corporate media & Western leaders complicit

  • Post last modified:May 28, 2024
  • Reading time:12 mins read


Less than two days after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to “immediately halt” its genocidal siege in Rafah on Friday 24 May, it brutally butchered 45 Palestinians it had displaced to a refugee camp there.

Social media filled with horrific posts detailing testimonies of this latest abhorrent massacre in the supposed ‘safe zone’. So of course, Western political leaders and corporate media were acting out varying degrees of their usual genocide apologist routine.

Israel airstrike on a Rafah refugee camp

On Sunday, Israel burned 45 people to death in a UN refugee camp in Rafah. It had classified the site a ‘safe zone’ for Palestinians it had forcibly and violently displaced from other parts of Gaza. Despite this, the settler colonial state launched a deadly strike on the camp where Gazans were sheltering away from Israel’s brutal assault.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israel’s strike ignited a fire that tore through the displacement centre in northwestern Rafah. It launched this attack near a facility of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

Palestinians journalists in Gaza, like Hossam Shabat, reported the harrowing reality of Israel’s crime:

Palestinian reporter Hind Khoudary emphasised the fact Israel had designated this a safe zone, but still committed this latest atrocity regardless:

Civil defence agency official Mohammad al-Mughayyir said:

We saw charred bodies and dismembered limbs … We also saw cases of amputations, wounded children, women and the elderly.

One survivor, a woman who declined to be named, said:

We heard a loud sound and there was fire all around us. The children were screaming.

Footage from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society showed chaotic night-time scenes of paramedics racing to the attack site and evacuating the wounded.

Mughayyir said Israel’s brutal ongoing siege has led to severe shortages of fuel and “water to extinguish fires”. As a result, he said that this had also compounded the impact of this latest attack – hugely hampering rescue efforts. Of course, Israel has been purposely cutting off fuel and water as an instrument of its mass-scale ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

Western political leaders issue tepid condemnation

This latest massacre comes after the ICJ ordered Israel to stop its genocidal military bombardment and ground invasion in Rafah. Specifically, on Friday 24 May, the ICJ ordered Israel to halt any offensive in Rafah and elsewhere that could bring about “the physical destruction” of the Palestinians.

Predictably, while South Africa spearheaded this effort to hold Israel accountable, Western leaders issued tepid condemnation.

For instance, French president Emmanuel Macron wrote on X that:

these operations must stop. There are no safe areas in Rafah for Palestinian civilians.

Naturally, the EU also continued its handwringing with more hollow words backed up by no real action. Foreign ministers agreed to call a meeting with Israel to get it to explain its actions in Rafag despite a UN court order to halt it. The bloc’s top diplomat Josep Borrell called the strike “horrifying”.

However, as Euronews reported, Borrell said that at the meeting:

there was no unanimous appetite to consider sanctioning Israel for its actions in Gaza

So, after Israel blatantly and brutally violated the ICJ’s order in real-time, the EU all but shrugged its shoulders:

Many on X pointed out that this response revealed shocking levels of hypocrisy after months of complicity in Israel’s crimes:

Silence in the face of another atrocity

Of course, some Western war criminals in arms couldn’t be bothered to even acknowledge the attack.

A US National Security Council spokesperson proffered the lukewarm demand Israel “must take every precaution possible to protect civilians”. However, after kicking up a fuss over the International Criminal Court’s recent arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Biden was noticeably, nowhere in sight:

Similarly, Sunak and Starmer simply couldn’t divert their attention from the election fever for long enough to acknowledge Israel’s latest war crime:

It was only when a reporter prompted Starmer that he finally spoke about Israel’s abhorrent massacre in Rafah. However, as Unite’s Howard Beckett highlighted, it was more empty demands.

Then, Starmer’s dutiful band of parliamentary stooges repeated his stock response en masse:

As the Canary’s HG reported today, this was only too predictable, given that many Labour MPs rub shoulders with Israel.

Unsurprisingly, Sunak has uttered not a word of condemnation either. As one poster pointed out, he’s still riding the giddy wave of unfettered corporate press fanfare over his latest hare-brained media stunt.

Unfortunately, it’s working, as the shill media has yet to press him on Israel’s appalling attack in Rafah.

Corporate media complicity continues unabated

In fact, everywhere, corporate media coverage of the abhorrent attack on the Rafah refugee camp has played up Netanyahu’s narrative.

Meanwhile, the BBC was laying cover for Israel by splitting hairs between its so-called ‘ground invasion’, and its ongoing indiscriminate airstrikes:

Some exposed the overt double-standards at play, referring back to the notorious ‘beheaded babies’ lie:

In other words, Western corporate media outlets unquestioningly parrot Israel’s unproven propaganda. Meanwhile, when Palestinians share graphic video evidence and reports of real Israeli atrocities, the press is silent.

Of course, this is the Western corporate media machine operating exactly as intended to uphold imperial interests:

Upholding the colonial-capitalist hegemony

Eight months into an atrocious, unrelenting genocide, and the Western political and media establishment continues to spout a spineless, heartless merry-go-round of Israel propaganda. That these apologists for Israel’s crimes barely bat an eye at another gut-wrenching war crime is not surprising.

Ultimately, arbiters of the colonial-capitalist hegemony will always regard Palestinian lives as expendable. More than 35,000 murders later, and a ever-burgeoning horror-show of war crimes – evidently, that fact has not changed.

Additional reporting via Agence France-Presse

Feature image via Associated Press – Youtube





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