This article was first published at When Life Comes Crashing In and is syndicated here with permission of the author

It is now beyond a shadow of a doubt that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza - indeed just a week or so ago it was reported in a Dutch newspaper that seven of the world’s leading genocide scholars — including renowned Holocaust experts — describe Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocidal. As Israeli genocide scholar Raz Segal noted: “Can I name someone whose work I respect who doesn’t consider it genocide? No."1

Yet despite this, and as Israel moves inexorably towards the final solution to its ‘Palestinian problem’, major Western media outlets continue to act as PR agents for Israel. The PR takes two major forms - 1) Laundering Israel’s genocide - via obfuscation, use of the passive voice, playing down atrocities, omitting to mention Israeli crimes, refusing to mention the word ‘genocide’ and fore-fronting Israel’s account of events to name but a few of the methods utilised and 2) Putting lipstick on the Israeli Pig - running stories on Israeli ingenuity, Israeli cuisine and culture and Israeli arts and sports endeavours which give the impression Israel is just a normal country full of normal people rather than a rogue state engaged in genocide with a wanted war criminal for a prime minister and a population that is fully supportive of their country’s crimes.

Classic examples of both kinds of PR occurred within one bulletin of New Zealand’s national broadcaster TVNZ’s flagship news show, One News, on Wednesday May 14. Just under 5 minutes into the bulletin the broadcaster ran a short ‘genocide laundering’ item - approximately 2 minutes and 48 seconds - on what host Simon Dallow referred to as the ‘spiralling humanitarian crisis in occupied Gaza’. Then, 25 minutes into the bulletin, TVNZ ran a ‘lipstick on the Israeli pig’ item from the BBC - lasting approximately 2 minutes 15 seconds including Simon Dallow’s introduction - on Israel’s entrant in the Eurovision Song Contest - Yuval Raphael.

*Screenshots from both items in this One News bulletin*

Item 1: Laundering Genocide - Report on the ‘Looming Humanitarian Crisis’ in Gaza

Before I begin I’d just like to note that this item is by no means the worst item on Gaza I’ve seen in New Zealand media since October 7 but that despite it being better than some it still amply illustrated many of ways in which Western media has laundered Israel’s genocide.

The item was introduced under the well-worn heading: ‘Middle East Conflict’. This is a phrase we’re all used to seeing and it is very useful as a means of downplaying the horrors that regularly occur in that highly contested region of the world. It is a useful way to obfuscate the reason for those horrors, the cynical and brutal machinations of Western powers and their proxy, Israel. The general feeling among most people when they see this phrase is ‘they’re always fighting over there - meh’. I must admit I used to think that myself until I started to make a genuine effort to educate myself about what is really going on in this world.

Here is how the news anchor, Simon Dallow, introduced the item. I have highlighted the phrases I will discuss:

Overseas to major developments in the Middle East now as concerns mount about the spiralling humanitarian crisis in occupied Gaza. As food shortages reach a critical point in the devastated Palestinian territory an Israeli airstrike has killed 28 and injured dozens at a hospital in Khan Younis according to the Hamas-run civil defence. Aid agencies now saying there is a high risk of famine in Gaza hundreds of thousands facing imminent starvation after more than 2 months of a total blockade of food and medical supplies a UN official telling the BBC that Israel is committing a war crime by weaponising the delivery of food. Meanwhile in SA Donald Trump laid the blame on Iran-backed Hamas.

Note how the devastation wrought by Israel is Gaza is described as a ‘spiralling humanitarian crisis’ rather than as what it actually is: a blatant and very plainly signalled project by Israel to make Gaza unliveable, to kill as many Palestinians as possible and to drive the rest of them out of the enclave or into small concentration camps guarded by Israeli-US forces. This is no longer a contestable statement - Israeli officials have confirmed it multiple times within the last few weeks.

The phrase ‘humanitarian crisis’ does a lot of heavy lifting for Israel and its Western media and political enablers. It leaves people with a vague sense that whatever the people of Gaza are going through it can’t really be blamed on anyone in particular, or at least it certainly can’t be blamed on Israel. I remember hearing the phrase many times when I was younger, and much more naive than I am now - usually accompanied by images of starving African children. And while I remember feeling sorry for those children in an abstract sort of way I never thought to question why they were starving - they just were. There was no rhyme nor reason to their suffering - it was just what periodically happened ‘over there’ - where people were ‘always fighting’.

And if you’d like a perfect example of the way the phrase ‘humanitarian crisis’ is used to downplay what is happening to the Palestinian people have a look at this tweet advertising an episode of Guardian columnist and liberal Zionist Jonathan Freedland’s aptly named ‘Unholy Podcast’.

This example is particularly useful because of the way it juxtaposes the way Israeli deaths are talked about: when two Israelis die it is “a deadly shooting in DC” with the way Palestinian deaths are talked about: when thousands of Palestinians die in unimaginably brutal and ‘deadly’ ways, day in and day out, it is ‘an ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza’. Which phrase carries the most emotional weight? Which phrase is more likely to make people feel something - the ‘deadly shooting’ or the ‘ongoing humanitarian crisis’? I’ll leave that for you to ponder.

The One News Anchor then tells us that “an Israeli airstrike has killed 28 and injured dozens at a hospital in Khan Younis” (I’ll discuss the way in which the perpetrator is often not mentioned in such reports later) and then he immediately qualifies this statement with “according to the Hamas-run civil defence”. This qualification may seem benign until you unpack the discursive work it does on behalf of Israel.

Hamas has, as we all know, been demonised by Western politicians and media since its inception. The group has long been officially designated a ‘terrorist organisation’ by the U.S. (since 1997) the UK, Australia, Canada, Paraguay, Israel, Japan, New Zealand and the European Union2. Indeed, my own country, New Zealand, which originally applied this designation only to Hamas’ military wing rushed to extend it to their political wing after October 7 thus ensuring the entire government of the Gaza Strip and all its employees would be seen as ‘terrorists’ by the New Zealand government.

The hysteria that ensued about Hamas after October 7 took the demonisation to new heights. As is now becoming clear a lot of the stories about that day were pure fabrications designed to demonise not just Hamas but the entire population of Gaza. The 40 beheaded babies, the babies on clotheslines, the burnt / baked babies, the nails in the vaginas, the women tied to trees, the families tied up and torched and, perhaps the most damaging of all, the mass rape used as a weapon of war - all of these have now been either comprehensively debunked or there has been absolutely no evidence been found to support them.

Furthermore it is becoming more and more obvious that many of the ‘1200 killed in the horrific attack’ were actually killed by Israel due to a policy they call the ‘Hannibal Directive’3. Sadly, however, most Westerners will have absolutely no idea about this because there has been a media cone of silence over Israel’s killing of its own on that day. If you search for the phrase ‘Hannibal Directive’ on most Western media websites you’ll get lots of stories about wrestling and cannibalism but you’ll get a big fat ZERO on October 7.

The upshot of this comprehensive demonisation project, of course, is that anything anyone, or any organisation, with any connection to Hamas says is simply not going to be believed. So every single time a media outlet says ‘according to the Hamas-run health ministry’ or ‘Hamas-run civil defence’ it is code for “Please don’t believe this for even one moment”. In the current atmosphere of hatred and hysteria deliberately fomented by Israel and the US and obediently amplified by Western media it is the equivalent of saying “Israeli airstrikes killed 28 Palestinians according to Satan and all his little minions”.

Dallow then tells us that ‘aid agencies are now saying there is a high risk of famine in Gaza’. The fact this wasn’t reported simply as ‘there is now a high risk of famine in Gaza’ undercuts the message by implying that this is just the opinion of certain un-named aid agencies. And while ‘aid agencies’ aren’t demonised to the degree that Hamas is they are often characterised by Israel and even some Western media outlets as unreliable witnesses and as “compromised” somehow by their dealings with Gaza. Furthermore the phrase ‘there is now a high risk of famine’ applied to Gaza works to lull people into thinking that things in Gaza aren’t really that bad and that people aren’t, in fact, already starving to death.

The message that Gaza was not yet in a state of famine was repeated when Dallow said there were “hundreds of thousands facing imminent starvation after more than 2 months of a total blockade of food and medical supplies”. Note also that there was no mention of who was carrying out the blockade - more on the implications of the failure of media to mention the word ‘Israel’ in connection with Israel’s crimes below.

Next Dallow notes that a UN official told the BBC that Israel is committing a war crime by weaponising the delivery of food. To be clear, under international law, Israel is, without any doubt whatsoever, committing a war crime by using food as a weapon of war. Rather than just stating this - a matter of actual fact which One News could not be hauled over the ‘Accuracy’ coals about - Dallow makes sure we know this accusation is coming - via the BBC - from some anonymous ‘UN official’ who, in common with ‘aid agencies’ is not necessarily seen as a reliable source given the constant criticisms levelled at such organisations by Israel and its supporters.

The introduction is then rounded off with a comment from Donald Trump that everything was the fault of “Iran-backed Hamas”. Whatever else you may think of Trump, he does happen to be the current President of the United States, the most powerful country on the planet, and what he says carries a considerable amount of weight. The main takeaway that many viewers would be left with after hearing this introduction - particularly those who are uninformed about this matter (which is most) - would be ‘It’s terrible over there, people are being starved for some reason, but it’s all the fault of Iran-backed Hamas’.

Now, onto the item on Gaza itself, presented by Corazon Miller. This item opened with the line “The bombs fell in unison on this hospital in Khan Younis where some had been waiting to evacuate the sick children out of Gaza”. Just like Dallow talking about the blockade, there was no mention of who was dropping the bombs. This, as historian Assal Rad notes in an article for Zeteo last July, is a common media tactic and is used constantly in headlines by prominent Western outlets such as Reuters, AP, AFP, BBC, CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times and many more. Here are just a few examples from the New York Times alone - with amendments by Assal Rad.

Now some might say, in the case of the One News item, ‘Well, it is obvious who is dropping the bombs so there was no need to mention them by name’ but I would ask them: Do you honestly think that if it had been Russia or China or Iran dropping bombs on a hospital the reporter would not have been very, very clear about who was doing the dropping? I think we all know the answer to that. In this case, however, those ‘bombs fell in unison’ as if from the clear blue sky. Perhaps God dropped them? Who knows?

And there is, absolutely, method to this madness. If you make sure you don’t mention who is dropping bombs on hospitals, shooting children at point blank range, or withholding aid from starving people, etc. it is much, much more likely the uninformed will emerge out the other end of news items like this one with the vague sense - once again - that there’s something bad going on in the Middle East but, let’s face it ‘they’re always fighting over there’.

If, however, you mention the perpetrator over and over again - if you really hammer it home - the way the media does with, for example, Russian attacks on Ukraine - then people get the message (and that message is absolutely intended) that, in this case, Russia is the bad guy. This is definitely not the impression the media want to give of Israel - a Western ally and the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ - and this is why they keep mentions of Israel as the perpetrator to an absolute bare minimum.

The next sentence in the One News report was “Israel says it was targeting a Hamas base beneath the hospital”. That this is reported without comment or caveat despite the fact that Israel been caught out multiple times lying about ‘Hamas bases under hospitals’ during the course of this ‘war’ is, quite frankly, astonishing. In no other situation would a media outlet dare to report the statements of a serial liar without qualifying those statements. In the case of Israel, however, the media does this every damn time - no comment, no caveats, just ‘Israel says’4. So much for our media’s much vaunted concern with ‘accuracy’.

Corazon Miller then informs us that

among the dozens killed and injured - women, children the elderly and journalists who risk their lives daily to show the world what’s happening.

Unfortunately, however, because the reporter has not qualified Israel’s account of the matter at all, viewers are left with the impression that all these deaths, including the deaths of the journalists, are just unfortunate ‘collateral damage’ which occurred as Israel righteously pursued the evil Hamas as they lurked in their lair under yet another hospital.

This notion of civilian deaths being ‘collateral damage’, as those of us who have been following this horror closely know, couldn’t be further from the truth. It is now widely acknowledged that Israel deliberately targets journalists - over 200 of them have been killed in Gaza since October 2023. Indeed, research has shown that Israel has killed more journalists in Gaza since October 7 than the US Civil War, World Wars 1 and 2, the Korean War, the VietnamWar, the Yugoslav Wars, the Afghanistan War and the Ukraine War combined.

It has also been becoming more and more obvious that the IDF deliberately targets women and children.

None of this is even alluded to let alone mentioned outright in this item, instead Corazon Miller intones mournfully, “the immense tragedy here just part of a looming humanitarian catastrophe” - a statement which really doesn’t even begin to describe the dystopian levels of horror Israel is now inflicting on the people of Gaza.

Next we are told “For more than 10 weeks Israel’s blocked all aid getting into Gaza” - the perpetrator being - refreshingly - named here but this is, as always, very quickly followed with Israel’s excuses - “It says to prevent Hamas from seizing fuel and food and to force it to release the remaining hostages”. This is an outright lie and if One News doesn’t know this then the organisation is guilty of gross journalistic incompetence. If they do know, which is far more likely, then they are guilty of gross journalistic malpractice for not informing their viewers that (a) there has never been any credible evidence that Hamas steals aid as I point out in the last section of this piece detailing my battle with TVNZ over a softly-softly Q+A interview in April 2024 and (b) that Israeli officials have recently stated publicly that getting their hostages back is at the bottom of their list of priorities.

Miller then goes on to say -“But evidence of a starving population is mounting and the UN is accusing Israel of weaponising food”. The phrase ‘the evidence is mounting’ - like the words ‘looming’ and ‘imminent’ once again that no-one is yet starving in Gaza - they are, indeed at least 50 people have died from starvation in the enclave - the phrase ‘the UN is accusing Israel of weaponising food’ is another example of plausible deniability. Farming out this as an accusation by a third party like the UN means One News doesn’t have to come right out and say ‘Israel is weaponising food’ - which, as I’ve already noted above, it incontrovertibly is. Once again, if Russia was doing it would One News be pussyfooting around or would they just simply say ‘Russia is weaponising food’? Again, I’ll leave that for you to ponder.

There is then a brief clip of a the head of UNRWA - Phillipe Lazzarini (from a recent interview with the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen - see Footnote # 4 for some background on this particular interview) - saying that in the coming weeks people will die not just because of the bombardment but they will also die because of the lack of food. Again, there is the implication that people have not already started dying of starvation, and again, due to the demonisation of UNRWA5 many uninformed people will not take anything Phillipe Lazzarini says seriously.

The item then cuts to a very brief clip of an understandably angry Palestinian man speaking in Arabic, translated as ‘the food distribution will end within days, the markets sell nothing, people will start collapsing in the streets”. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about how seriously Western viewers who have been marinating in anti-Arab, and specifically anti-Palestinian, propaganda for their whole lives will take the word of an ‘angry Arab’.

Corazon Miller then tells us that if a ceasefire deal is not reached soon, “Israel has threatened to capture and hold all of Gaza and force all 2.1 million people into a small patch of land in the south”. This counts as the first unequivocal statement of fact made by the reporter during the whole item because this, indeed (among a number of other egregious things) is indeed what Israel is threatening to do.

Following this statement we get a clip of the Palestinian Representative at the UN, Riyad Mansour, noting that ‘if ever more proof was needed for the intention to destroy the Palestinian people this manufactured famine is the ultimate proof” and then another clip of Phillippe Lazzarini (from the same recent BBC interview with Jeremy Bowen) saying that ‘in coming years we will realise how wrong we have been, how on the wrong side of history we have been’.

A screenshot from the BBC interview with Phillippe Lazzarini from which the One News clips are taken. Interestingly, the words ‘Israel dismisses Mr Lazzarini’s claims as lies’ were put up when Mr Lazzarini was answering Jeremy Bowen’s question ‘Do you think this is a genocide?’. For the rest of the interview the banner cited either Mr Lazzarini’s name and position or it said ‘UN Palestinian Refugee Agency speaks to the BBC’

The One News item then cuts to our very own New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters who mumbles that ‘a resolution is needed’ but that he has ‘stopped short of calling it a genocide’. Winston then babbles on about how “we don’t want to rush to judgement without having a full-scale investigation and inquiry”.

Finally, the item crosses to the Under-secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs & Emergency Relief Co-ordinator at the United Nations - Tom Fletcher - who implores the world to act decisively to prevent genocide.

The reporter then, thankfully, wraps the item up with a relatively honest, if brief, assessment of the situation “Outside the blockade talks are happening about a ceasefire enabling aid deliveries but it’s just talks while Gaza starves”.

It should also be noted that recent genocidal statements by Israeli officials about their actions and intentions of Gaza were conspicuous by their absence in this report. The only thing we heard from Israel were official statements exculpating itself from any blame. Why did we not hear statements such as this one by Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir? - made in April of this year so no excuses for One News not knowing about it:

Or this one from early May this year by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich:

Or this one from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing an Israeli ‘takeover of Gaza’ and admitting that ‘images of mass starvation are not a good look so he might let some aid in so his supporters will continue to funnel weapons to him to finish the job.

Once again, do you think a report about Russia deliberately starving people in Ukraine would not be accompanied by genocidal statements from Russian officials if such statements were available? Do you imagine that a news report would not take the opportunity to let their viewers know just how truly murderous these Russians really are?

Again, I’ll leave you to ponder that while I proceed to the second item to be discussed from this One News bulletin.

Item 2: Putting lipstick on the Israeli Pig - Israel’s Entrant in the Eurovision Song contest

This item was essentially a ‘puff piece’ about Israel’s entrant in the Eurovision Song Contest - Yuval Raphael - who, as anchor Simon Dallow noted in his introduction has

gone from hiding from Hamas gunmen at the Nova Music Festival to preparing to perform in front of a TV audience of over 100 million. Yuval Raphael says surviving the horrific attack on October 7, 2023 gave her a gift of life she doesn’t want to waste. The BBC’s Lucy Manning has more.

The BBC’s Lucy Manning also wastes no time, pointing out that Israel’s Eurovision entrant was a survivor of October 7 noting in her opening comments that

Yuval has gone from near death to something life affirming - the Eurovision stage. At the last major music event she attended she was nearly killed. Now she’s performing at the world’s largest one.

The item crosses, very briefly, to an interview with Yuval Raphael whoo expresses her joy at being able to ‘represent her country’ at the high profile song contest before cutting to harrowing footage of the events of October 7 and a description of Raphael’s traumatic experiences on that day - including a recording of her phone call with her father as she hid from Hamas gunmen. We were then told that it was only after surviving the attack that Raphael started singing professionally.

It is interesting, in light of the fact that there will be thousands of experienced singers in Israel who could have represented the country at Eurovision 2025, that Israel decides to choose this particular young woman - who only started singing professionally less than 2 years ago. But of course this particular young woman had something much more valuable than her voice or her singing experience. This young woman survived October 7 - the “worst thing that’s happened to the Jewish people since the Holocaust” - which means that every time she is profiled by news media in the lead-up to Eurovision her horrific experience on October 7 could, very conveniently for Israel, be brought up. This does the double duty of reminding viewers of the horrors of that day while also eliciting pity for Raphael and, by extension, for Israel. What this is, essentially, is yet another example of the Israeli government weaponising the suffering of Jewish Israelis in order to run cover for its relentless campaign to drive the Palestinian people off their land.

The item then cuts briefly back to Raphael talking about how she “wished for herself just to be happy” and “to understand the gift of life she has been given” before it cuts away again to footage of protests against Israel’s participation in the contest. The very brief clip selected by the BBC was of a protester facing the camera and making a throat-slitting gesture - over which reporter Lucy Manning intones grimly:

But Israel’s participation is facing protests. This at the opening parade, reported to police.

Remarkably, Manning says absolutely nothing about why people were protesting Israel’s involvement in the Eurovision song contest. This omission would leave many viewers - especially those who know very little about what’s going on - mystified as to why anyone would object to the participation of this beautiful brave young woman who has gone through so much, let alone why these protesters would be making nasty throat-slitting gestures towards her. To say this made these protesters look bad is an understatement and it is difficult not to draw the conclusion whoever was in charge of producing this BBC item selected this particular clip deliberately.

The item then cuts to Raphael singing and Manning says “When Yuval performs her song New Day Will Rise, she’s expecting some booing. She asks Raphael if she’s been practicing with people booing at her. Raphael laughs and says she had a few rehearsals where she practiced with ‘distractions in the background’. Once again, there is no mention of why on earth people would be booing this lovely, innocent talented young woman.

Manning then ends the report with:

The 24-year-old acknowledges the weight and the responsibility on her shoulders. She is a singer and survivor.

This, in light of the fact that Yuval was - whether she knew it or not - acting as a propagandist for her country, was an interesting choice of words by Manning because the “weight and responsibility” that Yuval was bearing was essentially to help Israel clean up its beleaguered image - an image tarnished by its murderous rampage in Gaza for the last 19 months.

To run an item like this - and from the BBC of all media outlets6 - 19 months into Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is, to put it mildly, astonishing. I always thought media people prided themselves on being ‘savvy’ and well able to spot propaganda when they see it. Well I’m sorry One News - this piece was purest Israeli hasbara and you ran it, with no comment or caveat, on your flagship 6 o’clock news show while Israel was literally in the process of not just openly and shamelessly starving the people of Gaza but also brazenly signalling its intentions to drive them out of the enclave entirely and permanently.

As Guy Christiansen points out in this video Eurovision has long been a valuable platform for Israel to polish its image internationally. He further notes that each year they use government funds to buy votes and to pay for advertising - which is, as Christensen points out, technically against the rules. He also notes that Israelis and their supporters have been using multiple credit cards from various different countries to vote for the Israeli entrant and that they “have been all over social media bragging about that”.

And in case you doubt the word of a young TikToker here is an article from GrayZone meticulously detailing how Israel did this very thing in 2024. If you imagine they wouldn’t pull the same stunt in 2025 - particularly given they’re currently tanking international reputation - then I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

But despite Israel’s attempts to astroturf the Eurovision vote a quick look at the top 10 Eurovision streamed songs in 2025 shows you that Israel was not, in fact, the crowd favourite at all. Not only is Israel not near the top of this list - Israel is not even on this list at all.

Regardless of the reality of the matter, however, optics mean everything in the hasbara game and Israel and its social media influencers made a meal of its ‘win’. Israel ‘doing well’ in Eurovision was used by a number of hasbarists to ‘prove’ that ‘the silent majority’ are still on Israel’s side and that ‘the haters’ are in the minority and large Israeli accounts who aren’t usually into pop music giddily celebrated the win.

*Yuval Raphael is at the front dancing and waving the Israeli flag*

I understand some may accuse me of being unfair to Yuval Raphael. Indeed, such a view is articulated perfectly here by Marsha Lederman, in this article for Canadian outlet Globe & Mail.

This performance – by a young woman who emerged from a death shelter to sing for the world, who walked up a winding, onstage staircase on a leg she was sure she would lose, who was wearing a costume inspired by a dead little boy – should have been cheered as a triumph over adversity. Especially at Eurovision, which began in 1956 as a competition to bring the continent together after the devastation of the Second World War. Its slogan today is “United by Music.” It’s meant to spotlight songs over politics. [my emphasis]

This is disingenuous to say the very least. As Lederman would have been fully aware, the people protesting at Eurovision were not protesting Yuval Raphael per se - a young woman who had gone through a trauma and ‘triumphed over adversity’ - they were protesting Israel’s participation in the contest. And the reason for their protest is that Israel is currently engaged in a genocidal war against the people of Gaza which - by the time the 2025 Eurovision kicked off - was starting to look frighteningly like a campaign of total annihilation.

For Eurovision to be platforming a state committing the kinds of egregious crimes against humanity Israel is committing, and shamelessly bragging about to the entire world, is astonishing, particularly in light of the competition’s squeamishness over Russia, which was banned from the competition almost as soon as set foot in Ukraine.

I’m sorry but no matter how ‘lovely’ this young woman may be, no matter how ‘sweet’ her voice or how tragic her back-story, the fact remains that Israel is using her to launder the abominations they are perpetrating in Gaza.

And those abominations are absolutely horrifying as a dozen United Nations experts made very clear in a recent statement. The following is quoted from a note on Substack by Story Ember leGaie:

On May 7, 2025, over a dozen United Nations experts issued one of the most damning statements yet on the genocide in Gaza. Their warning is not just urgent
—it is apocalyptic:
"States must act now to end the violence or bear witness to the annihilation of the Palestinian population in Gaza-an outcome with irreversible consequences for our shared humanity."
This is not symbolic. This is not hypothetical. This is the international system, such as it exists, finally calling this what it is: a genocide in progress, with mass death as policy, not collateral.

The UN experts went on to confirm:

Over 52,000** Palestinians killed, with 70% being women and children
118,491 injured
600 deaths in a single day (March 18), 400 of them children
Israel deliberately targeting aid workers, health professionals, journalists, and displaced persons
Gaza's population of 2.1 million trapped under a siege so total that food, water, medicine, and oxygen have been cut off for months
Starvation and dehydration used as weapons of war
Humanitarian aid made conditional on Israeli "strategic goals"—a form of collective blackmail and slow murder
Repeated violations of international law, war crimes, and acts of genocide, carried out in open defiance of ICJ orders, ICC investigations, and the global community
And amid this devastation, UN experts state plainly:
"These acts, beyond constituting grave international crimes, follow alarming, documented patterns of genocidal conduct."

As I noted above, Eurovision has always been ‘political’ for Israel because Israel, as a settler-colonial apartheid state that was birthed via a vicious campaign of ethnic cleansing which is still ongoing, has long needed to present a benign and attractive image to the international community. And what could be more benign and attractive than “this survivor with the sweet voice and still, somehow, some hope”? And what is more useful, particularly at this apocalyptic point in Israel’s war of annihilation, that, via this ‘survivor’ of October 7, the world can be reminded yet again of Israel’s trauma, of Israel’s pain and, perhaps most importantly, of Israel’s raison d’être for their ‘war’ on Gaza.

I may be wrong because I am not a regular One News viewer but I strongly suspect that One News hasn’t run profiles of very many, if any, other Eurovision entrants on their flagship 6pm show. If this is the case then why, given Eurovision has long been used to bolster Israel’s image, did TVNZ decide to do a puff piece about Israel’s entrant into the competition this year? And, furthermore, why did it choose to put this item in the very same news bulletin as an item covering Israel’s deliberate starvation policy in Gaza?

To be perfectly frank juxtaposing these two pieces in one bulletin was even more of a gift to Israel’s PR machine than just running the Eurovision piece alone. One News ran a piece on the ‘imminent famine’ in Gaza which, let’s face it, couldn’t be ignored given the gravity of the situation there and then, a little later in the bulletin, it soothed the troubled waters with an item that essentially washed all that bad stuff away, leaving many viewers with a warm and positive sense of Israel as a country full of lovely young women like Yuval Raphael with voices like angels and hearts full of hope running through fields of gold.

*Screenshots from the official video of Yuval Raphael's Eurovision song - 'A New Day Will Rise'*

Ask yourself honestly, what do you think most people would relate to and remember from that news bulletin - the ‘looming humanitarian crisis’ in Gaza with the talking heads from UNRWA and the UN droning on and on about Israel committing war crimes (that they may or may not have been committing, who really knows?) or the beautiful young singer who survived the horrors of October 7 (that terrible, terrible day where 1200 people were slaughtered by Hamas and weren’t there some babies killed and lots of women raped too?) rising like a phoenix to represent her country in front of millions of people at the Eurovision Song Contest?

You tell me.

Karyn Taylor-Moore is a recovering academic psychologist & a long-time leftist anti-imperialist from Ōtautahi

¹ There is a summary of the main points of this article in English here.

² Although the EU has been a little unsure about this - taking the group off the list in 2014 and then putting them back on it in 2021 - as detailed here and here

³ As pointed out by ex-IDF soldier Yehuda Shaul in this 2023 article by Al Jazeera, the Hannibal Directive, also known as the Hannibal Procedure or Hannibal Protocol, “is an Israeli military policy that stipulates the use of maximum force in the event of a soldier being kidnapped”. Shaul noted that soldiers are ordered to”open fire without constraints, in order to prevent the abduction,” and added that this is done even if there is a risk of killing a captive soldier. Shaul also pointed out that “In addition to firing at the abductors, soldiers can fire at junctions, roads, highways and other pathways opponents may take a kidnapped soldier through”.

⁴ And in case you imagine that offering a caveat or a qualifying statement is really just too much trouble for media organisations, take a look at the absolute doozy of a qualifying statement provided by Jeremy Bowen to his interview with Phillippe Lazzarini, Head of UNWRA, aired on BBC News at 10 on May 13:

Israel says he is a liar, and that his organisation has been infiltrated by Hamas. But I felt it was important to talk to him for a number of reasons. “First off, the British government deals with him, and funds his organisation. Which is the largest dealing with Palestinian refugees. They know a lot of what is going on, so therefore I think it is important to speak to people like him.

If one of the BBC’s senior journalists thinks it is appropriate to place a caveat around the statements of the head of UNRWA despite him having done nothing wrong and being caught out in precisely zero lies then perhaps it might be time to treat Israeli officials and government spokespeople - who have told, and been caught out in, lie after lie, after lie - in a similar manner.

⁵ UNRWA has long been in Israel’s crosshairs but its campaign against it stepped up several notches after October 7. Israel accused UNRWA staff of being involved in the October 7 attack causing UNRWA to launch an internal enquiry. It was later found that there was little to no evidence to support Israel’s claims but the international fall-out for the organisation was huge. Media ran the story relentlessly and many countries temporarily - or in some cases - permanently withdrew funding from UNRWA - casting even more doubt - for your average punter - on the reputation and reliability of the aid organisation.

⁶ Over the last 19 months the BBC has been called out repeatedly by both viewers and its own staff. From obfuscatory and misleading headlines to outright hypocrisy, the BBC has been shown to consistently present a narrative favourable to Israel.

How the media launders genocide: A case study