The September 23 massacre in Lebanon: the media and normalisation of Islamophobia

‘The West and its media institutions are telling us that it’s perfectly fine to kill 600 Arabs and Muslims in a day. It is alright to slaughter more than 50 children in a day if the kids are Arab, poor or Muslim.’

By IQBAL SULEMAN

Malcolm X describes the power of the media: ‘The media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent look guilty and to make the guilty look innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.’

More children were killed on September 23, 2024 than on October 7, 2023.

No one, under any circumstance, can justify the killing of children and non-combatants. There can be no argument about this. This is the position of international law rooted in all of our universal moral values.

The Times of Israel reported on March 3, 2024 that 38 Israeli children were killed in the attacks of October 7, citing the Israel National Council for the Child as its source. At the time of writing, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported that Israel killed more than 50 Lebanese children and approximately 100 women on September 23. The whole world condemned the October 7 attacks but hardly any western country has condemned the September 23 massacre in Lebanon.

The West and its media institutions by implication are telling us that it’s perfectly fine to kill 600 Arabs and Muslims in a day. It is alright to slaughter more than 50 children in a day if the kids are Arab, poor and Muslim.

Islamophobia and the complicity of the western media

So, after Israel slaughters more than 50 kids in one day what does the mind conditioned by the western media think? ‘Well it’s kind of sad that more than 50 kids had their brains splattered but hey, these Arab kids would have grown up to be terrorists. Yeah man, look, women and children should never be butchered and more than 100 Arab women killed on one day in Lebanon is certainly an outrageous number. But then again, these women give birth to terrorists, so the world is now a safer place because they were killed. These sand niggers procreate like animals anyway.’

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You would think that the western media, both print and cable, after having been complicit in the genocide in Gaza would self -correct. But this is not so. For almost a year now the western media has been serving as the public relations apparatus of Israel, repeating Israeli propaganda and lies. When Israel says its war is against Hamas and not the people of Gaza, the media parrots these words knowing fully well the fact that more than 70% of the killed in Gaza are civilians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

When Israel said that Hamas had beheaded babies, President Joe Biden repeated the lie. When Israel bombed hospitals and killed hundreds of civilians on the pretext that Hamas was in the hospital, the western media parroted the Zionist propaganda even though international medics who were serving in the hospitals provided eye witness accounts which unequivocally stated that they saw no evidence of Hamas combatants operating in these hospitals.

Killing civilians and double standards

On September 23 Israel killed approximately 600 Lebanese citizens. Benjamin Netanyahu, after ordering the killing, engaged in a public relations exercise and told the world that this is not a war against the Lebanese people but a war against Hezbollah.

Imagine if Hezbollah killed six hundred Israeli’s in one day? The world would come to a standstill. Every western government would condemn the conduct as terrorism. But now, not a word of condemnation from the United States nor the United Kingdom nor any other western government. Terrorism is not mentioned. Why the double standards and hypocrisy? It comes down to racism, Islamophobia and class discrimination. Almost 85% of the Lebanese population are now living below the poverty line.

International law, universal human rights and duplicity

Israel bombed hospitals, Israel bombed schools, Israel tortured Palestinian prisoners to death, Israel raped Palestinians, Israel dropped bombs on civilians in refugee tent camps, and Israel deliberately starved Palestinians to death. Israel shot at and killed hungry Palestinians whilst they were queuing for food. Israel killed journalists and banned international journalists from reporting from Israel and Occupied Palestine. Israel bombed the embassy of one country in a third country. Israel assassinated the last elected Palestinian leader in another country. Israel detonated communication devices in Lebanon that indiscriminately killed and injured thousands of Lebanese civilians.

It is impossible to think of one human rights violation that Israel has not committed in Gaza since October 7. With all of these rights violations, Israel should not have only been condemned by those who profess to be champions of human rights but Israel should have also become the most sanctioned country in the world. None of these Israeli human rights violations were condemned by the United States and Israel’s western allies. So Israel has been provided with immunity by the powers that be and therefore is acting with impunity in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran.

The western media and complicity in the Lebanon massacre

After killing almost six hundred Lebanese citizens, Netanyahu says that Hezbollah is using human shields and his words are beamed across the world on CNN, Sky News and the BBC on the hour, every hour, giving tacit justification for the slaughter of Lebanese civilians. Let alone giving consideration to the facts on the ground and calling out these lies, these media outlets don’t even question the Israeli propaganda. Instead they peddle and distribute it. Rights organisations tell us that it is rather Israel that uses Palestinians as human shields. The director of the Israeli NGO, Breaking the Silence, said ‘soldiers serving in the Gaza war have repeatedly come forward and reported how Palestinian civilians were being used as human shields’.

Discrimination and the selective use of language by the media

Mainstream cable news networks in the west, like CNN and BBC, for the most part when describing the Lebanese Resistance Movement, describe it as Iran-backed Hezbollah. No one can really dispute this fact because Iran does support Hezbollah and Hamas, both ideologically and with military assistance. But why don’t the same media institutions describe Israel as American-backed Israel? America supports Israel, ideologically and militarily. It has given Israel in excess of 40 billion dollars in military aid. It has provided Israel with political and diplomatic support, having embarrassingly vetoed a number of ceasefire resolutions at the United Nations. Now even after Israel has committed this massacre in Lebanon, the United States is sending more military troops in support of the Zionist State. Sure, describe Hezbollah as Iran-backed but then also describe Israel as American-backed.

Is the western media manufacturing consent for genocide in Lebanon?

When Israel detonated the communication devices in Lebanon, the BBC and CNN reported that this was a targeted attack against Hezbollah operatives. They did not report that the killings were indiscriminate and against international law. Or that Lebanese medics and other civilians were using pagers, that the pagers were detonated in civilian homes and public spaces where many Lebanese civilians were casualties. They did not tell the world about Israel’s deliberate use of psychological warfare that terrorised the entire population of Lebanon to the point that most were afraid to even touch their smartphones and laptops.

After the 911 attacks in the US, the mainstream media went into overdrive in pushing the narrative of the Muslim terrorist and ‘war on terror’. The language and the imagery used by the media was powerful and repetitive: the medieval Arab and middle-easterner, primitive, dirty and bloodthirsty seeking to impose ‘shariah law’ and driven to slaughter all westerners.

The media succeeded in exclusively equating terrorism with Muslims and Islam. The ‘war on terror’ narrative was manipulated by the mainstream western media to manufacture consent for the imperial wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Today the mainstream media presents the Palestinians and the Lebanese as guilty terrorists, savages, cruel, backward and full of hate. It presents Israeli Zionist Jews as innocent victims, democrats, civilised and modern. Hezbollah is described as a terrorist organisation, crazy and on the fringe of Lebanese society with no popular support in Lebanon. The audiences of CNN and BBC are not told of the fact that Hezbollah was created in reaction to Israel’s occupation of Lebanon. These audiences also may have no idea that Hezbollah is active in the Lebanese democratic and parliamentary process and that the Hezbollah alliance won 62 parliamentary seats in the last national elections in Lebanon, just less than fifty percent of the parliamentary seats. Hezbollah is part of the mainstream in Lebanese society. Not a fringe group by any stretch of the imagination. While Hezbollah does not have the electoral support of all of the Lebanese, when it comes to resisting Israeli military aggression, the majority of the Lebanese put aside their political differences and unite to support the Resistance against Israel.

The western media was complicit in manufacturing consent for genocide in Gaza. Is it now manufacturing consent for genocide in Lebanon?

• Iqbal Suleman is a social justice lawyer and former head of the law clinic for Lawyers for Human Rights in Pretoria.