| LurkerJ said: I have pointed out few times that the situation as it is, is definitely not what the majority of the people anywhere in the west want, but I would hard pressed to say our governments are not in full support of genocide, 3 months into the conflict, this is not a question anymore. Even statements like "passively complicit" are wrong. |
I don't know what it is exactly, greed, fear of the Muslim world or caught like a deer in headlights. Western governments have always been pro Israel and not immune to Hasbara either. Some might simply refuse to believe what's actually happening, politicians are just people after all and maybe even more easily influenced by propaganda and dogmatic thinking. Politics are the original echo chambers.
Governments are also full of old people, most set in their ways, rigid in their thinking. Most of the opposition voices come from the younger generations, more resistant to propaganda and disinformation, more used to the lies of the internet and far less prone to take government officials and major news outlets at their word. Which are just as complicit with their self censorship, selective coverage and pushing their own agendas.
The irony
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/israel-palestine-bbc-news-coverage-bias-gaza-war/
Broadcast journalists are sometimes accused of bias against Israel.
Such claims have been made, among others, by the pro-Israel media monitoring group BBC Watch and the right-of-centre press. More recently, the BBC was criticised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and a former BBC executive for not referring to Hamas as “terrorists”.
Academics analysed Israel-Palestine coverage and found Palestinian perspectives were given far less time and legitimacy
...
In 2023, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres reaffirmed the centrality of the conflict’s backstory when he stated that the 7 October attacks “did not happen in a vacuum” and were related to the history of the occupation: “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation,” he said. “They have seen their lands steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence, their economy stifled and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”
Yet the BBC repeatedly gives reports of events without such context. For instance, on 23 November BBC Online reported that: “The conflict began when Gaza-based gunmen from Hamas attacked southern Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 240 others hostage.”
The BBC’s coverage locates the origin of the conflict in the recent actions of Hamas – but Palestinians see themselves as resisting the actions of Israel stretching back decades.
In our earlier studies, which covered nearly five months of BBC One and ITV1 mass audience bulletins, we also found that, in the absence of context and history, BBC journalists would report the Palestinian “side” in terms of the suffering caused by the fighting. But the Palestinian perspective in terms of the reasons for the conflict was absent. The Israeli rationale, on the other hand, was often foregrounded in news reports.
I doubt most people in congress are pro genocide, but they took a stance for Israel early and now either have to somehow fool themselves into believing it was the right choice or admit that it's time to right the ship. A lot probably still refuse to see it as real, not allowing themselves to believe what's happening, it must be terrorist propaganda, can't really be that bad, we're the good guys!
Support is also highest in the USA and India, USA from the national trauma of 9/11 2001, India for 26/11 2008, both drawing parallels to October 7th, both never really looked into why those attacks happened. Or at least never told the public the rationale behind the attacks.
Oh look it's the UK again, about Jammu and Kashmir in particular
https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/why-was-british-india-partitioned-in-1947-considering-the-role-of-muhammad-ali-0
Jammu and Kashmir is a region administered by India as a union territory and consists of the southern portion of the larger Kashmir region, which has been the subject of a dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947 and between India and China since 1959.
There has also been a shift of not taking official organizations serious anymore (if they ever were). First the long campaigns discrediting global warming, then discrediting the WHO during Covid and even blaming them for the pandemic. Both eroding public support and political belief in the alarm bells these organizations ring. And of course the long culture of exaggeration, either trying to shock people into doing something or just to get clicks. Most people have shut themselves off from politics with the constant mud slinging between politicians.
The internet isn't helping either. Far too easy to get sucked into echo chambers, perpetuated by AI algorithms spoon feeding people their feeds. Nothing malicious in the algorithms, they simply serve up what you've been looking at before to get more of your attention. So once you lean to one side, you will only get more exposure to that side. Before the internet news papers were of course also biased, but people still talked more to neighbors instead of posting in echo chambers.
The internet is a great tool to find opposing views, yet far too few people do just that. It's so easy to get sucked into "recommended for you" and watch the next bias confirming video.
And those who know all too well how all of this works are the ones manipulating social media, mainstream media and politicians with targeted propaganda and disinformation campaigns. Social media is also complicit in genocides around the world.
The best new year's resolution is, think more for yourself.
Essay Pro