Throughout the first week of the war, Israel relied on external material and moral support to gain international legitimacy for a broad military operation without providing any specific goals or a clear picture of the future of Gaza, so Israel ignored world public opinion in the first weeks.
Amal Orabi
So far, neither Israeli society nor the official state institutions have woken up from the trauma of last October 7, amid the collapse of the logical and analytical framework that dominates the official and popular discourse in the last two decades, according to which Israel can continue to manage the conflict at the lowest possible cost, and even conclude economic agreements and normalize relations with Arab countries in total disregard of the increasing suffering of the Palestinian people, under the weight of occupation.
Since the early days of aggression and with the exposure of the magnitude of the destruction and loss of life suffered by Israeli society, in addition to the large number of prisoners and abductees, Israel has received unprecedented and unlimited support from the coalition countries, led by the United States, which included giving the green light to launch an aggression on Gaza in order to subjugate Hamas.
Throughout the first week of the war, Israel relied on external material and moral support, to gain international legitimacy for a broad military operation without providing any specific goals or a clear picture of the future of Gaza, and therefore Israel ignored world public opinion in the first weeks, supported by the biased and poor performance of the global press that adopted the entire Israeli narrative.
With the continued great popular pressure exerted by the Arab and foreign street on world public opinion and political leaders, the legitimacy of the Israeli discourse began to crack, and it became impossible to ignore the street, forcing Israel to galvanize the Israeli propaganda or propaganda system in an attempt to preserve the legitimacy of the aggression or “Israel’s right to defend itself” as stated by the heads of major countries, and this system is managed centrally by the official institutions in the state, and attracts Israeli civil society in addition to the arms of the Zionist movement in Europe and America for this purpose.
The Israeli propaganda strategy in the battle on world public opinion depends on two main pillars, the first is to portray the Palestinian struggle as “lasemitic” and “Nazi” terrorism aimed at eliminating Jews, and the other is to promote Islamophobia in European countries to dye the Palestinian struggle in a bloody color that does not differ from “ISIS” and thus Israel blocks the way for any sympathy or support for the Palestinian cause.
Embracing anti-Semitism:
This strategy is not the result of the moment, of course, it continues over time in formulating the Western perception of the conflict, as Israel has been working over the last decade to expand the definition of the term anti-Semitism, by including any criticism directed at the State of Israel, its ethnocratic character, or its expansionist occupation policies as necessarily anti-Jewish, because it aims to “undermine” their state and target them to complete the Nazi project of the Third Reich. Israel is working to achieve this goal by pushing decision-makers in international and academic institutions to adopt the new Israeli definition of Semitism, in addition to activating material pressure by international Zionist organizations on media and civil institutions to adopt this definition and exclude critical voices towards Israel’s policies.
In return for these efforts, the ruling political parties in Israel, led by the Likud Party headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, have worked to consolidate relations with populist right-wing movements and parties, especially in Eastern Europe and its center, as most of these movements carry an ideology hostile to democratic liberalism and human rights, in addition to hatred of immigrants and calling on the basis of the white Iraqi superiority, which forms the basis and intellectual greenhouse of anti-Semitic currents around the world.
The political leadership in Israel has found in these movements a strategic partner to spread its anti-Palestinian propaganda and obtain moral support for the establishment of the Israeli apartheid regime, which is based on similar ideological foundations, thus overlooking the explicit anti-Semitic ideas broadcast by these same movements. In addition, during the term of US President Donald Trump, we witnessed vigorous attempts by Israel to address and co-opt the American far right supporting Trump, which carries ideas similar to its counterpart in Europe, which is based on the anti-Semitic white supremacy, and for the East in general. This rapprochement led to the emergence of relations between the Israeli state and the Jewish communities in America, the majority of which are progressive in support for the party The democrat.
In addition, the Israeli government turned a blind eye to the emergence of movements carrying an anti-Semitic ideology, in addition to the manifestations of clear targeting of Jews, and racist statements by politicians in countries such as Germany, France and Italy in return for their support for Israel’s policies in the region and the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Israeli discourse aims to delegitimize the moral legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle, by addressing the guilt complex of the Europeans for committing the Nazi Holocaust, in order to drop the moral and historical responsibility as a result of the humanitarian disaster committed against Jews in general and Palestinians in particular, and thus giving Israel the full right to commit the most horrendous types of war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel does this today by bringing in the scenes of the Holocaust and equating it with the attack of Hamas in all official and unofficial discourses through the propaganda system to stigmatize Hamas as Nazi after every sentence, not only that, but the demonization of the Palestinian resistance also extends to the demonization of Palestinians on all political spectrums in order to dehumanize them. Thus, Palestinians and supporters of the dismantling of Israeli colonialism become the only anti-Semites, and in return racist anti-Semitic movements are contained.
Promoting Islamophobia:
During the last two decades, Europe and America have witnessed sporadic waves of migration from Arab and Islamic countries, which contributed to the increase in the number of Muslim minorities in major capitals and cities, and began to demand their cultural and religious rights, and these migrations coincided with the escalation of dark forces in the Middle East claiming to apply Islam and Sharia in order to destabilize the region, perhaps the most famous of which is the Islamic State “ISIS”, which has adopted a large number of operations directed against civilians in European cities.
These changes contributed to the rise in the level of Islamophobia in Europe and the consideration of Islam as a closed and petrified religion, and does not share any of the principles and customs of other cultures, but is more inferior to the West in addition to being barbaric and irrational and encourages terrorism. The increase in manifestations of hostility to Islam and Muslims was not limited to the political elite in that civil society and the Western media, which began to repeat these phrases as logical and acceptable, on the other hand, the United States witnessed a continuous escalation in anti-Islamic forces and discourse after the events of September 11, and gained popularity with the start of the populist tide in the world.
Since the emergence of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel has worked to portray the conflict as a religious conflict between Muslims and Jews, not a libertarian political conflict against colonial forces, and with the escalation of the forces of the religious right in Israel and the shift of the political map towards the extreme right during the other two decades, this has become the official speech of the state, especially as this new Israeli right carries a religious messianic project aimed at establishing the Kingdom of Judea and building the third temple on the ruins of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The escalation of hostility towards Islam and Muslim immigrants in European cities in recent years has formed a fertile environment for the global Zionist institutions to spread a discourse that Israel, which represents the principles of the West, and shares a culture that deals with the same dark Islamic forces and victory for Israel as a victory for the West and its principles, by dyeing the Palestinian popular resistance a terrorist religious character, composing lies and falsifying facts in order to create similarity between them and terrorist groups such as ISIS, and thus every Palestinian, and every Muslim pro-Palestinian cause becomes ISIS, until proven otherwise proven.
Today, the World Zionist Agency is working on publishing a media campaign in European cities under the title “You are the subsequent ones” in an attempt to symbolize Western public opinion, that extremist Islam will eventually reach you, therefore, you have to give full and unconditional support to Israel in its war on terrorist Islam, and Israel is waging a media war against every foreigner who supports the Palestinian cause because he supports terrorism, and their last goal was the environmental activist, the Swedish Gorita Tonbridge.
The Palestinian issue and the demand to lift the blockade and aggression against Gaza are witnessing a great global popular detour, especially after the massacres committed by Israel, which took millions around the world to the street, but in order to influence the global discourse, it is necessary to analyze the intellectual foundations of the Israeli propaganda discourse, and to investigate the hidden relations between it and its non-Israeli repeaters in the world, to understand the nature of relations between the West and Israel, and to develop a deism discourse based on historical facts and the justice of the Palestinian cause, and works to destroy racist ideas against Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs.
Amal Orabi; lawyer and human rights defender, holds a master’s degree from the Hebrew University, and a degree in public administration from Duke University in the United States.