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worshippers at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem with stones 703 , whereas in reality they had
thrown stones at some 1,000 Israeli policemen and soldiers who had accompanied the
rightwing Likud party leader and subsequent prime minister and fugitive from Belgian Justice,
Ariel Sharon, to the Noble Sanctuary (Haram al-Sharif, Temple Mount) in east Jerusalem. The
armed Israeli forces had provocatively taken up sniper positions on street corners, squares and
the roofs of buildings, etc., of all days on a Friday, the Muslim religious day of rest and
prayer. Five Palestinians were shot dead and hundreds were wounded, at least 32 of them
seriously, by the visiting soldiers, who thus sparked the outbreak of the Second Intifada, and
the ensuing intense hostilities. Not a single shot was fired by Palestinians on that first day of
hostilities. Nor was any Israeli killed, although a few soldiers were injured by stones. 704 In the
following year, Hamas and Islamic Jihad resumed and intensified a retaliatory suicide attack
campaign, dormant since 1996, targeting Jewish soldiers, settlers and civilians in the occupied
territories as well as in ‘Israel proper’. 705
The ideological weapon of blaming the victim for the very same wrong that was
perpetrated by the own side, used by the US-Israeli elites against the Palestinians, is in
essence nothing but the same as Isocrates’ and the Greeks’ meta-ideology, or the ‘mirror’ that
Africans represented for Europeans having problems with their own ideals of self-negation
and sexual restraint during the modern era. Deception is an integral part of warfare, and the
Israelis as well as the US elites are waging war on the Palestinians. Israel’s Apartheid Wall, as
we have seen, creates the impression that Palestinians wish to invade and Israelis to defend.
This weapon was also used by many other oppressive elites through history, including the US
cultural elites’ invention of the ‘Westerns’: literature, film, and folklore that portrayed Native
Americans as invaders, unprovoked attackers, thieves, and cowards. 706 The real invaders, the
original invaders, are referred to as ‘the victims’, and their acts of violence as ‘self-defense’.
Meanwhile, the propaganda machines continue to churn out their half-truths and lies:
Israeli armed forces on occupied foreign soil are mostly referred to in US as well as European
media as ‘security forces’, Palestinian demonstrators on the other hand as ‘rioters’. The Israeli
occupation army, which has created the largest mass of refugees in the world and is
responsible for the longest period of military occupation in post-World War II history, is
habitually referred to with its self-styled naming, the ‘Israeli Defense Force.’
In a June 2002 special on Jewish victims of Palestinian attacks, CNN’s website again
blatantly ignored coverage of Palestinian victims of the conflict – of three quarters of the
killed victims in this Intifada – and again referred to illegal Jewish settlements as
‘neighborhoods’. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip
was perversely related by CNN to the USA’s ‘War on Terrorism’, implicitly equating all
Palestinians with terrorists. 707
Heavy pro-Israeli pressure is also exerted on what for many must seem to be very
unlikely targets. Powerful media that display deep pro-Israeli bias, such as the New York
Times, Washington Post, CNN, and the BBC, are subjected to a barrage of criticism, even
703 CNN, September 29, 2000. It is symptomatic for the thesis espoused here that CNN chose white South
Africans for their two senior correspondents from Israel and Palestine, Jerold Kessel and Mike Hanna, during the
the beginning of the low-intensity Israeli-Palestinian war from September 2000. A few months after it broke out,
Time Warner Turner became part of AOL Time Warner, i.e. even larger and even more powerful. CNN’s firstlevel
parent corporation, the Turner Broadcasting Empire, was now not even present in the name of the ultimate
owner any longer. The bias in its reporting did not diminish in any way, rather the opposite.
704 Miftah: Statement: Israeli Massacre of Palestinian Civilians Continues, 2000; see also Shalal-Esa: Israel’s
Sharon Again Rejects Blame, Regrets Deaths, 2000 and Ackerman, S. 2002. The human rights group, Amnesty
International, and many others criticized Israel for using military rather than policing methods in the fighting,
though the international news media and world leaders on the whole paid scant attention to this side of the story.
For a rare exception see N.N.: Amnesty Slams Israel’s “Excessive Force”, October 22, 2000.
705 N.N.: Israel and the Palestinians: Yes to a Ceasefire, No to a Halt on Settlements, 2001: 47f
706 See footnote 613 above; Reilly, Kaufman & Bodino (eds.) 2003: 327
707 Abunimah & Parry: CNN Negates Victims And Ignores International Law, 2002