The key challenge is finding a way to lull the world into complacency, as endless horrors are broadcast live on our screens
Hossam Shaker is a journalist and an author who has extensively covered the topic of migration in Europe
Cross-posted from Middle East Eye
It has become clear that horrific atrocities are not a thing of the past; war crimes can be committed by modern armies using AI and other advanced technologies.
A case in point is Gaza, where Israel is carrying out genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass destruction, and a campaign of starvation – all without losing its extensive partnerships with western democracies and “human rights champions”.
And Israel’s accumulated expertise is now available to the world; a practical guide to committing genocide in the 21st century. The essential challenge it addresses is how to make the world coexist with a genocide that is broadcast live to our mobile devices.
Media and propaganda efforts must serve the adopted strategy of aggression, not the other way around. They must help facilitate the execution of genocide in all its horrific stages, by justifying strikes, diverting attention from war crimes, and attempting to obscure facts whenever possible.
The goal is not to “win hearts and minds”, but to distract the public from grasping the ongoing horror, and to discourage sympathy with Palestinian victims.
This strategy of obfuscation requires Israel to manufacture developments. Responding to allegations of genocide and war crimes before the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, Israel and its US patron launched a smear campaign, targeting the United Nations and its respected humanitarian agencies in an attempt to silence them.
The incitement campaign against Unrwa is an ideal example of this pattern of counterattacks. It achieved strategic and tactical gains sought by the Israeli occupation, while undermining the foundations of life for the Palestinian people and refugees’ right of return.
Posture of denial
Adopting a posture of denial is central to Israel’s modern guide to genocide. The script might read: “There is no hunger in Gaza. The heartbreaking images and videos the world sees are fabricated. People in Gaza even enjoy luxurious seafood.”
An old restaurant menu from Gaza, or fabricated images of local children, are produced to imply they live in abundance. In response to the horrors of starvation seen via live broadcasts, Israel can thus plant seeds of doubt, claiming that one person’s protruding bones are actually due to “chronic illness”.
Stirring debate around a few select images by questioning their credibility is a more effective strategy than trying to confront the torrent of horrific photos coming from Gaza. This tactic forces those warning against Israel’s policy of starvation of babies and children into a defensive posture.
Indeed, victim-blaming is a central prong of the 21st-century guide to genocide. This can be achieved by asserting that the “enemy” is responsible for what’s unfolding, or by assigning collective blame to the entire targeted population, while absolving the genocidal regime – thus providing a justification for any war crime, no matter how brutal.
The allegation that Hamas uses civilians as “human shields” is a standard pretext for targeting all Palestinians, including non-combatants. Civilian facilities, which have protected status, can be targeted with convenient claims of Hamas “command centres”, accompanied by fabricated diagrams and illustrations to provide a veneer of credibility.
A key prerequisite is to strip the targeted population of their human qualities – suggesting they are not civilians, but more akin to monsters or zombies, thus rendering their mass killing more palatable.
The indispensable central idea is that you are the “victim” – not them. You must construct your own melodrama and present yourself as continuously deserving of sympathy. Facing the world requires constant efforts to disrupt understanding of the reality, preventing the activation of conscience and outrage.
Setting the agenda
According to this playbook, each time a new atrocity occurs, the world must be persuaded that Palestinians are the ones bombing their own hospitals, destroying their own schools, firing on their own mothers and children, and killing their own aid-seekers.
Those advocating for the victims are thus preoccupied with refuting an endless deluge of false claims, diverting their attention from the heart of the issue. By setting the agenda in this way, you can justify killing crowds of children in displacement camps through perfectly crafted storylines that absolve you of responsibility, while showing feigned sorrow when necessary.
Your updated talking points must be disseminated widely, so that they are adopted by those who earn a living by advocating for your regime in media and political arenas on both sides of the Atlantic.
According to the Israeli operational guide for genocide, you must commit atrocities and deem them necessary: “Be frank and bold,” it might advise. “Proclaim your commitment to perpetrating atrocities, and to continuing them relentlessly – but treat them as necessary actions. Say ‘if we do not do this, we will face catastrophic threats; they want to annihilate us, and we must act. We will not tolerate any threat to the security of our citizens.’”
To silence western officials, bring up past atrocities committed by their own colonial regimes.
Another practical rule is to focus on justifying every new war crime committed. This may require launching rounds of propaganda campaigns based on fabricated pretexts – sometimes accompanied by vows to “thoroughly investigate what happened”.
Once the initial crime – say, the bombing of a hospital, the slaughtering of a group of aid seekers, or the killing of staff of an international humanitarian organisation – is successfully justified, its backlash absorbed and its consequences muted, nearly identical crimes can be repeated amid a framework of normalisation.
As long as officials in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin and Rome impose no serious consequences, you’ve earned a green light to continue your campaign relentlessly.
‘Good versus evil’
This guide can then be applied to questions such as: How do you justify bombing a hospital in the 21st century? What will you say to the world when you bomb a school or a kindergarten? What pretext suits the levelling of a mosque, church, ancient monastery or historical landmark? How do you explain to the world that your army bulldozed a cemetery and uprooted the dead from their graves?
Before the world sees the bombing of high-rise residential buildings, certain stories must be spun: that these buildings contain “command centres” for militants, or house “surveillance cameras that monitor and endanger our soldiers”, or that “rockets were launched from them”. It’s an easy trick.
To complete an ethnic-cleansing campaign, forced displacement orders must be labelled as “warnings against staying in dangerous combat zones”, or “instructions for residents to relocate to safe areas for their own protection” – after which their gatherings and tents may, of course, be bombed.
As for starving civilians and depriving them of life’s essentials, including medical care, infant formula, feminine hygiene supplies and drinking water, the justification becomes even easier: “The militants are stealing the aid.”
Implementing a genocide in the 21st century requires the continued invocation of values, principles and slogans: the fight for “civilisation in the face of barbarism”, the struggle of “good versus evil”, the confrontation between “the forces of light and the forces of darkness”.
But one must avoid uttering words such as “international law”, “the Geneva Conventions” or “human rights”. The aim is to place oneself above such global conventions.
To that end, it is important to inflate your fabricated narrative by invoking ancient tales and sacred texts; by speaking of “thousands of years” of history, thereby ignoring today’s human covenants.
The 21st-century guide to genocide is indeed extensive – but it must be remembered that to operate in accordance with its rules, you need strategic support from western power centres, who can aid in obscuring successive atrocities, even as they are visible to the entire world.
Perhaps, then, applying this guide is an exclusive privilege of Israel and its western enablers.
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