This article by Dianne Kirby first appeared in Unity, the weekly publication of the Irish Communist Party.
The deliberate degradation of living conditions, a mode of destruction with colonial origins deployed by the Nazis, denies the essential foundations of life. An addition to direct acts of massacre, slow, indirect killings effectively annihilate Indigenous peoples, releasing their lands for settlement. The systematic destruction of Gaza was completed by Caterpillar D9 bulldozers forcing the remaining population into ever smaller, overcrowded enclaves without housing, healthcare or essential services. Continuously bombed from above, gunned-down from below, Gazans live atop a contaminated landscape that will remain toxic for decades. Methodical environmental devastation removes society’s ability to sustain biological life.
Demolishing the cultural domain, educational and religious centres above all, removes society’s capacity to organise mutual care and support. Raphael Lemkin wanted ‘cultural genocide’ included in the 1948 Genocide Convention. He was opposed by the imperial powers and the settler-colonial states. The former, busy suppressing anti-colonial uprisings, disdained legal restrictions. The latter had largely erased the physical heritage, culture and languages of their own Indigenous peoples. Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s physical environment and all record of its existence, photos, maps, deeds and documents, reveals full commitment to total genocide. Israel’s allies are partners.
Israel openly states its intention to do to Lebanon what it has done to Gaza. Yet despite the flattening of whole villages, Lebanese are returning South to where their homes once were. Just as did the Gazans. Ceasefires have no meaning to Israel. Lebanese families will be slaughtered amongst the rubble, their children shot in makeshift schools, their lives made hell. Lebanese and Palestinian stoicism, their will to resist, survive, thrive and live on their own land, should be daily on the news. As should Israel’s relentless violence and genocidal policies. Media failure to document state terrorism is compounded by the elevation of non-stories of dubious intent.
Donald Trump’s public pronouncements are routinely reckless, crude, littered with outrageous lies. The status of the target matters not. Barack and Michelle Obama were depicted as monkeys. Not even death deters Trump’s crass commentaries. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell was insulted within 24 hours of passing. Trump celebrated former FBI Director Robert Mueller’s decease: ‘Good, I’m glad he’s dead.’ Yet Trump’s recent rants against Pope Leo XIV generated a media frenzy, helped by hapless Hegseth’s citing a Pulp Fiction prayer while Trump visualised himself as Jesus. Nonetheless, White House ravings, incompetence and improbity rarely attract massive media attention, even less so religion, other than its hypocrisy, sexual deviance or child abuse.
Woeful ignorance of ecclesiastical workings, pragmatism and compromise, plus diplomatic relations with 180 plus nations, America included, facilitated morality play dramatization. A fearless spiritual leader was challenging the world’s most powerful man misusing religion for political purposes. The framing permitted a critique of Trump that avoided directly attacking the thin-skinned litigious president. It also deflected attention from legacy media’s shameful dereliction of duty, the non-reporting of ongoing Israeli atrocities in contravention of the America brokered ceasefires, accompanied by unconscionable neglect of Lebanese-Palestinian perspectives.
The fairytale-telling ignored papal preoccupation with the war on Iran crippling the global economy, of consequential concern to a church with worldwide financial interests. The Christian church has radical roots. Within 300 years it became the state religion of the empire that executed its founder, devolving into conservative bureaucracies promoting and protecting church interests within states of various political hues.
Leo’s predecessor, pope Francis, indicted Israel’s murder of children as cruelty, not war. He acknowledged Gaza could be characterised as genocide, for which Israeli officials branded him antisemitic. He urged the world not to look away from Palestinian suffering. Leo is far more cautious, stating genocide is a technical term on which the Holy See cannot make a declaration.
Recognising the unwisdom of a spat with the president of the country that most contributes to ‘Peter’s Pence’, Leo has since criticised media coverage as inaccurate, claiming Trump was not the subject of his censure.
With legacy media concentrated in the hands of the self-serving Epstein class, alternative sources of information and analysis are crucial to freeing Palestine, stymieing militarism and preventing endless war.