My Enemy Is Not Iran My Enemy Is The Western Empire

My Enemy Is Not Iran My Enemy Is The Western Empire

Oct. 6, 2024

U.S. and ISRAEL IMPERIALISM - FOLLOW THE MONEY

Caitlin Johnstone

Iran is not my enemy. Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis are not my enemies. My enemies are the western imperialists and their Israeli partners in crime who are inflicting a waking nightmare upon the middle east and working to start a massive new war of unfathomable horror.

Hezbollah are just Lebanese people. There’s this framing of “liberating Lebanon from Hezbollah” like they’re some kind of invasive, alien presence, when they’re an entirely native fighting force organically arising from the injustices and abuses inflicted by Israel and the west.

The imperial spin machine always does this. The empire uses narrative to try and de-couple the people it wants to kill from the rest of the population in the nation they are targeting in order to legitimize the violence they want to inflict upon the country. They want to take out a certain government or element within a nation that conflicts with their interests, so they start babbling about “terrorists” or “evil dictators” or “regimes” in order to make it seem like they’re not just attacking a country and murdering people who disobey them.

If they can uncouple a nation from the people in that nation who they want to kill in the eyes of the public, then they can portray that killing as a heroic act of liberation from a force which doesn’t belong there. If they can get you to believe that, then they can get you to believe they’re killing people for the benefit of the nation they’re attacking, instead of for their own benefit.

It’s literally always solely and exclusively for their own benefit, though. It’s literally always a lie.

Israel apologia is unique in that so much of it is just people pretending to believe things they know for a fact are false. They know the IDF is deliberately targeting civilians with airstrikes, snipers and siege warfare, but they pretend to believe it’s just targeting Hamas and Hezbollah. They know Israel is a profoundly racist and abusive country, but they pretend to believe that calling it an apartheid state is antisemitic libel. They knew there were no burnt or beheaded babies, but they pretended to believe there were in order to justify the atrocities they wanted Israel to commit. They knew Jeremy Corbyn was not an antisemite, but they pretended to believe he was in order to keep a pro-Palestinian leftist out of power.

Of course if you say they’re doing this they’ll call you a liar and an antisemite, but they know it’s true, and they know you know it’s true. But they just keep pretending to believe fake nonsense anyway.

Israel supporters display remarkable unity in keeping this lie going, from the most influential pundits and politicians right down to ordinary members of the public. The closest thing I can think of is how parents unite to pretend to believe in Santa, except instead of doing it to keep a magical fantasy alive for their kids, they’re doing it for ethnic cleansing and wars of aggression.

Reading by Tim Foley

Article with supporting links: https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/10/06/my-enemy-is-not-iran-my-enemy-is-the-western-empire/

Original: https://youtu.be/8ub2q8-PpPY

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I write about the end of illusions. 100% reader-funded writer. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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