Even some who say they don’t hate the Jewish state yet rely only on the mainstream media for news think that there must be some truth to the “genocide” blood libel. Challenging it isn’t easy.
You can see it in online exchanges and hear it in casual conversations. The accumulated weight of nearly two years of media stories claiming that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, murdering journalists to cover up those misdeeds, deliberately starving its residents and thus responsible for “genocide” has had an impact on public opinion across the globe, as well as in the United States.
This has created a growing consensus about the war that ensued after the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab attacks on Israeli communities that took place on Oct. 7, 2023. It doesn’t matter how often the specifics of this narrative of Israeli awfulness are debunked or Hamas propaganda exposed. The notion that what seems like the whole world can’t be wrong while the few embattled defenders of the Jewish state are right is not something a lot of people, including many liberal Jews, can accept.
Falling for Hamas propaganda
After all, if you’ve grown up believing that what you’ve read in The New York Times, watched on CNN or heard while listening to NPR is true, then why question the assumptions about what’s been happening in the conflict that are treated as accepted facts in those outlets and others like them? And even if you are willing to question individual stories that are largely the product of Hamas propaganda and spread by so-called journalists working in territory controlled by those Islamist terrorists, the sheer volume of reporting that bolsters these claims has established a baseline concerning assumptions about the war. Those who consider themselves fair-minded and not prejudiced in their opinions about Israel have long since accepted the idea that where there is so much smoke about Israeli misconduct, there must be fire.