would have had the motive and political power to see it it that you hear or read her story?
That she wanted to tell her story would not have been sufficient to get her on CNN, which would surely not have been acting solely on her behalf.
It can also be asked what did not make
it onto CNN. For instance, the American media had been practically silent in
putting the Hamas attack in the wider context of decades of harsh Israeli
occupation of Gaza, maintaining it as a subjugated “ghetto.” Not that enduring
such harsh conditions for so long justifies the killing and hostage-taking committed
by Hamas on October 7, 2023; rather, the context is explanatory, and could have
resulted in a global public opinion less dismissive of Israel’s vastly
disproportionate destruction of Gaza. The omission of proper context can point
back to CNN’s bias or the media company’s role as part of a broader PR campaign
possibly being pushed by the Israeli government to set public opinion against
the accusation of genocide in Gaza in spite of the facts on the ground there.
In conclusion, Israel’s attempt to manipulate global public opinion (and even the justices at the International Court of Justice) may have eventuated into the following narrative: The entire population of Gaza committed a holocaust by killing 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping 240 more. Every civilian in Gaza is culpable, and thus is a legitimate military target and deserves to be homeless and starving. Furthermore, any serious effort to hold Israel back from its extremely disproportionate “collective justice,” which is an inherently flawed ethical theory because even people living in the same geographical area do not all have the same beliefs, values, and ideology, is to be discredited as “blood libel.” Unfortunately for Israel’s credibility in its PR offensive, much more blood had flowed in Gaza than in Israel, and this alone, rather than any antisemitism, had brought South Africa to the International Court of Justice. While it is easy to throw public-relations “bombs” such as Holocaust, Nazi heirs, and terrorists, such irrationality is expedient, and thus may end up working against Israel’s interests. For instance, by inserting Nazi-era terms into the public discourse, calls for a genocide of the Jews could be transformed from constituting hate speech to being merely countervailing political speech. Additionally, the hyperbole could ultimately undercut Israel’s credibility at the International Court and in the court of world opinion. Viewing an opposing political position on the war as antisemitic even though Israel’s military response had been so very disproportionate could erode Israel’s credibility further. The attack of October 7, 2023 was indeed horrific, as were the ensuing experiences of the Israeli hostages, but so too was the ironic banality of evil in the decades in which Israel occupied Gaza as a “ghetto” subject to the flawed ethical concept of collective justice. To say it has not been a fair fight, even taking the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 into account, is not to be antisemitic. Rather, the charge is political, as were the interviews given by freed Israeli hostages.
2. Jeremy Sharon, “Israel Confirms It’ll Defend Itself from Gaza Genocide claims in the Hague Next Week,” The Times of Israel, January 2, 2024.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Heather Chen and Eve Brennen, “Famine in Gaza ‘Around the Corner,’ as People Face ‘Highest Levels of Food Insecurity Ever Recorded,’ UN Relief Chief Says,” CNN.com, January 6, 2024.
6. Sanjana Karanth, “Senior Far-Right Israeli Official Admits Gaza Is a ‘Ghetto’ For Palestinians,” The Huffington Post, December 31, 2023.
7. Amy Spiro and Michael Horovitz, “Freed Hostage Mia Schem: ‘I Experienced Hell. There Are No Innocent Civilians in Gaza,” The Times of Israel, December 29, 2023.
8. Paul Blummenthal, “Israeli President Suggests that Civilians in Gaza Are Legitimate Targets,” The Huffington Post, October 13, 2023.
9. Michael Rios, “’No Food, No Water, Very Little Medical Supplies’: UN Aid Worker on Devastating Conditions in Gaza,” CNN.Com, January 4, 2024.
10. Ibid.
11. Amir Tal, “Israeli Government Divisions Burst into Open as Ministers ‘Fight’ over Post-War Plans,” CNN.com, January 5, 2024.
12. Christian Edwards and Bianna Goldryga, “Freed Israeli Hostage Says She Endured ‘Psychological Warfare’ during 50 Days of Hamas Captivity,” CNN.com, January 4, 2024.
