My personal view for quite some time has been that Israel has every intention of exterminating the Palestinians, and a new documentary confirms what I and many others have long suspected: to madmen like Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, the Palestinians mean nothing.
The film, produced by The Guardian, details Israel’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza, and has sent Netanyahu on a hunt for the "traitors' who were interviewed. He has demanded that various authorities, including the attorney general
“act urgently to uncover the identity of all those who are involved or appear in the libel film”.
Netanyahu also called for “the opening of a criminal investigation and prosecution for serious information security offences, criminal defamation, and harming Israel’s diplomatic and security interests”.
The filmmakers themselves are also facing substantial threats:
The Israeli government has fiercely attacked [Yuval] Abraham and [Rachel] Szor, threatening to strip them of their citizenship and accusing them of treason. Government supporters have vowed to hound the film-makers on their return to Israel and picketed Szor’s parents’ home in Savyon, chanting: “Death sentence to traitors.”
The Israeli government is, of course, following the playbook laid out by history's authoritarian regimes: suppression of the truth and persecution of the truth tellers, egregious violations of two of the most sacred principles of journalism:
The protection of journalistic sources is a cornerstone of press freedom under international human rights standards and disclosure orders are permitted only under stringent conditions.
Ricardo Gutiérrez, the general secretary of the European Federation of Journalists, representing over 320,000 journalists, said: “These threats constitute a blatant act of intimidation against journalists who have simply been doing their job, in strict accordance with ethical standards and in the public interest. I am not surprised by this outburst, which confirms that this regime is prepared to do anything to cover up its crimes against humanity and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
As well, the Jewish state has launched a propaganda counter-offensive.
In recent days, the Israeli government has promoted an online film project that mimics the style of NAZA, in an attempt to challenge the real film’s findings. Ariel Averbuch, an Israeli attorney and army reservist who made NAZA: The Real Story, described it as an “offensive move” intended to shift the world’s focus from allegations about the Israeli military’s killing of civilians.
An old saying states, "Better a bitter truth than a sweet lie." The age in which we live, and the powerful people who commit great evil, would beg to differ.
