If I Control the Headlines, Do I Control the Narrative?

I am sharing a few blurbs and recent headlines relevant to the 2023 Gaza bombings against Hamas.

May 14, 1948: Israel is founded.

November 3, 1948: Jawaharlal Nehru, India, address to the United Nations:

“It is a simple fact which I think we have to remember, because unless you have the full picture of the world before you, you will not even understand the problem, and if you isolate any single problem in the world from the rest, you do not understand the problem. Today I do venture to submit that Asia counts in world affairs. Tomorrow it will count much more than today. Asia till recently was largely a prey to imperial domination and colonialism: and it is an astonishing thing that any country should still remain unfree; and it is an astonishing thing that any country should still venture to hold and to set forth this doctrine of colonialism whether it is under direct rule or whether it is indirectly maintained in some form or other. After all that has happened, there is going to be no mere objection to that, but active objection, an active struggle against any and every form of colonialism in any part of the world. That is the first thing to remember.” [Emphasis mine.]

1955, Bandung Conference, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru: “Europe has got into the habit of thinking, also other great countries in America—whatever their political persuasions may be—that their quarrels are the world’s quarrels and therefore the world must submit to them this way or that way. Well, I do not quite follow that reasoning.”

April 19, 1955, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, Bandung Conference:

“The United States continues to create tension in the Taiwan area. Countries outside of Asia and Africa are establishing more and more military bases in the Asian and African countries. They are clamouring openly that atomic weapons are conventional arms and are making preparations for an atomic war. The people of Asia shall never forget that the first atomic bomb exploded on Asian soil and that the first man to die from the experimental explosion of the hydrogen bomb was an Asian. The peoples of Asia and Africa, like those in other parts of the world, cannot be indifferent to the ever-increasing threat of war… The people of all dependent countries should enjoy the right of national self-determination, and should not be subjected to persecution and slaughter. People irrespective of race or colour should all enjoy the fundamental human rights and not be subjected to any maltreatment and discrimination. However, we cannot help being aware that the peoples of Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and other dependent peoples who have been fighting for independence have never ceased to be suppressed with violence. Racial discrimination and persecution under racialism in the Union of South Africa and other places have not yet been curbed. The problem of Arab refugees of Palestine still remains to be solved.” [Emphasis mine.]

1955, Bandung Conference, Khaled El-Azem, Syria, “Report on Indonesia, Volume 6-13, Number 1, August-September 1954”: “Israel does not belong to Asia or Africa. Israel is a pocket left behind the line of imperialism in its desperate retreat. Placed at one of the main gates of Asia, at the cross-roads of the three continents, Israel is an advanced outpost of imperialism. Thus, Israel exposes to danger the liberty of the peoples of Asia and Africa--a liberty they captured through sweat, blood and tears.”

October 5, 1955, James A. Michener, New York speech, “The Role of American Private Aid in Asia”: “Pessimists feared that the Bandung meeting would be little more than a violent protest against the white man, but as often before, the white man was taking himself a little bit too seriously, for this great assembly said only briefly that it wished no more imperialistic intervention.”

December 1955, “Report on Indonesia,” Volume 7, Number 4, “Too many people fail to realize that the effects of centuries of foreign rule, with all that it implies, cannot be eradicated in a single stroke... ours is a country where crops can be raised by the mere scratching of the soil, yet 90% of the village population lives in distress and needs a balanced diet.”

1956, speech to Aligarh University by Vice President Mohammad Hatta: “Islam guides us to the road of peace, teaches us to be patient, but wants these things done on the basis of truth and justice, because only truth and justice can create an atmosphere of peace. For that reason we should seek truth which is also the first objective of knowledge, and the quest for justice is that prime duty of the faithful… Only a world at peace on the basis of brotherhood among all peoples can usher in the welfare and prosperity of the masses.”

January 26, 1957, speech to the D.C. Chapter of Americans for Democratic Action, American Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas: “We have unconsciously enlarged the category of subversives to include those whose ways and habits of thought are strange and disquieting to us. The unorthodox--and at times even the liberal--is confused with the subversive…”

[Fast-forward 55 years.]

January 13, 2012, Mark Perry:

October 27, 2014, Chinese Minister Wang Yi: “Wang Yi expressed that China supports Palestinian people’s just cause as always and has for long been committed to promoting peace, ending wars and facilitating peace talks. Currently, as the Palestine-Israel peace talks are once again at a stalemate, relevant parties and the international community should mobilize various resources and ways to try to resume the process of peace talks. The Chinese side will take an objective and just position and continue to speak out from a sense of justice for the Palestinian side in the international community.”

April 14, 2017, xinhuanet.com: VP Li Yuanchao reaffirms that “China supports the just cause of the Palestinian people to restore their national legitimate rights and interests.”

February 24, 2020: Mossad Chief visits Qatar to ensure Hamas continues receiving funding.

October 7, 2023: Hamas attacks Israel in a terrorist event called “Israel’s 9/11.”

October 12, 2023, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh: “‘Bibi [Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu] was always opposed to the 1993 Oslo Accords,’ the insider said, which initially gave the Palestinian Authority nominal control over both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. When he returned to office in 2009, the insider said, ‘Bibi chose to support Hamas’ as an alternative to the Palestinian Authority, ‘and gave them money and established them in Gaza.’ [Emphasis mine.]

An arrangement was made with Qatar, which began sending hundreds of millions of dollars to the Hamas leadership with Israeli approval. The insider told me that ‘Bibi was convinced that he would have more control over Hamas with the Qatari money—let them occasionally fire rockets into southern Israel and have access to jobs inside Israel—than he would with the Palestinian Authority. He took that risk.’”

October 13, 2023, from Wall Street Journal, by Jared Malsin, Fatima Abdulkarim, and Vivian Salama: “Israel’s military, just before midnight local time, told the United Nations that its staff and approximately 1.1 million [Palestinian] civilians should leave the northern part of the Gaza Strip in the next 24 hours… The U.N. called for Israel to rescind the order, saying it could transform an already tragic situation into a catastrophe.” Headline: “For Palestinians Trapped in Gaza, There is No Way Out.”

October 14, 2023 and thereafter, CBS News, CNN:

October 16, 2023, published by Straits Times (Singapore): “Israel's actions in Gaza have gone ‘beyond the scope of self-defence’ and the Israeli government must ‘cease its collective punishment of the people of Gaza,’ Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in remarks published Sunday [October 15].”

October 17, 2023, headline, Al-Jazeera: "Iran warns of 'preemptive' action against Israel amid Gaza war"

[And so it goes.]

© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (October 17, 2023)