Israel, which always seeks to blame Palestinians for the atrocities it carries out, is the least trustworthy source about the bombing of the hospital in Gaza.
Liar Liar – by Mr. Fish
By Chris Hedges /Original to ScheerPost
Israel was founded on lies. The lie that Palestinian land was largely unoccupied. The lie that 750,000 Palestinians fled their homes and villages during their ethnic cleansing by Zionist militias in 1948 because they were told to do so by Arab leaders. The lie that it was Arab armies that started the 1948 war that saw Israel seize 78 percent of historic Palestine. The lie that Israel faced annihilation in 1967, forcing it to invade and occupy the remaining 22 percent of Palestine, as well as land belonging to Egypt and Syria.
Israel is sustained by lies. The lie that Israel wants a just and equitable peace and will support a Palestinian state. The lie that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. The lie that Israel is an “outpost of Western civilization in a sea of barbarism.” The lie that Israel respects the rule of law and human rights.
Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians are always greeted with lies. I heard them. I recorded them. I published them in my stories for The New York Times when I was the paper’s Middle East Bureau Chief.
I covered war for two decades, including seven years in the Middle East. I learned quite a bit about the size and lethality of explosive devices. There is nothing in the arsenal of Hamas or Islamic Jihad that could have replicated the massive explosive power of the missile that killed an estimated 500 civilians in the al-Ahli Arab Christian hospital in Gaza. Nothing. If Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) had these kinds of missiles, huge buildings in Israel would be rubble with hundreds of dead. They don’t.
The whistling sound, audible on the video moments before the explosion, appears to comes from the high velocity of a missile. This sound gives it away. No Palestinian rocket makes this noise. And then there is the speed of the missile. Palestinian rockets are slow and lumbering, clearly visible as they arch in the sky and then tumble in free fall towards their targets. They do not strike with precision or travel at close to supersonic speed. They are incapable of killing hundreds of people.
The Israeli military dropped “roof knocking” rockets with no warheads on the hospital in the days leading up to the Oct. 17 strike, the familiar warning given by Israel to evacuate buildings, according to al-Ahli hospital officials. Hospital officials also said they had received calls from Israel saying “we warned you to evacuate twice.” Israel has demanded that all hospitals in northern Gaza be evacuated.
Following the strike on the hospital, Hananya Naftali, a “digital aide” to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, posted on X, formerly Twitter: “Israeli Air Force struck a Hamas terrorist base inside a hospital in Gaza.” The post was quickly deleted.
Since the Oct. 7 incursion into Israel by Palestinian resistance fighters, which reportedly left some 1,300 Israelis dead, many of them civilians, and saw some 200 kidnapped as hostages and taken to Gaza, Israel has carried out 51 attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza that have killed 15 healthcare workers and injured 27, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Out of 35 hospitals in Gaza, four are not functioning due to severe damage and targeting. Only eight of the 22 UNRWA primary healthcare centers are “partially functional,” the WHO says.
The brazenness of Israeli lies stunned those of us who reported from Gaza. It did not matter if we had seen the Israeli attack, including the shooting of unarmed Palestinians. It did not matter how many witnesses we interviewed. It did not matter what photographic and forensic evidence we obtained. Israel lied. Small lies. Big lies. Huge lies. These lies came reflexively and instantly from the Israeli military, Israeli politicians and Israeli media. They were amplified by Israel’s well-oiled propaganda machine and repeated with a cloying sincerity on international news outlets.
Israel engages in the kinds of jaw-dropping lies that characterize despotic regimes. It does not deform the truth, it inverts it. It paints a picture that is diametrically opposed to reality. Those of us who have covered the occupied territories have run into Israel’s Alice-in-Wonderland narratives, which we dutifully insert into our stories — required under the rules of American journalism — although we know they are untrue.
Israel has invented an Orwellian lexicon. Children killed by Israelis become children caught in crossfire. The bombing of residential districts, with dozens of dead and wounded, becomes a surgical strike on a bomb-making factory. The destruction of Palestinian homes becomes the demolition of the homes of terrorists.
The Big Lie — Große Lüge — feeds the two reactions Israel seeks to elicit — racism among its supporters and terror among its victims. The Big Lies fosters the myth of a clash of civilizations, a war between democracy, decency and honor on one side and Islamic terrorism, barbarism and medievalism on the other.
George Orwell in his novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” called the Big Lie “doublethink”. Doublethink uses “logic against logic” and “repudiate[s] morality while laying claim to it.” The Big Lie abolishes nuances, ambiguities and contradictions that can plague conscience. It is designed to create cognitive dissonance. It permits no gray zones. The world is black and white, good and evil, righteous and unrighteous. The Big Lie allows believers to take comfort — a comfort they are desperately seeking — in their own moral superiority even as they abrogate all morality. It feeds, what Edward Bernays called, the “logic-proof compartment of dogmatic adherence.” All effective propaganda, Bernays writes, targets and builds upon these irrational “psychological habits.”
Israeli supporters thirst for these lies. They do not want to know the truth. The truth would force them to examine their racism, self-delusion and complicity in oppression, murder and genocide.
Most importantly, the Big Lie sends an ominous message to the Palestinians. The Big Lie states that Israel will wage a campaign of mass terror and genocide and never take responsibility for its crimes. The Big Lie obliterates the truth. It obliterates the dignity of human thought and human action. It obliterates facts. It obliterates history. It obliterates comprehension. It obliterates hope. It reduces all communication to the language of violence. When oppressors speak to the oppressed exclusively through indiscriminate violence, the oppressed answer through indiscriminate violence.
The cartoonist Joe Sacco and I watched Israeli soldiers taunt and shoot small boys in the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza. We interviewed the boys and their parents afterwards in the hospital. In a few cases we attended their funerals. We had their names. We had the dates and locations of the shootings.
Israel’s response was to say that we were not in Gaza. We had made it up.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Defense Minister and Israeli Defense Force (IDF) spokesperson immediately blamed the killing of the Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022, on Palestinian gunmen. Israel disseminated footage of a Palestinian fighter they said shot and killed the journalist, who was wearing a flak jacket and helmet marked “PRESS.”
Benny Gantz, who was at the time Defense Minister, stated that “no [Israeli] gunfire was directed at the journalist,” and that the Israeli army had “seen footage of indiscriminate shooting by Palestinian terrorists”.
This lie was peddled until video footage examined by B’Tselem, The Israeli Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, identified the location of the Palestinian gunman depicted in the video. The video, the human rights organization found, was taken in a different location from where Shireen was killed.
When Israel is caught lying, as it was with the murder of Shireen, it promises an investigation. But these investigations are a sham. Impartial investigations into the hundreds of killings by soldiers and Jewish settlers of Palestinians are rarely carried out. Perpetrators are almost never brought to trial or held accountable. The pattern of Israeli obfuscation is predictable. So is the collusion of nearly all of the corporate media along with Republican and Democratic politicians. U.S. politicians decried the murder of Shireen and dutifully repeated the old mantra, calling for a “thorough investigation” by the army that carried out the crime.
A few months later, Israel admitted that there was a “high possibility” that an Israeli soldier killed the journalist by accident, but by then the eruption of street protests and rage over the killing of the journalist was over and her murder largely forgotten.
By the time the conclusive proof comes out about the bombing of the hospital, it too will be a distant memory.
There is dramatic footage captured in September 2000 at the Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip — where I saw a nineteen-year-old boy shot and killed by an Israeli sniper — by France 2 TV, of a father trying to shield his traumatized 12-year-old son, Muhammad al-Durrah, from Israeli gunfire that ultimately killed him.
The killing of the boy resulted in the typical propaganda campaign by Israel. Israeli officials spent years lying about the killing, first blaming the Palestinians for the shooting, later suggesting that the scene was faked, and finally insisting the boy was still alive.
When an Israeli soldier, in 2003, murdered the 23-year-old student and American activist Rachel Corrie, by crushing her to death with a bulldozer as she tried to prevent the illegal demolition of a Palestinian doctor’s home, the Israeli army said it was an accident for which Corrie was responsible.
The Israeli military has killed “at least” 20 journalists since 2001, with no accountability, according to a 2023 report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. “Immediately after a journalist is killed by security forces, Israeli officials often push out a counter narrative to media reporting,” the CPJ concluded. This includes blaming the deaths on “indiscriminate fire” by Palestinians or attempts to discredit those killed as “terrorists.”
Israel blocks the work of independent human rights organizations into atrocities and war crimes it commits in Gaza and the West Bank. It refuses to cooperate with the International Criminal Court into possible war crimes in the Occupied Territories. It does not cooperate with the U.N. Human Rights Council and prohibits the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967,from entering the country. Israel revoked the work permit for Omar Shakir, the Director of Human Rights Watch (Israel and Palestine), in 2018 and expelled him. In May 2018, Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy published a report calling on the European Union and European states to halt their direct and indirect financial support and funding to Palestinian and international human rights organizations that “have ties to terror and promote boycotts against Israel.”
After the bombing of the hospital, Israel first released a video that purported to show Palestinian Islamic Jihad rockets which struck the hospital. The Israelis hastily removed the video when journalists noticed that time stamps showed the images were taken 40 minutes after the strike on the hospital.
Israeli propagandists — aware that Palestinian rockets have little explosive power — then claimed that Hamas stored munitions under the hospital. This caused the massive explosion, they said. But if this was true, it would mean there would be a secondary explosion. There was none. And now Israel has released what they say is a recording of two Hamas militants discussing the missile strike on the hospital. The militants ask each other, in a self-incriminating conversation that is too ridiculous to believe, if Hamas or PIJ carried out the strike. Please. How was Israel completely in the dark about an incursion by thousands of armed Palestinian militants from Gaza into Israel on Oct. 7 and able to capture this incriminating conversation by two supposed militants?
“Israel has a whole unit of ‘mistaravim’, Israeli Jewish undercover agents trained to pose as Palestinians and secretly operate among Palestinians,” the reporter Jonathan Cook writes. “Israel produced a highly popular TV series about such people in Gaza called Fauda. You have to be beyond credulous to think that Israel couldn’t, and wouldn’t, rig up a call like this to fool us, just as it regularly fools Palestinians in Gaza.”
Israel has also long targeted medical facilities, ambulances and medics, as Middle East scholar Norman Finkelstein points out. It bombed a Palestinian children’s hospital during the 1982 war in Lebanon, killing 60 people. It also carried out missile strikes on clearly marked Lebanese ambulances during the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon. It damaged or destroyed 29 ambulances and almost half of Gaza’s health facilities, including 15 hospitals, during the 2008-2009 assault on Gaza known as Operation Cast Lead. It routinely prohibited wounded Palestinians from being picked up by ambulances during this operation, often leaving them to die. During Operation Protective Edge, the 51-day assault on Gaza in 2014, Israel destroyed or damaged 17 hospitals and 56 primary healthcare centers and damaged or destroyed 45 ambulances.
You can see my interview, released today, with Professor Finkelstein about Gaza and Israel here.
Amnesty International, which investigated the Israeli attacks on three of these hospitals in 2014, dismissed the “evidence” for the attacks offered by Israel as false. “The image tweeted by the Israeli military does not match satellite images of the al-Wafa hospital and appears to depict a different location,” the report read.
Expose Israeli lies and you are attacked by Israel and its supporters as an anti-Semite and apologist for terrorists. You are banished from mainstream media. You are denied forums to speak about the issue and, as has happened to me, disinvited from university events.
It is an old game, one I have played as a reporter many, many times. I bear the scars of the lies spewed out by Israel and its lobby. Meanwhile, Israel continues its butchery, endorsed and even lauded by Western political leaders, including Joe Biden, who accompany the torrent of lies from Israel like a Wagnerian chorus.
NOTE TO SCHEERPOST READERS FROM CHRIS HEDGES: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Bob Scheer, who runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget, and I will not waver in our commitment to independent and honest journalism, and we will never put ScheerPost behind a paywall, charge a subscription for it, sell your data or accept advertising. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my now weekly Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, The Chris Hedges Report.
Chris Hedges
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.
He was a member of the team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for The New York Times coverage of global terrorism, and he received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. Hedges, who holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, is the author of the bestsellers American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle and was a National Book Critics Circle finalist for his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He writes an online column for the web site ScheerPost. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and the University of Toronto.
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PROGRAMMING NOTE — You’ve been reading her byline for months. Now you’ll be seeing a lot more of Kelly Garrity in your inboxes, on Beacon Hill and beyond.
I’m thrilled to officially welcome Kelly to Massachusetts Playbook. A member of POLITICO’s breaking news team since September 2022, this Northeastern University grad and Walpole native has covered everything from White House happenings to Boston’s City Council elections.
Kelly is now stepping into an expanded role with Playbook as I pivot to more fully covering the 2024 presidential primaries in New Hampshire. Some of you eagle-eyed politicos have already seen me — and my byline — up there these past few months. I’m grateful for the opportunity to cover this unprecedented campaign cycle in more depth. And don’t worry, I’ll still be delivering #mapoli news and scoops to your inboxes — just with a little less frequency.
New Hampshire, put me on your lists (if you haven’t already). Massachusetts, add Kelly to yours. And say hi when you see us around!
We also want to hear from you. What do you want to see more of in Playbook? More coverage of central and western Massachusetts politics? Of the 2024 primaries in New Hampshire? Of Rhode Island? Please email us your thoughts: lkashinsky@politico.com and kgarrity@politico.com .
GOOD THURSDAY MORNING, MASSACHUSETTS . Now to the news.
Four Boston electeds are endorsing William King in the District 6 City Council race today, a quartet that includes state Reps. Russell Holmes and Christopher Worrell and Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden.
But one name stands out: Tania Fernandes Anderson. The District 7 councilor is an ally of District 6 Councilor Kendra Lara, who voters sent packing in the preliminary election after her late-June car crash. Now Fernandes Anderson is backing King, a lifelong Boston resident and nonprofit IT director who is Black, for Lara’s seat.
“By electing leaders who understand our diverse communities' struggles , we will be best equipped to work together toward finding tangible solutions that uplift all residents, which is why I am proud to endorse William King,” Fernandes Anderson said in a statement shared first with Playbook.
Fernandes Anderson’s endorsement is notable for three reasons. She's a member of the council’s left bloc, but she's passing over the more progressive of the general-election candidates — Ben Weber — in favor of King. One of the council’s most outspoken critics of Mayor Michelle Wu, Fernandes Anderson is now positioning against Wu, who's backing Weber, on the campaign trail. And Fernandes Anderson is also aligning herself with one of her council foes: at-large Councilor Erin Murphy, who’s endorsed Kingand helped fundraise for him . As they say, politics makes strange bedfellows.
TODAY — Gov. Maura Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll announce an executive order on competing for federal funding at 9:30 a.m. at the State House. Driscoll attends a municipal marina ribbon-cutting ceremony at 1:30 p.m. in Scituate and participates in STEM Week events at 3 p.m. in Hanover and 6 p.m. at the Harvard College Observatory.
Wu provides an update on a homeownership program at 10:30 a.m. in Dorchester. AG Andrea Campbell is on WBUR’s “Radio Boston” at 11 a.m. Auditor Diana DiZoglio attends a Psychological Center gala at 6 p.m. in Lawrence.
GO INSIDE THE CAPITOL DOME: From the outset, POLITICO has been your eyes and ears on Capitol Hill, providing the most thorough Congress coverage — from political characters and emerging leaders to leadership squabbles and policy nuggets during committee markups and hearings. We're stepping up our game to ensure you’re fully informed on every key detail inside the Capitol Dome, all day, every day. Start your day with Playbook AM, refuel at midday with our Playbook PM halftime report and enrich your evening discussions with Huddle. Plus, stay updated with real-time buzz all day through our brand new Inside Congress Live feature. Learn more and subscribe here.
DATELINE BEACON HILL
BOND BILL BATTLE LINES — Elected officials and special-interest groups are already drawing battle lines over Gov. Maura Healey ’s $4.1 billion housing bond bill.
— THEY LIKE IT : Boston Mayor Michelle Wu , who summited Beacon Hill just last week to ask lawmakers to let the city levy a tax on high-dollar real-estate sales, said she’s “grateful” to see the governor supporting transfer fees. Associated Industries of Massachusetts and the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization are also among those backing the bond bill.
— MIXED REVIEWS: The Greater Boston Real Estate Board applauded initiatives to develop state-owned land and create more housing units. But CEO Greg Vasil slammed the transfer tax as an “unstable source of revenue that would cause more harm than good.”
— THEY DON’T LIKE IT: The Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance is glad rent control didn’t make the bond bill, but that’s about the only thing the conservative group is happy about.
FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — More than two-thirds of Massachusetts voters support legislation that would let cities and towns establish supervised drug consumption sites, according to a Beacon Research poll conducted for Massachusetts for Overdose Prevention Centers and sponsored by ACLU of Massachusetts. That includes majority support among Democrats (85 percent), independents (63 percent) and Republicans (53 percent).
The overdose-prevention coalition is releasing the results of the mid-September survey of 603 voters ahead of a Monday hearingon legislation from state Sen. Julian Cyr and state Reps. Marjorie Decker and Dylan Fernandes that would create a pilot program for safe-consumption sites. Massachusetts recorded a record-high 2,357 opioid-overdose deaths last year.
— “House Approves Gun Law Changes On 120-38 Vote,”by Chris Lisinski, State House News Service (paywall): “Most House Democrats lined up Wednesday in support of a major overhaul of the state's firearms laws, easily hurdling over procedural complaints and sending the Senate a measure that has generated incendiary criticism from gun owners and promises from supporters that it will save lives. … [Representatives] unanimously agreed to an amendment making clear that the bill does not ban off-duty police officers from carrying firearms in certain restricted spaces, so long as the weapon is provided by their department.” More from the Boston Globe's Samantha J. Gross.
— “Massachusetts is drowning in single-use plastics. Why not ban them?”by Sabrina Shankman, Boston Globe: “An executive order issued by Governor Maura Healey earlier this fall banned state offices from buying single-use plastic bottles — a step hailed by many as a victory, but which applies to only 0.003 percent of the plastic bottles used in Massachusetts. … Now, lawmakers and advocates are pushing to go much further — an outright ban on single-use plastics.”
ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR
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Boston isn’t the only city weighing in on the conflict. Worcester’s City Council passedits own resolution on Tuesday, condemning Hamas for taking hostages in Israel.
PLAYBOOK IS GOING GLOBAL! We’re excited to introduce Global Playbook, POLITICO’s premier newsletter that brings you inside the most important conversations at the most influential events in the world. From the buzzy echoes emanating from the snowy peaks at the WEF in Davos to the discussions and personalities at Milken Global in Beverly Hills, to the heart of diplomacy at UNGA in New York City – author Suzanne Lynch brings it all to your fingertips. Experience the elite. Witness the influential. And never miss a global beat. BE PART OF THE CONVERSATION. SUBSCRIBE NOW .
MIGRANTS IN MASSACHUSETTS
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— “Violations do not hold up with state contract for Days Inn,”by Monica Sager, Eagle-Tribune: “The state is paying over $211.9 million to Community Teamwork to assist homeless and immigrant families in shelters, including the Days Inn in Methuen. … [I]n the contract between the [state] and Community Teamwork, the ‘scope of service’ indicated the contractor, Community Teamwork, must ‘provide safe, clean, well-maintained and furnished facilities for families.’ … But recent inspections did not find this true to the Days Inn situation.”
'SPILLING THE T' — The MBTA’s podcastis officially here, after a fittingly stop-and-start launch earlier this month. The first episode, which was posted and then quickly taken downat the beginning of month, features a conversation with MBTA General Manager Phil Eng about the challenges facing the system and his vision for its future.
DAY IN COURT
— “Biden nominates Joshua Levy as permanent Massachusetts U.S. attorney,”by Deborah Becker, WBUR: “The White House announced Wednesday that President Biden intends to nominate Acting U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Joshua Levy to permanently serve in the position. Levy has been acting U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts since Rachael Rollins resigned in May. She left office after two federal investigations found ethics violations and abuses of power.”
FROM THE 413
— “Springfield mayoral hopeful says COVID aid grantee has conflict; state rules imply otherwise,”by Jeanette DeForge, Springfield Republican: “In a statement issued Tuesday by Justin Hurst, a 10-year councilor who is running for mayor, he questioned if his rival Mayor Domenic J. Sarno improperly pledged $250,000 in American Recovery Plan Act funds to the City Line Cafe, which is owned by Martin Cunningham, a Planning Board member.”
— “New report shows ‘catastrophic’ cost of not replacing Cape Cod bridges,”by Matthew Medsger, Boston Herald: “According to a report prepared at the request of U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey and U.S. Rep. Bill Keating, the 90-year old Bourne and Sagamore Bridges are already costing Cape businesses money and impacting quality of life for the people who live and visit the region.”
MEANWHILE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE
— "‘There’s just no excitement’: Retail politics takes a nosedive in a Trump-dominated campaign,"by Natalie Allison and Lisa Kashinsky, POLITICO: "GOP candidate events in Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus state, are down nearly 50 percent this election cycle, compared to the same point in 2015, according to a review of campaign event trackers in early states. In New Hampshire, the first primary state, the candidates’ roster of September events was a fraction of those eight years ago. And hardly anyone is making the trek to Nevada."
HEARD ‘ROUND THE BUBBLAH
TRANSITIONS — Nicole “Nikki” Davies has joined Morgan, Brown & Joy as an associate.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY — to POLITICO’s Kyle Cheney , state Rep. Alan Silvia , Michael Goodman, state Rep. Kate Donaghue, Isaac Simon, Griffin Tighe of state Rep. Kate Hogan’s office and Mark Cote .
NEW HORSE RACE ALERT: BOND, HOUSING BOND — GBH’s Katie Lannan joins hosts Steve Koczela and Lisa Kashinsky to discuss the building blocks of Gov. Maura Healey ’s housing bond bill. Koczela and Kashinsky dive into the latest on the state’s migrant crisis. Subscribe and listen on iTunes and SoundCloud .
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