Caitlin Johnstone – Caitlin’s Newsletter Oct 14, 2023
Great efforts are being made to hide what’s happening in Gaza from the outside world, both by Israel and its western allies.
Israel’s minister of communications announced on Friday that all internet services in Gaza would be cut off on Saturday; CNN reports that internet services there have already been plummeting for the last week. Electronic Intifada director Ali Abunimah recently said on Twitter that he hasn’t been able to reach any of his contacts in Gaza for hours.
Even before the internet was cut off it had already been getting harder and harder for people in Gaza to get information to the outside world after Israel cut the enclave off from electricity as part of its “complete siege” on the civilian population. The outlet Middle East Eye reports that it lost contact with two of its journalists in Gaza on Friday. One of them, a reporter named Maha Hussaini, posted a video before losing contact in which she said “This might be my last video, as my phone battery is dying while we’re facing an almost complete blackout.”
As usual, Israel has also been targeting members of the press. A Reuters journalist was killed and six others from Reuters, AFP and Al Jazeera were injured by IDF artillery fire in southern Lebanon on Friday. Outlets like The New York Times and even Reuters have refrained from acknowledging the perpetrator of the attack, but Al Jazeera attributes the casualties to “shelling by Israeli forces,” citing witness testimony. BBC journalists were also held at gunpoint and physically assaulted by Israeli soldiers in Tel Aviv, and it’s probably worth mentioning that these reporters were specifically from BBC Arabic and had Arabic names.
Israel has cut off the Internet in Gaza.
The aim is clear: to commit genocide in a total media blackout.
— sarah (@sahouraxo) October 14, 2023
Efforts to blind the world to Israel’s crimes are of course not limited to Israel. The EU has begun exerting pressure on Twitter to begin censoring content on the Israel-Palestine issue in accordance with new Digital Services Act regulations in order to avoid receiving penalties. The day after receiving a 24-hour deadline to address “illegal content and disinformation,” hundreds of “accounts linked to Hamas” were reportedly removed from the platform. We’re meant to simply take it on faith that these accounts were indeed linked to Hamas and not simply deemed guilty of wrongthink.
Efforts to spread awareness of Israel’s crimes via public demonstrations have also been getting the blindfold treatment in the west. France has issued a blanket ban on all pro-Palestinian protests. Germany has been banning specific pro-Palestine protests and groups and has issued a total ban on all demonstrations deemed supportive of Hamas, and the Berlin public prosecutor’s office has criminalized the use of the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
In a new report for Mintpress News titled “Propaganda Blitz: How Mainstream Media is Pushing Fake Palestine Stories,” Alan MacLeod documents how the western media have been further obfuscating pubic perception into what’s happening in Gaza by pushing brazen atrocity propaganda and deceitfully framing the issue in a way that’s wildly biased in favor of Israel’s information interests.
So you can see that in every possible way, the world’s vision into what’s happening in Gaza is being obstructed, manipulated, and outright hidden. This is happening for the same reason witnesses to Mafia crimes tend to go missing: it’s easier to get away with murder when there’s nobody who saw you do it.
Pretty sure there’s a name for this. pic.twitter.com/aFxXmrsWET
— Thomas Fazi (@battleforeurope) October 14, 2023
This is after all happening as Israel prepares to ramp up its aggressions even further, and as Israeli president Isaac Herzog asserts that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza because they didn’t forcibly overthrow Hamas.
“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Herzog told the press on Friday. “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”
The worse Israel makes itself look with its own actions, the more forceful it and the nations who are aligned with it will get at obstructing and manipulating public perception of those actions. The more brazen Israel’s criminality becomes, the more shrill and vitriolic its defenders will become, the more iron-fisted government interference in public opposition will get, and the more hidden what’s happening in Gaza will become.
Internet blackouts, the war on journalism, propaganda, influence operations, bans on demonstrations and online censorship are all happening for the same reason: to keep the public from forming a truth-based understanding of what’s happening in Gaza. Because if the public did form a truth-based understanding of what’s happening in Gaza, they wouldn’t consent to what’s happening there.
—
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Caitlin’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I remember years ago when Eva Bartlett a Canadian Journalist in every sense of the word filmed an Israeli check point. When the Palestinian women were checked through Israeli women on the other side hurled rocks at them. Eva lost it and went ballistic at the Israeli women. It was released on national tv and I’ll never forget it but national tv called Eva a British journalist. I worked in a backpackers hostel for years as a young bloke. I got to see the world without traveling the world the world came to me. The best bloke I ever met was an Israeli bloke who was on holiday after serving in the IDF. He said he served in a missile silo that never saw operation for two long years. He told me his ancestors didn’t come from Palestine they came from Europe and that’s what he considered home.
He told me for decades to come closely watch the situation in Israel because it will be a flash point. He was not proud to be an Israeli. That was in the mid 80s and ever since I’ve witnessed specifically the Palestine situation. I don’t regard Jew life it doesn’t regard me however this one Israeli bloke clicked me on to world truth more than a parent could.
One of Boy George bumboys
was also servicing a senior member of the government with defence capability
he told the New Herald 3 days before the attack israel was preparing for something big
So if a 17 year old rent boy knew
who else knew ?
Apparently the Israeli President has said “There are no Innocent Civilians in Gaza.” By this reasoning of course, there are no innocent Jews in Israel. Anyone who rejects the latter statement, should certainly reject the former.
As reported in another article on this site, during an interview, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett became furious when asked about Gaza civilians. Bennett referred to the firebombing of Dresden as justification for anything Israel might do, conveniently ignoring the fact that the firebombing of Dresden–burning Nazi women and children alive– was certainly a war crime. The fact that such actions were ignored by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg does not make them any less a crime against humanity.
The article cites assertions by Israeli president Isaac Herzog that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza because they didn’t forcibly overthrow Hamas. It is not easy to remove one’s government. Angry Israelis learned this recently when they protested en masse against government corruption and power-grabbing judicial reforms. One might apply Mr. Herzog’s reasoning to conclude that there are no innocent civilians in Israel because they have not forcibly overthrown the current, seemingly genocidal, regime.
Many people now recognize how badly Native Americans in the Americas were and continue to be treated by Europeans. These same people often seem blind to the parallel in how Israel has dealt with Palestinians since 1948. Settlers moving in, harassing and attacking natives, then calling in the cavalry when the natives fight back, is just part of the shared playbook. The constant threat of Indian wars justified incredible atrocities and served the United States’ interest in expansion for a hundred years. Perhaps the ongoing threats from Hamas serve Israeli interests in much the same way.
After all, many believe that Israel played a key role putting Hamas in power to replace the PLO. If so, it is hard to believe that Israel could install Hamas in power, but later be helpless to replace the regime with a less threatening one.
Israel is already committing war crimes in Gaza, promising more to come. Hopefully the Israeli political and military leadership will be held accountable one day.
Another excellent piece from Caitlin Johnstone here.
“Because if the public did form a truth-based understanding of what’s happening in Gaza, they wouldn’t consent to what’s happening there.” … We could say that not only about Gaza, but about EVERYTHING the Jew does or has done. We are all Palestinians to the Jew, and it is their satanic law that they are relentless in the degradation and destruction of everything and everyone not of their satanic tribe of depraved homicidal maniacs.
What a cheesy world we live in, the robot mind doesn’t understand humor so I laugh at them.
Even if the accounts were “linked to Hamas” (Apparently they’re sitting around twittering on tweeter… right now …. and let’s say they are … even more illegitimate !!) … are we in grade school? Like the comedian said: sticks and stones will break my …it’s the first thing you learn !!”
@ Neil
“Many people now recognize how badly Native Americans in the Americas were and continue to be treated by Europeans. These same people often seem blind to the parallel in how Israel has dealt with Palestinians since 1948. Settlers moving in, harassing and attacking natives, then calling in the cavalry when the natives fight back, is just part of the shared playbook.”
You are right in making the comparison. All colonial expansion was done using similar means. However, that ought not to make such methods justified for Israel or any other nation or people these days. The native people who were pushed out of their homelands had been left out of the loop of the educational, industrial and commercial advancements of what we (rightly or wrongly) still view as the “civilized” the world. They were easily but wrongly considered as “savage”, “primitive”, and “inferior” people by the interloping Europeans in the past. The ruling establishments of the past also used use propaganda and prosperity to lure settlers into the promised lands, mainly for their empire and nation building. Israel is a carbon copy.
That being the case, to those of us in the former “colonies” in North American and most places “down under”, most Jews easily point out the obvious hypocrisy saying to us, “Your ancestors murdered and suppressed inferior, native savages in the past. So can we, and so shut up!”. However, if you are a native of North or South America, or now a MIX of any kind either genetically or “morally”, you simply cannot buy that argument. If we allow this in our day, then that is what is in store for everyone of us deemed as inferior or “non-essentially” in the future, and especially under the totalitarian globalist NWO order in the works, all ruled by the same plutocrats and monsters controlling all of our nations, including Israel.
Their other Zio argument is that their ancestors were driven from their land by the Romans and then were persecuted and treated like inferiors later in European nations, that they, therefore, have a right to clear their ancient lands of the interlopers. To that we have to say that for the most part the Palestinians likely have more Jewish blood in them than those who claim they are the descendants of ancestors from the Roman dispersion, and that it happed some 2000 years ago. In response we hear words to the effect, “So what. It is now our land and these people hate us, and we hate them.”. In that respect we have to remind them, that was exactly the justification the Nazis used in trying to get rid of them. Have they leaned nothing?
We really have to ask if there there are any universal moral standards in play to condemn the Zionist Jews on a global basis for the atrocities they are committing in carving out and growing their nation through land clearances, ethnic cleansing, and genocide? There are the UN humanitarian conventions which most certainly are being flagrantly ignored. We can see clearly that the conventions have no real teeth, but that then becomes an argument for more globalist controls over nation states. In any case, the UN will do nothing in this instance, and neither will our nations who are under the same Rothschild thumb.
As for actual moral condemnations, the fact is that the only organization which the Israelis feared, was that of the Vatican condemning their atrocities, and in fact they publicly warned the Vatican to be silent. I personally have lost a great deal of trust in the Vatican these days in being a moral force in the world and in maintaining any objective moral standards even in my own church, and the fear of the Israelis of a moral condemnation from that source is hard to understand. However, supporting the Palestinian cause has until recently been considered as mainly a left-wing and even a Marxist cause, and hence, whether left or right, Israel has warned, and even threatened the Vatican not to interfere.
Since Covid, there is now no real “right” or “left” anymore anyway. The traditional political lines are blurred for everyone with any sense of decency these days on the grass-roots levels. In relation to the ruling oligarchs behind Covid and every other mass deception and fake peril, we are all Palestinians. They have made war on the common people of the world in order to usher in their totalitarian New World Order, and unfortunately Vatican and hierarchs in other major denominations are mostly their appointed stooges in these times. They can be trusted not to rock the Rothschild NWO boat for any Marxist or underdog sympathies for fear of being personally cast out or even killed. As for their churches the threat they are living us is that if they do not cooperate with all the top-down orders, they will be bankrupted, for they like our nations they also are completely debt-rigged and easily blackmailed. They are all living under the threat of being bankrupted – so corrupt is our world.
I can see no other basis for Rothschild Zionists of Israel being so bold as to warn and threaten the Vatican to mind its own business. The same scenario holds for every other Rothschild debt-rigged nation with all of their puppet leaders advancing the UN-WEF-WTO-WHO totalitarian Agendas. Despite the past left-wing, Marxist leanings of the globalist puppets on the world stage, Trudeau, Biden, Schwab, Macron, etc., on the Palestinian cause they will all be muscled into silence, looking the other way while the slaughter goes on.
Once that operation is complete the US-UK-Zio Rothschild axis will roll into Syria, and once the major power blocks are satisfied with turf in their various speres of control, the full weight of the globalist tyranny will descend upon us.
Israel has absolutely nothing to fear from Russia, China, or any nation in the West. They are all under control and deals have obviously been made for them to look the other way. The Greater Israel is most likely part of the NWO globalist plans agreed to decades ago. Outside of Iran and a few other Islamic nations, the only fear Israel has is from a moral force it can’t control. That ought to be us. The world burns and is drenched in innocent blood while our traditional moral leaders fiddle around and do nothing.