“. . . as appalling as it sounds, dominant Zionist hasbara narratives have tried to criminalise the humanity of Palestinians, making it controversial to even acknowledge it and mourn their deaths.” J Khader

The genocidal war that the apartheid Israeli state has waged on the Gaza Strip has generated an unprecedented wave of international public condemnation and international solidarity with the Palestinians. Graphic images of unimaginable destruction and heaps of dismembered and shattered bodies of innocent children flooded social media. Circulating in the context of the recent history of a series of Israeli military incursions into Gaza (first in 2008 and again in 2012), these images prompted hundreds of thousands of people to take to the streets around the world to demand an end to the Israeli occupation and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

The engineers of Zionist hasbara (the Hebrew word for “propaganda”) pushed back, redoubling their efforts in well-orchestrated PR campaigns that tried to reframe their genocidal war with typically hackneyed talking points. Israeli PR pressure even forced some celebrities, who had posted on Twitter both against the senseless genocide in Gaza and for recognising the humanity of Palestinians, to retract their Twitter posts.

However, the hasbara apparatus of the Israeli apartheid state failed to concoct myths and rhetorical games creative enough to whitewash their disproportionate use of force and war crimes. Their psyops tactics were largely ineffective, even in Tel Aviv, pushing them to desperate measures, including censoring the media.

‘Resistance is futile’

Hasbara engineers have therefore resorted to three main strategies to deal with the political fallout from the Gaza genocide. First, they desperately launched blackmail campaigns that attempted to conflate the irrational fear and hatred of Jews (anti-Semitism), which is unacceptable, with the legitimate critique of the apartheid Israeli state (anti-Zionism). Continue reading →