On Israel’s Public Relations Campaign against the Charge of Genocide

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 20^th 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 18^th 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 20^th 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.

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1.. Pierre Meilhan, Bethlehem Feleke, and Tamar Michaelis, “South Africa Files Genocide Case Against Israel at International Court of Justice Over Gaza War,” CNN.com, December 29, 2023; Jeremy Sharon, “Israel Confirms It’ll Defend Itself from Gaza Genocide claims in the Hague Next Week,” The Times of Israel, January 2, 2024.
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.

Unfairness and the Brain: Behind CNN's Biased Coverage of the Israel v. Gaza Conflict

Watching CNN on August 4, 2014, I tuned into CNN when Wolf Blitzer briefly mentioned the number of Palestinians killed that day only to quickly pivot to a focus on Israel's successful interception of two rockets. He went on to interview an Israeli official on the defense system to the extent of near obsession. The implication is that an Israeli life is worth more than a dozen Palestinian lives. At the very least, the editorial judgment is questionable, if not suspect. 

My question is not so much as to why CNN (and other news editors and reporters) is so biased; they are human after all. I find it more interesting that so many viewers have such a tolerance for unfairness that they continue to watch.[1] CNN would not have been giving the story such airtime were viewers fleeing like bats out of hell. As soon as I realized that Blitzer's attention would be on the intercepted rockets even as scores of Palestinians had died that day, I changed the channel. Did many other people watching have the same sentiment of disapprobation I instinctively felt and simply dismiss it when it came to deciding on whether to act? Or, do people have different instinctual tolerances for unfairness, whether as bias primped up as neutral journalism or the unfair fight being covered? Perhaps different life-experiences intervene, rendering the common instinct more or less sensitive to the external stimuli. Lastly, not everyone is going to make the same choice regarding how to respond.

Nevertheless, we can look inside the brain, at how it functions normally, to get at whether a certain tolerance for unfairness is species-wide even if individuals differ in how far the tolerance extends. The process of natural selection may have left its mark, and the matter of self-interest or self-preservation is never far when discussing human nature. Crucially, the extent to which a person’s own interests—including one’s self-identity—or those of one’s friends—are involved in a given case of unfairness impacts how reasoning, or cognition, and emotions, or the passions, affect the tolerance.

Experiments have found that activity in the cognitive area of the brain, the cognitive dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), increases the amount of tolerance beyond that which the emotional area, the anterior insula cortex, will permit. Simply put, by thinking over whether to accept a condition that is unfair to you—that feels unfair (and is)—a person analyzes whether acceptance is in his or her own interest. If it is, then the person is more likely to override his or her anger at the unfairness and accept.

In one study, $100 is to be divided between two players—one of whom makes an offer, which the other person can accept or reject. The game is played only once, and anonymously. So the person tasked with accepting or rejecting the offer must decide whether a distribution unfair to him or her is worth accepting, given that rejecting it would mean he or she would not receive any money. Rationally, he or she would accept any offer, even one in which the other player gets $95 of the $100 because $5 is more than not getting anything. Emotionally, however, the responder may reject blatantly unfair offers. In the experiment, this second player rejected offers in which he or she would receive 30% or less of the $100. At that point, the emotive response outweighs cognitive calculation.

In another experiment, magnetic pulses were used to reduce the activity of the relevant emotional area of the brain (don’t try this at home!) while leaving the cognitive area untouched and thus fully functional. The result is that more unfair offers with less than 30% of the total $100 are accepted. The suppression of the sentiment of disapprobation that is triggered by instances of unfairness gives cognition the upper hand. The person can more easily conclude that tolerating the unfairness is worth the (diminished) emotional cost of resenting the other person for getting more than deserved. In business terms, the break-even point shifts in the direction of greater tolerance. Reason can speak internally with less suffocating clutter being spewed out by the passions: self-interest does not reside ultimately in relieving momentarily unpleasant feelings. Accordingly, the dominance of the cognitive area in the brain results in more tolerance for unfairness in cases in which the person’s self-interest is directly impacted by the unfairness.

The rational self-interest impacts the tolerance by reasoning that the person gets more in spite of the unfairness than without it. Less directly, the gravity of the self-interest can be expected to inexorably skew the person’s perception to an angle at which the unfairness is conveniently less transparent, and the tolerance more bearable. The person’s assumptions naturally comply. By means of their larger framework—a paradigm of assumptions unconsciously organizing experience with the world—they bend perception itself accordingly.

The CNN viewers who self-identified with Israel, for example, would not have perceived the bias fully, or even at all. Hence, the rational self-interest can triumph without so much emotional turmoil over the alleged unfairness to be tolerated. What about the viewers whose rational self-interest is not invested in either side the conflict, or with CNN? With perception freed up, though certainly not objective, the appearance of the bias cannot be assuaged or mollified. Nor is rational self-interest there to justify tolerating more unfairness.

Yet even so, self-interest generalized as self-preservation—that genetic instinct informed by the process of natural selection and elevated by reason—may still enable more tolerance. We humans can evince a chilling tolerance for unfairness that is borne by others rather than ourselves. The underlying culprit here may be our survival instinct, which is etched into the fabric of our very being through the myriad of accretions pronounced by natural selection on our species’ genome. We may have a greater confidence of our own survival by vicariously "living" through the dominance of an alpha male unfairly dominating a weaker constitution. Any sentiment of disapprobation proffering a harsh ethical verdict is also instinctual, but the primal urge of self-preservation more successfully marries instinct to reason and is thus habitually more powerful. According to Nietzsche, reason consists of contending instincts—the strongest urge being victorious as conscious thought. The instinct of self-preservation affords more tolerance of the unfair than the moral sentiment would allow. Society, including its organizations, may magnify this tendency.

Broadcasters may orient their news broadcasts to the cognitive dimension in highlighting facts, statistics, and news analysis. CNN suffers less of a financial disincentive from decreased viewership in exploiting an unfair fight and taking sides, even if tacitly in the choice of paradigm undergirding the news reports.  

Moreover, modern society itself, being oriented to scientific advancement (e.g., in medicine) and technological innovation (e.g., engineering) over the humanities (e.g., philosophy), may privilege the brain’s cognitive functioning over moral, sympathetic feelings. The news media may simply be reflecting this overall ethos. Ironically, the teachings of some major philosophers, Hume excepted, advocate for the hegemony of the rational dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Reason has what Kant termed “absolute value.” Furthermore, Plato’s theory of justice requires reason to subjugate emotions so as to provide order to the psyche and polis (city), which are then in musical/mathematical harmony with the harmony of the heavenly spheres (i.e., stars and planets). Within this “justice as order” prescription, greater tolerance for unfairness can be expected as the sentiment of disapprobation is subordinated.

In conclusion, the bias implicit in the CNN report relies on not only the rationalistic values esteemed in the technological age, but also a natural proclivity in how the human brain coordinates its internal parts. We may be inclined both as a society and as individuals to accommodate instances of unfairness that are repugnant to us emotionally—even those in which we decide to bear the unfairness ourselves. Just think how easy it must be for us to tolerate unfairness when someone else must bear the burden.

1. See http://thewordenreportinternationalrelations.blogspot.com/2014/07/hardly-fair-fight-israel-and-gaza.html