By Dan Greenberg
“Israel is committing genocide”. “Israel commits war crimes daily”. “Israel is starving Gaza’s population”. “Israel is indiscriminately bombing Gaza”. If you were to listen to pundits, activists, TikTokers and much of the media, these assertions are made as statements of fact, or at the very least, not challenged when made by others. However, if you listen to warfare experts and those who actually have context and skill to evaluate the real situation, all of these claims are easily debunked.
The supposedly more moderate and measured members of the punditry and media class keep slight distance from the claims themselves but certainly don’t challenge the non-expert opinions of the activists who they platform that make those claims.
But the more insidious affronts to our communal ability to understand what is going on in the Middle East are carried out by our political leaders. The leaders of the free world.
Two weeks ago, a Russian strike killed 18 people in Kiev. It targeted civilian infrastructure and EU and British offices. Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the strike “…a horrific and deliberate killing of civilians”, while Russia’s Kremlin spokesperson said that the strikes “…were successful, but Russia is still open to peace talks”.
Why is this of note? Many times, throughout the history of recent conflict we see dictators or their spokespeople comment on actions that are horrific in ways that turn them into generic and normal war actions. This is not new.
What is new is that the world does not know what to believe anymore because the language that we use to describe horrendous acts has been cheapened as it has been used over and over again to describe Israeli actions in Gaza that can be refuted somewhat easily. The examples of Al Ahli Hospital, and numerous claims of starving children which turned out to be manufactured stories come to mind easily. In the former, the media reported that Israel had bombed a hospital killing 500, and it turned out that in reality, a failed Islamic Jihad terror group missile aimed at Israeli civilians had landed in the parking lot of the hospital killing around 30. In the latter, we have seen numerous examples recently of Gazan children supposedly dying of starvation, only to learn later that they are actually suffering from diseases causing their sickness, and the slightest bit of journalistic rigor would have spurred a journalist to question the accounts and to ask why the rest of the family looks well fed and healthy.
Certainly, most people see the original stories that are incorrect, and not the corrections and retractions later, but there is still a degree of noise and non-believability to the accounts that causes doubt, and pushes people towards a place where it is harder to believe anything that comes from either side in a conflict. When kids are fighting in the back seat of the car, the parents yell at both kids, it doesn’t matter most of the time that one of them stabbed the other with a pencil out of the blue, and there would not have been a problem had that not happened.
The media is the conveyance of these messages which demonize Israel and cheapen the words we use to understand war. Whether it is because they are convenient to the narrative, drive good ratings, or due to bias, or because they simply don’t know any better, the stories are out there, and they are consistent, but the fault lies mostly with the leaders. The leaders know better and have allowed the narrative to go off the rails, and while it is certainly bad for Israel and Jews, it is bad for the entire world, and here is why.
Everything is now a war crime. Israel is constantly accused of committing war crimes and this is not pushed back on by our leaders and politicians, yet we continue to send military support to Israel because at the core of this issue, our leaders understand that Hamas is a terrorist group and that The West needs Israel. So, it turns out that nothing is a war crime. At the same time, Hamas continuously commits their own war crimes, such as fighting in civilian clothing and neighborhoods, and using civilians as human shields, but they are talked about as resistance and this is not pushed back on by our leaders and politicians.
Far too many actions are labeled as genocide. Israel is committing genocide, and this is often not challenged by our leaders and politicians, yet The West continues to send military support to Israel for the above stated reasons, and further, we know that 2 million Muslim Arabs live peacefully in Israel, so, then nothing must be a Genocide.
Basic actions in war like blockades are now referred to as starvation tactics. The only problem is that the idea that a country is supposed to send supplies to the enemy that started the war is patently absurd, so while politicians don’t push back on the rhetoric, the average person has something in the back of their mind saying, if this is considered a starvation tactic in wartime, then every country who ever fought in a war is guilty, so why am I supposed to be impressed?
Bombing an enemy is now referred to as indiscriminate bombing and targeting of civilians. This language is consistently accepted and not pushed back on by western leaders, but the problems is that people understand that there is collateral damage in war and that fighting an entrenched terrorist organization in densely populated urban areas comes with consequences, so the claims of civilian targeting by Israel are echoed by activist but doubted by the masses.
The net result is that people do not know what to believe. So when Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson says that that war aims were achieved, and Western leaders decry the barbarity of the bombing, people have to say to themselves, “well, no one agrees on what a war crime is anymore, so what makes him less right than Zelenskyy or other leaders.
This is a fundamental failure of our leaders in The West to clearly call Hamas a terrorist entity, and their consistent every day, demonstrable actions, war crimes. It is a failure of our leaders in the west to clearly differentiate the democratically elected leaders of Israel from the illegitimate Hamas leadership.
The presumption, the undertone is that there is moral equivalence between Hamas and the democratically elected government of Israel. The problem is that Hamas does not and has not ever wanted peace, so the moral equivalency causes a fundamental strategic error leading to negotiations that break down over and over again. The world has been focused on this and seen it play out time and time again for just under two years, but those who follow middle eastern politics have seen this play out over and over again from 20 years with Hamas, and for decades prior to that with the PLO.
Sure, Hamas lies, we expect it. And the media echoes those lies? Well, we are used to that. But when leaders accept it, that is when those who aren’t thinking, and don’t know the situation take their position. They assume western politicians to be knowledgeable and understand what is going on, so they outsource their analysis and that is why we can end up with 33% of democrats supporting Hamas over Israel.
A recent Harris poll shows 60% of Gen Z and 33% of Democrats side with Hamas over Israel. This is specifically the result of western leadership not putting their foot down and stating unequivocally that Hamas is a terrorist organization and that they are to blame for the war, and for the suffering in Gaza. The lack of clarity on these points is what has given license to Israel haters to publish more and more one-sided information, the media to parrot it and the uninformed to assume the validity of it.
President Trump has not been fantastic on this issue. He certainly does not proactively fall into as many of the same traps as other Western Politicians, but he has often missed opportunities to push back, and has often, allowed the rhetoric of Israel blaming to be conflated with the plight of Gazans, somehow allowing Hamas off the hook for any role they have played. However, the reality is that he is miles better than Democratic leadership, and much of European leadership when it comes to Israel blaming rhetoric. Instead of simply allowing false statements to slide, Democratic leadership has taken an active role in peddling it.
Even former President Biden, who was maligned by the left while in office for supposedly supporting Israel to too great a degree, was guilty of peddling in moral equivalency consistently. With the exception of his remarks on October 7th itself, he consistently qualified his support for confronting Hamas with statements chiding Israel to operate within the rule of law, which, by definition, implies that there is question as to if they have been doing so. The qualifications, and limitations in every statement listed below serve to create that moral equivalency and lend credence to those who want to equate just acts of defense and war, to overt and gruesome terrorism.
October 10, 2023: During a conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Biden emphasized that democracies like Israel and the United States are stronger and more secure when they adhere to the rule of law. He also said that Israel has a duty to respond to the attacks, but that it should do so according to the law of war.
October 22, 2023: President Biden stated on social media that Israel has the right to defend itself and must have what it needs to protect its people. He also stated that Israel must operate by the laws of war and protect civilians. He also said that the humanity of innocent Palestinians who only want to live in peace cannot be ignored.
October 25, 2023: President Biden reiterated Israel’s right to defend itself but also said that Israel needs to do everything in its power to protect innocent civilians in Gaza. He also stated the importance of preparing for the end of the conflict and what comes next, and that the U.S. remains committed to a two-state solution.
November 1, 2023: According to The Hill, President Biden reaffirmed that Israel has the right to defend itself within the bounds of international humanitarian law.
April 4, 2024: President Biden warned Israel that continued U.S. support depended on new efforts to protect civilians and aid workers in Gaza, according to the BBC.
May 9, 2024: President Biden said in an interview with CNN that he would stop sending bombs and artillery shells to Israel if it launched a major ground invasion of Rafah without a plan to protect civilians. He emphasized that while the US would continue to ensure Israel’s security, including the Iron Dome system, it would not supply weapons for an offensive in Rafah that could result in high civilian casualties.
The media have been complicit at a dizzying level, from articles quoting Hamas propaganda as fact and then inserting the word “claims” every time they refer to an official Israeli source to talk show hosts allowing blatantly false comments about Israel’s efforts to slide without providing context. But it is the subtle affronts to truth that are driving the most insidious results. Piers Morgan ran a segment which was a conversation between Cenk Uygur, and Ben Shapiro. He spent the majority of his breath challenging Ben Shapiro on his support of Israel, but it was something subtle that was very telling.
Shapiro referenced Douglas Murray in one of his statements. Morgan scoffed and dismissed the reference stating that Murray was “biased”, strongly insinuating that his opinion was not to be taken seriously. With that comment, we can understand a great deal about how this story has been told. Media, on the whole has been happy to treat Hamas statements with the same validity as any other official government statements made by non-terrorist entities even as they have proven to be false time and time again. But, Douglas Murray, is dismissed simply because he has taken a pro-Israel stance. To clarify, Murray is not Jewish or Israeli, nor is he someone who advocated or did activism work for Israel and Jews prior to his time reporting on wars.
Over the past number of years, as he has been on the ground in the Middle East, he has developed his stance. You see, if you look for people who are non-affiliated, and actually have the experience of being on the ground and experiencing wars in the Middle East for themselves, you tend to find people who realize that what is being asked of Israel and its military is different and far and away more than what has been asked of any other military.
In addition to Murray, these are people like retired British Army officer, Colonel Richard Kemp, who called Israel, “The world’s most moral army”, and John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, who wrote, “Israel Has Created a New Standard for Urban Warfare. Why Will No One Admit It?” And there are others. Those who have seen things firsthand for themselves and did not come in with bias, are being marginalized because they don’t support the black and white story that the press has been thought to parrot or has taught themselves to parrot. The idea that an expert who develops and opinion somehow becomes unfit to be an expert because their opinion does not match up with a specific vision of a story is fundamentally flawed and runs away from truth-seeking. Instead, we find ourselves relying on the media, who in turn relies on pundits and uniformed media who are swallowing Hamas stories whole and using those stories to construct their narrative.
Leaders in the west have been so reluctant to take a stand of any kind, that the narrative that both sides are at fault seems the least risky to them. Sure, it does not stand any chance of resolving the issue, but it won’t lose them the next election.
There is a hard thing for people in The West to understand, and it is that both sides of an issue don’t always possess equal legitimacy. Certainly, there is bald faced antisemitism, and there are those with ulterior motives pushing Hamas propaganda. There are also useful idiots peddling the same propaganda because they simply don’t have any grasp of history, politics, or law. But let’s put all of that aside for a moment.
My wife has a friend from grad school that she has not talked to in years. She posted something on Instagram the other day that, in my view, is clearly antisemitic, but it, of course, substitutes in the term “Zionists” for “Jews” in all the right places so that one can ostensibly clear themselves of the charge of antisemitism. Of course, well over 90% of Jews support the existence of the State of Israel, so there are inherent problems with the logic, but here is the thing. I would assume my wife’s friend does not know any of that. She likely does not understand the interplay between Zionism and Judaism, or the fact that almost all Jews can in one way or another be classified as Zionist.
She is almost certainly not an antisemite. She also likely has limited ulterior motives from posting these types of things, and she is almost certainly not a useful idiot. So where does that leave us? Where did people like this get the green light?
Islamist terrorism is brutal and scary and for many, they have to feel as if there is a reason it is happening to “them” which is a way of justifying why it won’t happen to “me”. “There has to be something causing it”. “It can’t be that the other side didn’t bring it on”. Islamism, not Islam, believes that everyone who doesn’t believe in their form of Islam is an Infidel and needs to be eliminated or subjugated. This is not me talking, speeches of Islamist leaders saying these things can be found by the thousands, not in western media, of course, but this is standard belief and rhetoric. But for the West, the lie that is being ingested is necessary. It is a way to appease ourselves into thinking that we are not at risk. And, in order for that lie to work, the conflict has to be about two sides, both guilty, unable to come to peace.
So, we are left with people who want to believe that the conflict is inherently two-sided, being influenced by leaders who have political incentive to lean into the status quo and don’t have the backbone to admit publicly that war is terrible and messy, and that war should not be conflated with war crimes. That bombing should not be equated to deliberate targeting of civilians. That hiding behind civilian populations and driving up the death count does not give Hamas a free pass to commit atrocities and then escape the consequences of war. Certainly, the devaluation of the words that should only be used to describe the actions of terrorist entities and truly genocidal regimes is bad for Israel. But what most of The West will have to come to terms with at some point is that it emboldens Russia, and Iran, and exacerbates the post-truth feeling of many so that when bad actors do bad things, it becomes much harder to gather support for actions that need to be taken to keep them in check. Simply put, it is not only bad for Israel, it is extremely dangerous for the world.
