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If indeed the expectation that South African journalists and media practitioners would be in solidarity with Palestine’s journalists, is it acceptable for the public broadcaster to normalise Hasbara by platforming agents who justify Israel’s rationale to victimise them?
By IQBAL JASSAT
It is not an exaggeration to state that an overwhelming majority of people in the world are aware that having its public image reduced to tatters – junk status actually – the genocidal regime, a/k/a #ApartheidIsrael, is desperate to regain favourable press coverage.
‘If you normalise genocide, you will have nothing left.’ – Professor Noura Erakat at the 77th Commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba
The only option Netanyahu and his criminal gang of warlords have to package Israel’s public image as a ‘benevolent democracy’, as well as to justify the mass slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, is to splash billions on media outlets.
As explained by Dr Marwa Maziad, professor of international relations and comparative civil-military relations at the University of Maryland, Israel has for decades invested heavily in Hasbara – a term for state-backed public diplomacy campaigns.
‘In practice, it is a tool to justify the state’s policies to a global audience,’ she writes.
And since October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched Al-Aqsa Flood, the regime has continued its media influence campaigns, as relentlessly as the genocide itself.
However, to the dismay of the Zionist regime, the world has not bought its Hasbara. The reason is simple: the justifications for the genocide in Gaza are blatantly untrue and preposterous. Built on lies.
According to Maziad, ‘Hasbara may still operate at full force, but the reality of pulverised neighbourhoods, mass starvation and mounting civilian deaths has made the narrative impotent, as Israel continues prosecuting a war that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians’.
Her estimate is that in late 2024 and early 2025, Israel’s government approved an unprecedented budget: roughly $150 million, which is more than 20 times the usual annual allocation. Recent reports reveal that this amount has multiplied over and over.
I agree with her that while Hasbara can buy airtime, bots and billboards, it cannot buy legitimacy – not when the policy is a permanent occupation, an attempt at regionally-menacing hegemonic expansionism into Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere dressed up as’ security’, or when ‘de-Hamasification’ looks like deliberate social collapse.
Though it is known that Hasbara budgets keep rising, like the rest of the world, South Africa’s tolerance of fake propaganda is not.
Indeed, intolerance of Hasbara techniques such as buying journalists or corrupting editors within newsrooms of radio and TV channels, is a virtue.
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In recent days the platforming by South Africa’s public broadcaster of a known Zionist Hasbarist, has sparked outrage among civil rights activists.
Rolene Marks is associated with the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF), an organisation best described as an Israeli asset, that blatantly declares its mission to ‘build strong support and love for the Land and State of Israel’.
Surely, since it proudly claims that ‘SAZF looks after matters relating to Israel and its image in South Africa’, to then believe that Marks would be an objective analyst on the occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, would be foolish as well as extremely naive.
On the issue of the abduction of South Africans on the Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters by Israel’s occupation forces, the official stance of the SAZF is shocking but not surprising.
Reacting to the statement of condemnation by the Department of International Relations (DIRCO) as well as by President Cyril Ramaphosa, SAZF ridiculed it in typical Israeli Hasbara saying it ‘is a lie’ and ‘reckless disinformation’.
Again, not surprisingly, in a recent Jewish Report article, Marks defended Israel’s blockade of journalists and denying them access to independently report on the atrocities and carnage caused by Netanyahu’s horrendous genocide.
Contrary to Marks’ whitewashing of Israel’s failed media blackout, general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Anthony Bellanger, had a brilliant op-ed published in The Guardian under the heading: ‘Gaza has become journalism’s graveyard. Killing journalists is killing the truth’.
Renowned as a unionist, historian and of course a journalist, Bellanger is also a visiting professor of journalism at the University of Mons (Belgium).
His biting criticism of the Israel army’s killing of more than 200 Palestinian journalists in the past two years cannot neither be ignored nor dismissed:
‘For 24 long months now, Gaza has become the most dangerous place in the world to practise our profession. Israel prohibits foreign journalists from entering the territory, so the truth relies exclusively on Palestinian reporters – almost all of whom are members of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, affiliated to the IFJ. Too often they work without protection and without refuge for their families. And all too often, they are directly targeted.’
If indeed the expectation that South African journalists and media practitioners would be in solidarity with Palestine’s journalists, is it acceptable for the public broadcaster to normalise Hasbara by platforming agents who justify Israel’s rationale to victimise them?
Bellanger’s profound observation that never before has the profession of journalism seen such massacres in its ranks ought to be a daily reminder in newsrooms that ‘Gaza has become the worst graveyard for journalists in contemporary history’.
Interestingly, the IFJ has recorded no comparable death toll since its formation, neither during the second world war, nor in Vietnam, Korea, Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq.
Deplatforming Hasbara agents is an essential obligation if media outlets have regard for the fact that Palestinian journalists along with the besieged and displaced population, are the only ones bearing witness to the devastation, destruction and gruesome atrocities perpetrated in Gaza by the Netanyahu regime.
Iqbal Jassat is an executive member of the Johannesburg-based Media Review Network.
