Casting doubt is part of the propaganda

July 10, 2024

Sam Varghese, is simply adding to the propaganda wars around Israel’s war against Hamas. The casting of doubt about this or that atrocity serves the purpose of discrediting the enemy to bolster one’s own narrative.

That a massacre of Israeli citizens occurred on 7 October is not in question.

The killing of some 240 young people at a music festival in southern Israel is not in question.

That rapes occurred is not in question.

But Varghese wants to analyse the veracity of the reporting without lending some words to the events themselves and the very real victims and survivors who endured those events. And in humanising the victims of 7 October, the innocent victims of the Israeli war in Gaza are also humanised.

Some 37,000 Gazans - militants and civilians - have died in this war. Gaza has been devastated, people have been displaced multiple times, bodies lie under the rubble and Hamas will ultimately not be eliminated.

If ever a conflict cried out for a political solution, this conflict confronts us daily with that imperative. Yet Israel and Hamas shadow box their negotiations and more people die every day.