How a Secluded 1984 Conference Forged Israel’s Unprecedented Influence Over US Media
How a Secluded 1984 Conference Forged Israel’s Unprecedented Influence Over US Media
As Israel’s October 1 invasion of Lebanon unfolds, the media’s complicity in shaping public perception raises urgent questions
As Israel’s October 1 invasion of Lebanon unfolds, the media’s complicity in shaping public perception raises urgent questions, particularly when viewed through the lens of a controversial 1984 conference where influential advertising and media figures gathered to refine Israel’s narrative strategies. This conference laid the groundwork for a sophisticated propaganda campaign—Hasbara—that sought to sanitize Israel’s actions and cast its military operations in a favorable light. Today, as Western journalists whitewash, distort, and conceal Israel’s the realities of Israel’s deadly campaign of violence, the enduring legacy of this meeting becomes alarmingly clear, revealing how narratives crafted decades ago continue to shape the coverage of a conflict that claims countless lives.
In the first week of October, Israeli forces fired 355 bullets at a car containing a five-year-old, then shot at rescue workers who rushed to save her life. A horrific crime – yet, per many Western media headlines, she was simply a “girl killed in Gaza.” The circumstances and perpetrators of her death, if mentioned at all, were invariably buried at the bottom of reports, well hidden from the 80% of the news-consuming public who only read headlines, not accompanying articles.
By contrast, on October 15, Sky News was very keen that its viewers know the names and faces of four “teenage” IDF soldiers “killed” in a “Hezbollah drone attack,” humanizing and infantilizing individuals who, by mere token of their service in Israel’s military, are by definition, guilty of genocide. In passing, the same report briskly noted: “‘23 die’ in Gaza school strike.” Their identities, ages, and photos, let alone clarity on who or what murdered them, weren’t provided.
Moreover, the inverted commas incongruously hovering around the number of Palestinians killed subtly undermined that claim’s credibility while reducing the child victims to an afterthought compared to the considerably more important quartet of deceased IDF genocidaires. MintPress News senior staff writer Alan MacLeod put it succinctly when he Tweeted, “In years to come, students in university departments around the world will be studying the propaganda embedded in this headline. It’s truly incredible how much propaganda has been packed into 16 words.”
The mainstream media’s systematic use of distancing and evasive language, omission and other duplicitous chicanery to downplay or outright justify Israel’s murder of innocent civilians while simultaneously dehumanizing their victims and delegitimizing Palestinian resistance against brutal, illegal IDF occupation is as unconscionable as it is well-documented. Amazingly though, ‘twasn’t ever thus. Once upon a time, mainstream news networks exposed Israel’s war crimes without qualification, and anchors and pundits openly condemned these actions on live TV to audiences of millions.
The story of how Western media was transformed into Israel’s doting, servile propaganda appendage is not only a fascinating and sordid hidden chronicle. It is a deeply educational lesson in how imperial power can easily subordinate supposed arbiters of truth to its will. Comprehending how we got to this point equips us with the tools to assess, identify, and deconstruct lies large and small – and effectively challenge and counter not only Israel’s falsehoods but the entire settler colonial endeavor.
‘Neighborhood Bully’
On June 6, 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon. The effort was ostensibly intended to drive Palestinian Liberation Organization freedom fighters away from their positions on Israel’s northern border. But, as the IDF savagely pushed ever-deeper into the country, including Beirut, it became clear that ethnic cleansing, massacres, and land theft were – as in Palestine – the true goal. Throughout the Lebanese capital, news crews from major networks and reporters from the West’s biggest newspapers were waiting.
Israel’s rapacious bloodlust and casual contempt for Arab lives had hitherto been, by and large, successfully concealed from the outside world. Suddenly, though, scenes of deliberate IDF airstrikes on residential housing blocks, Tel Aviv’s trigger-happy soldiers running amok in Beirut’s streets, and hospitals overflowing with civilians suffering from grave injuries, including chemical burns due to Israel’s use of phosphorus shells, were broadcast the world over, to nigh-universal outcry. As veteran NBC news anchor John Chancellor contemporarily explained to Western viewers:
What in the world is going on? Israel’s security problem, on its border, is 50 miles to the south. What’s an Israeli army doing here in Beirut? The answer is we are now dealing with an imperial Israel, which is solving its problems in someone else’s country, world opinion be damned.”
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