Erasure of history

Israel’s allies worldwide are desperately scrambling to help Tel Aviv re-establish a convincing narrative, not only concerning the Gaza genocide, but the entire legacy of Israeli colonialism in Palestine and the Middle East.

The perfect little story, built on myths and outright fabrications – that of a small nation fighting for survival amid ‘hordes of Arabs and Muslims’ – is rapidly collapsing. It was a lie from the start, but the Gaza genocide has made it utterly indefensible.

The harrowing details of the Israeli genocide in Gaza were more than enough for people globally to fundamentally question the Zionist narrative, particularly the racist Western trope of the ‘villa in the Jungle’ used by Israel to describe its existence among the colonized population.

Not only have people across the globe, but even Americans have decisively turned against Israel. What began as an alarming trend – from the Israeli viewpoint, of course – is now the irrefutable new reality. National polls indicate that support for Palestinians among US adults has risen, with 33% now saying they sympathize more with the Palestinians – the highest reading so far and an increase of six percentage points from last year.

Even the once unshakeable pro-Israeli majority among Republicans is softening in favor of Palestinians, with 35% of Republicans favoring an independent Palestinian state, a significant increase from 27% in 2024, demonstrating a clear shift in a segment of the Republican base.

The Israeli government is now fighting with every resource at its disposal to dominate the information war. It is focused on injecting calculated Israeli falsehoods into the discourse and aggressively blocking the Palestinian viewpoint

Latest reports of an Israeli campaign to win social media by granting millions of dollars to TikTok and other social media influencers is only a fraction of a massive, coordinated campaign.

The war is multifrontal. On November 4, news reports revealed that Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales personally intervened to block editing access to the page dedicated to the Gaza Genocide. He claimed that the page fails to meet the company’s “high standards” and “needs immediate attention.” According to Wales, that specific page requires a “neutral approach” – meaning, in practice, that blatant censorship is required to prevent the genocide from being accurately described as the “ongoing intentional and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people.”

Israel has long been obsessed with controlling the narrative on Wikipedia, a strategy predating the current Gaza genocide. Reports dating back to 2010 confirm that Israeli groups established specific training courses in ‘Zionist editing’ for Wikipedia editors, with the explicit goal of injecting state-aligned content and shaping key historical and political entries.

Excerpted: ‘Polishing Genocide: Israel’s Desperate War to Erase History’. Courtesy: Counterpunch.org