I was introduced to a blogger in 2014 when I began my own journey to understand what I was seeing on the news: Israel committing every atrocity imaginable against the civilians of Gaza. It was my first knowledge of Pallywood.
Pallywood is a whole industry: civilians, Hamas, Al Jazeera, phony NGO’s and even many UN organizations that put out false stories and staged video of events that are completely faked.
When I stumbled upon this blogger, I played devil’s advocate on every piece. He showed us, very meticulously, how Hamas had dragged military aged men into a schoolyard following a targeted strike by the IDF, outside of the school yard. He examined many stills and video of how they placed a young girl of about 5 in the schoolyard to also make it look as if she was murdered in this schoolyard by the Israelis…on a Sunday. We saw a further still of the young girl walking around. We kne it was after because we could still see the fake blood soaking her skin. I believed everything that I saw myself, except for one piece. While this staging was going on there were about 5 UN employees watching the staging, wearing blue UN vests. I asked this blogger, couldn’t it be possible that the UN workers were actually Hamas, dressed in blue vests to continue the charade? He admitted that it was possible but then shared quite a bit of additional information about our *saintly* UN.
I read this blogger’s daily debunking of Pallywood. There was certainly no shortage of these types of scenes. By my count, he debunked over 600 pieces which included evaluating photos of extreme military strikes. He’s a munitions expert so now I was able to look at photos and learn more about evidence of how photoshopping works in these instances. I was woke. I could no longer read a piece of news or watch a video and walk away and say confidently, that I had just read the facts and the truth and now I knew what happened.
So now I see friends starting to question items that they read or hear about on the news. I hear things like “the media has become evil with their lies”, or “look, more fake news”. No. This hasn’t just happened. This has been going on for three years by my own research. I hear those who decry the “fake news” claims, worried that President Trump is going to make it so that no one believes any of the news, and that is how fascism starts. No, that’s not accurate either. I have been watching “fake news” for at least three years. Goebbels said that if you repeat a lie often enough, it will become truth. And Orwell clearly understood what would happen if media and truth were created to control people.
Ever ask yourself why so many wedding parties get droned or struck upon in the Middle East? Maybe they just get married at a much higher rate than us? Ever ask yourself why the NYT puts out the same story they published three months ago but now it’s released with a much different timeline? Ever ask yourself why the NYT buries ledes 40 paragraphs into a news story or the Washington Post, five paragraphs in, will admit that they can not independently confirm? Or that a man is a definite antisemite because “three people told this reporter” yet several paragraphs later state that these same three people had offered no evidence. Do you ever go back two days later to read that damning article to see if any editor’s corrections had been made to its content or it’s headline? Are you aware that is a journalistic standard to make that note at the bottom, not quietly change the headline or content without notifying the viewer? Are you aware that so many articles get changed within two days, either to its headline or to its content? Are you aware that some get changed without any editor’s note? Do you find it odd that something may be trending on Facebook but when you click on the link, it is only a four or five sentence recap of that trending news, and even more odd, the emphasis is on the most minor of details, yet the trending item seems to only garner one or two sentences? Ever seen a guy live on air, from the scene, claim that an innocent man was shot for no reason while the home office is showing a split screen of that man a few moments earlier waving a large knife trying to attack police? Did you see another news outlet describe it as a man wielding a boy scout’s knife in that same attack, when you clearly saw a hunting knife in that previous video? When John Kerry held a press conference to tell Americans that we abstained from a UN resolution on “settlements” in Israel because it was consistent with US policy, did you go back and actually read the resolution and realise that the Obama administration basically endorsed that the Western Wall was actually Palestinian land that Israel was now illegally occupying, in the face of archaeological evidence and international understanding? Do you find it strange that the NYT offers op-ed space to convicted murderers or ministers of foreign policy, whose one main foreign, policy is “death to the US”.
If you’re still here. News didn’t just become “fake” although that is not a term that I use. Propaganda didn’t just drop down out of the sky. “Run this; don’t run that” didn’t just appear as a good idea. The fear shouldn’t be that more Americans will not believe our media, the fear should be that we have been fed lies and untruths for too long. Our hope *should* be that the media makes honest changes to the news and how they report it, honestly, full stop. Our media has become no different that Russia or Qatari state sponsored media. Oh, and a heads up when you share those cute little panda videos by AJ+ (Al Jazeera’s more hip publication, still Qatari state-run), you are sharing propaganda without even knowing it. If you share the pandas, what else will this cool, hip outlet put out for you to share: people posting selfies in Auschwitz for one.
We all deserve better than this in our country. It’s cute to knock CNN as “fake news”. It’s far more eye-opening to try to understand why this is occurring in the first place.
