Hassan and Ahmed are two mid-level backroom terrorist operatives in Gaza. Here we follow their observations and comments about how they see their ‘struggle’ and the outside world’s reaction to it. Think in terms of the past UK Bird and Fortune or current US Saturday Night Live political lampoons.
While being satire, these exchanges will generally focus on current ‘hot-button’ topics. This week they focus on their strongest supporters in the West.
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Hassan: Who do you think are our strongest supporters, have the most impact?
Ahmed: Here in Gaza, or in the West?
Hassan: Here, we have many supporters, we’re spoilt for choice. But few of them have much impact outside. So, I’m thinking more of supporters in the West.
Ahmed: (Nods). So, more or less, who tells the biggest lies or makes the most outrageous claims in order to glorify us and make Israel look bad?
Hassan: (Waggles one hand). Not exactly. Because while a big, bold lie might initially be seen to do the most damage to Israel, often it backfires and doesn’t help us much.
Ahmed: (Knits his brow). I’m not sure I follow you. Surely the bigger the lie, the bolder the claim, the better.
Hassan: Not exactly. (Gestures) I’ll give you an example. The other day I saw a poster online claiming that the Israelis had killed a million people here in Gaza, had used white phosphorous and chemical weapons. And that they regularly raped Palestinian children, not just in prisons but at checkpoints too.
Ahmed: What’s wrong with all of that? They appear very keen, robust Palestinian supporters.
Hassan: Yes, they were certainly keen, but as for robust? (Holds a palm out) Trouble is, none of those claims are even remotely believable. We both know they are lies of such immense proportions that not even fellow Palestinian supporters are going to swallow them, let alone any Israelis. So, in the end those claims count for nothing. No more substance or impact than farts in the wind.
Ahmed: Ah, more gas attacks (Smiles). And did they make any efforts to support their claims from news reports or statistics?
Hassan: Yes, they quoted The Lancet, the British medical journal. But that doesn’t help, because we both know The Lancet got it wrong when they quoted 174,000 – because that was a UN figure that included even minor injuries. And then there was the major screw-up they made a few months back when they claimed life expectancy had dropped 30 years – which would mean something like 800,000 dying.
Ahmed: (Nods slowly) So, you’re saying The Lancet is no longer seen as a reliable source of information?
Hassan: Exactly. And the rest of her claims were so outrageous that nobody was paying attention to her anymore. So, that type of supporter doesn’t exactly help our cause. The claims need to be more subtle, or at least within the realms of believability.
Ahmed: But so many of the claims are extreme…
Hassan: Like the ‘thousands’ of children tortured and raped in Israeli prisons spouted by fiery Francesca?
Ahmed: Yes. And even Jonathan Cook regularly using the term Israeli ‘torture camps.’ I need to think a moment (Ponders, raises a finger). George Galloway - he tends to avoid extreme claims… or at least he makes them with such strong bluster that you daren’t question him.
Hassan: Such as? Any examples?
Ahmed: (Nods firmly) He was on with Piers Morgan a few months back and agreed with Piers that October 7th was a terrible massacre – thereby indicating he was at least even-handed. But when Morgan aired that it was the worse one-day massacre from either side, Galloway disagreed, saying that was Shattilla, where almost two-thousand were killed by Israel. So, he managed to still get in a strong prod against Israel.
Hassan: Yes. Very crafty. Particularly as Israel weren’t even responsible for Shattilla, it was the Christian Phalangists. But Israel got the blame because they were meant to be guarding the camp. And lower estimates put the figure at thirteen hundred killed and over a three-day period. So even if the Israelis were responsible, the toll was a lot lower than October 7th for one-day victims.
Ahmed: Nice to see he’s at least following our ‘blame Israel for everything’ ethos.
Hassan: Yes. He’s been a strong defender of our cause over the years. Even had a Palestinian wife at one stage.
Ahmed: (Smiling) And that didn’t put him off waving the flag for us?
Hassan: (Mirrors Ahmed’s smile). No. But must have been the ultimate test of his loyalty. Any others?
Ahmed: (Shrugs) While fiery Francisca’s claim of thousands of children tortured and raped in Israeli prisons is too wild and extreme to be accepted by anyone outside of our most ardent supporters, she was very good on the same programme challenging Morgan over the forty beheaded babies claim. The way she confronted the issue, it came across that the whole claim was false, that no babies were beheaded.
Hassan: Again, very crafty. Francisca is certainly a wily fox. (Gestures) And maybe given her stature in the UN, she feels her ‘thousands of children’ tortured and raped claim will be believed.
Ahmed: I didn’t even know there were ‘thousands’ of children in Israeli prisons. Surely, she’s not trying to suggest they’ve all been tortured and raped?
Hassan: I think the number of children in their prisons now is about three hundred.
Ahmed: (Grimaces). So, another claim that can’t possibly be true. I see what you mean now about our supporters being more subtle, sticking to claims that at last have a chance of being believed.
Hassan: Well, we know from our own experiences that the torture and rape claims are not true. We never experienced anything like that in Israelis prisons, nor saw or heard any claims from fellow prisoners. But then we’re not the main audience, Ahmed. It’s all our followers in the West, and they seem eager and ready to believe anything that’s fed them.
Ahmed: The ‘useful’ idiots?
Hassan: Yes. (Becomes thoughtful) So, maybe by that measure, we’re being too tough on ourselves. Perhaps we don’t need to be subtle or within the bounds of believability at all – because it seems even the wildest claims get swallowed by that audience.
Ahmed: (Nods) Maybe that poster claiming a million killed, gas and chemical attacks and Palestinian children raped both in prisons and at checkpoints – that’s the audience she was aiming for.
Hassan: Yes, could be. (Looks unsettled) But I think I know where a number of those stories have originated – one of our most ardent British online supporters, Sarah Wilkinson, we talked about her the other week. And a clampdown on her by the British anti-terrorist police has made me think that maybe we have to hold back on some of the more extreme claims, because otherwise it can backfire.
Ahmed: What? She’s made one extreme claim too many about the Israelis?
Hassan: More like a few hundred. After all, she’s been pumping out fifty to sixty comments with links a day. She was arrested just days after returning from Gaza, all her computers and cell-phones seized and asked about her contacts in Gaza.
Ahmed: Did she give any names?
Hassan: No, she refused. Said she feared the Israelis would bomb them is she gave names, as part of their continuing genocide in Gaza.
Ahmed: Good stuff! Manages to get in a dig at the Israelis and use the ‘genocide’ slur even when under arrest.
Hassan: Yes, but she’ll be out of action for a while now with no computer access. And with her arrest, I fear others like Jonathan Cook and Asa Winstanley might be next. That’s why I’ve become more concerned now about extreme claims – apart from the fact that only our hardcore supporters are sucked in by them.
Ahmed: Are Cook and Winstanley just as extreme with their claims?
Hassan: Sometimes they’re more subtle and drop names like the ICC and Amnesty International to support their genocide claims, but other times they’ll throw caution to the wind and make outlandish claims. Winstanley claimed that Israel killed most of their own on October 7th, and Cook regularly uses the ‘torture prisons’ term. But I think our own media team in Gaza are partly responsible for feeding Wilkinson a number of her claims. Sort of, ‘if we can get away with that, why not claim this’ situation. Next thing she’s claiming Israel used chemical weapons, and putting up pictures from Assad’s Syria to support it.
Ahmed: You think that’s what got her targeted and finally arrested?
Hassan: That and hundreds of other false or highly exaggerated claims. After all, putting out fifty to sixty messages and links a day, what time does she have to verify anything?
Ahmed: But surely there’s nothing they can stick on her? If lying was a crime, then half of Britain’s politicians would be in jail, and in Ramallah it would be all of them (Chuckles briefly).
Hassan: I think it’s these new ‘hate crimes’ laws. Okay, one side of it protects our Muslim brothers through claims of ‘Islamophobia’, but the other side of it is not so clear-cut. So, they’ll either try to prove ‘incitement of hatred and violence’, or perhaps support and defence of terrorism. (Sighs) But if we lose Cook and Winstanley as well, combined the three have over a million followers and readers. That would be a big hole in our information feed network.
Ahmed: (Nods slowly) I see what you mean. We’re already losing the war on the ground here in Gaza. We don’t want to be losing the information war as well.
Hassan: (Looks at Ahmed levelly) You see now why I’m concerned about these more extreme claims – as much as I relish seeing such claims against Israel, the possible backlash now worries me.
Ahmed: Yes, I see that now (Fresh breath). You asked me who I thought were our biggest supporters. Do you have any favourites?
Hassan: Yes, I do. (Gestures) Okay, no end of left-wing media that supports us more than Israel – CNN, Huffington Post, The Guardian, Channel 4… but my favourite is the BBC. Following my ‘subtle’ line, they never make outlandish or extreme claims, just this repetitive drip-drip bias in our favour and against Israel delivered with such an air of respectability. They’re not known by us as the British Bias Corporation for nothing.
Ahmed: Mind you, we did pull a fast one on them with that ‘How to Survive a Warzone’ documentary’.
Hassan: (Looks back cooly). They’re the BBC, Ahmed. Even an ounce of research would have revealed what they were getting into. They just made that excuse afterwards to cover themselves. And then look at the marvellous hatchet job they did with that Theroux interview. He interviews the settlers, but portrays them simply as aggressive and troublesome – exactly what we want to help us finally clear the area of all Jews. Never a mention that the Settlers suffer four to five times as many attacks, and that their actions are mostly defensive.
Ahmed: (Nods slowly) But I’ve seen them hauled over the coals a few times for their bias?
Hassan: Yes, but nothing ever comes of it. They launch a brief internal enquiry, a few gentle wrist slaps, but nobody ever gets fired. An apology issued if necessary, then they just continue as before. They couldn’t serve our needs better if we paid them.
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John Matthews is an experienced writer and journalist. The author of 24 books, including two centred around WW2 and the holocaust in the name of J.C. Maetis (his father’s original Jewish name) his first experience of writing about the Middle East came as a war correspondent covering the last years of the Lebanese Civil War, which led to his second book, ‘The Crescents of the Moon’. He has since written on the subject for a number of journals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The Spectator. He was also in the run-up to the millennium editor of European Brief, the main magazine for the European Parliament, editing the likes of Tony Blair, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unity, climate change and nuclear fusion to, once again, the Middle East. He lives in London with his wife and family.
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Brilliant. Funny but also sad because it's so true.