By Khalid Amayreh
Israeli hasbara doctors and their mouthpieces in the West don’t stop dithering about the perceived failure of the Israeli propaganda machine "to get the message through" to western audiences. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year and the best of the best PR firms are recruited to do the job for Israel.
However, Israel 's image remains dark and ugly as many Europeans and others are drifting away from Israel as the outgoing British ambassador to Israel affirmed recently.
Of course, the failure of Israel's lying machine to get the message through has little or nothing to do with any presumed inefficacy of the lies themselves. After all, the Israelis have been professional liars since time immemorial and very few people under the sun could possibly outmatch them in this dishonorable field.
Moreover, the best of the best of what the West has to offer in terms of public relations means, tactics and knowhow, including a huge armada of Jewish-owned or Jewish-influenced media of communications extending from Australia to California, are readily available at Israel's beck and call to spread her often virulent lies about the criminal state's genocidal treatment of its Palestinian victims.
Hence, it is highly unlikely that some technical or extraneous factors are to blame for the alleged inadequacy of the Israeli hasbara.
Likewise, it is unlikely that Israel, with all its expertise in the PR field, doesn't realize that the matter goes far beyond mere skill and hucksterism. In the final analysis, all the public relations in the world wouldn't be able to make the cold-blooded murder of a schoolboy on his way to school or on his way home from school look as if it were an act of charity. A murder is a murder and no amount of spin could make it look an expression of self-abnegation.
It may be true that Israel could utilize certain things to enhance its image, such as having Arab doctors serving in Israeli hospitals and allowing Arab patients to be treated by Israeli doctors. There are also mixed Arab-Jewish neighborhoods in Israel, though very small in number, which could be used by the Israeli hasbara officials to show that Israel is not as satanic as some of its enemies portray it to be.
The care of Israeli doctors for this young boy, while touching, leaves so many things unasked, unsaid. What of the thousands cold heartedly shot down over the years? What of the burn victims and the horrors of the Gaza Holocaust? Why this child while so many others still suffer in misery and with no medical attention in Gaza or the West Bank? I see this picture and remember the following quote:
There is no single fixed method for murder and not even for genocide. The author Y. L. Peretz wrote about "the righteous cat" that does not spill blood, but only suffocates.
The government of Israel, using the military and its instruments of destruction, is not only spilling blood, but it is also suffocating. ... Of course, with our self-righteousness, with our self-adoration in our "Jewish ethics" we make sure to advertise how beautifully the doctors take care of Palestinian victims in the hospitals.
We do not advertise how many of those are executed in cold blood in their own homes or how we destroyed their own hospitals. Therefore, it is not yet genocide of the terrible and unique style of which we were past victims.
And as one of the smart Generals told me, we do not have crematoria and gas chambers. Is anything less than that consistent with Jewish ethics? Did he ever hear how an entire people said that it did not know what was done in its name?“~ Shulamit Aloni
It is true that Israel allows some kids from the West Bank and Gaza to be treated in Israeli hospitals, mainly for propaganda purposes. But it is also true that the Israeli Shin Beth, Israel's chief domestic security agency, often blackmails the parents of these ill kids into working as informers and collaborators in exchange for granting them a permit to enter Israel.
It is true that that some of these kids have undergone successful operations in Israel, but it is also true that the Israeli occupation army knowingly and deliberately murdered Palestinian children and youngsters specifically in order to harvest their internal organs for transplant in Jewish recipients. Israel may deny these "canards" and "blood libels" but the truth cries out to the seventh heaven, and one can't really belie his own eyes.
However, it is also true that for every positive aspect connoting or denoting humanity and civility on Israel's part, there are a thousand evil aspects which prove beyond the slightest doubt that Israel is a decidedly criminal, murderous, racist and even Nazi-like state. Indeed, the evils meted out to non-Jews in Israel/Palestine are structural, systematic and permeating every aspect of life.
As a Palestinian who has been an eyewitness to Israeli crimes for so many years, I can testify before God and man that Israel is a Nazi state par excellence. This is why cataloging Israeli crimes would require a huge encyclopedia. After all, Israel's history is an uninterrupted concatenation of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Indeed, one would exaggerate very little by stating that Israel is itself a huge crime against humanity.
None the less, I would like to state some of the crimes the Israeli occupation army committed in the past few years, crimes which I have witnessed myself:
I witnessed Israeli troops shoot and kill totally innocent Palestinians and then claim the victims had tried to attack soldiers. Very often, the soldiers would place a knife next the victim's body in order to give credence to the concocted Israeli account.
I have seen Israeli helicopter gunship fire hell-fire missiles on crowded streets, killing and maiming innocent children and other civilians.
I have seen Israeli tanks fire rounds of ammunition on markets, killing and maiming many civilians.
I witnessed Israeli soldiers shoot and kill totally innocent Palestinian youngsters and then claim that the kids put the soldiers' lives at risk when in fact the soldiers were well-protected inside well-armored vehicles such as Merkava tanks or APCs.
I have witnessed Israeli soldiers manning roadblocks in the west bank bar severely-ill Palestinian patients from proceeding to hospital, which happened to be a few blocks away, until they patients succumb to their illness. The same thing would happen to pregnant women in labor in which case the fetus or mother or both would die as a result of the soldier's bestiality.
I have witnessed Israeli soldiers murder journalists and cameramen without any justification, just to see to it that they wouldn't communicate the truth to the outside world.
I have witnessed the Israeli army storm Palestinian hospitals and fire gas grenades inside the corridors.
I have seen Israeli bulldozers create deep trenches in the heart of Palestinian towns in order to paralyze movement.
I have witnessed Israeli occupation authorities impose open-ended curfews on hundreds of thousands of citizens, causing incalculable harm.
I have seen Israelis withhold water supplies from Palestinians for several weeks in order to enable Judeo-Nazi settlers to enjoy an American-standard of life and welfare.
I have seen the Israeli authorities arrest and detain Palestinians in dungeons and detention camps for years without charge or trial.
I have seen the Israeli occupation authorities blow up people's homes for no justifiable reason, just to discourage other Palestinians from opposing the occupation.
I have seen Israeli bulldozers crush people's fields, orchards, and vineyards, just to scare them and let them know "who is the boss."
I have seen Israelis abduct young Palestinian kids and take them to nearby Jewish settlements where settler kids and youngsters would beat and humiliate them in order to show the Arab kids "who is the boss."
I have seen Israeli soldiers target innocent farmers, innocent vacationers, innocent travelers, innocent workers, and innocent students, and murder them in cold blood.
I have seen Israeli soldiers induce Palestinian kids to come out to the streets in order to kill them.
In fact, I have seen Israeli soldiers shoot Palestinians school kids while sitting in their classrooms.
In the Gaza Strip, the crimes Israel has committed against these badly-savaged people defies linguistic description. In fact, one would exaggerate little by saying that Israel's murderous criminality succeeded in pushing 1.6 million Gazans to the edge of Bergen Belsen, Auschwitz and Ghetto Warsaw.
The raining of White Phosphorus on crowded Gaza neighborhoods in December-January 2008 and 2009 de-masked Israel's Nazi face so much that no amount of hasbara and public relations was able to make the ugly reality seem less uglier.
In addition, Israel has shot passenger airplanes and attacked passenger ships, killing hundreds of civilians. Security is always invoked as the mantra that justifies every crime against innocent civilians.
As I said, one could write volumes upon volumes of books, chronicling Israeli crimes and criminality.
Israel is actually like an extremely ugly lady who exaggerates in the use of cosmetics in the hope of making herself look beautiful.
But Israel's face is ugly because it is ugly, not because the hasbara efforts are inadequate.
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