These are findings that should be trumpeted to as wide an audience as possible. Yet even as outlets like the Times undermine their own editorial position with this sort of reporting, fair-minded observers should temper their expectation that this will help turn the tide in the information war being fought about the conflict.
That’s because those journalists, international “human rights” activists and politicians who continue to assert that what is going on in Gaza is a genocide of Palestinians don’t care about what is actually happening there. Even as they hyped Hamas’s misleading casualty numbers, they have not bothered to answer or take into account coverage that makes it clear what is happening is a war but not an ethnic cleansing.
Why?
The answer is that once the false narrative implicit in critical race theory and intersectional ideology is accepted and applied to the Middle East—where Israel and the Jews are falsely labeled as “white” oppressors—it doesn’t matter what either side actually does. Every institution that adheres to the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) that is used as a formula to justify discrimination against Jews and Israelis is the problem—not just the lies told by Hamas.
As best-selling author Ta-Nehisi Coates asserted in his ignorant pro-Hamas screed The Message, which was rapturously received by the mainstream media, the facts about Palestinian terrorism, Hamas intentions and the many Israeli efforts to achieve a compromise peace that would have created a Palestinian state that the Palestinians rejected, don’t matter. Such people believe Israel is in the wrong and has no right to exist or defend itself—ever. What either side does is therefore of no consequence. The Times and other left-wing outlets can publish daily articles debunking the genocide claim, and it would make no difference to those who throw the term around to drain its actual meaning.
This doesn’t mean that supporters of Israel should not continue to point out these facts and make the argument that its cause is just and its tactics defensible (and legal). But unless society is also prepared to attack the toxic woke ideologies that are the foundation of the baseless genocide charge, then it won’t matter how effective any arguments might be.
The target of fair-minded observers shouldn’t only be the flimsy and easily disproved libelous assertions about Israel but the entire edifice of woke ideology, which allows both the ignorant and those with malevolent antisemitic intentions to engage in fact-free smears of the Jewish state. Without tackling these ideologies, the lies about the Middle East will continue to proliferate, regardless of how often they are disproved.
