by Caitlin Johnstone, published on Substack, July 25, 2024
Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before Congress was everything you’d expect: packed full of lies and propaganda spin, yet simultaneously very illuminating and revealing.
The Israeli prime minister received no fewer than 58 standing ovations while speaking before both houses of Congress and spewing the most despicable lies you could possibly imagine in his conspicuously American accent. Depending on how politically aware you are, this spectacle could be perceived as either deeply un-American, or as American as it gets.
Netanyahu repeated evidence-free atrocity propaganda about what happened on October 7, falsely asserting that Hamas “burned babies alive” and killed two babies in an attic. He falsely claimed that Hamas “butchered 1,200 people”, pretending it’s not a well-established fact that many of the 1,139 Israeli deaths that day came from both indiscriminate IDF fire and deliberate targeting in implementation of the Hannibal Directive.
“This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”
~ Aaron Bushnell https://t.co/omrIn5SNr1— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) July 24, 2024
He made the completely baseless claim that Iran may be paying the anti-genocide demonstrators outside the Capitol Building during his speech, saying, “When the Tyrants of Tehran, who hang gays from cranes and murder women for not covering their hair, are praising, promoting and funding you, you have officially become Iran’s useful idiots.”
Netanyahu spent minutes ranting and raving about protests in America against his government’s atrocities in Gaza, during which he received a standing ovation from Congress that went on for nearly a minute.
He accused the International Criminal Court of “antisemitism” and “blood libel” for saying that Israel deliberately targets civilians, as though this hasn’t been conclusively established by mountains of evidence like the IDF’s Lavender AI system and statements from doctors describing what can only be deliberate sniper executions of children in Gaza.
He repeated Israel’s evidence-free claim that the only reason people are starving in Gaza is because Hamas is “stealing” all of the aid Israel allows in for itself.
Netanyahu went out of his way to frame Israel’s plight as civilized people against uncivilized barbarians, which only works if you harbor a supremely racist worldview. He kept repeating the word “civilization”, contrasting this with the “barbarism” of Hamas and its supporters, calling Israel’s US-backed military violence “a clash between barbarism and civilization” and saying “Israel fights on the frontline of civilization”.
He made these appeals to the racism that westerners harbor toward middle easterners in the same speech wherein he decried the “outrageous slanders that paint Israel as racist and genocidal”.
Netanyahu said Israel “must retain overriding security control” over Gaza “for the foreseeable future”, an open admission of plans for indefinite military occupation.
This deluge of lies and racist invective received dozens and dozens of standing ovations. The same political class that’s spent the last eight years shrieking about the threat of misinformation, disinformation and foreign propaganda just normalized and applauded a foreign genocidal war criminal as he stood before Congress telling lie after lie after lie.
You couldn’t ask for a better example of everything Washington stands for than this. Both houses of Congress rising to feverishly applaud one of history’s worst genocidal monsters dozens of times as he lies over and over again is a much better representation of what the US government is about than anything you’ll see during the presidential race from now until November.
This is everything Israel is, and this is everything the US empire is. They’re showing you who they are. Believe them.
Caitlin Johnstone is a Melbourne-based journalist who specialises in American politics, finance and foreign affairs. She is a 100% reader-funded journalist. Her articles have been published in Inquisitr, Zero Hedge, New York Observer, MintPress News, The Real News, International Policy Digest and more.
Caitlin is the author of Woke: A Field Guide For Utopia Preppers, an illustrated poetical guide to reclaiming the earth from the forces of death and destruction.