April 30, 2024 (EIRNS)—Call it Operation Diversion if you will. Every time the Israeli government gets caught in some new crime, its apologists go into overdrive to change the subject. Usually, that entails making an outlandish countercharge that generates major ink from a compliant press, but which turns out, a good time later, to have been balderdash. However, the temporal lag between the accusation and its subsequent refutation serves the intended purpose of “disappearing” the repercussions from the original atrocity perpetrated.
Is it just a coincidence that on Jan. 26, the very day that the International Court of Justice ruled that the South African charge of Israeli genocide was “plausible,” the Netanyahu government suddenly alleged that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was contaminated by connections to Hamas? First it was 12 employees (out of tens of thousands), then the yarn was expanded to include fully 10% of the aid workers. Without proof or even investigation, the U.S. and nine European governments immediately suspended funding for the only organization capable of large-scale delivery of vital food and medicine to desperate Gazans. Months later, absent even a scintilla of substantiation of these ugly claims, some European nations have resumed their donations. But the crucial ICJ ruling has been relegated to “old news.”
Then, in mid-April, some 300 corpses were discovered in a mass grave just outside the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis. Credible reports indicate bodies had hands and feet bound, and were stripped of clothing, very likely the result of execution. Other unspeakable atrocities were also alleged. Yet none of this got anywhere near the coverage as did the provably-false accusations of beheaded Israeli babies, gored pregnant women, etc., in the wake of October 7th.
