In recent days, Israel has massively escalated against the Axis of Resistance with attacks on Lebanon and Iran that threaten to drag the world into war.
German media is doing its part to manufacture consent for an all-out regional war through disinformation, lies, strategic omissions, double standards and distractions.
Disinformation: Schrödinger’s “Israelis”
On Saturday 27 July, a rocket struck the village of Majdal Shams in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, killing 12 members of the Syrian Druze community. German media calls this “The worst attack on Israeli citizens since October 7”, but none of the 12 children killed had Israeli citizenship.
The Golan Heights were occupied by Israel in 1967. Almost 90% of its inhabitants, mainly hailing from the Syrian Druze community, were expelled. In 1981, Israel annexed the area in violation of international law. That same year, it blockaded the town of Majdal Shams and attempted to physically force residents to accept Israeli identity documents. The town’s residents, certain that they did not want Israeli citizenship and protesting their forcible separation from their Syrian community, proceeded with a 19-week general strike and ultimately successfully negotiated with the Israeli government to be considered non-citizens, which they remain today.
Around 80% of Golan Druze have refused to take on Israeli citizenship and remain Syrian citizens only. The Israeli government also does not consider them Israeli citizens, treating them with blatant racist disregard. They are no more Israeli citizens than the people of Gaza.
The annexation in violation of international law, the presence of Israeli settlers in the occupied Golan Heights, the oppression the Syrian Druze community face from the Israeli occupiers – all of this is mentioned as a side-line in German coverage, if at all.
It is factually incorrect to call the people killed in Majdal Shams “Israeli citizens.” If it were just an error made by an ignorant reporter it would have been corrected after receiving criticism. We’ve already seen that interns and others without background knowledge are allowed to write headlines in major journals, as was the case with a recent article in Tagesspiegel portraying a banner comparing police to pigs as “antisemitic”. But not so for this article: ZDF eventually annotated their Instagram post (over 24 hours later), but without acknowledging the annexation.
Worse yet, Der Spiegel even issued a wrong and disingenuous correction, stating that the Israeli army spokesperson had spoken of “citizens”, not “Israeli citizens.” This ‘correction’ is blatantly false: in Hebrew the spokesperson had said “azarchei mdinat israel” meaning “citizens of the state of Israel.” A reporter can be heard in a video of the press conference correcting him, saying “hem lo azarchei mdinat israel!” – “they are not citizens of the state of Israel!” Der Spiegel’s sad ‘correction’ betrays either an ignorance of history and unwillingness to engage with criticism, or a malicious rewriting of facts about the deceased, against the will of the families who fought so hard against this.
Other mainstream sites pay some lip service to the annexation, while upholding the Israeli narrative. German media are helplessly tangled up in contradictions: they say the people killed are Israeli, but they don’t have Israeli citizenship. They say the area belongs to Israel, but it is occupied in violation of international law.
Are you confused? That would be because German state narrative has completely lost touch with reality, and because German media props up this cognitive dissonance.
The headline “the worst attack on Israeli civilians since October 7” is not only factually incorrect, but also a direct quote from the Israeli military spokesperson. Any journalist who adopts this quote by a war party without categorizing it, or even labeling it as such, is not practicing journalism, but shorthand war propaganda.
Double standards: whose children matter?
On the same day of the tragic death of 12 children in Majdel Shams, at least 50 people were killed by an Israeli attack on a school in Deir el-Balah in Gaza, and two Palestinians were killed in the occupied West Bank. Hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza have been facing continuous bombardment, starvation, and destruction of all means of life. Just last week, doctors returning from Gaza reported that children in Gaza are “definitively” being shot in the head and heart by israeli snipers. But none of this caused a ripple in German media.
The German media’s stance is clear: only one set of children matter, and only when they can be instrumentalized to fit a narrative.
Journalistic Integrity
Of significant note, and reminiscent of a certain Colin Powell or Reichstag Fire in earlier US and German history, is the German media’s immediate attribution of the explosion in Majdal Shams to Hezbollah as an organization.
The Israeli government immediately blamed the rocket on Hezbollah, while Hezbollah – known for taking responsibility for its rockets – categorically denied involvement. Residents of Majdel Shams say they recognized the rocket as Israeli, and Iron Dome rockets regularly fall over their village. Residents of Majdal Shams have collectively protested Netanyahu and Israeli government officials when they visit the town, calling them war criminals and pushing them out of the village when they tried to attend the funeral, as well as publicly calling for no retaliation or bloodshed to occur in their name.
Sound journalistic practice would wait to learn more about the origin or details of the explosion at Majdal Shams, and consider the motivations or consequences of an Israeli counterattack. Evidence and proper investigatory journalism could potentially clarify the origin of the attack. Instead, German media outlets uncritically parrot the Israeli narrative.
Killing journalists
On July 31st, Al Jazeera journalist Ismail Al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Refee were killed in Gaza by what seems to be a targeted Israeli air strike on their car. Images show Al-Ghoul in the destroyed vehicle, still wearing his press vest, decapitated.
Fake stories of beheaded babies are still being spread by German politicians months after they have been debunked. Real, actual pictures of decapitated journalists don’t elicit any response from German media.
This is not the first time Al-Ghoul has been targeted: in March, he was arrested in a hospital and severely beaten by Israeli forces for 12 hours.
Israel has targeted Palestinian and Lebanese journalists since long before October 7th, including Al Jazeera reporter Shirin Abu Akleh, who was killed by sniper fire while reporting from Jenin refugee camp. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 113 journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 7th. At the recent opening of the Olympic Games, the Lebanese journalist Christiane Assi carried the Olympic torch to honor the journalists wounded and killed. Assi had part of her leg amputated after being injured in an Israeli strike on a group of journalists reporting from Lebanon, which killed her colleague Issam Abdallah.
More than 70 media associations from across the world signed an open letter urging Israel to allow international journalists to access the Gaza Strip. In no other war has one party been able to completely bar access to the fighting zone. This, in addition to the targeted killing of journalists in Gaza, shows that Israel does not want information to leave Gaza. But this does not bother Staatsräson (German reason of state): Not a single German association has signed the letter or decried the targeted killing of its colleagues in Gaza.
German complicity
German media has overall ignored necessary context and repeated the Israeli government’s narrative. This serves the purpose of manufacturing consent for further Israeli attacks on Lebanon, Iran, Syria, and of course Palestine, including the alleged targeted assassination by Israel of Haniyeh, the head negotiator in Gaza ceasefire talks.
Are we really supposed to believe a regime is interested in negotiations if it kills the other side’s negotiator, on the soil of a powerful enemy?
All of this is beating the same war drum.
The Zionist state has learned that its supporters, mainly the USA and Germany, will protect it from any accountability: not the ICJ, not the UN, and not the highly praised international community matter as long as the arms dealers cover up every genocidal massacre, every imperial attack and every war crime. That is why it is so important to keep the German population in line and keep telling them lies: so that they don’t notice that Germany is once again supporting genocide.
Israel is provoking an ever greater war. German media is happy to provide the excuses.
