In late-2021 an Israeli lecturer from Bar-Ilan University’s Center for International Communications was in Kiev for the “umpeenth time, to continue trainings in dialogue and research.” The course at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev’s Institute of Journalism was, according to an Associate Professor from the International University of Kiev, simple - ‘Be consistent with messaging and narrative, get foreign officials in shot and use English language.’ Case studies and examples were given over the 3 days. Some related to Ukraine’s 2013-14 protests and coup, others to Israeli campaigns. A core was MoJo or ‘mobile journalism’. This is best seen at protests, catastrophes or sports events where you have to work on your feet and get copy back to HQ or out online as quickly as possible. The single piece of advice they were given at the end was to “Be first.”
40 behaded babies is the lie repeated by Joe Biden, having already been spread by English newspapers despite knowing it was just that - a lie. A single, fanatical armed settler (David Ben Zion) told a single journalist, from a far right extremist Israeli media outlet, that 40 babies had been killed and beheaded. At the settlement of Kfar Aza there were dozens of journalists, camera & sound operators. There was destruction, there was death, but no beheaded babies. Joe Biden said he saw photos of said babies, he didn’t and the White House desperately tried to roll back on it. But it was too late. Hamas, Palestinians and Muslims in general are baby killers. We can now exterminate them all like the “human animals” they are - right? Haven’t we heard this all before?
My children, partner, friends, colleagues are all “orcs”, “evil” and “mongoloid”. They are all less than human and since July 2023 fair game for murder, by order of Vladimir Zelensky. When the long-running conflict in Ukraine exploded into full scale war, I continually asked people not to “other” Russians. Few listened. Anyone whose mind was made up by media just went full on Russophobic. There was no turning back and every new outrage was met with another uptick in hatred towards Russia and Russians. Russian media was blocked in the EU, USA, Canada and other bastions of freedom of expression, while Russian diplomats were largely useless in getting any message across. It wasn’t so much that they weren’t allowed, it was their sheer incapability of telling the truth in an honest, humble, human way. To a person they came across as aloof, fake and insincere.
The Palestininan Ambassador to the UK has been supremely good this week. He was able to speak rationally, humbly yet firmly when he was being told to condemn Hamas and apologise. As a former colleague from Croatia now living in London told me:
Every time I see some Russian diplomat pushed in front of a camera they sound just like a British Tory, and if I didn’t know history, I’d want them gone, out. Scum I’d say.
I see normal people online objecting to the obvious lies that much of the media, and political class, are happy to repeat. The 40 babies “narrative” was confronted over and over by people who were hurt by the diminution of actual events on the ground. They were hurt because there were, for sure, little Israeli babies killed. They were furious that anybody would try elevate the life of one child over another. They were incensed because this was being used as an excuse to wipe out an entire population from the planet. They were enraged because they were able to see actual photos and videos of tiny babies pulled from Gazan rubble, while the Israeli Defence Forces and government (correctly) said they could “not confirm” the 40 beheaded babies.
Last March, after 2 weeks of increased conflict and absolute bunkum in western media, Ukrainian Telegram channels were complaining about their military taking over schools, homes and hospitals as defensive positions. Is it against the ‘rules’, apparently yes. If I were an soldier defending (or attacking), would I care about where I could dodge bombs and bullets? Not a jot. In the vast majority of cases Ukrainian forces cleared buildings, moved people on and there were no civilians. How do I know? 100% I don’t, however from locals complaining to officials and on social media, I’m pretty sure. I also knew the maternity hospitals in Mariupol had been taken over by military as defensive positions. How do I know? Locals were complaining, with verified photos and videos circulating on Ukrainian social media. Russia, Amnesty International, UN etc said they were “hiding” there (again, they were almost 100% civilian free). One wasn’t fully cleared and still operational - maternity hospital number 3.
A bomb exploded at the hospital March 9, was it Russian? Almost for sure. AP and 2 other local correspondents were there, waiting, embedded with the military. The first video went on Telegram within minutes, nothing seemed clear. A blonde woman clearly dazed, was asked - What happened? Did you hear the plane? She told the journalist to leave her alone. She said “I came here for a shoot?” Her question was to the AP journalist who repeatedly took photos of her, despite being told to stop. She said she heard explosions, but no plane. She told the other 2 hospitals were closed with soldiers stationed at the first before arriving at #3, but there were soldiers here too. Soldiers who were taking their food and scared, like her. This was not the video or photos that flashed around the globe. They were lying to cover up and the world needed to know. Someone had to speak out. I was stupid.
I made the mistake of pointing out the errors in a thread on Twitter. I thought it was just a minor thing and moved on. I got ready, went to work and then…..it kicked off. I was asked, by the Chair of Gaelic Games Europe to delete the tweets and the remove any reference of my involvement with the organisation. I’ll point out I am a volunteer who has only once claimed expenses in 4 years, even when I’m supposed to submit claims for travel, costs etc. It’s an amateur movement after all. I explained the situation and was confused as to what I’d done wrong. I deleted the tweets and publicly disassociated myself from the organisation and thought, which was the bigger mistake - pointing out the lies or doing what I was asked. That evening the Irish Times called me, their journalist aggressively asking questions as I tried to figure what was going on. My wits came back and I asked if he was recording this, he said no, just notes. I told him that he never told me that this was “on the record” and that if he wanted something “on the record” I would gladly do so. I decried war and that there was never a reason for people to die.
He wrote that a “GAA Officer” had repeated Russian propaganda, I was shocked. I’d been watching Ukrainian and western news, never Russian, but they said I was repeating claims from the Russian Embassy in London. I found the “claims” and it was nothing to do with what I’d said. But, it was too late. Shortly after Marianna Vyshemirskaya gave birth to her daughter, she moved BACK to Donetsk and gave a full, frank interview that went even further than my memory. I sent this to the Irish Times, asking them to make a correction - 17 months later, zero. For a month I was puzzled as to how this came about. I’m now tainted as a person who repeated Russian claims and that’s it. When even the BBC, months later, lied so blatantly to back the AP “story” and dismiss the woman’s claims, there is no hope. The woman they held up as a reason to fuel further hatred of Russia was at first condemned by Ukrainian media for “going home”, but western media doubled down - she was “kidnapped” and then worse, when she reiterated that she was actually back home, they called her a Kremlin stooge.
Symbolically on Friday Ursula von der Leyen landed in Israel. She was immediately taken to Kfar Aza, a move taken from the Ukraine playbook. Foreign official lands in Kiev, they’re taken to Bucha where, according to a former Irish Deputy PM - "people were shot through the eyes by snipers”. Eamon Gilmore’s statement on Irish radio still bugs me to this day. He admitted he never saw a body, he was just told this. But once he repeated the lie, it became the truth. The same with the 40 beheaded babies in Kfar Aza. The child of a nazi family who’d made their money and got their title from service in the Russian Empire, von der Leyen had already shown her true colours. She never commented on Ukraine’s blocking water, food and electricity to Crimea for 8 years, she decried (rightly) Russia’s attacked on Ukraine’s infrastructure, but she backed Israel cutting off water and electricity to Gaza. As the great and bad landed in Israel to show solidarity with Tel Aviv, marches in support of countless UN resolutions were being banned across Europe.
As I write, on a Saturday morning in rainy Moscow, it has just been announced that Israel will “allow” Gazan residents to move to another part of their open air prison for the next 5 hours. Once the time is up, they will bomb the living shit out of the place. US, UK and other NATO naval vessels, are all in the area to lend support. What they do in the Black Sea to Russia, in the Baltic to Russia, in eastern Europe to Russia, is now being done to Palestine. It is western-backed, supported, aided and abetted slaughter. The playbook rolled out for Ukraine was still steaming when it was rolled out last weekend. How many more innocent children of all passports, colours, creeds and lands need to die for us to call it out?
PS - The person who sent my tweets in March 2022 to Croke Park and to the Irish Times (and other media)? An Irishman who followed me on Twitter and worked with the pr agency Hill & Knowlton, the people who brought us the lie of Kuwaiti babies being thrown out of incubators by Iraqi soldiers. Since December 2021 Hill & Knowlton have an ongoing contract with Kiev to monitor “opposition English-language social media activity”.