Hasbara in ruins: Israeli propaganda campaign fails to whitewash Gaza genocide

By Iqbal Jassat 

“If you normalize genocide, you will have nothing left,” Palestinian-American academic and activist Noura Erakat said in her address to the United Nations marking the 77th commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba in May.

It is not an exaggeration to state that an overwhelming majority of people in the world are aware that, having its public image reduced to tatters - junk status actually - the genocidal Israeli regime is desperate to regain favourable press coverage.

The only option Benjamin Netanyahu and his criminal gang of warlords have to repackage the regime’s international image, as well as to justify the mass slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, is to splash billions on media propaganda.

As explained by Dr Marwa Maziad, professor of international relations and comparative civil-military relations at the University of Maryland, Israel has for decades invested heavily in Hasbara - a term for regime-backed public diplomacy campaigns.

"In practice, it is a tool to justify the state's policies to a global audience," she said.

And since October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched the historic Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, which marks the second anniversary on Tuesday, the regime has continued its media influence campaigns, as relentlessly as the genocide itself.

However, to the dismay of the Zionist regime, the world has not bought its Hasbara. The reason is simple: the justifications for the ongoing genocide in Gaza are blatantly untrue and preposterous, built on blatant lies.

According to Maziad, "Hasbara may still operate at full force, but the reality of pulverised neighbourhoods, mass starvation and mounting civilian deaths has made the narrative impotent, as Israel continues prosecuting a war that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians".

Her estimate is that in late 2024 and early 2025, the Israeli regime approved an unprecedented budget: roughly $150 million, which is more than 20 times the usual annual allocation. Recent reports reveal that this amount has multiplied over and over.

I agree with her that while Hasbara can buy airtime, bots and billboards, it cannot buy legitimacy - not when the policy is a permanent occupation, an attempt at regionally-menacing hegemonic expansionism into Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere dressed up as" security", or when "de-Hamasification" looks like deliberate social collapse.

Though it is known that hasbara budgets keep rising, like the rest of the world, South Africa's tolerance of fake propaganda is not.

Intolerance of Hasbara techniques such as buying journalists or corrupting editors within newsrooms of radio and TV channels is a virtue.

In recent days, the platforming by South Africa's public broadcaster of a known Zionist Hasbarist has sparked outrage among civil rights activists.

Rolene Marks is associated with the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF), an organisation best described as an Israeli asset, which blatantly declares its mission to "build strong support and love for the Land and State of Israel".

Surely, since it proudly claims that "SAZF looks after matters relating to Israel and its image in South Africa", to then believe that Marks would be an objective analyst on the occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, would be foolish as well as extremely naive.

On the issue of the abduction of South Africans on the Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters by Israel's occupation forces, the official stance of the SAZF is shocking but not surprising.

Reacting to the statement of condemnation by the Department of International Relations (DIRCO) as well as by President Cyril Ramaphosa, SAZF ridiculed it in typical Israeli Hasbara, saying it "is a lie" and "reckless disinformation".

Again, not surprisingly, in a recent Jewish Report article, Marks defended Israel's blockade of journalists and denied them access to independently report on the atrocities and carnage caused by Netanyahu’s horrendous genocide.

Contrary to Mark's whitewashing of Israel's failed media blackout, the general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Anthony Bellanger, had a brilliant op-ed in the Guardian under the heading: "Gaza has become journalism’s graveyard. Killing journalists is killing the truth".

Renowned as a unionist, historian and of course a journalist, Bellanger is also a visiting professor of journalism at the University of Mons (Belgium).

His biting criticism of the Israeli army's killing of nearly 250 Palestinian journalists in the past two years can neither be ignored nor dismissed:

"For 24 long months now, Gaza has become the most dangerous place in the world to practise our profession. Israel prohibits foreign journalists from entering the territory, so the truth relies exclusively on Palestinian reporters – almost all of whom are members of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, affiliated to the IFJ. Too often, they work without protection and without refuge for their families. And all too often, they are directly targeted."

If indeed the expectation those South African journalists and media practitioners would be in solidarity with Palestine's journalists, is it acceptable for the public broadcaster to normalize Hasbara by platforming agents who justify Israel's rationale to victimize them?

Bellanger's profound observation that never before has the profession of journalism seen such massacres in its ranks ought to be a daily reminder in newsrooms that "Gaza has become the worst graveyard for journalists in contemporary history".

Interestingly, the IFJ has recorded no comparable death toll since its formation, neither during the Second World War, nor in Vietnam, Korea, Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq.

Deplatforming Hasbara agents is an essential obligation if media outlets have regard for the fact that Palestinian journalists, along with the besieged and displaced population, are the only ones bearing witness to the devastation, destruction, and gruesome atrocities perpetrated in Gaza by the Netanyahu regime.

Iqbal Jassat is an executive member of the Media Review Network, Johannesburg, South Africa.

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV)

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