May 30, 2024

Are the powers-that-be preparing to cut Israel loose?

Kit Knightly

For decades, Israel has been “one of the club”, a proud member of the “good-guy countries”. A handful of regimes protected by a bubble that makes them almost immune to criticism or consequence, whatever crimes and evils they might commit.

No matter how many ships they bombed or children they shot or open air prison camps they ran, the general tone of Western media was the same – Israel are good guys.

Now, there are signs that could change, that the next step in the Gaza narrative will be a heel-turn that makes Israel an official “bad guy”.

The hints have been there for a while, starting almost immediately following October 7th attack last year, and picking up pace in the last couple of weeks.

In fact the Israeli Prime Minister became the first non-African and non-Russian charged with war crimes by the ICC earlier this year.

Now let’s be quite clear here. Netanyahu IS a war criminal. He is a blood-soaked tyrant, guilty of vast amounts of illicit slaughter.

But let’s remember that in the real world blood-soaked war criminals go unpunished – and indeed sometimes get awarded Nobel Peace Prizes – every day. The ICC never moved against Bush or Blair or Obama or Brown or their cadre of war criminal subordinates.

Until recently “Bibi” was in that Teflon-coated club. He has been slaughtering innocents for years and years, while institutions and the legacy media happily ignored the fact. Now suddenly he’s not.

This needs to be interrogated.

The question must be – what is different now?

Two weeks ago, as we reported in This Week, Israel banned Al Jazeera. This received condemnation in the Washington Post and from the German foreign office.

Just a few hours ago, the CBC ran a headline bemoaning the “decline of press freedom in Israel”

Canada, the US, Germany?

These are not places that care about free speech, as their banning of RT (and others) demonstrates, so why the criticism? Why isn’t the Al Jazeera ban bracketed with all the other “acceptable” censorship that’s gone on for years?

Two days ago, the Guardian reported in big red banner headlines…

Spying, hacking and intimidation: Israel’s nine-year ‘war’ on the ICC exposed

Why is this suddenly a front-page story? Alongside that, there are at least half a dozen stories on its front page criticising Israel – here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Contrast this to the coverage of Israel in the same paper nine years ago.

A UN court has already ruled that Israel must “stop Rafah offensive and open border for aid”

Brazil has withdrawn their Israeli ambassador while various European leaders voiced condemnation of the attack. Two more members of Joe Biden’s administration recently resigned in protest over US support for the Gaza war, bringing the total number to seven.

Political punching bag Nikki Haley was filmed writing “finish them!” on IDF ammunitions, Rolling Stone immediately dragged her over the coals for it.

On May 27th, Piers Morgan – the plump purple face of managed media himself – was tweeting out outrage over the Rafah attack.

On May 28th, speaking at the UN, President Macron of France voiced his own “outrage” over the Rafah attack.

Yet another Guardian editorial headlines:

The Guardian view on the Rafah offensive: crossing US red lines should have consequences

And even goes so far as to suggest Biden and the US could be held legally accountable for Israel’s actions as well, something that would have sounded absurd as recently as 2015 (the potential fall of the US Empire, and the power shift it would signal, are a story for another time).

Even the staunchest of Israel’s media supporters – the Washington Post and the New York Times – have been loudly decrying Netanyahu’s actions of late.

The pattern is forming, it is definitely much more acceptable to criticize Israel in the mainstream media right now than it has been for decades.

But why?

Why would outlets like the Guardian or Washington Post decide to print anti-Israel articles now, but not ten years ago?

Is it because Israel is suddenly behaving worse than it ever has before?

Of course not. The slaughter in Gaza is an awful crime, but it’s not new. Israel and their NATO allies already had the blood of millions on their hands before this offensive even started. They commit war crimes and crimes against humanity with such monotonous regularity it almost dilutes the meaning of the words.

Is it because ‘even the mainstream media’ is finally ‘waking up’ or finding a conscience?

No.

They are not waking up because they were never asleep, and no, they have NO conscience.

Unless having one becomes politically expedient.

Nothing is so true the mainstream media have to report it, nothing is so morally outrageous the mainstream media bow to their consciences. They don’t have consciences. There is no facility for even recognizing truth or morals, let alone acting upon them.

They are opinion manufacturing machines, that is all. When they say something – anything – even something manifestly true like ‘Israel is engaged in genocide’ – it’s because somebody somewhere wants to tell a story.

So what is the story they are telling? Where is the narrative going?

The rulers of Israel are bloodsoaked sociopaths but they are also an entirely disposable part of a greater malign whole.

Terminology fails us here, because none of us in the alt-media world can ever completely agree on a name for that whole. CJ Hopkins favours Globo-Cap, others use “the elite”, “Deep State”, “Globalists” or “the-powers-that-(shouldn’t)-be”.

Roughly speaking, we’re talking about an overlapping cartel of political and corporate power brokers existing outside the so-called (largely sham) “democratic” power structures and wielding supranational influence in every sphere of human society.

Israel, like most regions and nations, is a base and tool of those powers, but a replaceable one. There is a vast, VAST power structure desperately looking for a way to appease a swelling of righteous anger tens of millions strong, and cutting Israel and its leadership loose might currently be perceived as a way of doing that.

If that stops the slaughter in Gaza then that’s a win for humanity.

But the slaughter means nothing to the narrative managers. Their agenda will be something else entirely.

If Israel really is about to be ejected from the “we can kill indiscriminately and still be good guys” club, what will that mean for the grand chessboard? Or the greater globalist agenda?