Were seeing the western political/media class bleating the word unprovoked in unison again, this time in reference tothe massive multi-pronged operationlaunched by Hamas against Israel on Saturday morning which reportedlykilled hundreds of Israelis.

The United States unequivocally condemns theunprovokedattacks by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians, reads astatementfrom the White House.

The loss of life in Israel as a result of the violent, calculated andunprovokedattack by Hamas is heartbreaking, reads astatementby House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Theunprovokedterror attack today and the murders of innocent Israeli citizens are a stark reminder of the brutality of Hamas and Iran-backed extremists, reads astatementby congressman andhouse speaker contenderJim Jordan.

This ignominious,unprovoked, and barbaric attack on Israel must be met with world condemnation and unequivocal support for the Jewish states right to self-defense,tweetedpresidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr.

This is an unprovokedattack on civilians: Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg,readsa recent Fox News report.

Unprovokedaggression by Hamas terrorists, reads atweetby former secretary of state Mike Pompeo.

I forcefully condemn these cowardly, horrifying,unprovokedattacks on Israel by Hamas,tweetedcongressman John Fetterman.

These attacks by Hamas against Israel were heinous andunprovoked,tweetedSenator Mark Kelly.

As a steadfast supporter and ally of Israel, I unequivocally condemn theunprovokedand unprecedented terrorist attack launched by Hamas and stand with the people of Israel as it rightly defends itself,tweetedcongressman Richie Torres.

Theunprovokedattacks on Israel by Hamas through Gaza and via air and sea, are absolutely a terrorist attack,tweetedDemocratic Party pundit Ed Krassenstein.

I unequivocally condemn Hamas horrific,unprovokedattacks and call on all parties to take steps to prevent civilian harm,tweetedcongresswoman Sara Jacobs.

I could cite many, many more examples, but I think thats enough to make the point Im trying to make. Isnt it strange seeing the same oddly specific word choice inserted over and over and over again about the same event in statements by politicians and pundits, regardless of their political affiliation? When you lay them all out together it starts to sound highly suspicious, like someone always referring to his car as my car, which I did not steal, or always introducing his spouse as my wife, whom I do not beat.

Its clear by now that whenever you see the word unprovoked being forcefully repeated in a uniform way across the entire political/media class, whatever theyre talking about was definitely massively provoked.

We saw this exact same thing when Russia invaded Ukraine; from the very beginning western politics and media weresaturated with the word unprovoked, bashing the western public in the face with that message over and over and over again despite theobvious and undeniable factthat the war in Ukraine wasmost definitely provoked.

As Noam Chomskyquipped last year, Of course, it was provoked. Otherwise, they wouldnt refer to it all the time as an unprovoked invasion.

And the same is of course true of the latest Hamas offensive. There are all kinds of arguments you could legitimately make about it, but one argument you definitely cannot defend is that it was unprovoked. As Palestinian-American writer and comedian Amer Zahr put it on Twitter, 75 years of ethnic cleansing. 15 years of blockade. Confiscation of Palestinian lands. Pogroms on Palestinian towns. Desecration of Palestinian sacred sites. Daily raids into Palestinian homes. Constant humiliation of a entire people. Nothing about today is unprovoked.

Calling Palestinian violence against Israel unprovoked is easily even more ridiculous than calling the Russian invasion unprovoked, because the abuses of Israeli apartheid are so well-known by the general public at this point.Multiple mainstream human rights organizationshave accused Israel of administering an abusive apartheid regime which treats Palestinians as lesser people. Palestinians who live in theopen-air prisonknown as Gaza are deliberately subjected toundrinkable water,food shortages,energy shortagesandbombing campaigns. Those outside Gaza are subjected toracist, violent policingandland seizureand live under adifferent set of lawsthan Jewish Israelis. The entire people were forced out of their homes to make way for a new state for reasons that had nothing to do with them, and any attempt to resist this has seen them killed as terrorists.

Of course the attack was provoked.

Isnt it odd that the western political/media class would begin uniformly asserting something so easily disprovable? So transparently false? Why would they keep choosing over and over and over again in each instance to make use of that specific word unprovoked in their condemnations of the attacks by Hamas?

The answer is that this choice is not so much something they are saying as something they are_doing_. Theyre not attempting to communicate with their audiences, theyre attempting to circumvent the critical thinking of their audience and trick them into accepting a blatant falsehood as true.

Skillful manipulators make frequent use of a cognitive bias known as theillusory truth effect, a glitch in the way human minds tend to operate which makes it hard for us to differentiate between the experience of hearing a well-evidenced fact and the experience of hearing something that theyve heard repeated multiple times. If you want the public to believe something false you wont be able to use facts and evidence to make your case to them, so what you can do is just repeat something over and over again until it starts sounding like the truth. Repeat the lie enough times and boom, youve perception-managed westerners into viewing the world from an understanding that Israel did nothing to provoke Palestinians into their actions.

After the news broke about the Hamas offensive I tweeted, Here come days and days of western news media slyly reversing the aggressor-defender relationship and reporting as though the violence began with the Hamas offensive, spontaneously out of nowhere.

But even I wasnt expecting the perception management to be this brazen.

First published byCaitlin Johnstone; reposted from Caitlins Newsletter October 8, 2023