Hasbara Not Working? Crack Down On Free Speech

Yahya Sinwar amid the rubble of Gaza, where he was born a refugee in his own land.

In the West we grew up awash in hasbara i.e. Zionist narrative spin both overt and, at times, surprisingly subtle. 

I can remember my father telling me that Israel had no oil reserves and stood alone in the region in this regard. At the time I'm sure he believed that was true. It was part of the David and Goliath myth-making where the Zionist entity was the weak and small character and the Arabs were the giants. Except when they were invisible -- as in the nonsense saying, "a land without a people for a people without a land."

Decades later I would teach high school students about the rise of fascism, the Holocaust, and the creation of the state of Israel -- followed by the Nakba, still unfolding. It was challenging to convey the jaunty tone of U.S. media coverage from the mid 1960's. For example, the Six-Day War, which a news anchor gleefully termed a "blintz-krieg." Because turning Nazi atrocities into cute references to Jewish cuisine helped conceal the fact that Palestinians were suffering for the sins of European fascists.

How times have changed.

Israel is now the butt of jokes about how universally they're hated, and their attempts at spin are tremendously out of touch. Witness their attempt to denigrate Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar by publishing their drone footage of his heroic last stand, footage which contradicted their own propaganda that Sinwar was allegedly hiding in the tunnels, disguised in a burqa, amid hostages being used as human shields. 

Today, people who barely knew his name have seen him display almost superhuman courage and resilience by continuing to resist with only one remaining hand. The effect on public opinion has been the opposite of what was intended: to depict Sinwar as weak and defeated.  Headlines like "IDF Finally Kills Yahya Sinwar After 41,800 Failed Attempts" and photo pairings like this one are all over social media: 

What's a failing imperial outpost to do? Crack down on free speech, of course.

Yesterday in the UK, Electronic Intifada editor Asa Winstanley had his home raided and his electronic devices confiscated.

Here in the belly of the beast, a friend reports their Instagram account is suspended after trying to post writings by and about Sinwar. 

Twitter just announced that blocking will no longer protect your account from unwelcome eyeballs. 

And Australia's government has announce it will levy fines of up to 5% of global revenue on social media platforms that fail to stop the spread of "misinformation." Misinformation meaning true facts that threaten the imperial narrative.

We were told for months that Israel's massacres were about the hostages. But that was never the case, as we found out when we learned that Israel murdered them, too.

From Palestine Will Be Free on substack yesterday:

The world has come to see why that deplorable, despicable, inhuman entity cannot continue to exist and why it must be dismantled in favour of a Palestinian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea in which all faiths can live peacefully side by side, just like they did before the beginning of Zionist thievery and terrorism over a century ago. 

Sinwar, more than anyone else in recent history, has brought that day closer to fruition.