The BBC is the propaganda arm of the British state, although, as the Lineker affair shows, the close relation of its top executives and presenters with the Tory Party, also means it is an arena for the war going on between, the conflicting interests of the ruling class and the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie. The presenters, as I have set out before, are paid an average of around £150,000 a year, which, with the other incomes such positions generate, means, more often, around half a million. Its no surprise, therefore, that its reporting reflects the interests of those petty-bourgeois and bourgeois elements, and, after more than a century of experience, it is able to do it subtly. An example of which I was immediately struck by this morning.
One of its presenters in reading the headlines talked about Israeli air strikes on the "Palestinian militant group Hamas, in Gaza". Now, as I have written many times before, I have no time for the reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalist, and clerical-fascist Hamas, or its equivalents across the Middle-East. However, to present things in this way, was deceptive, because Hamas is also the government of Gaza. What the Israeli state was actually striking, therefore, was the government and state apparatus of Gaza. Why does this matter?
By presenting things in this way, what the BBC was doing was legitimising the actions of the Israeli state, by basically saying it was just dealing with terrorists, not conducting a war against another state, albeit another state that is not allowed to become fully fledged, because of the actions of Israel itself, and its supporters in western imperialist countries/NATO that provide it with large amounts of advanced weapons, and finance, and, as with this instance, blanket ideological support. Compare that with the attitude of the same western imperialism and its propaganda machine with its attitude towards Ukraine, and you can see the significance of why the BBC presents this attack, and everything surrounding it, resulting from the occupation of Palestinian territory, its attacks on the Al Aqsa Mosque, and so on, in the way it did.
A lot of the West's propaganda against Russia is based upon the fascistic nature of Putin's regime, and, indeed, there are many fascistic features of that regime that any decent socialist must abhor. Yet, western imperialism is highly selective in pointing out the fascistic or undemocratic features of states, depending upon whether it is currently in alliance with them or not, and the social-imperialists in the labour movement follow a similar course. The Israeli state came into existence, as with all states, by an act of violence. Usually, that violence is by natives of the country, in a dominant region or principality, exerting that dominance over other regions and principalities, as happened with the creation of the British, French, German and Italian nation states, for example. But colonial states come into existence, as a result of some external nation settling its colons on the territory of other nations, and mobilising violence behind them to establish their dominance over the native population, as with European settlement in the Americas, Australasia, Asia and Africa.
The creation of the Israeli state was of this latter type, and differs from the other examples in that it was created only in 1947, at a time when the idea of colonialism was in disrepute, and imperialism was breaking up the old colonial empires that had been created from the 16th century onwards. Moreover, it reflected the worst examples of that earlier colonialism. In the Americas, and Australasia, the colonists carried out policies of genocide against the native populations, some of which were wiped out, and others of whom were reduced to living in the concentration camps of reservations, and so on. That was the strategy that the Zionists also adopted in Palestine, in order to remove the existing Palestinian population from the land, and as with the continued policy of stealing Palestinian land, and establishing settler communities, it continues today, with western imperialism limply protesting, whilst doing nothing, and the social imperialists, respond, as with Starmer, by claiming that anyone who points out the inherently racist and colonialist nature of Zionism is an anti-Semite!
From the start Zionism, as an ideology was racist, and colonialist, and as is always the case with such ideology, closely tied to the need for authoritarianism, and violent suppression of effective opposition. In other words, it looks very much like, fascism. Its no surprise that many of the leaders of Zionism involved in setting up the Israeli state, therefore, embraced the ideas of fascism and Nazism. The Lehi group members were trained in Mussolini's Italy, and sought support from both fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany, to fight against Britain in Palestine. As Wikpedia says,
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