media
'Manufacturing Obituaries': Media Falsely Reports Noam Chomsky's Death
"Shameful and sad that Valéria Chomsky had to deny news of Noam Chomsky's death," said one Brazilian academic who spoke to the renowned leftist's wife.
Some popular media outlets and international political figures came under fire Tuesday for falsely reporting the death of U.S. academic and social critic Noam Chomsky, who is fighting to recover in Brazil after suffering a massive stroke last year.
"Chomsky did not die. I just spoke to Valéria, his wife," said Brazilian journalist Cauê Seigner Ameni.
"He is well," Valéria Chomsky confirmed to ABC's Chris Looft.
Beneficência Portuguesa de São Paulo, a hospital in Brazil's largest city, said in a statement that Chomsky was discharged on Tuesday to continue his treatment at home, according toThe Associated Press.
The New Statesman ran—and subsequently deleted—a Chomsky obituary Tuesday following rumors of the 95-year-old's passing. Other outlets including Jacobin kept or tweaked Chomsky obits, with telltale signs like the word "obituary" in their URLs belying their inaccuracy.
Commentators from across the political spectrum also posted reaction—from mournful on the progressive left to gleeful among liberals and right-wingers—to false reports of Chomsky's death.
"Shameful and sad that Valéria Chomsky had to deny news of Noam Chomsky's death over the phone here in Brazil, because a bunch of places decided to publish pre-written obituaries and posts at the first online rumor," Brazilian academic Sabrina Fernandes said on social media.
"Since no outlet that reported the death decided to post an errata, it only got worse," she added, condemning "the online scoop and attention industry... waiting... like vultures."
Responding to numerous reports of Chomsky's death in the Latin American corporate media, Andrew Kennis—a journalism and social media professor at Rutgers University whose book Digital Age Resistance contains a foreword co-authored by Chomsky—told Common Dreams that "it is both a fitting and cruel irony that the fundamentally flawed, trillion-dollar-valued, conglomerate-owned, mainstream news media system has once again erred in its ways."
"No, Noam is not dead. Instead, he's struggling to recover with the unflagging dedication of his partner, who transported him the first chance Noam's health permitted her to do so to receive top-rate medical care in Brazil," Kennis added.
Some observers worked the title of one of Chomsky's more than 100 books—Manufacturing Consent, which he wrote with Edward Herman—into their commentary on the false reports.
"Chomsky is NOT dead. If Chomsky was dead, he would be turning in his grave to see how quickly rumors spread and how social media functions," said Croatian philosopher and Chomsky collaborator Srećko Horvat. "He might as well still call it: 'manufacturing obituaries'."
A 'Focus on Solidarity' and Progressive Solutions at Latest Sanders Institute Gathering
"It bodes well for the future," said Jane O'Meara Sanders of the gathering where elected officials, union leaders, experts, and organizers discussed solutions for the climate, housing, healthcare, and more.
In preparing for The Sanders Institute Gathering this year, Jane O'Meara Sanders and Dave Driscoll knew they would have to pry some of the nation's leading advocates for climate action, labor rights, and economic justice away from their crucial work for a few days.
But doing so meant that progressive leaders including Third Act founder Bill McKibben, One Fair Wage president Saru Jayaraman, economist Stephanie Kelton, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would be able to spend three days collaborating on solutions to some of the most pressing issues facing communities across the United States and the globe.
"We are all working so hard in our own areas," O'Meara Sanders told Common Dreams after the event wrapped up on June 2. "It allowed people to get out of the silos that too often separate the policymakers. So to have elected officials and advocates in so many different areas, having them be able to come together and discuss different things... it bodes well for the future."
Over three days filled with more than 15 livestreamed panel discussions, film screenings, and other events, participants in the Gathering learned about how advocates in California are working to implement social housing, taking inspiration from countries like Austria and Spain; the labor rights movement's "25x2" strategy of pushing living wage legislation and ballot measures in dozens of states; and a number of reasons to be optimistic about fighting the climate crisis—even as scientists warn the continued burning of fossil fuels will push global temperatures past 1.5°C of heating in at least one of the next five years.
Climate
Despite experts' bleak projections, McKibben and Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous welcomed guests on the first night of the conference by offering evidence that electric vehicles and solar panels are rapidly becoming more powerful and more accessible to more U.S. households, providing hope that the world's largest historic emitter of carbon dioxide is making strides to cut down on planet-heating pollution from transportation and electricity.
"Right now, the sea surface temperature in the Atlantic is two to three degrees higher than we've ever seen it before," said McKibben. "And at the exact same moment that the planet is physically starting to disintegrate precisely the way the scientists 30 years ago told us it would—as if scripted by Hollywood—you'll also see finally the sudden spike in... the only antidote we have at scale to deal with this: the application of renewable energy around the world."
"Last summer, just as scientists were telling us that it was the hottest week in the last 125,000 years, that same week was the week that the engineers told us that for the first time, human beings were now installing more than a gigawatt's worth of solar panels every single day on this planet," he added. "That's a nuclear power plant's worth of solar panels. So we are right at the moment when one or the other of these trends is going to cancel out... the other one. Our job, I think, is to make sure that we figure out how to dramatically accelerate that second trend so that we have some hope of catching up with the physics of climate change before it does in everything that we care about on this planet. So for me, that's the context of the moment that we're in."
That theme—giving guests at the Gathering an unvarnished accounting of the very real crises that face communities while providing a glimpse into campaigners' ongoing efforts and positive results of their tireless advocacy work, with the crucial help of progressive lawmakers like Sen. Sanders—continued throughout the weekend.
Joseph Geevarghese of Our Revolution, The Hip Hop Caucus' Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jamie Minden of Zero Hour, and Friends of the Earth U.S. president Erich Pica. (Photo: Will Allen / via The Sanders Institute)
On the climate front, advocates shared their hopes to seize on the opportunity of Republican plans to extend Trump-era tax cuts if they regain power in the November elections.
Participants on a Saturday panel at the Gathering—including Joseph Geevarghese of Our Revolution, the Hip Hop Caucus' Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jamie Minden of Zero Hour, and Friends of the Earth U.S. president Erich Pica—argued that ending federal handouts to Big Oil is part of the broader effort to ultimately "kill the fossil fuel industry" that's cooking the planet while blocking the worker-led demand for a green energy transition.
Too often when covering advocacy work, the corporate media focuses on "the controversy," O'Meara Sanders told Common Dreams. "What's the controversy as opposed to what's the plan?"
The Gathering set out to offer an antidote to that dynamic and many participants—including Dr. Deborah Richter, board president of Vermont Health Care for All—said the effort was a success.
"Sometimes when you're trying to get some sort of major social change, it can get really, really strenuous and make you sad," Richter told Common Dreams. "I felt incredibly rejuvenated after this weekend."
"You tend to get single-focused when you're working on one issue," she added. "And I actually really appreciated the updates, the good and the bad on climate change... I came away thinking, I have to learn more about climate change. I'm going to learn more about this. I'm going to learn more about that."
Healthcare
Richter spoke to attendees about her group's efforts to bring government-funded healthcare to Vermont, noting that she has spent years advocating to expand Medicare to the entire population while also witnessing her own patients' struggles with the for-profit system as a primary care doctor and addiction medicine specialist.
Joining Richter for the panel discussion was Dr. Jehan "Gigi" El-Bayoumi, a Georgetown University School of Medicine professor who founded the Rodham Institute, which works to achieve health equity in communities across Washington, D.C.
"Many people think that what determines how long you live and how healthy you are is access to healthcare," El-Bayoumi told Common Dreams. While crucial, "that only accounts for 20%." The remaining 80% is other "social determinants of health," such as whether people live in a neighborhood with access to affordable, nutritious food and clean air or a fenceline community next to a chemical plant or oil refinery, raising their chance of developing respiratory problems or other health issues.
"Health is the air that we breathe. Health is what we eat and where we live," El-Bayoumi said, noting that the same factors are also "the social determinants of education and the social determinants of employment."
"If you don't have those things in place," the physician continued, "then how are you going to have better health?"
In Burlington, El-Bayoumi spoke about efforts to ensure people of color in Washington, D.C. had access to Covid-19 vaccines when they were first introduced. Working with the Black Coalition Against Covid, she partnered with medical schools at historically Black universities, Black fraternities and sororities, the hip-hop community, and others to hold a mass vaccination event in Ward 8.
"Community needs to be at the table," she told the audience. "The people that are closest to the problem know the solutions."
El-Bayoumi stressed to Common Dreams the importance of not only engaging with impacted community members but also following the lead of success stories around the world. While progressives often cite European examples, she pointed to models such as the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease's Project Axshya, which set up nearly 100 tuberculosis treatment and information kiosks in 40 cities across India.
She also cited models from Egypt, Namibia, and Zimbabwe, where the Friendship Bench project trained elder volunteers without any formal medical credentials to discreetly counsel patients on wooden benches on the grounds of clinics, aiming to address "kufungisisa," the local word closest to depression.
When it comes to providing healthcare, "we're all spokes on a wheel," El-Bayoumi said. "The nurses and the physicians and the custodians... we're all spokes. We could not function without each other."
"But then similarly, health, environment, food, political, education—all spokes on a wheel," she added. "There is not one thing that's more important."
Housing
The latest Gathering built on the institute's April conference on housing justice—an event that brought together leaders in Los Angeles, including the city's Mayor Karen Bass, California Assemblyman Alex Lee (D-25), and U.S. Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.).
Lee also attended the Burlington conference, where he spoke on a panel with Michael Monte of Vermont's Champlain Housing Trust and AIDS Healthcare Foundation president Michael Weinstein, who argued that "housing is not high enough on the progressive agenda."
"Our job as progressives is to do everything we can every day to make people's lives materially better, and this is an area that we have to focus on," Weinstein said, echoing his remarks during the 2018 Gathering, the very first such event hosted by the institute.
In terms of actually getting people into affordable homes, "we could do a lot to make it less bureaucratic," he said—touching on a topic that dominated a second housing crisis panel.
For that discussion, O'Meara Sanders was joined by Brian McCabe, deputy assistant secretary for policy development at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Nika Soon-Shiong of the Fund for Guaranteed Income (F4GI), which provides "cash transfers that support those who have been locked out of welfare programs and economic systems."
F4GI is also working on a pilot program to provide a "cash on-ramp" to help people who are participating in the federal Housing Choice Voucher Program, commonly called Section 8, while they search for rental units, Soon-Shiong explained.
.@nikasoonshiong: I founded @fund4gi out of a belief massive wealth redistribution is an urgent necessity…We research government bureaucracies and we join hands with movement leaders across the country to design a safety net that actually lives up to its name. pic.twitter.com/j7Xbdmh9E1
— Sanders Institute (@TheSandersInst) June 2, 2024
She stressed the importance of including community members in the development and implementation of the programs designed to help them, and pushed back against common messages about financial and logical hurdles.
"Part of addressing the root cause of the housing crisis is actually removing that false frame," she said, "and demonstrating that it's possible to collaborate, to move quickly, and to design things that are new and actually relatively inexpensive."
Workers' Rights
During one of the labor panels, Jayaraman of One Fair Wage spoke about the nationwide fight for better pay and working conditions—and how the movement's wins had provoked threats to her and her family.
El-Bayoumi said that before Jayaraman's remarks, she knew a bit about restaurant workers' fight for higher pay due to experiences living and working in Washington, D.C.—where residents passed ballot measures to raise the minimum wage for tipped employees in 2018 and 2022.
"What did I not know? Always scale," the physician continued. She was struck by the specifics that the labor leader shared, as well as her perseverance while being attacked for being successful.
"She was so inspiring and invigorating… She was raw. She was real. I'm just a great admirer now, and I learned a lot from her," El-Bayoumi said. "Her energy was amazing... It was the information, but also her commitment."
One Fair Wage co-founder and president Saru Jayaraman during a speech at The Gathering. (Photo: Will Allen / via The Sanders Institute)
During her speech at the Gathering, Jayaraman said the fight being fought by the millions of low-wage workers her group represents, many of whom work two or even three jobs just to stay afloat, are crucial if the progressive movement more broadly wants to win the battles on climate, healthcare justice, and housing.
"It's not a competition with all of our issues," Jayaraman said, "because if these folks could work one job instead of two or three, they would have the capacity to work on healthcare and climate change and everything else. I asked them, 'What would you work on if you could only work one job?' They've said climate. They've said public education. They've said, 'I would do so much, but I have time to survive right now. I just have to get from job to job.'"
.@SaruJayaraman: We are on the cusp of an incredibly historic moment and we decided it was time to go huge…We are going to raise 3.5 million workers wages because guess what, when minimum wage is on the ballot it never ever fails. Ever. pic.twitter.com/0TKWqmNmLK
— Sanders Institute (@TheSandersInst) June 1, 2024
So if the question is what's the problem and what's the opportunity, Jayaraman said, "The opportunity is this November—we have 3.5 million workers get a raise and then turn around and work on all of the issues everybody else cares about in this room."
Media & Technology
At a panel on progressive news media, The Nation national affairs correspondent John Nichols spotlighted another labor struggle that has national and global implications, as U.S. newsrooms lose thousands of working journalists to layoffs and budget cuts—frequently stemming from private equity firms purchasing newspapers and then looking to raise revenues at the expense of the reporters whose work the outlets rely on to operate.
"Since 2005, we have lost 45,000 working journalists in this country," said Nichols. "So we have a collapse of journalism. We have no filling of the void, and the institutions themselves are collapsing. Since 2005, roughly 20 years, we have lost a third of all print and online publications that existed at that time."
Nichols, who edited Sanders' book, It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, and spoke on the senator's podcast in April about the current crisis in media, was joined by The Lever founder David Sirota and Common Dreams managing editor Jon Queally.
"We are in a period where our media in this country is in such crisis and such collapse and such dysfunction that it is no longer sufficient to sustain democracy itself," Nichols told the audience.
John Nichols: We are in a period where our media in this country is in such crisis and such collapse and such dysfunction that it is no longer sufficient to sustain democracy itself pic.twitter.com/bwUKQJ6wsj
— Sanders Institute (@TheSandersInst) June 1, 2024
As traditional newsrooms across the country struggle to survive in an industry increasingly dominated by private equity firms and hedge funds, Sirota spoke about starting an online investigative news outlet with the aim of breaking news stories that might otherwise go uncovered by large publications—or that might be reported on briefly, with the stories of the people affected forgotten within a few days.
After a Norfolk Southern train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in the town of East Palestine, Ohio, Sirota said, The Lever "broke open a story that looked back at what were the decisions on specific policies that were made to create an environment for a disaster like that to happen, and which politicians took money at the time while they were making those decisions."
The Leverreported on how Norfolk Southern lobbied lawmakers to repeal a rule requiring widespread use of electronic braking systems, which were meant to help avoid accidents, and how the Trump administration rescinded the rule in 2017 after the rail industry donated more than $6 million to GOP candidates.
"Ultimately, our reporting ended up playing a big role in getting the Senate and the House to introduce major rail safety legislation that had specific provisions in it that dealt with exactly what we were reporting on," said Sirota. "The New York Times asked us to do a full page op-ed about our reporting... That's how elevated it became."
"The reason to do that is not for our own glory," he added. "It's ultimately to shape what actually happens moving forward. So our goal is to hold accountable those who are making these decisions with the hope that if they are held accountable, they will be deterred from making such bad decisions in the future."
In addition to the media, the Gathering featured panels on civil discourse and technology. During the latter discussion, which addressed topics including artificial intelligence and data collection, journalist Sue Halpern pointed out that in Congress, "there's a tension between... wanting to protect us—theoretically—and commerce."
She suggested that corporate pressure is blocking bipartisan efforts to pass federal privacy legislation, explaining that "the lobbyists for the Big Tech companies are constantly saying to lawmakers... if you regulate this, if you pull back on this, you will harm the American economy and you will limit innovation. And I have to say that most congresspeople are terrified of being accused of limiting innovation."
"Congress can't get it together to make national legislation. And so we see kind of a piecemeal thing going on, at least with privacy," Halpern said, highlighting laws passed by California, Illinois, and recently, Vermont, that serve as models for other states, in the absence of federal action.
Screenings
Along with panel discussions, the Sanders Institute incorporated film screenings and music into the Gathering to offer attendees another avenue into some of the issues discussed.
Kelton, an economist at Stony Brook University, presented a film spotlighting efforts by her and several colleagues to prompt a "paradigm shift" in Americans' understanding of the national deficit by introducing the public to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).
Directed by Maren Poitras, Finding the Moneyfollows Kelton and economists including Randall Wray as they explain their vision for how the national debt could be viewed not as a burden that American taxpayers must pay back through cuts to government programs, but "as simply a historical record of the number of dollars created by the U.S. federal government currently being held in pockets, as assets, by the rest of us."
Kelton questioned how the Republican Party can, year after year, name reducing the federal deficit as one of their top priorities when the tax cuts introduced by the GOP under the George W. Bush and Trump administrations have been the primary drivers of the increasing debt ratio in recent years.
"They don't care about the fiscal or budgetary impacts. They want to pass their agenda. So we get sweeping tax cuts," Kelton said. "[The Congressional Budget Office] says the tax cuts will add $1.9 trillion to the deficit. Republicans shrug and say, who cares? On the other side of the government deficit lies a financial windfall for somebody else. Every deficit is good for someone. The question is for whom and for what."
In the film, Kelton argues that as the issuer of U.S. currency, the federal government does not need to "find the money" to spend on public programs, but instead needs only to ensure that real resources like workers and construction supplies are available when it comes to spending. The government can avoid a surge in inflation through policy decisions, the economists in the film argue, but greater deficits in a large country like the U.S. are far more sustainable than Americans have been led to believe.
Along with the Bush and Trump tax cuts, Kelton used the relief packages passed by Congress when the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020. A total of $5 trillion in relief was passed through several laws, raising people's unemployment benefits and helping small businesses to stay afloat.
"We cut child poverty by roughly 40%, and you can talk on and on about the benefits, because every deficit is good for someone," Kelton said. "The question is for whom and where does the windfall on the other side of the government deficit go? In March of 2021, it went to the bottom... That's who it helped. The Republicans did $1.9 trillion with their tax cuts. Where did it go? Eighty-three percent of the benefits went to people in top 1% of the income distribution."
Now, said Kelton, the deficit should be seen as a way for the government to pass more far-reaching legislation to fight the climate emergency.
The weekend also featured screenings of trailers for filmmaker Josh Fox's The Welcome Table—which is about the climate emergency causing displacement and is set to be released on HBO—and The Edge of Nature, an evolving documentary project that connects the crises of Covid, climate, and healthcare.
Fox, known for the award-winning anti-fracking film Gasland, brought his banjo—signed by Sen. Sanders—to Burlington to preview a musical performance that accompanies The Edge of Nature, which he is bringing to New York City with a 12-person ensemble from June 14-30.
"I thought that his telling of his own experience with Covid and the healing power of nature is just so true," El-Bayoumi said of the performance. "I have patients who are just struggling with life, with mental health issues. I will tell them, go outside, take off your shoes, feel the ground under your feet, because nature is healing."
The Edge of Nature "actually gave me hope... which I think is one of the things that was brought up over and over again at the Sanders Institute Gathering," she added. "How do you present that, the issues and solutions, if you will. And I thought that he did that very well."
.@joshfoxfilm -- playing a Bernie-signed banjo discussing Long Covid film: I went off to the woods, you know, Thoreau-style…I discovered something in the midst of all of our grief. In the midst of all our trauma, something weird & miraculous was happening. The planet was healing pic.twitter.com/qj12iZK6ed
— Sanders Institute (@TheSandersInst) June 2, 2024
There was also a screening of a video produced by the Power to the Patients campaign, which has worked to educate the public about healthcare transparency requirements through murals painted in cities across the United States. While the auditorium was waiting for that video to start amid technical difficulties, the audience broke out in song, singing "Solidarity Forever."
"It was so beautiful. And that was an amazing moment to me," Fox told Common Dreams. "And it said to me, go ahead and sing your song in your presentation, because this is a room where you can sing."
"My takeaway was, we have our differences, and we definitely have our identities, and we have our priorities, and we have... teachable moments where we have to instruct each other as to how we're messing up," he said. "But also, we really need to focus on solidarity."
Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous, filmmaker Josh Fox, and The Sanders Institute's Dave Driscoll listen to a presentation during the Gathering in Burlington, Vermont on Saturday, June 1, 2024. (Photo: Will Allen / via The Sanders Institute)
Fox noted that when he used to introduce Sen. Sanders during his 2016 presidential campaign, the filmmaker would say, "All the movements are in this room."
As he prepared for the NYC performances, Fox said that in the current "moment of division… the more we can come together in physical space—and that's what we're offering here with this show, a chance to be in an audience, a chance to be together, a chance to be in reality with each other—the better we can break those boundaries down."
"My takeaway from the Gathering is, I wish this was happening all the time and at the White House," he added, "but if it's not, we can recreate this in our small ways throughout this [election] cycle."
What's Next
O'Meara Sanders said the Sanders Institute intends to have one large Gathering each year and will continue to hold smaller events focused on specific issues, as it did in April with housing.
International Gatherings are one possibility, said O'Meara Sanders, expressing hope that some of the policymakers and advocates who shared their aspirations and plans for the United States in Burlington could convene with lawmakers in other countries who have been successful at implementing social housing, far-reaching climate action, and government-funded healthcare.
The institute aims to bring "members of Parliament together with members of Congress, to bring together diplomats from different countries," said O'Meara Sanders, "to talk about specific issues. Who's doing it best? How can we learn from them?"
"We're going to be bringing people together from all the different countries to explore what they're doing best and how we can do it better together," she added. "And then what's the political will necessary to accomplish these things?"
Despite Mainstream Headlines, Israel’s Tents Massacre Was Not a ‘Tragic Mistake’
Most establishment U.S. media repeated Israel’s false claims that the tents massacre was an accident, weaving disinformation messaging into toned-down descriptions of the scene.
Over the Memorial Day weekend, Israel bombed starving Gazan refugees crowded in tents in Rafah, where Israel had told them to go. As Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch, 5/31/24) wrote, leaflets dropped in Rafah a few days before told them to go to “Tel al-Sultan through Beach Road,” an area set up by the UNRWA refugee agency and designated a United Naitons humanitarian safe zone. The leaflet added, “Don’t blame us after we warned you.”
Nevertheless, without warning, Israel hit the camp with at least eight missiles spreading fire though the encampment of plastic tents (Quds News, 5/26/24). Some refugees burned to death, mostly women and children, leaving them dismembered and charred.
The world saw the terror of the massacre on international and social media. Images showed the area of the strike engulfed in flames as Palestinians screamed, cried, ran for safety, and sought to help the injured. “They told people to move there then killed them,” Richard Medhurst (5/28/24) posted.
Repeating and discussing the ever-changing Israeli disinformation of denial, discussing weapons and official statements, also allows U.S. corporate media to avoid easily observed patterns of Israel’s ongoing massacres, in addition to drawing public attention away from the suffering.
A boy cries in horror and fear as he watches his father’s tent burn with him inside. A man holds up the body of his charred, now-headless baby, wandering around, not knowing what to do or where to go. An injured, starving child convulses in pain as a medic struggles to find a vein for an IV in her emaciated arm (Al Jazeera, 5/27/24).
Al Jazeera (cited by Quds News, 5/26/24) quoted a Civil Defense source, “We believe that the occupation army used internationally prohibited weapons to target the displaced in Rafah, judging by the size of the fires that erupted at the targeted site.”
U.S. news media reported the tent massacre, some more truthfully than others. But most establishment media repeated Israel’s false claims that it was an accident, weaving disinformation messaging into toned-down descriptions of the scene. With confused syntax, they omitted words like “genocide,” “massacre,” and “starvation.” Most left out the language of international law that is best able to explain the unprecedented crimes against humanity that Israel is committing. Corporate reporting left the tent massacre devoid of context and empathy, ignored actions that need to be taken, and ultimately facilitated the ongoing Israeli genocide of Palestinians.
Embedded With an Illegal Invasion
When NBC News (5/28/24) reported from Gaza that “Israeli tanks reached the city center for the first time, according to NBC News‘ crew on the ground,” it failed to say that the NBC crew was embedded with Israel’s invading force.
The same sentence continued that Israel was “defying international pressure to halt an offensive that has sent nearly 1 million people fleeing Rafah.” But Israel was not just “defying… pressure”; it was in violation of a direct order from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to halt its attack on Rafah. Yet NBC reporters rode into Rafah with an army that was ignoring international law to commit further genocide in Gaza.
Compare NBC’s words to those used by Ramy Abdu (5/26/24), chair of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, who posted, “In the deadliest response to the International Court of Justice’s decision, the Israeli army targeted a group of displaced persons’ tents in Rafah, killing approximately 60 innocent civilians so far.”
In a post, Francesca Albanese (5/26/24), U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in Palestine, included International actions that needed to be implemented:
The #GazaGenocide will not easily end without external pressure: Israel must face sanctions, justice, suspension of agreements, trade, partnership and investments, as well as participation in int’l forums.
Such sanctions are rarely discussed in establishment media, but are becoming more urgent, given The New York Times report (5/29/24) that Israel intends to extend the genocide through the remainder of 2024. Though the Times reported on the global outrage and demonstrations against the Rafah massacre, the words “genocide” and “massacre” were not used, nor was there any mention of the possibility of sanctions against Israel.
Targeting ‘Hamas,’ Not Civilians
Instead of sourcing the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, or any humanitarian actors in the region, NBC (5/28/24) quoted a U.N. National Security Council spokesperson:
Israel has a right to go after Hamas, and we understand this strike killed two senior Hamas terrorists who are responsible for attacks against Israeli civilians…. But as we’ve been clear, Israel must take every precaution possible to protect civilians.
Israel’s claim that it killed two Hamas leaders became the rationale for the strike, which was repeated extensively on corporate media. Over NBC‘s images of burning tents and killing scenes, the header read, “Dozens killed in Gaza tent camp in an airstrike targeting two Hamas commanders.”
The dead were connected to Hamas whenever possible. At the bottom of the video, the subtitles listed numbers of dead, followed with, “according to the emergency services in Hamas-run Gaza.”
Human rights attorney and Rutgers academic Noura Erakat (5/27/24) exposed the attempt to link murdered children to Hamas. Over the picture of a burned baby, she posted these harsh words:
Have you ever seen a burnt baby? Can you imagine her final, gaping screams? And all Israel had to tell you was “Hamas,” so you look at her and shrug. Your willful ignorance is genocidal.
CounterPunch (5/31/24) quoted Jeremy Konyndyk, former head of disaster relief for U.S. Agency for International Development, saying, “Bombing a tent camp full of displaced people is a clear-cut, full-on war crime” who added, “Even if Hamas troops were present, that does not absolve the IDF of the obligation to protect civilians. It does not turn a tent camp into a free fire zone.”
‘A Tragic Incident’
On NBC (5/28/24), under the footage of the burning horrors of Rafah, the chyron read, “Netanyahu: Deadly Strike a Tragic Incident.”
In response to Israel’s “accident” claim, journalists, activists, and social media users, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), reacted with incredulity and withering criticism of those who asserted it. That was the reaction Axios reporter and CNN analyst Barak Ravid (5/27/24) received when he posted, “Breaking: Netanyahu says the airstrike in Rafah on Sunday was ‘a tragic mistake,’ and adds that it will be investigated.” Katie Halper (5/27/24) replied to Ravid with, “Nice to see you using your position as a journalist to do comms for the Israeli government.”
And Tlaib (5/27/24) commented:
This was intentional. You don’t accidentally kill massive amounts of children and their families over and over again and get to say, “It was a mistake.” Genocidal maniac Netanyahu told us he wants to ethnically cleanse Palestinians.
She ended with the question, “When are you going to believe him?”
Sana Saeed (5/27/24), media critic for Al Jazeera+, posted the front pages of four print publications that repeated Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s accident claim. The New York Times used “Tragic Accident,” while “Tragic Mistake” was preferred by Time magazine, Forbes, and The Associated Press. Over the headlines, she called them “propagandists for genocide masquerading as journalists.”
‘What Israel Shared With Us’
ButCNN (5/28/24) seemed to be vying for Most Valuable Propagandists by elaborating on the unlikely details offered by the IDF to describe the official Israeli version of what happened. It began with Netanyahu speaking to the Knesset: “Despite our best effort not to harm those not involved, unfortunately a tragic error happened last night. We are investigating the case.”
After four paragraphs of details of the massacre—“burned bodies, including those of children, could be seen being pulled by rescuers from the wreckage”—CNN returned to the justifications. The long, breathless chain of details began:
A U.S. official told CNN Monday that Israel had told the Biden administration it used a precision munition to hit a target in Rafah, but that the explosion from the strike ignited a fuel tank nearby and started a fire that engulfed a camp for displaced Palestinians and led to dozens of deaths.
But the claims could not be confirmed; “It’s what Israel shared with us,” the official said.
But the attack on Rafah was in no way a single “precision” “hit,” as numerous sources reported that multiple bombs hit the camp. And Al Jazeera (5/27/24) reported that Israeli drone strikes also hit the Kuwaiti Hospital, the only functioning hospital in the area, killing two medics. It also pointed out that no notice to evacuate came before the strike.
Ever-Changing Disinformation
In an X post (5/27/24), Intercept co-founder Jeremy Scahill noted the shifting narrative coming from Israel:
Netanyahu now admits Israel carried out the horrifying bombings that incinerated human beings in Rafah last night and turned a refugee camp into hellfire. I assume all the people who claimed it was actually a failed Hamas rocket attack will now rush to correct themselves.
As we observed after the flour massacre (FAIR.org, 3/22/24), Israel’s string of differing false statements immediately following a massacre is an IDF propaganda strategy designed to confuse and delay. Focusing on changing falsities distracts from the massacre and turns the cameras away from the horrible images of U.S.-supplied weapons slaughter. In this way, massacres become normalized.
Repeating and discussing the ever-changing Israeli disinformation of denial, discussing weapons and official statements, also allows U.S. corporate media to avoid easily observed patterns of Israel’s ongoing massacres, in addition to drawing public attention away from the suffering. But on social media, the raw footage and cries of outrage by users indicate that the manufactured emotional distance collapses online.
Some users expressed extreme distress after prolonged viewing of such imagery. One Palestinian organizer (5/27/24) said:
I’m shaking uncontrollably since last night. I can’t get the beheaded baby that was burned alive. The woman’s screaming out of my head. The decomposed bodies of babies out of my head. The girl whose body was stuck to a wall. Hind’s final message to PRCS…. And now. How do you watch all this and not feel your soul dead?
The daughter of Palestinian refugees posted (5/27/24):
The flour massacre, the tents massacre, the hospital massacre, the refugee camp massacre, the “safe corridor” massacre, the endless massacres, in homes, on the streets, in tents, on foot—eight months of massacre after massacre after massacre.
Another user (5/27/24) asked, “Why do so many Israeli mistakes involve launching multiple missiles at people they’ve assured are in safe zones?”
‘Willful Media Blackout’
It was the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (2/29/24) that exposed U.S. corporate media reporting as repeated propaganda in a piece titled, “In Netanyahu’s Israel, the Rafah Horror Was Neither ‘a Mishap’ nor Exceptional.” The editorial scoffed at the use of “tragic mishap” to describe the “horrific incident.” It observed that “it took Netanyahu 20 hours to produce the disgraceful statement, which, as usual, lacked any shred of regret over the death of ‘noncombatants.’”
Haaretz derided the “willful media blackout regarding the scope of death and destruction over the last eight months.” Skeptical about the assertion that “it was not expected to cause damage to noncombatant civilians,” the paper observed that, if true, “this involves an ongoing failure at the strategic level.”
By May 29, U.S. corporate media began to report extensively that the Israeli bombs dropped on Rafah that burned Palestinian refugees alive were made in the U.S. A munitions fragment was filmed by Palestinian journalist Alam Sadeq, and was posted on X (5/27/24) by former U.S. Army explosive expert Trevor Ball two days earlier. Much was made of the fact that the ordinance was smaller than the usual 2,000-pound bombs used to destroy Gaza, and were the preferred bombs the Biden administration had sent to Israel.
Over the last eight months, U.S. establishment media have helped Biden “explain away” such atrocities.
As The New York Times (5/29/24) put it, “U.S. officials have been pushing Israel to use more of this type of bomb, which they say can reduce civilian casualties.” The lengthy report included a drawing of the bomb, the details of its manufacture, and assertions that its use by Israel indicated they tried to kill fewer civilians. Gone were any mention of the “tragic mistake,” and the “exploded fuel tank,” forgotten as yesterday’s fake news.
But a lengthy back-and-forth about how the fire could have started failed to point out the obvious, which comes only at the very end when a retired U.S. Air Force sergeant observes, “When you use a weapon that’s intended as precision and low–collateral damage in an area where civilians are saturated, it really negates that intended use.”
As Israel’s atrocities continue to mount in Gaza, the LA Progressive (6/7/24) wrote that though Biden claimed to care about the loss of civilian life in Gaza, and that an Israeli attacked on Rafah would be a “red line,” “events of the past weeks have demonstrated that none of these claims are in fact true.” It added that a month ago, Hamas agreed to an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire agreement “that looked a lot like the cease-fire agreement now being promoted by the Biden administration,” but Israel responded by rejecting that agreement as well.
In addition, Israel closed off the border area between Israel and Egypt, cutting off any aid or supplies from coming into famine-ravaged Gaza. The authors concluded, “What has transpired is a horrifying series of massacres against civilians, which the Biden administration continues to try to downplay, excuse and explain away.”
Over the last eight months, U.S. establishment media have helped Biden “explain away” such atrocities. They have not stopped repeating Israel’s propaganda, and have acted as willing conduits for Israeli disinformation. It is past time they stopped doing so, and started reporting on what is actually happening on the ground in Gaza, not through the eyes of the IDF.