The left insults us — Gaza edition. By Chris Kenny in The Australian.
When people you know and care about accuse you of supporting the murder of 70,000 people, the bombing of babies and genocide, it is impossible not to take offence. The astonishing level of hatred is insulting, but you need to remind yourself it is the result of wild propaganda and misinformation about the Gaza conflict.
Sure, you cannot help but feel disappointed in people swallowing jaundiced coverage or outright lies and omissions from the ABC, SBS, The Guardian or a whole range of other mainstream media, but you need to understand that this, tragically, is the “narrative” they are immersed in. What do you say to them? How can you ever get them to confront reality?
These are not ranting students or Islamist hardliners marching in the streets chanting “From the river to the sea” or “Death, death to the IDF”. We can reassure ourselves that we will not need to deal with those zealots, who are beyond reason.
When friends, acquaintances, and family members make these awful claims it amounts to an assault on your moral fibre. It is personal and terrible. …
Truth? The left started saying 40 years ago that there is no truth, only power. “Critical theory,” they called it.
The anti-Israel propaganda is widespread, sure, but with just a little effort people can gain access to the facts, and with a some critical thinking they can expose many of the lies.
Most people do not read this newspaper or The Wall Street Journal, or watch Sky News, they do not go to primary sources, so they are left with a jaundiced narrative. Many rely mainly on snippets from social media, while others rely on the ABC or free websites that pump out a constant diet of anti-Israel coverage.
In the post-truth world, it is the narrative that prevails over facts and reality. And the chosen narrative of the progressives who dominate debate is Palestinian victimhood, along with malign intent from Israel.
This is not new, it has been a growing trend in response to political events over the past few decades, so that just two days after the unspeakable atrocities of October 7 I was able to predict on air that “just you wait, within days there will be more criticism of Israel than of Hamas”. …
Can’t the left summon even a tiny bit of skepticism?
Strange how all the mistakes demonise Israel. And peculiar how stories that are clearly implausible are amplified with wide-eyed enthusiasm. …
Cerebral palsy was presented as starvation (does the mother look starving? the kid’s brother, just out of shot, was anything but starving)
How can Israel be involved in a genocide when the growth of the Palestinian population has outstripped Israel’s? Given the military might of Israel and the urban density of Gaza, how could the population in Gaza have fallen by only 100,000 people — equivalent to the number of people who have been able to flee the territory – during two years of intense warfare?
Israel must be conducting the most incompetent genocide in history. Perhaps warning civilians about where you will attack by dropping leaflets, making phone calls, issuing text messages and posting warnings on websites while facilitating safe passage routes for evacuations before you strike is not the best way to maximise civilian casualties.
How could the ABC and other media pretend away these key and uncontested facts? Instead, they have encouraged people to believe that Israel has deliberately targeted civilians — precisely the opposite of reality. …
Claims of genocide are not only offensive but ridiculous. There would hardly be anyone alive in Gaza today if not for the electricity, fuel, water, food and medical supplies that come from and through Israel (admittedly restricted by war). …
We have had politicians, media and activists routinely accusing Israel of war crimes, usually on spurious grounds, while for more than two years, on clearly verifiable facts, Hamas was involved in the daily war crime of targeting civilians and holding civilians hostages.
This illustrates the political problem of our times — the left has gone nuts, they are in your face, and they will not listen to reason or evidence. But why?
Obviously the truth has nothing to do with the left’s narrative on Gaza — the merest contact with facts or reason dispels their narrative. No, the left is all about virtue-signaling to other leftists, and more importantly, bringing down whoever stands between Team-Left and power/money.