"You are Terrorists, We are Victorious": Another Analysis of Israeli Propaganda

It's these days that we are witnessing an increase in Israeli propaganda in the Israeli and American media. Lebanese deaths are downplayed, and Israeli deaths are victimized, even soldiers. They actually bothered to show a report on how a lone American went to Lebanon in order to save DOGS, and NOT human beings! Isn't that a tad racist? But that aside, let's focus on Israeli propaganda and how it has made heroes of the Israeli army, and at times victims. NabberGnossi sent me this article by London Review of Books writer Yitzhak Laor, who lives in Tel Aviv (believe me: that's all the info I have on this guy). Laor struck me as a critic, but of the Richard-Ben-Cramer type who sticks to patriotic Zionism and outlines how Israel's military occupation and operations have corrupted much of the worldwide Zionist populace's thinking, or, in Ben Cramer's words, "corroded" the society of "both Jew and Arab". However, Laor mainly discusses how the Israeli media has done something Arabs and other pro-Palestinian and independent media have not:

Polarization.

What do I mean by that? Just look at the title. By establishing the "terrorists" and the "heroes", we are led to believe that the Lebanese deserve every hit they get, and that the deaths of the so-called "heroes" of the so-called "humane" I"D"F are tragedies in the making. This propaganda is similar to that used by the communists of Russia in the past, with their glorification of their soldiers who used to run pogroms and other similar killings. We are seeing history repeating itself, only this time with the Israelis propagating their message of lies. We keep hearing the mantra that Israel should "achieve victory". Truth is, Israel's "victories" just maintain the status quo, and do nothing but inflict misery on both the occupied and the occupier, except to those who are eager for war on the Zionist side.

Back to the article I was talking about. Laor tells us about how the Israeli "hero" side pretends to be on the side of the Lebanese, all the while ignoring civilians and uses the "they/them" "logic" on Hizbullah. He wrote,

In the melodramatic barrage fired off by the press, the army is assigned the dual role of hero and victim. And the enemy? In Hebrew broadcasts the formulations are always the same: on the one hand ‘we’, ‘ours’, ‘us’; on the other, Nasrallah and Hizbullah. There aren’t, it seems, any Lebanese in this war. So who is dying under Israeli fire? Hizbullah. And if we ask about the Lebanese? The answer is always that Israel has no quarrel with Lebanon. It’s yet another illustration of our unilateralism, the thundering Israeli battle-cry for years: no matter what happens around us, we have the power and therefore we can enforce the logic. If only Israelis could see the damage that’s been done by all these years of unilateral thinking. But we cannot, because the army – which has always been the core of the state – determines the shape of our lives and the nature of our memories, and wars like this one erase everything we thought we knew, creating a new version of history with which we can only concur. If the army wins, its success becomes part of ‘our heritage’. Israelis have assimilated the logic and the language of the IDF – and in the process, they have lost their memories. Is there a better way to understand why we have never learned from history? We have never been a match for the army, whose memory – the official Israeli memory – is hammered into place at the centre of our culture by an intelligentsia in the service of the IDF and the state.

Note the wording. Laor tells us that whatever the army has done has nationalized its victories and integrated as not a part of Israel's history, but a part of its very core, or heritage. The unilateralism of Israel's actions make it not only one-sided, but headstrong in its actions, eager to strike and kill whatever may stand in its way. The I"D"F has become Israel's voice... its body. Criticizing it means criticizing Israel. I know it sounds bad, but we have to face it. Israel is now a military state bent on occupying more and more land and killing more and more people, and at the same time poses as the hero in all of this. I think Laor said it perfectly when he wrote,

The truth behind this is that Israel must always be allowed to do as it likes even if this involves scorching its supremacy into Arab bodies. This supremacy is beyond discussion and it is simple to the point of madness. We have the right to abduct. You don’t. We have the right to arrest. You don’t. You are terrorists. We are virtuous. We have sovereignty. You don’t. We can ruin you. You cannot ruin us, even when you retaliate, because we are tied to the most powerful nation on earth. We are angels of death.

What a way to summarize Israeli rightwing groupthink... but even leftwingers aren't any better in the Knesset. But seriously, what this propaganda also serves is to blind us not only to the dying Lebanese, but the dying Palestinians as well. According to the Electronic Intifada, there have been at least 175 Palestinian deaths in the past month, most of them innocent. The media diversion has blinded us to the ongoing aggression. However, Laor also stated that Israel has no right to forget, but the Arabs should forget, meaning that whatever aggression Israel commits on the Palestinians and Lebanese aren't really aggressions, because it's okay to kill them... They're just "Araboushim" (a racist derogation like "n*gger").

But let's put this bullshit aside. Israel has no way that its propaganda machine can actually polarize us - the supporters of Palestine, Lebanon, the rest of the Arab/Muslim world, and the Third World in general - against those who seek to resist Israel's vile agenda. I'm not speaking in the bullshit name of "freedom" or "democracy", which is what Israel does, but I'm speaking from a human point of view. It's time that Israel drops this whole war and grow a mature mind. The world is already sick of what Israel has become.

Salaam, from
Saracen