So they’ll flood the tunnels now?

You have to see it to believe it, but it seems one of the unintended casualties of Israel’s genocide in Gaza is going to be the myth of free media. Any journalist who’s covered the Middle East, especially its revolutions and wars, will tell you that the official narrative is the last thing you can trust.

So it was during the so-called Arab Spring, which saw the Muslim Brotherhood – which did not take part in Tahrir Square, by the way – catapulted to power in Egypt. And so it was when al Qaeda hordes were made to lead the uprisings in Libya and Syria – Obama White House’s “leading from behind” novelty – chanting ‘Allah Akbar’ over Gaddaffi’s corpse in Sirte and eating the hearts, literally, of Assad’s soldiers in Hama.

And it’s always true about anything even remotely related to Israel and its settlements. All journalists covering the 2006 IDF-Hezbollah war knew that Israel’s aerial blitzkrieg that pulverised Lebanon, including Beirut, was followed by a humiliating IDF retreat when its ground forces crossed the border.

But when Ehud Olmert ordered more bombings of civilians to vent his anger, all correspondents were forced to peddle Condi Rice’s line that these were “birth pangs of a new Middle East” that will “eradicate Hezbollah terrorists” and “bring peace to the region”, not heartless carpet bombing of innocent women and children.

And it’s never been truer up to and following Hamas’s Oct7 raid into Israel, which forced Netanyahu to hunt down “Hamas terrorists”, freedom haters whose only purpose in life is to destroy the only humane, progressive, liberal democracy in the Middle East. 20,000 dead civilians, especially women and children, were human shields “Hamas cowards” hid behind, therefore entirely their responsibility, not even collateral damage.

In fact, the bigger and more influential and prestigious the international publication/channel, the more you can be sure that it’ll hype the only line that will not get its editors fired and disgraced, and its ad revenues snatched. And it’s not only because one family/company, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, owns a good 70 percent of the whole world’s most influential media outlets. Prominent Arab media houses have also been complicit in this hostile takeover of international news flow.

Until now.

Washington has vetoed all attempts to rein in Israel practically since the UN was established. And people have got used to knowing about it from inside pages of newspapers and way down the list in news bulletins, but always without the fact that the US was often the only country in the world supporting Israel’s stance.

Last week, though, when America was once again alone in vetoing a desperate call for ceasefire at the Security Council – a draft forwarded and backed by more than 100 countries – American isolation was plastered on front pages across the world and screamed out of top-of-the-hour news everywhere, including the “land of the free and home of the brave”.

So much so that the follow-up symbolic UN general assembly resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire — passed by 153 votes in favour, 10 against and 23 abstentions – led to the first ever “sharpest public disagreement” (The Guardian) between Washington and Tel Aviv, with Joe Biden telling Bibi Netanyahu that he was losing international support because of the “indiscriminate bombing”. And also that “Netanyahu should change his government, which is dominated by hard right parties”.

It’s not just Guardian’s middle class, largely left-leaning audience that got this bit of breaking news, of course. Soon enough, Reuters was leading the charge to circulate this development in the industry’s classic rush for ratings.

This “madness”, as Ariel Sharon once described a specific yet very limited kind of coverage of the conflict, died along with the Independent’s legendary foreign correspondent Robert Fisk, only to be resurrected by images of dead Gazan children and the blood curdling shrieks of their mothers.

The latest headline comes from the Wall Street Journal, also owned by News Corp, and it suggests Israel is following its successful ground invasion, which has already smashed Hamas’s theatre of operations, by flooding the tunnels underneath it “where those rats are hiding”.

Only this time the counter argument is also finding unprecedented space. That Hamas is far from destroyed, IDF is shocked by its own casualties, and flooding the tunnels is hardly a new idea, or even a smart one.

Egypt tried it, 10 years ago, when strongman Sisi had just overthrown the Brotherhood, with Uncle Sam’s blessings no doubt, and happily flooded the tunnels connecting Gaza to Egypt with sewage waste. It created an environmental disaster alright, even killed some Palestinians, but it did nothing to Hamas.

If anything, it made Hamas realise Israel could do the same thing one day, which is why most tunnels under Gaza now are not interconnected. So they’ll have to be flooded separately, which will require complete takeover of the entire strip.

And that will run into more Israeli casualties.

Stay tuned to the news. Who knows, some truth might finally filter through as well.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023