Those optics are fueling pro Palestinian protests all over the world right now. Which appear to be substantially increasing with every passing day. Pictures (or in this case videos) showing death and destruction; Palestinians crying about the death of a wife, a child, a brother, a sister, or a parent. All because of Israeli bombs. Palestinian doctors in hospitals crying about not having enough electricity to power their life saving equipment. In short all that is broadcast daily from Gaza are images of seemingly unending pain and suffering.
Day after bloody day for about a month now the media features unimaginable devastation and carnage.
The truth is that Palestinians in Gaza are indeed suffering. We see it broadcast every single night on TV without letup. And in sympathy - reporters crying right along with them. One would have to have a heart of stone not to be affected by those images. Especially if there is no context to them.
Except that the opposite is true.
Most of the protests are by a combination of Jew haters and people that simply sympathize with Palestinian suffering. Palestinians blame it it all on ‘the occupation’. Which is all those sympathizers hear. Only now their ‘righteous indignation’ has increased with a vengeance! ...thereby insisting on a cease fire
And that happens to be precisely what the actual Palestinian protesters want. They would like nothing better than a land of Palestine to that spans from the river to the sea. A euphemism for the destruction of Israel.
Sympathizers joining them in protest are unaware of that motive. (They probably think that the the protests are ultimately about creating a 2 state solution - believing it’s actually attainable.) Additionally, they have either forgotten or completely ignore what precipitated this war. Nor do they understand that all the civilian casualties are the direct result of Hamas using them as human shields.
Quite likely as well - sympathizing protesters do not realize that many if not most of those civilian casualties are actually Hamas terrorists. Who dress in civilian clothing and embed themselves among the civilian population. Nor are these protesters aware that the shortages of fuel to power their humanitarian infrastructure (like hospitals) can be attributed directly to Hamas which has been hording fuel for their terrorist purposes.
And not once have I heard a single reporter ask a suffering Palestinian in Gaza whether they place any blame at all on their own Hamas leadership. Which in the only election they ever had - voted them into office!
It didn’t help that UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that the Hamas attack did not happen in a vacuum. Nor did it help when former President Barack Obama (who is so admired by the left and media elites) said pretty much the same thing. Implying that Israel had a hand in is own massacre (!) because of its settlement policies. What about the hostages? It’s almost as though it’s Israel’s fault that they have been kidnapped by Hamas.
The larger truth is therefore completely ignored. Either by design or through ignorance
Israel is doing nothing short of fighting for its life. And doing so with as little collateral damage as possible. Israel has no interest in taking a single innocent life and has gone out of its way to try and avoid that.
Hamas has done their best to make sure there are as many civilian Palestinian casualties as possible. So they can make their genocidal accusations seem credible. And they are succeeding.
Meanwhile the rest of the entire world is demanding Israel have a cease fire (translation: commit national suicide) No one has demanded anything from Hamas.
So, while truth and justice lies with Israel, the optics tell another story. It is a lie that keeps on giving since the images of Gaza life – even before the war – was dismal. And now the current images make the old ones look like paradise.
I am therefore very worried about the fallout from all this. Thankfully, Israel’s most important ally, the United States, still stands by Israel’s right to exist for both moral and strategic reasons. And to do what’s necessary to accomplish that. And that remains true on both sides of the poltical aisle
But the daily horrific images that are broadcast day after day on the mainstream media will eventually take its toll, I fear.
The antidote to a lie is truth. The 64 dollar question is how to keep the optics from distorting that truth. It is imperative that the truth be spread far and wide. And the only way I know to do that is to keep talking about it. Let the good people of America be reminded as often as possible about it. And to understand what is really at stake. Which is not the genocide of the Palestinian people. It is the genocide of the Jewish people.