Originally published at: Israeli officials back off baby massacre claim | Boing Boing
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Bit late to put that genie back in the bottle, since the story already circled the world and major news outlets reported it.
I expect retractions and apologies will be printed immediately and tensions will lower.
The siege is getting worse and violence is increasing? Huh.
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If your goal is to be in a perpetual war that demands that men in general and leaders specifically must be “strong” above all, and that women are relegated to a role of soldier-producers, and soldier-supporters (i.e. fascism) sounds like everything is going according to plan.
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A cynical part of me suspects it was done on purpose. The soldier who supposedly saw it lied and the the Israeli official all the news outlets quoted lied too. Because what Hamas really did wasn’t quite horrific enough to completely blot out the things IDF and the Israeli government have been doing to Palestinians for years now. They wanted blind rage inducing levels of atrocities
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It doesn’t matter now, it can be used as if it were true.
It will go in the pile of horrible things that people say, that when repeated and called out get the response, "Well, it’s the kind of thing they would do… "
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Earlier Biden had said
so this sure seems more like a retraction than a “clarification.”
Everyone needs to be more careful about what rumours they pass on, but world leaders like the U.S. president have a responsibility to be especially careful to get their facts straight. I certainly hope that Biden does better in the future. We’ve seen the disastrous consequences of what can happen (multiple times now) when a U.S. president pulls us into a war based on bad or non-existent intelligence reports.
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So it wasn’t true. I had an argument with relatives about this. Then Mr. Biden said that he saw those photos. Now he says it wasn’t quite like that. I think it’s better to keep quiet next time.
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I’m surprised that Biden’s staff allowed him to repeat this story. I get that they’ll support Israel no matter what, but blowing his credibility in public on a dodgy story like this isis the kind of move I’d expect from TFG.
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It was his own responsibility.
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You and me both.
I’m just muting all war topics and taking a vow of silence on the subject. What good does it do me and what good do I do others? It’s just a vector for stress and disinformation to expose myself to it at all.
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The buck stops with him for sure. Usually staffers and advisors are there as a backstop for amateur-hour gaffes like this. Helping rumour-mongers is a very bad look for a world leader.
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Yeah… people who wanted to believe it, who wanted to use it to justify mass slaughter of Gazan civilians, are going to lean into it anyway.
Could be…
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Well if you’re looking back at historical examples of this kind of awful rhetoric you can always point to the Old Testament, such as Deuteronomy 20:16-18 where god tells his people to do some pretty dark shit against the Canaanites, sparing no one. Or Saul’s slaughter of the Amalekites. Or any number of ancient wars, probably.
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Okay, but again, the source seems questionable… 
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Truth is the first casualty of war.
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Turns out, it’s usually children.
Truth is way down the list.
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I hate that saying, it’s a glib phrase that disguises the horror.
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