Tea at Trianon: Regurgitating Hamas Propaganda

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, October 20, 2023

Regurgitating Hamas Propaganda

From The Federalist:

Before changing the headline (twice) The New York Times declared, “Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say.” The Wall Street Journal also called it a “strike,” without any evidence beyond the say-so of a terrorist regime that 10 days earlier had butchered more than 1,000 civilians, raping women and decapitating babies. Nearly every major news organization did something similar.

By nightfall in the Middle East, angry mobs assaulted the embassies and military bases of Israel, the United States, and other Western powers. The streets of Baghdad, Istanbul, Beirut, Amman, Doha, Tehran, Cairo, Rabat, and even some European cities like Berlin and Barcelona were filled with hordes of enraged Hamas sympathizers who believed (and now will always believe) that Israel struck the hospital. The fake news cycle even derailed President Biden’s trip to the region. Jordan abruptly canceled a planned summit with the United States, Egypt, and Palestinian leaders while Biden was en route. It also placed American lives in real danger.

By Wednesday morning, it was clear that nothing the media initially reported was true. Israel didn’t fire a missile at the hospital, and hundreds of people weren’t killed. Instead, it appears that a Palestinian rocket misfired and landed in the parking lot of the hospital complex. In the light of day, video footage of the site showed no impact crater consistent with an airstrike, and most of the nearby hospital buildings intact.

So what happened here? This was an info op, a deliberate campaign to alter the narrative of the Israel-Hamas war and inflame the Muslim world. Perhaps a billion people or more are now convinced beyond all doubt that Israel bombed a hospital and killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians.

We have seen this kind of op before, many times. In every case, it’s designed to serve the domestic interests of the progressive left. In this case, the purpose was to constrain Israel’s response to last weekend’s horrific Hamas attacks on innocent Israeli civilians. That, by the way, is the actual purpose of Biden’s trip to the Middle East, where he’ll be “asking tough questions as a friend of Israel,” according to the administration. Translation: Israel is to stand down now. The credible threat of unconstrained mob violence across the Middle East, directed at Western targets, will do much to advance this goal. Indeed it already has. (Read more.)