Let's face it, nobody here, or any reguklar citizens for that matter, has a clue what's really going on - because we are all being played left right and centre.
Michael Rosen said it best yesterday. I've underlined the single sentence which sums up this whole horrific episode in world history:
" I've been thinking about where we are in the news cycle with the Gaza events. Let me rack back a little to the time when Starmer thought that it was a good idea to recognise Palestine. What seemed to be going on then (correct me if I'm wrong) was some heavy duty wallpapering. What I mean by that is that Starmer and others in the government were doing a lot of frowning and 'condemning'. They said that all sorts of things going on in Gaza were 'unacceptable' and of course that they were straining every sinew to bring about a peaceful two-state solution.
Quite what they were doing in actual real terms is another matter. In theory it was brilliant diplomacy going on 'at the highest level' and this (apparently) contributed to the 'brilliant' ceasefire that Trump (apparently) achieved.
Whatever actually did happen at this time is not clear to me (perhaps it is to others) but I confess I did think there was a tiny bit of momentum in the direction of peace. I thought that for a moment perhaps the Netanyahu government was perceived by the US govt (political-military-industrial complex) to have overstepped the mark. The attack dog of Israel had somehow managed to get a bit free from its leash, and had now been mildly restrained by its master. That's what I thought. I confess I was probably wrong. What seems much more likely now is that some kind of cynical ballet is going on, where what we see and hear (care of the media) is not what is actually happening.
How come? Surely with the world's eyes on Gaza and Israel, nothing can be concealed, disguised or re-represented?
Well, to do this you need two things working in tandem. You need the world's media to regard anything produced by Palestinians and/or networks from within the Arab world as useless, suspicious, lying, Hamas propaganda. Second, you need a situation in which the 'trusted' media (BBC, NBC, Fox, CNN, Reuters, PA etc etc) are not allowed in.
This means that we, the punters, are constructed by the media as living in a state of fog. Any story produced by anyone MIGHT NOT BE TRUE. The important bit of that phrase is the word 'MIGHT'.
You see, back in the olden days, the idea was, that there should be a media war that accompanied a real war. There were supposed to be two versions of the truth. I believe what is happening now is not quite the same. What is important for us in the west is that we should think we are living in a state of fog. Any story could be true or false. Any news could be fake news.
If this is the situation, let's ask ourselves, who does this benefit? Who does it benefit that every story might be untrue? Surely, it can only benefit the force with the greatest power, the force that is doing the most damage. It means, in effect, that the greatest power (which has the power to commit the greatest atrocities) can get away with it. Any report that the greatest power has just committed an atrocity MIGHT NOT BE TRUE. Result: greatest power gets away with it.
Of course this also applies to any kind of judgement being made about what's going on. Thus the word 'genocide' is investigated and doubted over and over again which means that it too MIGHT NOT BE TRUE. (I've said many times, I don't actually care what it's called. We have the phrase 'mass killing' and we don't necessarily need a legal term to label it, in order for us to know that something awful is going on. (I fully understand that the 'genocide' word could have legal consequences but at present, the doubt over its use serves the purpose of the greatest power because they can keep saying, 'it's not genocide', as if that proves that mass killing is not going on!))
So the present phase is the 'Foggy Phase', the moment when the most successful part of this war is to cause people to doubt whether any story is true. Has the ceasefire been broken? If so by who? The answer is fog. So long as the majority of people can't commit to saying the ceasefire is just a cover for more atrocities to take place, the greatest power is in a good place. After all, fogged minds aren't angry minds. Minds that are not angry, are not on the streets trying to stop governments from heaping yet more pain, misery, dispossession and death on Palestinian people. Result. "