There's No Way to 'Explain' the Degree of Death and Destruction in Gaza
There is no way to "explain" Israel's conduct in the Gaza Strip. Destruction, killing, starvation and siege in such monstrous dimensions can no longer be explained or justified, even by an effective propaganda machine like Israeli public diplomacy (hasbara).
The evil can no longer be hidden by any propaganda. Even the winning Israeli combo of victimhood, Yiddishkeit, chosen people and Holocaust can no longer blur the picture. The horrifying October 7 events have not been forgotten by anyone, but they cannot justify the spectacles in Gaza. The propagandist who could explain killing 162 infants in one day – a figure reported by social media this week – is yet to be born, not to mention killing some 10,000 children in two months.
Israel is already setting up its updated "Yad Vashem." Hundreds of Jewish functionaries from the United States are being flown by air shuttle to the burnt kibbutzim in the south. Natan Sharansky has also been to Kfar Azza this week, to see and show those antisemites what they did to us.
No official guest will be able to land in Israel from now on without being forced to pass through Kibbutz Be'eri. And afterward if he dares turn his gaze to the Gaza Strip, he will be labeled antisemitic. Wait for Birthright buses with a soldier watching over each one, Czech rifle drawn. They too are already on their way to Nir Oz.
It is very doubtful this will do any good. Hasbara is now an immoral machine. Anyone who makes do with being shocked at what has been done to us while disregarding what we've been doing since has no integrity or conscience. One cannot ignore Gaza and only be shocked by Kfar Azza. Of course it's compulsory to tell and show the world what Hamas did to us. But the story only begins there. It doesn't end there. Not telling its sequel is a despicable act.
Alongside the awful Israeli suffering, which must not be underestimated, the much greater suffering is now in the Gaza Strip. It's enormous in scope and causes despair. It has no explanation, nor does it need one. Suffice it for the reports coming out of Gaza and being broadcast all over the world except in one tiny state, whose eyes are shut and whose heart is sealed.
Palestinians pray over bodies of people killed in Israeli bombardments before burying them in a mass grave in the town of Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, last month.Credit: Mohammed Dahman / AP
Israeli hasbara is a deception. It tells a story that isn't the whole truth. By hiding more than half the truth, hasbara should have been seen as a shameful activity. But it isn't. In Israel a preposterous figure like Noa Tishbi has become the heroine of the moment. The fatuous attack on Benny Gantz, who attended a party in her honor in the home of bereaved father Eyal Waldman and was photographed smiling, a glass in one hand and Tishbi in the other, missed the point.
The point is that deceivers are turned into heroes here. Browsing through Tishbi's X account will make you puke. Natalie Dadon, but with Hollywood stardust, new age, hugs, tears and Colgate smiles, kitsch and death straight from the area near the Gazan border. The Jewish nation is the indigenous people in Israel, we're from here, says the woman who migrated away from here. The moment she landed in Ben Gurion Airport she had to run for shelter, filming herself of course to make the heart of every "friend of Israel" tremble and bring them to tears.
And the jewelry, oh the jewelry on Tishbi: two Stars of David, not one, just to make sure; a Chai necklace and a from-the-river-to-the-sea map, all in gold. A quarter of a million followers. Hanukkah is a Zionist holiday. Tel Aviv is a city under attack. "You have to imagine what the Middle East will look like after Hamas is defeated," she tells Piers Morgan of TalkTV.
Want to know what the Middle East will look like? Gaza destroyed to the ground, two million homeless people and opposite them, also scarred and beaten, an apartheid state, which Tishbi hasn't even heard of.