Last May, in a previous post, I talked about how a subservient mainstream press meant that much of America was bewildered by how quickly events in Afghanistan unravelled. I suspect the war in Gaza may also unfold in ways that will leave much of America feeling similarly blindsided.
Polls indicate that a majority of Canadians and Americans no longer trust what they see and hear in the mainstream media. Nonetheless, most North Americans still continue to get most of their news from those same (untrustworthy) mainstream sources.
When the media is writing about issues where their audiences have their own experience to draw on, the media’s control is somewhat constrained.
If we look at the pitiful uptake rates on the latest COVID vaccines, for instance, it’s obvious that Americans place far more stock in what they see around them in their family and friendship circles, than in anything the CDC or the mainstream media might say about vaccine safety and effectiveness.
Even with issues that cannot be measured against personal experience, a good many Americans clearly have an ability to see beyond the mainstream narrative with time. Ukraine is a good example. Support for sending more money and arms to Ukraine was falling even before America’s mainstream media grudgingly admitted that the Ukrainian counteroffensive had failed. An increasing number of Americans are seeing the moral bankruptcy of ‘fighting to the last Ukrainian’ in order to ‘weaken Russia’.
Time is the operant word here. I suspect many American’s will become less unreserved in their support for Israeli tactics in the war in Gaza over time. Unfortunately, huge consequences may already have occurred by the time that happens.
In Michael Snyder’s latest post, Snyder is clearly outraged that Turkey’s President Ergodan is calling Israel a ‘terror state’ guilty of ‘war crimes.’ What Snyder clearly doesn’t understand is that that’s how the media in much of the rest of the world portrays what is currently happening in Gaza. That’s how billions of people in the non-Western world are increasingly coming to see the situation in Gaza, as evidenced by some truly massive worldwide protests.
Where we in North America will see the pro-Israel march in Washington, DC, and hear Benjamin Netanyahu accusing Hamas of using civilians as human shields, much of the rest of the world sees and hears every single time Israel bombs a refugee camp, an ambulance, a Church, a mosque, a school or a hospital. Every day they see mothers wailing as their dead children are pulled from the rubble.
America’s mainstream media can’t really alert Americans to the very different media coverage happening in the non-Western world without acknowledging that an alternative narrative exists for what is happening in Gaza.
Insofar as Americans do get a glimmer of what is happening, Michael Snyder’s response is typical of how emotion and outrage get in the way of a clear-headed view of what is happening.
The issue is not whether the anti-Israeli media coverage seen in the non-Western world is fair, or accurate, or whether it is ‘anti-semitic’. The issue is that the Arab World, the Muslim world, and, indeed, a majority of the non-Western world are being strongly shifted in their attitudes towards both Israel and America by the large number of women and children dying in Gaza.
Beyond the not-insignificant risk that the Gaza conflict will spiral out of control into a regional or global conflict, I see three likely consequences of that:
1) Jihadi Recruitment: The Israelis have said very clearly the war in Gaza will not end until every Hamas member has been killed. What I suspect the Israelis may not fully understand is that Benjamin Netanyahu has become recruiter-in-chief for every Jihadi revenge army in the world.
If the Israelis do manage to kill the ten thousand existing Hamas members in the Gaza Strip, twenty thousand more Gazans may immediately fill their places. And that may be the least of Israel’s worries. I suspect Hezbollah may have held off from attacking Israel in order to have time to train thousands of new would-be fighters streaming through their doors every week.
The Jews are not the only people to have suffered a diaspora. There are many tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians in Jordan, in Lebanon, in Egypt, in Iraq, in Syria, in England, in Europe and in America. If those displaced communities continue to see pictures of dead and bleeding Palestinian children week after week, I strongly suspect violent new ‘anti-semitic’ groups may form in at least some of those countries.
2) Anti-Americanism and anti-Imperialism: Even the US State Department has warned the US Government that its one-sided response risks creating a vehement anti-Americanism throughout the Arab and Moslem worlds that could last for years.
I’ve seen some of the rhetoric in the foreign media, and its not pretty: ‘America, having subjugated and partially exterminated its own indigenous people, is quietly supportive of Israel doing the same.’ Europe is tarred with the same brush; ‘those imperialist exploiters all support one another.’
In recent years, Israel has managed to mend fences with many of its Arab neighbours. Much of that slow, steady progress is now history. Whatever remains will soon disappear on the current path.
3) Fence-sitters get off the fence: Thus far, several important nations have tried very hard to stay friends with both America and China/Russia, including India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Indonesia.
If the situation in Gaza continues to escalate, there will be greater and greater pressure for all those countries to choose one side or the other. Turkey could easily withdraw from NATO and take it’s 500,000 strong army with it. India might side with America, but then be pressured into leaving the BRICS, which would open the way for the BRICS to become far more radical than it has been until now.
I think we can take it as a given, that if the world becomes completely divided into two antagonistic blocs, World War 3 will be that much harder to avoid.
Arguments about Israel’s ‘right to self-defense’, or ‘antisemitism’, or even seeing what is happening in Gaza as being a ‘justified vengeance’ won’t alter any of the above outcomes.
If the Gaza war ends with Israel economically and politically isolated, and threatened by more ‘terrorists’ than existed before the war began, Israel and America will both come to regret their current course of action.
If America had something approaching a free press, more Americans would be cognizant of the underlying dangers in the current situation, and America would perhaps be less likely to blunder into another predictable disaster.
PS: Zerohedge has just announced poll results indicating 68% of Americans now want an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. How many of those respondents are concerned for the immediate well-being of Palestinians, and how many are concerned for the longer-term well-being of Israel and America is unclear. What is clear is that most Americans, given time, are able to recognize a situation that is unlikely to end well, even if their Government, and their media do not.
PPS: It must be acknowledged that CNN has been willing to display both the horrors and the desperation happening in Gaza. One could argue that they have done so to placate the segment of their Democratic audience which is pro-Palestinian, but nonetheless it has given CNN viewers some idea of the coverage events in Gaza are receiving in the rest of the world.