ANALYSIS: Israel and the Ongoing Cognitive War Against the Jewish State
Israel does not defend itself sufficiently in this cognitive war and pays a high price for a lack of adequate ‘hasbara.’
Fake news has become a scourge with far-reaching consequences for humanity, and in particular for the Jewish people and Israel.
Both are burdened by ever-escalating antisemitism fueled largely by untruths, lies and even modern blood libels.
Many of those lies, libels and untruths have to do with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which again raged on in full force this year.
Israel does not defend itself sufficiently in this cognitive war and pays a high price for a lack of adequate ‘hasbara’ – the Hebrew word for explanation, meaning “public diplomacy” in this context.
Israel’s enemies, however, regularly resort to the propaganda weapon, which proves time and time again to be more effective than Israel’s hasbara, and this has poisoned public opinion around the globe.
A couple of recent examples.
Last week, media outlets such as Reuters reported that the Qatar-based news channel Al Jazeera had filed “a lawsuit” against Israel at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
Al Jazeera wants the ICC to track down and prosecute “the individuals who were directly involved in the killing of (Al Jazeera journalist) Shireen Abu Akleh.”
These were the words of Rodney Dixon, Al Jazeera’s lawyer, who further claimed that prosecution of the Israeli military allegedly responsible for Abu Akleh’s death is mandatory under ICC statutes.
Otherwise, the court would bear “the same responsibility as those who opened fire (on the journalist),” Dixon said.
Before I will prove that Dixon indulged in the industry of distortions and lies, first a brief history of this action by Al Jazeera against Israel.
The investigation into the death of Shireen Abu Akleh
Abu Akleh was shot dead on May 11 in the terror stronghold of Jenin during a long gunfight between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian terrorists.
The death of the popular Al Jazeera journalist was used by the Palestinian Arabs and by pro-Palestinian organizations and media, especially Al Jazeera, to again accuse Israel of war crimes.
Abu Akleh’s family immediately called upon the US government to conduct an in-depth investigation because the Palestinian journalist also held an American passport.
That investigation eventually took place, but according to the family was not conducted thoroughly enough.
They ignored the fact that the Palestinian Authority had refused to cooperate with the investigation and had long withheld the bullet that allegedly killed Abu Akleh.
The family then demanded a meeting with none other than President Joe Biden and eventually spoke to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken who promised to hold Israel “accountable.”
In the meantime, the IDF had completed its own investigation prior to this meeting in Washington and concluded that it was “plausible” that a bullet from an Israeli soldier had killed Abu Akleh during the chaos in Jenin on May 11, as the forensic investigation was made extremely difficult by the fact that the bullet in question was severely damaged.
After the forensic investigation both Israel and the US concluded that it was not possible to determine with certainty who was responsible for the gunshot wound to which Abu Akleh succumbed.
Two weeks ago it suddenly became known that the FBI still intends to investigate the death of the Al Jazeera journalist.
Benny Gantz, Israel’s outgoing defense minister, reacted by saying that the FBI investigation was a “tragic mistake” and that Israel would not cooperate with the American probe. Gantz said the IDF itself had already conducted an in-depth investigation and pointed to the joint Israeli-American conclusion that it was impossible to determine who exactly was responsible for the gunfire that killed Abu Akleh.
Al Jazeera now claims it has new evidence that IDF soldiers deliberately shot at Abu Akleh and other journalists covering the gun battle in Jenin.
Al Jazeera’s fake news
Let’s now look at what Reuters and numerous other media reported on the latest development in the Abu Akleh case.
Al Jazeera had “opened a lawsuit against Israel” at the ICC according to these media, but this is impossible because only states that are members of the ICC and the United Nations Security Council can ask the ICC to bring proceedings against persons or states suspected of war crimes.
The International Criminal Court also has a limited mandate since it can only prosecute individuals and states in the case of genocide, crimes against humanity, violations of the Geneva Conventions and in the case of aggression by one state against another.
So, this was clearly a case of fake news and Dixon lied about the mandate of the ICC.
All Al Jazeera did was launch a new publicity stunt around the death of its journalist, and the news organization merely wrote a letter to the chief prosecutor of the ICC asking for action against Israel.
Israel as a rogue state
The reason for these and other actions intended to smear Israel is that the opponents of the Jewish state want to create an image of a rogue state that commits war crimes.
Israel is thus put on the defensive and has to explain its actions in the conflict with the Palestinian Arabs and other enemies over and over again.
The United Nations is forcing Israel into a similar position by consistently singling out the country for often baseless and unwarranted criticism.
The UN’s obsession with Israel is a thorn in the side of any government in Jerusalem, which, whether on the left or the right, accuses the organization of bias and even of having an obsession with the Jewish state.
UN obsession and lies about Israel
The latest example of this attitude towards Israel was the statement by the UN Special Envoy to the Middle East after another terror attack near the city of Shechem, or Nablus, on Saturday, November 4.
The UN envoy, Tor Wennesland, wrote on Twitter after the incident in which the Palestinian terrorist was killed that he was “shocked” that the Arab was shot dead in a “scuffle.”
Wennesland also demanded that those who killed the terrorist “be held accountable,” and offered his condolences to the “grieving family of the victim.”
UN envoy Tor Wennesland demanded that the Israeli border police officers that killed a terrorist who was trying to kill them, “be held accountable.”
In reality, Ammar Mefleh, the Palestinian terrorist, was killed after trying to kill Israelis three times in a row.
First, Mefleh tried to kill a couple in a car, and when he failed to open the door of the vehicle he smashed a window of the car, after which the driver (a soldier on leave) drew his weapon and fired at Mefleh.
The terrorist then went to a group of Israeli Border Police officers and stabbed one of them in the face with a knife.
One of the other officers then managed to hold the terrorist in a headlock, but he managed to break free and tried to steal the weapon from this policeman, after which he was finally shot and died of his wounds.
Emmanuel Nachson, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, called Wennesland’s Twitter post “a complete distortion of reality.”
The incident also drew a sharp response from outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who said it was “a false story and a disgrace.”
The link with rising antisemitism
These are just two examples of the ongoing cognitive war plaguing Israel, and this war can be directly linked to the alarming rise in antisemitism, especially in the West.
In a related development, President Joe Biden convened an emergency meeting with Jewish leaders at the White House this week after a number of shocking antisemitic incidents took place in the United States recently.
However, Biden did not make the link with Israel in a statement after the meeting, and only made clear that political leaders “should be calling out antisemitism wherever it hides” and that “silence is complicity.”
This may have to do with the fact that a movement has emerged within the Democratic Party that now opposes US support for Israel, even going so far as demanding an end to US military aid to the Jewish state.
1 comment:
It is very hard to defeat lies in the era of modern media if the media supports the lies. That is unfortunate but is still very true.
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