Dangerous lies of western media

Truth, it is said, is the first casualty in a war. The quote has been variedly attributed to US senator Hiram W. Johnson (1918), or Dr. Samuel Johnson (1758).

Whatever might be the origin, it accurately recognizes the challenge facing the combatants on both sides.

It is known that social media is not a credible medium and a lot of fake news, morphed pictures and genuine but mischaracterized stuff are shared by millions on X (formerly twitter), facebook, whatsapp, and other such media.

But it is surprising that the fake news of Hamas beheading several Israeli babies found space in the columns of highly credible newspapers such as London’s The Times, Daily Express and several such British dailies.

The Turkish news agency Anadolu has confirmed from Israeli military sources that they did not have any information about this. But the misinformation was shared millions of times before the veracity of the news was checked, on social media.

It was potentially dangerous as it incites violence and turns the global public opinion hostile against the Hamas and the besieged Palestinian people in Gaza and impedes the efforts to broker peace between the warring sides.

While in this case, the Israeli authorities acted in good faith and refused to confirm the fake news, same is not true of many Western journalists who are prepared and willing to lie to defend Israel, regardless of its record of brutality.

They will never admit it, but they do it again and again. The Western media has taken on itself the duty of using euphemisms when it comes to Israeli aggression. In their narrative, Israel never attacks, “it launches operation”.

Similarly, all Israeli attacks are mere “retaliations”, totally oblivious of the fact that Israel has occupied double the territory it was originally assigned in 1948; Jewish settlements have been relentlessly expanding on the usurped territory; Palestinian homes are torn down by bulldozers on a regular basis; their lands are confiscated; water sources are seized; an apartheid wall has come up between Jewish settlements and Palestinian camps in the West bank; thousands of Palestinian youth are imprisoned in the Israeli prison for the mere act of protesting against the injustice.

Often times, Israeli attack is only termed ‘raid’ and it doesn’t kill, it “leaves Palestinians dead” as if Israel did not mean any harm to them. It is only the “Palestinian attacks that kill Israelis”.

These euphemisms deployed by the media have for decades carefully camouflaged the lethal consequences for Palestinian people and ruinous impact on the rudimentary infrastructure the besieged people are able to raise after each murderous Israeli attacks laid the land to waste.

It is the same Western media that sustained the Pentagon’s bogey of Saddam’s Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to justify the US attack on Iraq and rendering the post-Saddam Iraq into a vassal state of the US.