Information: massmedia and Israel-Hamas war
By Kristo Ivanov, prof. em., Umeå University
April 2024 (rev. 240516-2205)
<https://www8.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/Israel-Hamas240210.html>
< https://ia600305.us.archive.org/25/items/israel-hamas-240210/Israel-Hamas240210.html/>
CONTENTS
Background:
finding vs. making of information
Experience
of information in Sweden
If
you say nothing, you will have said nothing
Contacting
the Swedish public television
Transition from blog to monitoring
and article
Background: finding vs. making of information
Initially it
must be explained that this text is an “organic” development of an
item in my blog on “Swedish coverage of the Israel-Hamas war”, written
originally on February 10, 2024. It required updates to the point of justifying
a separate treatment as below.
Especially
during trips abroad, and as already mentioned in my article on the Russia-Ukraine
conflict, I compare Swedish news in mass media, mainly
television SVT and
radio SR,
with news accessible in hotels’ television networks, the English versions of Deutsche Welle
(DW), France
24, and AlJazeera. It
stimulated other critical thoughts, and conclusions. Earlier I also compared
them with the CNN, BBC and more seldom
available CGTN
(Chinas Global Television Network) in connection with the Ukraine war. Now in
the first two months of year 2024 I felt it embarrassing, the more so in
dialogues with our foreign contacts, that the events in the Israel-Hamas
war are comparatively silenced after the initial
terrorist attack by Hamas in Israel. This to the extent that we wondered if
this silencing is not recommended because of concern that the truth (as well as
the balancing of different opinions) may increase the harassment of Jews in
Sweden. It is the case that TV and radio stations in other Western countries
including the Al
Jazeera English reported news with text and images of the killing and
the wounding, of up to an average of 200 civilians per day, mainly in Gaza,
including the West Bank. This in Israel's self-defense after the Hamas attack
with (in mid-February 2024) about 28.000 (33.000 in April) dead Palestinian
civilians against Hamas's murder of roughly 1,300 Israelis, both figures including
children, women and elders.
By the end of
February news agencies (here, here and here),
reported that an active member of
the United States military (Aaron Bushness) had set himself on fire outside the
Israeli embassy in Washington, DC, in an apparent act of protest against
Israel’s devastating war on Gaza, estimated (as the BBC
Middle East correspondent did) to have resulted in about more
than 30.000 dead and 70.000 injured. Others
estimated on March 5, 2024 an informal death total of up to 200.000, which is
supported by the reported
application of high-tech warfare. (see here
on AI-weapons). I did see neither the suicide nor the 100-200 daily
deaths being commented in the Swedish public service news. It recalls, as I
already remarked in my essay on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the difficulty to
respect not only Christian doctrine but even the milder Jewish classical
injunction of “An
eye for an eye”.
I understand
that Sweden’s commitment to membership in NATO implies an increased mirroring
of its and USA’s positions regarding ongoing conflicts such as in Gaza and
Ukraine. At the same time Swedish news ignored what was going on in Senegal,
Pakistan and Indonesia, while AlJazeera on
February 24th I saw journalist Step Vaessen
interviewing Indonesian foreign minister Retno Marsudi on her country’s view of
the conflict in Palestine. In Deutsche Welle the very same day I saw the
journalist Sarah
Kelly interviewingThe Palestinian politician, academic and
economist Mohammad
Shtayyeh, followed by comments from politicians from Israel,
Jordan, Spain and Canada. AlJazeera on several occasions interviewed people from
the Norwegian Refugee Council (also here) in Rafah, Gaza, e.g. Youssef Hamash and Samah Hadid.
Other interviewed and reporting journalists in
Deutsche Welle were World Health Organization WHO’s representatives, and e.g. Mohammad Alkahlout and the often consulted Marwan Bishara presented as an “author
who writes extensively on global politics and is widely regarded as a leading
authority on US foreign policy, the Middle East and international
strategic affairs. He was previously a professor of International Relations at
the American University of Paris”. Another personality appearing at the
television is Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian physician, activist, and
politician who serves as General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative.
Experience of
information in Sweden
Up to the end of February 2024 nothing of all this was
considered worthy a loan of some program from an international news service, or
a television or radio program, documentary or podd at the Swedish public service network. The first more
ambitious program I heard was from the Swedish Radio SR, in the serie Konflikt
[Conflict] on March 1st 2024 with the title Bidens fredsplan mitt I Gazakriget [Biden’s plan for peace in the middle of the
Gaza war]. It indirectly uncovered the “active passivity” of the USA in face of
the ongoing killing and injuring of civil Palestinians, completing a few
shorter previous programs as of February 28 on Protester och ilska mot Hamas I Gaza: “Vi står inte ut [Protests and anger against Hamas in Gaza:
"We can't stand it"].
It could be seen as a diplomatic journalistic bonus to
Israel, reminding Swedes that the 30.000 Palestinian deaths and ongoing
suffering is to be attributed to Hamas and its initial incursion in Israel. It
is also a diplomatic journalistic bonus to Ukraine to have had an earlier
program on Putin’s krig mot sitt eget folk [Putin’s war against his own people], reminding
that journalism, the more so with membership in NATO, relinquishes the need of
objectivity with presentation of conflicting views and arguments. In any case,
one main Swedish morning newspaper, Svenska
Dagbladet, on March 6-7 2024 has obviously no problem with access to its
source (TT) of news in Israel when it publishes (my transl):
“His friend is a Hamas prisoner - wants tougher
action”:
Two of his friends were murdered and a third kidnapped
to Gaza in the Hamas terror attack on October 7.
Student Daniel Danon wants peace - but also wants
Israel to be even tougher in the Gaza Strip.
Mia Holmberg Karlsson/TT
Published at 06:19
On the morning of October 7, Daniel Danon is eating
cereal in a hotel bar in Iceland. He is on vacation from his studies in Tel
Aviv, visiting glaciers and ice caves. When messages from home start to trickle
in, he calls his mother in Kalia, a kibbutz by the Dead Sea in the occupied West
Bank. […]
I remember one
day towards the end of January, war news in SR were replaced by the news that
climate warming was behind the fact that some butterflies' 5 spots on their
wings had been reduced to just 3. And it was probably last night that the
complete silencing of such news is replaced by a fairly large feature about the
trials in the United States in the case of Alec
Baldwin’s “2021 shooting incident”. Before that I listened to the
news at the radio’s channel 1: no mention of the Israel-Hamas war but a notice
that researchers find environmental clues on butterfly wings (cf. old notice here). I
asked myself, “journalists editing such news while at the beginning of february
I had heard that 113 journalists had already been killed in Gaza and Jodie
Ginsberg reported for the Committee
to Protect Journalists.
And what about
“World news in the now NATO-friendly Sweden?". The Swedish TV (STV) choose
to rely only upon its correspondent in the Middle East Samir Abu Eid
whose e-mail address I have been trying to obtain from STV while other
international sources are even too generous to supply their own
controversial information and complaints for Israel’s military campaign in
Gaza. All this while Samir Abu Eid complains for
not being allowed by Israel to enter Gaza. At the same time it is noticeable
how skillful he is in his reporting from outside Gaza, in order to maintain
“impartiality”. And the Swedish radio’s
correspondent Cecilia
Uddén has always been even more skillful in being more
outspoken as in one of the rare strong reportings, on
March 10, 2024, from her contact with the journalist Sami
Abu Salem in Gaza (also here,
immediately accused here by
the online newspaper Bulletin for spreading
Hamas propaganda), apparently allowed in a medium that emotionally is not so
strong as television is, with its images.
But by a
remarkable coincidence, the very same day of March 10, when the whole world had
begun to talk about the Gaza disaster, also the Swedish television had a rare
if not first close
report from the news agency Reuters from a hospital
in Gaza. It included images of dying and dead children whose faces and limbs,
however, appeared shiningly whitewashed, if not computer-photoshop-manipulated
with beauty filter, as I had never seen in e.g. Deutsche Welle’s and
AlJazeera’s videos showing dirt and blood. That was followed by an interview with
Carl
Skau, chief operating officer of the World Food Program
and by interviews emphasizing Sweden’s restart of contributions to UNWRA and Israel’s
right to defend itself from Hamas. It is interesting that such skills in
maintaining “impartiality” have been unnecessary in both Swedish radio’s and
television’s reportings from the war in Ukraine, while Cecilia Uddén has been
criticized and suspended by the Swedish television for making evaluative
statements about presidential candidates during the 2004 American presidential
election when she was the radio’s correspondent in Washington.
I felt
embarrassed in front of our foreign friends. I guess that SVT does not have the
same resources as several foreign TV stations, the more so when the news
mention its unavailability of own journalists in Gaza, allowed only if
incorporated in Israel’s IDF, without explaining why it cannot purchase news
and programs by e.g. AlJazeera with daily reports by their correspondents. I
cannot understand why it could at least buy selected programs with reports with
e.g. Deutsche Welles and AlJazeera's local foreign correspondents (including
from Gaza itself) and simply "translate" them with Swedish
undertexts.
Again: During my
latest trip in Western Europe down to Spain I did annotate interviews in the
mentioned channels with e.g. Tareq Abu Azzoum and
the already mentioned Marwan Bishara in
AlJazeera; Efraim
Halevy in DW (former director of the Mossad Israeli
intelligence), interviewed by Tim Sebastian in
the series “Conflict Zone”, and revealing the official Israel rationality; Jan Egeland,
Norwegian diplomat, and Norway’s foreign minister Espen Barth Eide
(chair of the board, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue), and I wonder whether he
has been interviewed by SVT in the Scandinavian brother-country Sweden) in
AlJazeera; the broadcasted public report by US secretary of state Antony Blinken on 7
February 2024 after Israel’s rejection of Hamas’ plan for peace. And Shani
Rozanes from Deutsche Welle commented the Israel’s rejection
of the Hamas offer, while Swedish television preferred to only report “Hamas’
rejections of Israel’s plans for peace”.
I saw nothing of
all this in my daily comparison with Swedish television and radio news, which
uncontroversially presented readymade facts and conclusions. I also experienced
that the items mentioned above required heavy
attention and continuous sometimes painful
thinking. I had to think while
listening to the discussions and interviews. All this is crowned SVT’s news
only mentioning (e.g. on 9 Feb 2024) that there were more than 200 Palestinian
deaths, plus that SVT's Russia correspondents only convey criticism of Russia
instead of conveying views from Russia's counterparts to our defense or
geopolitical pundits (e.g. Fyodor
Lukyanov). And in addition, following Brussels' EU
recommendation, Sweden has been censoring the Russian
"state-controlled" RT.com, at the same time (Jan-Feb 2024) as e.g.
Spain had it fully available. It is paradoxical that Sweden, which often wished
to be considered the “conscience of the world”, refers so often to its
"democratic freedom of expression". As I already wrote in my text of
“Quality-control of information”:
The debacle of democratic free
expression, or the official mistrust of people, of freedom in communication and
of power of argumentation, is displayed in governmental western censorship of news from the Russian network Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik News. In Sweden. It was directed by decision of The
Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (corresponding
to USA’s FCC), following EU imposed sanctions (also here) announced 2 March
2022, while all those western countries were not in war.
If you say nothing, you will have said nothing
It is meaningful
curiosity to match these events to what is a popular saying in Sweden, Upon an
observation by a close Swedish relative, I found this also consistent with
ongoing assumptions about elements in its national
character, it all recalling abusive interpretations of Biblical
sayings, mainly Psalm 141:3 and Proberbs 21:23. Psychology
suggests that fear of open conflict is counterbalanced by hidden aggressivity.
According to the following table, in Swedish on the left, and English on the
right:
|
Om man
ingenting säger har man ingenting sagt. Om man
inte lägger sig i behöver man inte dra sig ur. Sköt
dig själv och skit i andra (Som jag kompletterar med liknande uttryck:) Om du
inte tittar ser du ingenting. Om du
inte lyssnar hör du ingenting. |
If you say nothing, you will have said nothing. If you don't interfere, you will not have to
withdraw. Take care of yourself and don’t mind others (Which I complete with similar expressions:) If you do not look, you see nothing. If you do not listen, you hear nothing. |
And then we
shall mention the latest curiosity reported in Germany, France and England that
after by then unproven Israel's claim that 12 out of the about 30.000 UNRWA
employees were Hamas sympathizers or fighters, Sweden together with UNRWA's major donors, including the
United States, Germany, Japan, Italy, the United Kingdom, and France,
subsequently suspended funding. As if they could not wait for proof that
this claim is not part of the information war. But, again, it may be a
consequence of Sweden’s commitment to a membership in Nato, implying an
increased eagerness to follow the USA’s positions in political matters, as
already done in the conflict
Russia-NATO-Ukraine.
It is therefore
a question of SVT’s programmatic silencing (also mirrored in the press) of
controversial videos and news - which cannot be offset by any other occasional
programs that in turn tend to become biased and cannot reach a wider Swedish
audience that has been already biased by the SVT’s policy.
Contacting the Swedish public television
I wrote about
all this to SVT’s contact address <kontakt@svt.se> with the naïve request that this should be
presented to SVT's top management, with the expectation of a comment as well. I
got the following anonymous answer (except for it being signed with the first
name “Daniel, editor”), whose anonymity was encouraged by the nowadays famous
Swedish "Thou-reform”
that today is often (ab)used to anonymize or hide the identity, relieving the
responsibility of the sender. I maintain my view of the distressing inferior
quality of Swedish public radio and television in the issues covered here, but
also in other intellectual ethical issue such as LGBT as ultimately
shown in a recent talk-show program for seniors in the series Studio 65. It is
characterized by the avoidance of controversial views and opinions, and it is
unrelated to the showing of “the bloodies and most horrific images”, which in
my experience have been also avoided by all the mentioned established foreign
television channels. My general conclusion is that we are experiencing a
serious “apocalyptic” cultural crisis that is not mainly political but rather
ethical with its base in ignored religion and theology: in the Western world,
mainly Christianity.
And here follows
the body of the mail answer from the Swedish public television SVT at the
beginning of February 2024. No comments:
------------
Thank you for
your email.
If you think we
have not reported on the suffering of civilians in Gaza, I question whether you
have been following our reporting at all. We have had numerous reports on how
people are really suffering in the Gaza Strip, almost on a daily basis. Our
reporting on the war between Israel and Hamas has been extensive since October
7.
It's sad that
you are ashamed of SVT compared to other European broadcasters. But there is no
lack of resources to cover these news events.
My suggestion is
that you go through our articles on svt.se about the war and watch our
broadcasts backwards in SVT Play. Unfortunately, they are available only for
the past seven days, but it will give you a good picture.
Here you can
also read more about how we report on this conflict [in Swedish]
https://www.svt.se/kontakt/sa-rapporterar-svt-om-kriget-mellan-israel-och-hamas
…
[B]ut we can't
show the bloodiest and most horrific images either. There are laws and rules
about how much violence and blood we can show during the early evening. And
even after 9 pm, we can't show the most brutal images. We have a journalistic
responsibility here. If we violate it, we will be condemned by the Review
Board.
With kind
regards
/Daniel
Editor
------------
No
comments, and a curiosity: the Swedish public radio’s program on March
23, 2024 Medierna [The Media] reported that from the listeners had been received hundreds
of complaints to the Swedish
Press and Broadcasting Authority about partiality in
reporting the conflict in Gaza, with the news that three of them that had been
recently been officially verified by the authority.
I think that a
continuous discussion of these matters would incur in the communicative
(im)possibilities that I try to resume in my texts on Information and Debate and Information and Theology, with applications to my analysis on the information
about the Russia-NATO-Ukraine
conflict, all related to Quality-Control of Information that includes the matter of information-wars,
misinformation and disinformation.
For
the rest, I only hope that this text will not have to grow as it grew during my
writing here, to an exhausting whole long essay, as it happened with my blog (below) on the conflict between Russia, NATO
and Ukraine.
And
now only (as I thought when I wrote it) a final note:
Note for mainly Swedish readers since it deals with the content of a
Swedish book:
A
suggestion I offer to “intellectual pundits” who wish to pursue the matter is
that they should attempt to review the theology behind a new book, Grinden I Dachau [The gate in Dachau] by the journalist Björn
Wiman, cultural editor of one main morning newspaper Dagens Nyheter which represents an
influential main current of Swedish journalism. A sufficiently explicative excerpt from the book was published in Dagens Nyheter on 27 January 2024, and
can be helpful to understand, for instance, also the background of the above-mentioned
interview in DW of Efraim Halevy in (former director of
the Mossad Israeli intelligence). It is a theology of a Judeo-Christian culture (see also Wikipedia’s disambiguation of the term)
that has divorced from Christianity and from a dialog with Islam and other
religions, while speculatively referring to the Midrash Biblical exegesis that uses a rabbinic mode of interpretation prominent
in the Talmud.
My
speculative interpretation is that the author refers to the Midrash and Talmud
but, in one of the most, if not the most secularized countries of the world,
Sweden, this sounds as nonsense. As the Yddish language itself, this kind of
approach is influenced by the history of the very same German culture that
played down Christianity and Jewish religiosity, as many if not most modern
Jews define themselves as only “cultural Jews” (cf. here, and here). Yiddish is said to have become the cohesive force in a secular culture in favor of a vague “Spirit”. It
was the way to Goethe, Schleiermacher, Nietzsche, Heidegger and even Rudolf
Steiner, and further to Nazism and Holocaust. The latter would barely have developed in a Christian culture, how
critical yet it could have been of the consequences of Judaism’s momentous rejection
of Jesus Christ’s teaching, while some see an implicit “genocidal ideology”
applied (mainly by cultural Jews?) to the war in Gaza. It reveals to me the
importance of cultural and theological background (beyond “Spirit”, culture,
imagination, universal values, and substitutes of God) in the engagement and
position of humans who tend reduce it to political issues,
and to the role of “conservatism” as analyzed by Claes Ryn.
Transition
from blog to monitoring article
But no…! It was not enough. At this point of my
writing I felt that I had to repeat and probably implement what I had written
above that: “I only hope that this text will not have
to grow as it grew during my writing here, to an exhausting whole long essay,
as it happened with my blog (below)
on the conflict between Russia, NATO and Ukraine.
A couple of weeks after all the above text was
completed, on April 6, 2024, I listen to the Swedish public radio program in
the series “Medierna”, which seems to be a self-appointed supervision of or
self-criticism produced by a business that calls itself Tredje
Statsmakten Media [The
Third Estate Media], and presents itself as (my translation) “Monitoring media
and journalism. Goes behind the week's headlines and
looks at the media landscape of the future.” The program is related to another
one published February 10, 2024 also mentioned below, and announced as follows
(also my translation) naming reporter, producer and presenter:
or
https://podme.com/se/medierna/1796715
Media
giant Al Jazeera banned in Israel. This
week, news broke that Israel has passed a new law that can temporarily restrict
foreign media from reporting in the country - if they threaten the country's
security. It quickly became apparent where the axe was pointed when Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on X that "the terrorist channel Al
Jazeera will no longer be allowed to broadcast from Israel." But what role
has the Qatar-owned media giant Al Jazeera played in covering the war?
Reporter: Freddi (Fredrik) Ramel.
And
related
or
https://podme.com/se/medierna/1686230
SVT [The Swedish public television] spreads both pro-Russian disinformation
and its own conspiracy theory.
Last weekend,
SVT Nyheter [SVT News] published an investigation into how pro-Russian
disinformation, through various media proxies, could be spread to established
media. But exposing fake news involves a balancing act on a knife edge. Because
retelling inaccuracies and lies involves the risk of amplifying the messages
and spreading the false claims to a far wider audience than they would
otherwise reach. In this particular case, that is exactly what happened.
Because when films from the investigation were spread outside the safe SVT
environment, they suddenly became perfect examples of exactly what the
investigation was supposed to highlight. The media cover up mistakes. Like the
changing of the seasons, the media's willingness to expose their mistakes seems
to vary over time. For a long time, it was not only customary, but also a
matter of great pride and honor for the media to clearly display their
corrections. But are we seeing a shift in how openly the media acknowledge
errors and account for changes and additions to publications?
Producer: Erik
Petersson. Presenter: Martina Pierrou.
My comments: the first program contains also an
account that AlJazeera’s various versions in English and Arabic contain
different versions of news, where the Arabic ones, for instance, have a more sympathetic
attitude to Hamas, seemingly meaning that they dare to account for its own
versions of events. One or two days earlier than April 6, interestingly enough,
I had heard at the English
AlJazeera,
National Security Communications Advisor John
Kirby (live) reiterating, in
face of Israel’s accusations, the official trust of the USA White House in the
quality and integrity of AlJazeera.
Likewise, in what I called the “related” program it is
meant that it is pro-Russian because it accounts for the Russian version of
events, which seems to mean that it dares to account for non-Western USA-NATO
accounts of the very same events. In this sense it means that they resemble
what I myself have been accused or will be accused of in the present blog and
in my essay about the Russia-NATO-Ukraine
information crisis. In
the above presentation of the latter related program on pro-Russian disinformation
it is also extremely interesting to realize that so-called disinformation, lies, inaccuracies, false claims, corrections, errors etc.
outside the safe SVT environment, ignore
the whole problem of quality-control
of information as developed in my essay on the subject. And who are,
what do listeners or readers know about the self-appointed (and approved the
Swedish Radio itself) “public media supervisors” or “journalists square” of
the “program square Medierna” Freddi Ramel,
and Martina Pierrou? They could be arabs, Israelites, or employees or
sympathizers of whatever besides being employees or associates of the
above-mentioned business firm Third
Estate Media.
And what does Third
Estate (or Third Power) mean?
Yes, this is also extremely interesting. The Third Estate in
Sweden corresponds to The Fourth Estate in
most if not all other concerned countries of the world. Very simple if one does
not ask “Why?”. The short answer is: because the the Swedish Third Estate is
supposed to be the democratic public mass media, here represented by SVT and
the firm Third Estate Media, where
Media has appropriated to the Judiciary Power’s third place in other countries
where the media are relegated to being a fourth power, within the political
theory’s concept of division and
balance of powers legislature, executive, and judiciary. Whoever wants
details, can study Inga-Britt
Ahlenius’ article (in Swedish by translatable by e.g. the
Chrome-browser’s translator feature): “Sverige
har en egen syn på maktdelning” [Sweden has its own approach to
sharing power], in Svenska Dagbladet, December
12, 2020.
It would last until April 10, 2024 for the Swedish
radio itself (it was serendipitous that it happened after my own blog – which
both the radio and television have reasons to follow-up - was published) to
broadcast a program of 20 minutes in its series “Dagens Eko” [Today’s Echo]
with the title Därför kallar Israel Al Jazeera för en terrorist kanal [Therefore Israel calls AlJazeera a terrorist
channel]. It was an ambitious short report about AlJazeera’s origin, history,
and ambitious work including Israel’s killing of journalists emphasizing,
however, the problematic that it also has reported pronouncements by e.g. the
Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. This emphasis once again reveals that both
the Swedish public media and its self-appointed critics do not understand the
grounds for what I have called quality-control of information.
Conclusion? It is regrettable that the Swedish public
radio cannot report controversial events, judgments and opinions, and that artificial
general intelligence or the presently trendy ChatGPT
cannot be expected to write texts such as Alastair Crooke’s Brutal, chaotic war – norms, conventions and laws of
conduct are being erased. Even
if disregarding that our so-called norms, conventions and laws of conduct were
originally supposed to decur not from western democracy, but rather that they
and democracy itself decurred from religion in general, and from Christianity
in particular.
PS – Having listened to the Swedish Radio’s main
morning news at 8 o’clock, the day April 11, 2024 I can refer typically two
among the highlights: that a man was shot in a suburb of the capital Stockholm,
and three horses were attacked by wolves somewhere else in the country. One may
assume that nothing important has happened in neither Gaza nor Israel.
Another
significative highlight the following day was an Internet message I received on
April 12: on an
article by Jan Majlard that was published earlier, in the morning-newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, referring to an
article in the the Politico with the title Zelenskyy warns Russia has penetrated US politics,
invites Trump to Ukraine. It has gone so far
that people in the West are accused for being “pro-Russian”, both politicians
and common people writing in their blogs, or driven by “idealism”, which
possibly also includes eventual references to religion and Christianity. I
already remarked in my essay on the conflict in Ukraine that the simple
suspicion of my being “pro-Russian” was enough for the enmity of former assumed
“friends”. And this in a western country, champion of “democracy”, based on
free press and freedom of expression. So far, Swedish public media stands above
all suspicions of broadcasting fake news, of being pro-Russian or
pro-Palestinian.
Finally,
as I pondered whether to terminate my follow up of the subject of this paper,
and “freeze” this writing I saw on AlJazeera’s live channel in my computer one
additional thoughtful program through a link that I want to leave documented:
What would ICC [International
Criminal Court] arrest against Benjamin Netanyahu mean for Israel? with the contribution of, among others, the Israel journalist Gideon Levy.
Serendipity and synchronicity
The Israeli
bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus in
April 2024, and the subsequent Iranian
strike in Israel could be expected, however, to
serendipitously foster an increased mass-media focus on the danger of
escalation and war in the Middle East, with consequent disinterest for the
conflict in Gaza. It may be considered by some as an interesting case of
political-psychological synchronicity or meaningful coincidence. Nevertheless Gaza was not forgotten in the
subsequent only quality program on the issue that I have seen on the Swedish
public television: “Vedergällningen” [The Retaliation, can be seen in the whole world until October 13th,
2024], was broadcasted on April 16th with a discussion between former
minister of Foreign Affairs Carl Bildt, and
the former Middle East correspondents Bitte Hammargren and Stina Blomgren.
Again, it may be a serendipitous synchronicity that all of them are “former”,
as I myself.
But despite of this exceptional quality program, there
seems to be no chance that the Swedish TV will be able to at least report and
even less borrow and re-transmit the program that the channel AlJazeera
transmitted the following day, April 17th. The commissioner-general of the
UNWRA (already mentioned above), Philippe
Lazzarini, was shown “live” delivering a speech to the the United
Nations Security Council UNSC. He explained the tragedy that Israel’s
announced proposal to dismantle UNWRA would imply for the Gaza population, 75
years after the organization was established for assisting displaced
Palestinians with food, medical assistance and education. And he reminded that
since the beginning of the war in Gaza 178 of the staff had been killed in the
war, while Israel’s accusation (so long without delivered proofs) that 12 of
the staff out of 13.000 employees had
been active in supporting Hamas’ activities and attack in Israel, had
not yet been evaluated. But 16 UN-countries, lead by the USA, had freezed their
UNWRA’s funding.
One conclusion was suggested above. It is
regrettable that the Swedish public radio cannot report controversial events,
judgments and opinions, and that artificial
general intelligence or the presently trendy ChatGPT
cannot be expected to write texts such as Alastair Crooke’s Brutal, chaotic war – norms, conventions and laws of
conduct are being erased. Even
if disregarding that our so-called norms, conventions and laws of conduct were
originally supposed to follow not from western democracy, but rather that they
and democracy
itself followed from Christian religion in particular.
In view of all these problems concerning
“information systems” it is perhaps understandable that not only journalists
and politicians avoid tough work. Even young doctoral students who pursue a
career as smart operators and careerists are not interested in old professors’
talk about “quality-control
of information”. They prefer to avoid “information and
debate” by opting for politically correct cronyism and socialization in a postmodern approach to (Wikipedia’s
description of) “sensemaking”, one of its important
properties being that people prefer “plausibility”, whatever it happens to be:
People
favour plausibility
over accuracy in
accounts of events and contexts (Currie & Brown, 2003; Brown, 2005; Abolafia, 2010): "in an equivocal, postmodern world, infused
with the politics of interpretation and conflicting interests and inhabited by
people with multiple shifting identities, an obsession with accuracy seems
fruitless, and not of much practical help, either" (Weick, 1995: 61).
For the rest, if somebody feels that my
text has not been sufficiently “balanced” in taking into consideration both the
Israeli and Hamas’ point of view, I suggest that the balance may be re-assessed
and re-adjusted by reading another controversial text that was mailed to me by
a critical reader, at about the same time when I stopped updating mine, one of
the first days of May 2024. Please read or listen to it at the following link with
the title Israel/Gaza: The Masks Come Off in American Society, as
related to the IHRA’s Working
definition of antisemitism, plus the comments in Will
the US adopt IHRA’s antisemitism
definition? What’s the controversy?
The whole may be completed by reading a sort of
historical summary of the situation on December 8, 2023, by the multinational
news channel and website CNN, under the title Israel-UN relations at historic low as
secretary-general invokes rare diplomatic measure. It
may be worth to ponder whether the legality of God’s denial as in the
historical “Atheism
dispute” corresponds to today’s dispute on the Legality
of Holocaust denial, implying that the Holocaust stands as a sort of modern
democratic god in a secularized western world, or rather as the devil that must
be acknowledged and affirmed, and its victims with descendants are conceived as
its saints and priests including the equivalent of grand
inquisitors. It would reveal the old relation between theology
and politics where especially today, as I show in my essay on Information and
theology, theology
and religion are reduced to politics. But after all,
my naïve surprise and desolation for events in Gaza and Israel, as well as
earlier in Ukraine and in the world, is caused by my deliberate unwillingness
to adopt the cynical conclusion of followers of the new gods including
democracy, that the Christian message is not “plausible”.