The release of two US hostages from Gaza last Friday marked the first step in a nascent process of negotiations. Some Israelis have been released since. These releases were in exchange for humanitarian aid going into Gaza—something the Israeli government had initially ruled out completely.
It indicates that we are on the road to gradually backing away from a ground invasion of Gaza by Israeli forces. There’s no denying that this could still escalate into a war involving much of West Asia. Such a war threatens to light up the skies all the way from Iran to Turkey, and to involve the US and even China, albeit in the background. That may suit deeply entrenched forces in certain
capitals.
For the moment, war clouds still hover most darkly over Lebanon, to the north of Israel, but an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza seems less and less likely.
That is a reversal of what may have been the plan: some analysts speculate that Israel’s hardliners figured that the horrifying 7 October attack by Hamas would bring Israel so much sympathy worldwide that they would be able to launch an operation to destroy Gaza, remove many of its inhabitants, and take over at least part of that territory.The fact that Egypt had warned Israel means that some in Israel were aware that something was going to happen before Hamas’ terrorist attacks hit two Israeli kibbutzes, a music festival and some other Israeli settlements, all quite close to the Gaza border, on 7 October. If indeed they let it happen in order to pave the way for razing Gaza, they evidently miscalculated on the sympathy they would garner.
Social Media power
One reason is the general cynicism among a lot of common people who have access to non-mainstream views on the internet—and these are now in the millions. The flip side of that is that a lot of people now question the narratives the more powerful `mainstream’ media dish out. After a plethora of posts questioning the after-effects of Covid vaccines, and the mushrooming of posts questioning the agenda of the World Economic Forum, people are less prone to take what the media says at face value.
For more than half a century, a great advantage of the Israeli establishment has been its overwhelming influence over powerful mainstream’ providers of news and entertainment in the West, mainly the US. As long as that ‘mainstream’ controlled narratives, sympathy for Israel remained strong.
In today’s US, news audiences are sharply divided, and more and more people depend on social media feeds to understand what’s going on. That has wrought havoc on narratives. Some recent TikTok posts out of the US have decried Israel, and even US policy towards Israel. This would have been unthinkable in the past. The contrast between `legacy media’ coverage was starkly obvious when Hamas released two aging Israeli women. CNN reported one of them saying she `went through hell,’ but a video of her stating that the terrorists treated her well bubbled across social media. Quite soon after the terrorist attack, media houses such as the BBC found themselves apologising or dissembling, as viewers committed to each side of the conflict cried foul over different sorts of messaging. Right-wing broadcasters like Piers Morgan found themselves on the back foot.
Impact on leaders
Divided sympathies on the street have reverberated in the corridors of power, impacting powerful political leaders, parties, and media outfits. Having unconditionally backed Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’ a couple of weeks earlier, US President Biden publicly called for an end to anti-Semitism as well as Islamophobia in his address to the nation from the Oval Office (a rarely exercised option) last Friday. He asserted that he had arranged for humanitarian aid to reach Gaza, and had told Prime Minister Netanyahu that the rules of war must be followed.
In the run-up to that, rumours had swirled on social media of a backlash from staff at the US State Department and staff of US Congresspersons—all pushing for more evenhanded responses to the two sides in the conflict in Israel.
As many as 842 staff of EU institutions were reported to have signed a letter warning that European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen was making the EU "lose all credibility" and expressing dismay at
what the letter called her "patent show of double-standard.” Von Der Leyen has been called out for not condemning Israel’s threat to cut off water and electricity the way she had castigated Russia for what she, in
that case, described as `war crimes.’
Britain’s Labour Party faced a huge backlash over its Leader Kier Starmer’s statement: Asked specifically if `a siege is appropriate?Cutting off power? Cutting off water?,’ his first response was that `I think Israel does have that right,’ before adding that `obviously, everything should be done within international law.’
Faced with dissent in the ranks of his party, Starmer backtracked,emphasising the `within international law’ part of what he had said. But that initial interview, viral on social media, haunted his party, down to the grassroots. A number of Labour councillors from mid-England towns resigned in protest. Some (but not all) of them were descendants of Muslim migrants to the UK. The party was reported to have lost its majority in the Oxford City Council after eight Labour councillors resigned. All this is deeply ironic in light of the fact that Starmer’s activist
predecessor, Jeremy Cornyn, was prevented from becoming prime minister, and then lost his party’s leadership, after he criticised Israel.The power of `legacy media’ and their control over public narratives have shifted radically from the time when Corbyn was forced to resign as leader of the Labour Party in 2019.
So newly has the grassroots shift become manifest that Starmer was able to get Corbyn removed from the party over accusations of anti-Semetism as recently as March this year.