'Entirely false', 'fabricated' and 'based on lies'

The three phrases above characterise the stock responses trotted out by Israeli officials and military spokespeople when challenged by the appallingly high toll of death and destruction in Gaza and beyond. 

Time after time (and yet again in Iran and Lebanon), we were told to dismiss the data about killing and maiming released by the “Hamas-controlled” Health Ministry. 

Even established and routinely credible news outlets bought (and continue to buy) into this despicably dishonest agenda.  These claims and assertions have been made time and time again, including in commentary on Gaza and Middle East-related stories in this newspaper. 

“Mere propaganda” we were told, designed to falsely depict and tarnish the “precisely targeted”, “legally compliant”, “defensive” and “security driven” attacks of the Israeli (US supported) regime in Gaza and, most recently in Iran and Lebanon. 

We are repeatedly told that there is no truth whatsoever in local reports of the numbers of entirely innocent civilians being killed and maimed.  The latest known atrocity is the murder of some 150+ young women in southern Iran, now the subject of an “investigation” by the US military.

The killing of innocent people has now become so normalised that much routine reporting neglects to follow through on the details or the impact.  Investigating the direct and indirect scale and impact of such slaughter has become the work of specialist institutions such as the costs of war project  or the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.   

Anyone aware of the killings in Gaza will have noted that even the Israeli Defence Forces now accept the casualty figures they previously vehemently denied.  In fact, it is now accepted that the “Hamas-controlled” health ministry figures are likely an underestimate following research by a diverse range of sources, including those in Israel.

And this is but one glaring headline example of conscious, systematic and blatant lying.

Another example: the obviously false assertions of the Israeli and US regimes around basic food, health and shelter needs in Gaza and about the impact of the war on the local and regional environment.

Yet another: statements on the so-called ceasefire supposedly in place and the systematic killings which continue, albeit on a reduced scale.

As part of a necessary exercise in truth recovery we need to repeatedly remind ourselves of the scale and brutality of this “defensive” war on Gazans – at least 75,000 killed and still counting.  An estimated 170,000 injured and still counting.  According to detailed figures reviewed by Israeli newspaper Haaretz, some 45%+ of those killed were young or teenage girls, women and people over 65 years and therefore most unlikely to have been combatants. 

Women make up a higher percentage of the dead than in any other war in recent decades, while an estimated 5.27 million people in the region have so far been displaced by this vengeful agenda. 

In the twisted calculus of industrial killing, the kill ratio between Israelis and Palestinians is now of the order of 50:1.  The horrific crimes of October 7^th have now been matched 50 times over with more in the offing. 

And that before we count in the killings in Iran, Lebanon and beyond. 

We are now being regaled with a series of new mega-lies. 

One: Israel and the US are attempting to force the rest of the world into accepting that the war on Iran is somehow on behalf of “democracy, peace and the Iranian people”.  This fake binary choice between war and “democracy” is blatant nonsense given that democracy is an absent commodity among their own current and historical allies across the Gulf and elsewhere.

The notion that Netanyahu, Trump and their supporters are invested in democracy is risible.      

Two: for those who even bother to acknowledge the “collateral” damage of the innocent lives obliterated, the rationale is that such is the price of “freedom, security and peace”.  Their assertion of their right (even their duty) to kill and maim many, many innocent “others” is simply and clearly criminal. 

No amount of aggressive lying can erase this.

Each and every time, we meekly accept, ignore or defend their lies, justify their killing and appease their aggression, we simply embolden them further.  The structures and institutions (and many leaders) across the EU continue to spectacularly fail us (and, far more importantly, those being slaughtered) in this regard.

The EU’s blatant double standards on Putin’s war on Ukraine and Trump and Netanyahu’s war on Gaza and now Iran is sickening in the extreme.  Their appeasement in the latter case will rank alongside those of other dark times and contexts in the history of Europe.

Three: This is the biggest lie of all. The assertion that “this time” (unlike the many previous times) when the killing is done and when enough blood has been splattered across the region, “our world” will be safer, more peaceful and more prosperous than ever before. 

The least, the very least we can do is to call out such lying, to refuse collusion in them and to reject the evil they represent.  Every time and everywhere.