Western political leaders and corporate media act out their usual genocide apologist routine over Rafah

Less than two days after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to “immediately halt” its genocidal siege in Rafah on Friday 24 May, it brutally butchered 45 Palestinians it had displaced to a refugee camp there.

Social media filled with horrific posts detailing testimonies of this latest abhorrent massacre in the supposed ‘safe zone’. So of course, Western political leaders and corporate media were acting out varying degrees of their usual genocide apologist routine.

Israel airstrike on a Rafah refugee camp

On Sunday, Israel burned 45 people to death in a UN refugee camp in Rafah. It had classified the site a ‘safe zone’ for Palestinians it had forcibly and violently displaced from other parts of Gaza. Despite this, the settler colonial state launched a deadly strike on the camp where Gazans were sheltering away from Israel’s brutal assault.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israel’s strike ignited a fire that tore through the displacement centre in northwestern Rafah. It launched this attack near a facility of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

Palestinians journalists in Gaza, like Hossam Shabat, reported the harrowing reality of Israel’s crime:

About last night’s massacre in Rafah. People were looking for the injured using their phone flashlights. Fathers were desperately looking for their children’s remains with a phone flashlight, parents were using their bare hands collecting their children’s body parts. People were…

— حسام شبات (@HossamShabat) May 27, 2024

Palestinian reporter Hind Khoudary emphasised the fact Israel had designated this a safe zone, but still committed this latest atrocity regardless:

A lethal massacre is unfolding against displaced civilians near the UNRWA logistics base in Tal Al-Sultan, located in the western part of Rafah. Israeli aircraft have shelled several tents in this area, resulting in numerous martyrs and casualties. Many have been transported to…

— Hind Khoudary (@Hind_Gaza) May 26, 2024

Civil defence agency official Mohammad al-Mughayyir said:

We saw charred bodies and dismembered limbs … We also saw cases of amputations, wounded children, women and the elderly.

One survivor, a woman who declined to be named, said:

We heard a loud sound and there was fire all around us. The children were screaming.

Footage from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society showed chaotic night-time scenes of paramedics racing to the attack site and evacuating the wounded.

Mughayyir said Israel’s brutal ongoing siege has led to severe shortages of fuel and “water to extinguish fires”. As a result, he said that this had also compounded the impact of this latest attack – hugely hampering rescue efforts. Of course, Israel has been purposely cutting off fuel and water as an instrument of its mass-scale ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

Western political leaders issue tepid condemnation

This latest massacre comes after the ICJ ordered Israel to stop its genocidal military bombardment and ground invasion in Rafah. Specifically, on Friday 24 May, the ICJ ordered Israel to halt any offensive in Rafah and elsewhere that could bring about “the physical destruction” of the Palestinians.

Predictably, while South Africa spearheaded this effort to hold Israel accountable, Western leaders issued tepid condemnation.

For instance, French president Emmanuel Macron wrote on X that:

these operations must stop. There are no safe areas in Rafah for Palestinian civilians.

Naturally, the EU also continued its handwringing with more hollow words backed up by no real action. Foreign ministers agreed to call a meeting with Israel to get it to explain its actions in Rafah despite a UN court order to halt it. The bloc’s top diplomat Josep Borrell called the strike “horrifying”.

However, as Euronews reported, Borrell said that at the meeting:

there was no unanimous appetite to consider sanctioning Israel for its actions in Gaza

So, after Israel blatantly and brutally violated the ICJ’s order in real-time, the EU all but shrugged its shoulders.

Many on X pointed out that this response revealed shocking levels of hypocrisy after months of complicity in Israel’s crimes:

Some Western leaders are “outraged” with Israel’s attacks in Rafah, yet this outrage never translates into sanctions against Israel. This feigned outrage is just a way to hide their complicity.

— Jairo I Fúnez-Flores (@Jairo_I_Funez) May 27, 2024

Mrs von der Leyen, will you now apologise for projecting Israel’s flag on the EU buildings? Will you now project the Palestinian flag? Or will you repeat your shameful cheering on of IDF tanks before their genocidal assault on Gaza? Just asking… https://t.co/xnK4MLmjaz

— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) May 27, 2024

Silence in the face of another atrocity

Of course, some Western war criminals in arms couldn’t be bothered to even acknowledge the attack.

A US National Security Council spokesperson proffered the lukewarm demand Israel “must take every precaution possible to protect civilians”. However, after kicking up a fuss over the International Criminal Court’s recent arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Biden was noticeably, nowhere in sight:

Biden was so quick to express outrage over the ICC wanting arrest warrants for Israel, but is silent while they massacre refugees in tents.

We’ve seen the charred bodies of *babies* and he won’t even condemn it, but you say he’s the lesser evil. What’s more evil than genocide?

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) May 28, 2024

Similarly, Sunak and Starmer simply couldn’t divert their attention from the election fever for long enough to acknowledge Israel’s latest war crime:

Labour MPs tweeting word for word the comments of Starmer on Netanyahu & Rafah

No calls for boycott, sanctions, arms embargo, arrest warrants or imposing ICJ rulings

Unconscionable that on genocide we do not have MPs of independent thought

They do not deserve your vote. https://t.co/JE6KRhQCcM

— Howard Beckett (@BeckettUnite) May 27, 2024

It was only when a reporter prompted Starmer that he finally spoke about Israel’s abhorrent massacre in Rafah. However, as Unite’s Howard Beckett highlighted, it was more empty demands.

Then, Starmer’s dutiful band of parliamentary stooges repeated his stock response en masse:

Labour MPs tweeting word for word the comments of Starmer on Netanyahu & Rafah

No calls for boycott, sanctions, arms embargo, arrest warrants or imposing ICJ rulings

Unconscionable that on genocide we do not have MPs of independent thought

They do not deserve your vote. https://t.co/JE6KRhQCcM

— Howard Beckett (@BeckettUnite) May 27, 2024

As the Canary’s HG reported today, this was only too predictable, given that many Labour MPs rub shoulders with Israel.

Unsurprisingly, Sunak has uttered not a word of condemnation either. As one poster pointed out, he’s still riding the giddy wave of unfettered corporate press fanfare over his latest hare-brained media stunt.

Israel bombs people sheltering in TENTS in Rafah & the carnage & bloodbath is evident. This is happening now. People have been burnt alive! Meanwhile @BBCNews & @SkyNews are talking about Sunak’s pathetic military service IDEA.#IsraeliWarCrimes#StopGenocideInGaza https://t.co/x7EkuIsNcg

— Dr Fauzia Ahmad (@brisofa) May 26, 2024

Unfortunately, it’s working, as the shill media has yet to press him on Israel’s appalling attack in Rafah.

Corporate media complicity continues unabated

In fact, everywhere, corporate media coverage of the abhorrent attack on the Rafah refugee camp has played up Netanyahu’s narrative.

Starmer’s response to the slaughter of Rafah:

No mention of boycott
No mention of sanctions
No mention of arms embargo
No mention of arrest warrants
No mention of the ICC rulings

He says nothing. It’s just words

A vote for him is a vote for genocide.pic.twitter.com/F6FXtq4Roy

— Howard Beckett (@BeckettUnite) May 27, 2024

Meanwhile, the BBC was laying cover for Israel by splitting hairs between its so-called ‘ground invasion’, and its ongoing indiscriminate airstrikes:

“Their operations so far have not resulted in a bloodbath.”

BBC reports on the day after Israel’s tent massacre in Rafah. pic.twitter.com/plPktpB5qd

— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) May 27, 2024

Some exposed the overt double-standards at play, referring back to the notorious ‘beheaded babies’ lie:

“Many of the newspapers… The Metro, The Times, The Telegraph.. leading on these reports… 40 babies died, and some of them had been beheaded.”

None of those papers have shown or mentioned the images of actual beheaded babies from Rafah today.pic.twitter.com/FaWzu01IjP

— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) May 27, 2024

Unsurprisingly the journalists who propagated the beheaded babies lie are keeping quiet about the video of a beheaded Palestinian child from the Rafah camp massacre.

We will not forget, we will not forgive.

— Dr. Yara Hawari د. يارا هواري (@yarahawari) May 27, 2024

In other words, Western corporate media outlets unquestioningly parrot Israel’s unproven propaganda. Meanwhile, when Palestinians share graphic video evidence and reports of real Israeli atrocities, the press is silent.

Of course, this is the Western corporate media machine operating exactly as intended to uphold imperial interests:

whenever Israel has a PR crisis because people can see them mass murdering babies and children, beheading them, burning them alive, Zionist propagandists come up with a deranged patently absurd deflection, the point of which is to get you to stop talking about them mass killing…

— ☀️👀 (@zei_squirrel) May 27, 2024

Upholding the colonial-capitalist hegemony

Eight months into an atrocious, unrelenting genocide, and the Western political and media establishment continues to spout a spineless, heartless merry-go-round of Israel propaganda. That these apologists for Israel’s crimes barely bat an eye at another gut-wrenching war crime is not surprising.

Ultimately, arbiters of the colonial-capitalist hegemony will always regard Palestinian lives as expendable. More than 35,000 murders later, and a ever-burgeoning horror-show of war crimes – evidently, that fact has not changed.

Additional reporting via Agence France-Presse

Feature image via Associated Press – Youtube