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10/12/2023 How Western media, social media influencers peddle lies to vilify Palestinians By: Shabbir RizviRead Now Since the Hamas-led Palestinian resistance operation “Al Aqsa Storm” on Saturday, mainstream Western media and social media influencers have been aggressively pushing Zionist narratives as part of a murky disinformation campaign against the resistance. The multi-front information war is designed to control the narrative around anything surrounding the Palestinian issue and the latest military operation that has shaken the foundation of the regime. Now more than ever, it is becoming clear that Western governments and their ruling class, which have a tight grip on media and information control, are losing the battle of ideas. Palestinian support in the West is at an all-time high, despite Western leaders coming out in the open in defense of the Zionist regime and its relentless and indiscriminate aggression against Palestinians. Western leaders came out in unison on Saturday to tow the same false narrative: That the Hamas operation is “unprovoked,” that the Israeli regime is “just” in its decades-long ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and that the Palestinian resistance is “terrorism.” However, the world saw past these imperialist lies. Millions of people in the West, from New York to London to Paris, poured into the streets to pledge their support to Palestine and the Palestinian resistance, despite their own governments denouncing the Palestinian cause. In fact, the rallies themselves began to be denounced by Western officials, who despite their aggressive rhetoric against the Palestinian cause saw no end to the outpouring of support for Al Aqsa Storm. Now, the West and its media apparatuses have turned to their usual assortment of disinformation campaigns to muddy the line between fact and reality. Perhaps the most egregious claim came from Zionist outlet “i24 News.” Nicole Zedeck, a reporter, falsely claimed that “40 Israeli babies” were killed, and that some were “decapitated.” Obviously a jarring claim, many netizens pushed back asking for more details or any source that could corroborate this claim, which is part of the disinformation campaign. Zedeck walked back the claim, saying Zionist soldiers told her this was happening - but the post, which still has not been deleted - or retracted - has been proven categorically false by media outlets. The multiple high-profile accounts on X (formerly Twitter) shared Zedeck’s baseless claim, disseminating the proven lie to millions of people across the world. Perhaps most frustrating of all is that while this claim of Israeli babies being killed was spread with no source or proof, very real footage of martyred Palestinian babies being pulled from the Gaza rubble was also being shared - but without the solidarity of any Western influencer accounts. Another similar example was shared of a woman, Shani Louk, allegedly being held hostage by Hamas. Zionist influencers claimed she was sexually assaulted and murdered. Later, the woman’s own mother confirmed she was safe and that Hamas had taken her to a hospital in the Gaza Strip - the same hospital targeted multiple times by Israeli warplanes. This is a very intentional strategy of the Zionist regime, and the West - when their narrative is being challenged by reality itself, they will not be above spreading lies and refusing to apologize or issue a real retraction when they are caught. The claims are instead echoed by official Zionist accounts as reality without citation, leading media outlets in the West to print the story verbatim. Even the celebrity apparatus of the West plays a significant role in disseminating false claims - and then quietly walking them back after millions of people were exposed to flagrant lies. Actress Jamie Lee Curtis published a photo on Instagram of terrified children looking at the sky, with a caption expressing solidarity with the Zionist State. When netizens correctly identified the children in the photo as children of Gaza, fleeing from a Zionist airstrike, she quickly deleted the photo. The strategy of publishing lies and issuing a whimper of a retraction (if any at all) has been an imperialist strategy for decades. The US entry into Vietnam was sparked by a false report of an attack on a US warship in the Gulf of Tonkin. The US illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 was due to a made-up claim of weapons of mass destruction. The invasion of Afghanistan before that was also based on false assumptions. Iran’s foreign-plotted riots were caused by a categorical lie peddled by accounts known to be on the payroll of the United States intelligence agencies - then were spread using a vast network of online bots and influencer accounts. Western celebrities and influencers then picked up the story to smear the Islamic Republic, despite multiple witnesses and CCTV footage proving the tragic death of Mahsa Amini was of natural causes. More recently, after a 16-year-old Iranian girl Armita Geravand fell unconscious at the Tehran subway, social media accounts and news media in the West jumped on the bandwagon, claiming “torture.” Western media apparatus and celebrity apparatus are intertwined. They are part of a sophisticated system that is forced into place by the US ruling class and further strengthened by the Zionist lobby. Any deviation - meaning support for Palestine - is met with categorically false claims of anti-semitism, racism, or outlandish smear campaigns. Western outlets will never publish about the true carnage unleashed upon the people of Gaza - the women and children who were martyred. They will never publish, for example, the video of Israeli soldiers shutting off the water to Gaza - already contaminated - despite it being a human rights violation and a war crime. The imperialist media will never document reality, because reality would condemn the West for its barbarism. Furthermore, if the West cannot win a war of information, then it seeks to outright ban inconvenient facts altogether. Take for example the shutdown of Press TV in the United States - or the deplatforming of Russia Today or Sputnik after the February 2022 Russian military operation in Ukraine. Lebanon’s Al-Maydeen was also briefly banned on Meta platforms for its coverage of Al Aqsa Storm. According to the network, no reason was provided for it, nor was any prior notice given. The fact of the matter is the imperialist media does not shy away from playing dirty to ensure only its pro-imperialist outlets and narratives dominate public perception. It understands it is in a losing battle against the truth and is aggressively conducting widespread disinformation and information stifling in a final bid to control its narratives. An age-old saying is that in war, the first casualty is truth. The imperialist West has been imposing war on the entire globe for over a century. The truth has been “killed” in this sense many times - leading to racism, Islamophobia, and more rot within society - but it can also be salvaged. As growing contradictions sharpen within our world, the imperialist West will intensify its disinformation campaigns. Based on what we already know about its unethical conduct, the world cannot look to the West for the truth. The West’s truth is a false reality based on the vision created by the US ruling class and its partners, who are committed to defiling the world for their own greed. If the West fears the narrative of the Palestinians so much then it must know that the truth is with Palestine - and that Palestine is the truth. AuthorShabbir Rizvi This article was produced by PressTV. Archives October 2023
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