Great article by John Pilger. Another insightful artist points to - TopicsExpress

Great article by John Pilger. Another insightful artist points to the big picture narrative spinners in this war of minds, just what is at stake, and where our hope lies.. In the end it boils down to one question: Will we break our silence while there is still time?: There is a taboo, said the visionary Edward Said, on telling the truth about Palestine and the great destructive force behind Israel. Only when this truth is out can any of us be free. For many people, the truth is out now. At last, they know. Those once intimidated into silence cant look away now. Staring at them from their TV, laptop, phone, is proof of the barbarism of the Israeli state and the great destructive force of its mentor and provider, the United States, the cowardice of European governments, and the collusion of others, such as Canada and Australia, in this epic crime. The attack on Gaza was an attack on all of us. The siege of Gaza is a siege of all of us. The denial of justice to Palestinians is a symptom of much of humanity under siege and a warning that the threat of a new world war is growing by the day. When Nelson Mandela called the struggle of Palestine the greatest moral issue of our time, he spoke on behalf of true civilization, not that which empires invent. In Latin America, the governments of Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia, El Salvador, Peru and Ecuador have made their stand on Gaza. Each of these countries has known its own dark silence when immunity for mass murder was sponsored by the same godfather in Washington that answered the cries of children in Gaza with more ammunition to kill them. Unlike Netanyahu and his killers, Washingtons pet fascists in Latin America didnt concern themselves with moral window dressing. They simply murdered, and left the bodies on rubbish dumps. For Zionism, the goal is the same: to dispossess and ultimately destroy an entire human society: a truth that 225 Holocaust survivors and their descendants have compared with the genesis of genocide. Nothing has changed since the Zionists infamous Plan D in 1948 that ethnically cleansed an entire people. Recently, on the website of the Times of Israel were the words: Genocide is Permissible. A deputy speaker of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, Moshe Feiglin, demands a policy of mass expulsion into concentration camps. An MP, Ayelet Shaked, whose party is a member of the governing coalition, calls for the extermination of Palestinian mothers to prevent them giving birth to what she calls little snakes. For years, reporters have watched Israeli soldiers bait Palestinian children by abusing them through loud-speakers. Then they shoot them dead. For years, reporters have known about Palestinian women about to give birth and refused passage through a roadblock to a hospital; and the baby has died, and sometimes the mother. For years, reporters have known about Palestinian doctors and ambulance crews given permission by Israeli commanders to attend the wounded or remove the dead, only to be shot through the head. For years, reporters have known about stricken people prevented from getting life-saving treatment, or shot dead when theyve tried to reach a clinic for chemotherapy treatment. One elderly lady with a walking stick was murdered in this way - a bullet in her back. When I put the facts of this crime to Dori Gold, a senior adviser to the Israeli prime minister, he said, Unfortunately in every kind of warfare there are cases of civilians who are accidentally killed. But the case you cite was not terrorism. Terrorism means putting the cross-hairs of the snipers rifle on a civilian deliberately. I replied, Thats exactly what happened. No, he said, it did not happen. Such a lie or delusion is repeated unerringly by Israels apologists. As the former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges points out, the reporting of such an atrocity invariably ends up as caught in the cross-fire. For as long as I have covered the Middle East, much if not most of the western media has colluded in this way. Something is different now. There is a huge revulsion across the world; and the voices of sensible liberalism are worried. Their hand wringing and specious choir of equal blame and Israels right to defend itself will not wash any more; neither will the smear of anti-Semitism. Neither will their selective cry that something must be done about Islamic fanatics but nothing must be done about Zionist fanatics... Understanding the sophistry and power of liberal propaganda is key to understanding why Israels outrages endure; why the world looks on; why sanctions are never applied to Israel; and why nothing less than a total boycott of everything Israeli is now a measure of basic human decency. ... The jargon is controlling the narrative. In his seminal Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said was more explicit: the western media machine was now capable of penetrating deep into the consciousness of much of humanity with a wiring as influential as that of the imperial navies of the 19th century. Gunboat journalism, in other words. Or war by media. Yet, a critical public intelligence and resistance to propaganda does exist; and a second superpower is emerging - the power of public opinion, fueled by the internet and social media. The false reality created by false news delivered by media gatekeepers may prevent some of us knowing that this new superpower is stirring in country after country: from the Americas to Europe, Asia to Africa. It is a moral insurrection, exemplified by the whistle-blowers Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange. The question begs: will we break our silence while there is time? johnpilger/articles/breaking-the-last-taboo-gaza-and-the-threat-of-world-war