Explaining to a Grandchild what you did during the Genocide – Blog 72
27.06.2025
As the ceasefire between the USA and Israel, on one side, and Iran, on the other, comes into force in a muddled, farcical Trump-world way, while the USA empire spirals downwards into its chaotic decline, let us turn our eyes back to what the USA and Israel are perpetrating in Gaza: the hideous on-going genocide.
However hard it is to watch, watch it we must. And we must, whenever we can, act so as to keep peoples’ eyes on the genocide, focus peoples’ minds on it, and help organize people to act and to force governments to act to stop it. It is not easy. But it is easier than surviving one day in Gaza under the genocidal assault of intentionally imposed starvation, drinking-water-deprivation, fuel supplies cut off, not to mention the perpetual slaughter from the air, from tanks, from snipers’ guns, as you try to calm your children even while the psychological torture of the buzz of drones drives every already-traumatized Palestinian living there to the very brink of going crazy.
Meanwhile, we in LALIT, listened spellbound Sunday to the riveting political report-back from our three members, Alain Ah Vee, Ally Hosenbokus and Ragini Kistnasamy, who joined 4,000 people from 80 countries in Egypt on the Global March to Gaza due to take place in Egypt together with the Sumud Convoy (“Steadfastness Convoy”) from the Maghreb to Egypt. The aim: to keep the eyes of the world on the accelerating genocide Israel is inflicting upon the Palestinians. It was a success. It kept eyes on Gaza, even though eyes had to be on the US-Israel war on Iran. The Global March and the Sumud Convoy dovetailed with the Freedom Flotilla boat, the Madleen, all aiming to show the world the intentional starvation Israel is inflicting on Palestinians. So, we in LALIT got a first-hand account, a “report”, from three people present, who faced repression from the military dictatorship of Egypt, in order to show the world how hard it is even to get to nearby Gaza. They did show us. The report-back session was uplifting. A public report-back will be announced soon. All these actions, taken together, means it is more difficult for the USA and Israel to hide their genocide.
These actions help us put into perspective how, after this is over, we will see ourselves, when we look back at this moment of genocide in history. And what we will answer if someone asks us, “How did you let that happen? Why didn’t you do something to stop it?”
Today, let us put a 300-year perspective on what it will be like for those who collude with genocide, let alone participate in it, one way or another, when they have, in the future, to justify their pasts.
Let us imagine the difficulty any reporter at the New York Times, CNN, BBC, LCI or the Jerusalem Post – being news outlets that bend over backwards to mask, hide and camouflage the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza, when they can no longer outright justify it as Israel’s right to “self-defense” – were to get when they try to give an account, in years to come, of their own role when they look back.
Even if they put every bit of spin on their past roles in the genocide and other crimes of their Governments, to an independent listener from outer space or even to their not-yet-born grandchild in the future, and if they were then cross-questioned by this faraway or future listener, they would end up, very much like poor Gulliver in Jonathan Swift’s 1726 novel written 300 years ago Gulliver’s Travels.
Gulliver got an earful from the good king he gave his account to.
To explain. After Gulliver had given his famously flattering and glorifying account, with eager spin added, on Britain’s fine history and noble system of government, and had fallen over backwards to “justify” the crimes and the corruption of the British political, military and religious institutions of his times, the good king in that faraway kingdom, replied to Gulliver most politely. The king began with the respect he had all along shown the visiting “reporter” from Britain. He exempted the “reporter” from what he was about to say, and came to the point. What he famously said to Gulliver could today be said to any of the thousands of Western reporters in response to their reporting on their country’s generalized moral turpitude: “what I have gathered from your own [telling], and from the answers I have, with much pains, wrung and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your [British] natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious [creatures] that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.” Gulliver got that earful in his direction after his glittering panegyric on Britain’s history and government! [Square brackets to make meaning clear since the words were written over 300 years ago.)
Most reporters in the Western Liar-Sphere could rightfully expect to be given that kind of earful from a listener from the future, in reply to their daily rendering of the genocide in Palestine, justifying the unjustifiable acts of their leaders in Washington and other capital cities.
The countries the reporters “justify”, in particular the USA and Israel, or at least the leaders of these countries or “the bulk of them”, are indeed appropriately described as the most “pernicious” bunch of odious people “that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth”. When we refer to these “leaders in the West”, we include the near-totality of their ruling class, often even with the opposition politicians, most journalists, leaders of bosses’ organizations, the military brass, educated professionals and refined academics, not to mention their “advisors” and the shady “lobbies” and financial backers behind them all.
So, here are one or two of the said moral contortions and outright lies that the Western reporters on Gaza, not unlike Gulliver, make use of to try to cover the crimes of their leaders:
* Palestinians, of whom at least 55,000 have been killed by Israelis since October 2025, are usually reported by these Western media “reporters” as having simply “died”. Rarely are they “killed”. Rarer still are they “killed” by someone in particular. Reporters hardly ever refer to Palestinians being “murdered” or “slaughtered”, as they indeed were. They just “die”. All by themselves. They are seldom “massacred”, as they indeed were, and still are – even as they try to scramble for food from the “death trap” set for them by the Israeli military at supposed US-Israeli military distribution outlets. The Israelis who actually do the killing are rarely mentioned. Generally, the passive voice is used to hide Israeli crimes. And, of course, where the bombs, planes, drones, tanks, munitions and shells actually come from remains a “non-dit”. Palestinians, if they do not just die, are killed only by anonymous aggressors, and without intention. The victims of the war crimes are rarely reported to have had families. Or feelings. Or to have had particular characteristics of any kind. They are just insignificant, often even questionable, “numbers” that just “die” or get “killed” by nobody-knows-who. And then the journalists give pretexts to cover for the crimes: pathetic arguments like “the Palestinians in Gaza are being used as human shields by Hamas”, therefore we massacre them, to the last boy-child and last blind, aged grandmother singing him a lullaby. The reporters claim “the Israelis were aiming at Hamas military targets underneath the hospital”, so bad luck to the slaughtered primary school girl still attached to her drip in her hospital bed, with the memory of her amputated leg still throbbing. Reporters claim, in any case, “that the Hamas Health Ministry statistics are false,” as if it makes a difference whether the USA-Israeli genocide killed “only” 30,000 or a whole 35,000. The reporters’ childish deflections are treated by BBC journalists with all seriousness as if they were rigorous argumentation.
Let us look at the contrast with how reporters treat the Israelis killed by Palestinians. Some 1,200 people in Israel, including soldiers, were killed on 7 October. They are invariably described as having been “massacred”, “slaughtered” or “murdered”, as indeed the civilians amongst them were. (The soldiers amongst them were killed in action.) Although there were 50 times less people massacred in Israel on 7 October than Palestinians massacred since then, over 1,000 Israelis were nevertheless killed. The reporters, however, manage not to mention that many of them were, in fact, killed not by the Palestinians who broke out of their “concentration camp”, but by the Israeli army’s retaliation – under its notorious Hannibal Doctrine that was issued that day, according to the Israeli press. All those 1,850 burnt-out cars piled up for journalists to photograph, like the now-notorious Aline Groeme-Harmon did in her Saturday’s L’Express article after her visit sponsored by the Foreign Ministry of the genocidal state of Israel, look very much like, and are now known to be, the end-result of Hellfire missiles fired by Israeli armed forces from American Apache helicopters, under the Hannibal Doctrine, so as to prevent Palestinians from taking Israelis as prisoners. The Hannibal Doctrine, to explain, says Israeli soldiers must kill the Israelis concerned rather than allow them to be taken captive by the enemy. Such an instruction was issued that day.
Israeli victims of the Hamas led military attack, are often, and rightly so, granted the respect of individualized stories, as “the son of someone”, or “a mother of three”, or “about to be married”, or of “just finishing studies at university in Tel Aviv”. Respect is shown to the dead Israelis, as it should be shown to the dead Palestinians. Only, it is not shown.
* The word “genocide” is well-nigh banned for journalists in the Western media in relation to what Israel is doing. Israel is, in fact, committing genocide. Everyone can see it. Reporters must report it as it is. Not put spin on it. Not deny it. Not hide it.
Israel has already been deemed “plausibly” to be committing genocide by the highest court on such matters in the world, the International Court of Justice. So, that is that. Reporters can quote the exact words of the Court if they are too cowardly to call a genocide a genocide, themselves.
All UN bodies and all respectable international NGOs have called what Israel is doing in Gaza by its name, “genocide”. Reporters can quote them too.
Ordinary people in the whole world with any nous call it “genocide”.
Remember that there is a binding Treaty that makes it the duty of States to “prevent” genocide. The very name of the Treaty is “the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”. What does this actually mean? It means journalists obviously have a duty to name genocide as genocide from the time before any court of law makes the final judgment, perhaps years later. Otherwise it would be too late to “prevent” the genocide. And the Treaty would be totally undermined. Yet, Western journalists avoid the term, or when they use it, the senior staff edit it out.
And the Western reporters never refer to Netanyahu, who is under ICC arrest warrant for war crimes as they should, in a perfectly normal sentence, as, for example, in this one: “Yesterday war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu addressed reporters”, or “Today Mr. Netanyahu, with a warrant for arrest for war crimes hanging around his neck, has a meeting with the German Chancellor,” or whatever. It is as if they forgot that. Even though they might remind us that President Trump is the President of the USA. In Mauritius, journalists fail this rather ordinary test, too.
Hamas members, though their party was elected in free and fair elections, and then subjected to a US-Israeli coup d’etat, and who managed to stay in power in Gaza afterwards anyway because of their general popularity, are decreed “terrorists” and then called “terrorists” by reporters, and the fact that they are “resistance fighters” resisting colonialism, an activity recognized by all international law, including the UN charter, is never mentioned by Western reporters. It is as if journalists do not consider Palestinian leaders, even if elected, as human beings, but as this other species called “terrorists”.
No context is ever given by Western reporters to the 7 October Hamas attack against the eleven odious Israeli military bases that keep the entire people of Gaza locked into an illegal state of siege and under unlawful military occupation. History, they pretend, began on 7 October. The 77 years of aggression that caused the 7 October riposte is hidden from view by the West. Nor do journalists report the success of the military action of Hamas and the other resistance fighters. The military attack that day turned into a rebellion of the enslaved and imprisoned against their aggressors. People ran, cycled and motor-biked on to the land of their grandparents, still colonized by Israel and the West until today. But, for journalists, history began on 7 October. For that obsequious section of the Press, the Palestinians’ oppression and colonization before that is not worth mentioning. That the people of Gaza have been suffering Israeli aggression relentlessly for 77 years is hidden “context”.
This inability to so much as mention the colonial context is proof of the colonial mentality of the Western media.
Context, however, is invariably insisted upon when telling of the genocide Israel is perpetrating. One single day of context: 7 October 2023. For these journalists that mask the genocide, the context is this “Hamas attack”, as they call it. The attack by those who broke out of Gaza did involve the murder of civilians as well as soldiers. It is true. This is a war crime. It is true. There were, to be precise, 695 Israeli civilians killed. That is a huge number. Not 40,000 as in Gaza, but huge. It is serious. And it is a war crime to kill a civilian. But, again, we must remember we do not yet know how many Israeli civilians of the 695 were killed by the Israeli army once the order to follow the Hannibal Doctrine was given. We do know that 36 of those killed were under age 18 i.e. children. It is a big number. These are war crime. One of the children, Millie Cohen, was a baby. She was the only baby to be killed. She was hit by a bullet. The Palestinian resistance groups and others did take hostages. Taking civilians hostage is a war crime. Taking military staff is taking prisoners of war.
But reporters, when writing up the 7 October, go wild.
They resort to what in German is called “gräuelpropaganda”, which means exaggerated or invented “atrocity propaganda”.
Such propaganda had two functions: one, to cover up the military defeat of the Israel Defense Force suffered at the hands of the resistance fighters that day, 7 October, and two, to cover up Israel’s own future genuine atrocities during its 20-month genocide against the people of Palestine. So, the journalists spread this Israeli state-invented propaganda – for example, the lies about “Hamas” supposedly “decapitating people”, supposedly “decapitating 40 babies”. Fabricated stories. No-one is reported killed on the formal Israeli state’s list by decapitation. One baby was killed. One. Her name was Millie Cohen. She was tragically killed in her mother’s arms in cross-fire between the IDF and resistance fighters. The report about 40 babies supposedly being decapitated has been shown to have been completely concocted as gräuelpropaganda.
And Western politicians and journalists spread these lies even while the Israeli armed forces really do blast Palestinian babies’ limbs and heads off their bodies in Gaza. Even as eye-witnesses testify to it. Even as the filming of it proves it. And as the Western reporters cover it up.
And then there are the fake reports about supposed “mass rape”, when there is not evidence of even one single rape by Palestinian men in Israel that day, but only debunked fabrications. This propaganda continues until today, even as the well-documented history of the Israeli masters raping Palestinian women and men remains largely covered up by reporters.
So much for the role of “reporting” in the ongoing genocide.
Conclusion
Imagine politicians and journalists ignoring the genocide and all the expressions of intent of the Israeli leaders to commit genocide, even as these leaders go ahead and bomb children, snipe children, intentionally shell children just as they said they would, as was done against the Amalek, and then starve children to death – just as they said they would by tightening the siege.
Imagine politicians and journalists arguing away the fact that Israel is starving to death children and the sick, on purpose, and denying that it is genocide.
Imagine them arguing away the Israeli bombardment of hospitals with the patients and staff in them, denying that it is genocide.
Imagine arguing away how many messengers have been assassinated, by “messengers” we mean Palestinian journalists massacred by the Israel army in these 20 months, so they cannot deliver their “message”.
Imagine arguing away the Israeli occupation forces’ bombing of archives and art galleries, even a zoo, to wipe out Palestinians memory in Gaza, and deny that this is part of the covering up of genocide.
Imagine arguing away, the Israeli army dismembering of people, old and young.
Imagine arguing away the Israeli torture and rape of men prisoners.
And imagine arguing away Israeli institutions that intentionally starve an entire people, Israeli leaders announcing their intention to do so beforehand, and then that they lay traps with bait in them for these starving people, as if they were pests not human beings, and when they get nearer the food rations, in their famished numbers, eager to feed their little ones, then those institutions first scan them, and then choose who to shoot at, and shoot them. The trap springs, as it were. Even then, they aim at and kill women and children. Imagine that. And then reporters still deny genocide?
We can conclude, in paraphrasing Jonathan Swift’s satire that from “what we have gathered from their own telling, we cannot but conclude the bulk of these Western journalists, especially but not only from the USA and Israel, to be the most pernicious assortment of little odious humans that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”
And that is 300 years after Jonathan Swift wrote similar words in his satire against his own country and leaders, and against Gulliver as the “reporter” trying to cover up the crimes committed in his country. Today’s journalists could do with an iota of Swift’s courage to tell truth to power.
Lindsey Collen
for LALIT.
