Unmasking Media Tactics: The Disturbing Trend of ‘Do You Condemn Hamas?’ in Interviews.

Demanding Evidence is Not Sympathy, It’s Sensible Inquiry.

It has been extremely telling that all mainstream Western news broadcasters have gone into every interview asking first and foremost of any interviewee calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, “Do you condemn Hamas?" The most troubling aspect is how these pro-Palestinian guests are treated when they ask for evidence of what they are being asked to condemn. Mainstream Western news outlets invariably paint any request for evidence as a hesitation to condemn Hamas and thus as implicit support for the group.

This of course, is not true. The IDF has a long history of making fabricated statements, and the events of 7th October 2023 are no different. Israel's official narrative of that day has changed many times. From the White House's de facto retraction of Biden's untrue claim of seeing pictures of beheaded babies, the IDF admitting that an Israeli military helicopter was responsible for a number of Israeli civilian deaths, to the Israeli State rolling back the official Israeli death count by hundreds, the Israeli government is giving a masterclass in misinformation during this war.  Dealing with such circumstances, the only prudent approach is to insist on verifiable evidence of events before forming any comments upon them.

Consistently, however, evidence is not produced in these interviews, yet the interviewees are attacked for not following the official narrative of those who have been found time and again to have lied.

The is all premised on the assumption that the Western powers supporting Israel are assumed truthful solely based on their Western identity. It is also no surprise that the majority of those advocating for Palestinian rights are non-white. There is an unspoken bias in the Western world that non-white populations, particularly those from the Global South, are expected to accept the Western, 'white' narrative without the same rights to demand evidence. Such contrast is evident within the Western world itself. Tampered ‘evidence’ is enough to convict an African American man, while a higher standard is applied for a white man, often requiring far more concrete proof. Black Americans simply do not have the same rights to demand evidence of their guilt before they are incarcerated than white Americans.

It’s a significant testament to the influence of the Western Empire and the mythical perception they’ve cultivated around the incorruptibility of their institutions that even when these institutions are undeniably proven to have lied, there’s a tendency for people to continue following their narrative assuming that regardless, the rest of their statements must be true. While one lie should expose a liar, in the realms of the White House and 10 Downing Street, a thousand lies does not seem to suffice.

Taking the facts of what we know about the events of 7th October alone:

1). Israeli sources have revised their statements of many facets of that day.

2). The Israeli government admitted to firing on its own civilians with military helicopters.

3). The Israeli government revised the death toll from 1400 to 1200, admitting its first numbers were over-estimates.

4). The Israeli government published the names of the those who died on 7th October on its official twitter account revealing that rather than civilian deaths, the majority of Israeli deaths were military and security-related personnel.

5). There were no beheaded Israeli babies.

6). There are currently no substantiated accounts of rapes.

The demand for pro-Palestinian supporters to condemn Hamas for the events of 7th October in every interview simply continues the tradition in the Western world of denying Palestinians the same rights as others. In this case, being presumed guilty of severe atrocities without verifiable evidence, despite the widespread acknowledgment that these Western narratives are ever-changing and increasingly strained.

Palestinians are never afforded the right to be presumed innocent before being proven guilty. And neither are their supporters.