The first casualty of war is truth, according to Aeschylus, father of Greek tragedy. And nowhere is that more evident than the Israeli war on Gaza.
Foreign journalists are prohibited by Israel from entering the strip, so all casualties are listed by the “Hamas-controlled” health agency.
Every time the media uses the phrase, we are invited to disbelieve the sobering statistics as being mere propaganda from a terrorist organisation.
And Hamas is indeed a terrorist organisation – anyone who was able to watch the harrowing Channel Four documentary One Day in October can hardly dispute the fact.
In heartbreaking detail, with the testimony of survivors of the onslaught on Be’eri kibbutz on October 7 last, it traced a minute-by-minute account of what happened.
Terrified families huddled in basement shelters that were built to withstand overhead rocket fire, but with doors with no locks, they could not withstand bullets.
One father told of desperately holding onto the door for hours along with his 15-year-old son, as his wife and younger children cowered nearby. The boy died of bullet wounds, as did his mother. For hours and hours they waited for help from the army, but none came in time.
The Hamas insurgents were seen from kibbutz security cameras, and their own exultant phone footage, and it was truly sickening. A review in next morning’s Guardian newspaper, by seasoned TV critic Stuart Jeffries, referred to the ”evident evil” of their actions on that day.
He added: “If you want insight into why Israel is doing what it is doing in Gaza and Lebanon, this film may help. If you want to understand why Hamas murdered civilians, though, One Day in October won’t help.”
That is true, but it brought an avalanche of criticism on social media and The Guardian, champion of free speech, caved in and took the offending review off its website within hours.
In a statement, a spokesman for the paper said: “The article did not meet our editorial standards and we have removed it pending review.”
The torrent of online rage against Jeffries suggests he was somehow sympathetic with the perpetrators of the October 7 atrocity. He wasn’t. But he was pointing out that the film only looked at one point of view.
He compared it to the movie Zulu, where viewers were encouraged to identify with the brave white British against overwhelming hordes of faceless black African attackers.
But he was not asking us to identify with Hamas – just asking questions about what leads people to do unspeakable things is not offering a justification.
In today’s world of instant judgements, and social media pile-ons, there is little room for reasoned debate. This is the world we live in now. It’s all black and white.
If you’re not for us in everything, you’re against us. If you ask why Hamas could commit such an atrocity, then you are supporting terrorism.
It is possible to detest Hamas and what they did and equally detest Netanyahu’s response. An eye for an eye just makes everyone blind.
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Maga fans will not be rushing to cinemas to see the movie The Apprentice starring Sebastian Stan. Trump’s campaign team called it “garbage” and his lawyers sent the filmmakers a “cease and desist writ”. But everyone else should catch it at the Queens Film Theatre this week.
Stan turns in an astonishingly real depiction of the young Donald, trying to forge an empire in 1970s New York, under the Svengali-like tutelage of bent but powerful lawyer Roy Cohn – another brilliant performance by Jeremy Strong.
Cohn was the chief lawyer during the McCarthy communist witch-hunt trials, who boasted that he sent the Rosenbergs to their death sentence for treason.
He helps create the monster that Trump becomes – venal, narcissistic and completely self-believing.
It’s hardly credible that he ended up as president once, and may still be again. If only Hollywood could produce a different ending.
In today’s world of instant judgements, and social media pile-ons, there is little room for reasoned debate