Disaster and disgrace: Israel’s PR meltdown echoes globally amid growing protests

By Iqbal Jassat 

If there were a word to capture or describe how severely the Israeli genocidal regime's public image has been damaged, it would most certainly be "disaster."

Some may argue that even metaphorically speaking, the embattled Benjamin Netanyahu regime has exhausted all options aimed at overcoming its disastrous public relations. 

Every action – whether military, political or diplomatic – has led from disaster to disaster. 

A recent example of the extent of worldwide outrage against the Israeli regime's genocide in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, saw thousands upon thousands – some estimates place the number at more than 300,000 – marching across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia. 

Dubbed the March for Humanity, and despite torrential rain, mainstream Western media reported that protestors carried placards with messages to politicians to stop the genocidal war.

"Shame shame Israel, shame shame USA," the crowds chanted. "What do we want? Ceasefire. When do we want it? Now."

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was spotted among the protesters, with other notable attendees including federal MP Ed Husic and former NSW Premier Bob Carr.

Some protesters carried a placard showing Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, something that was never seen before in a Western capital.

The Guardian quoted New South Wales police calling it the largest protest to descend on the city in memory. 

Moreover, the devastating critique of Israel was best captured in its heading: The horror of Gaza called and a mass of rain-soaked Sydney Harbour Bridge marchers, young and old, came in full force

As expected that Zionist pressure groups would cry foul, the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies said it was "disappointed" by the Supreme Court's decision to authorize the protest. 

This is typical of what we know from our own experience in South Africa, where Zionist lobby groups would bemoan, lament and bewail efforts by Palestinian solidarity movements to expose Israel's innumerable human rights violations. 

In fact, it is well known that the SA Jewish Board of Deputies condemned South Africa for taking Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the genocide in Gaza. 

It amounts to selective amnesia by defenders of the child-murdering regime who prefer to engage in semantics to deflect from compelling evidence of genocide.

A former deputy prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia said the amount of evidence pointing to genocide in Gaza is overwhelming and likened the situation to the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, media reports said. 

Graham Blewitt, who helped prosecute war crimes in the Balkans and Nazi crimes in Australia, said in a recent interview that if he were working in the International Criminal Court today, he would have “no hesitation in bringing an indictment against the Israeli leaders for genocide.”

To its eternal shame, the SAJBD called on the South African government to "reconsider its ill-considered, immoral and ultimately self-defeating stance on the conflict in the Middle East and instead align itself with other members of the international community who are doing whatever they can to help bring peace to the region".

Such ill-considered statements demonstrate levels of disconnect and blindness to the mass slaughter of Palestinians, positioning lobby groups as diehard supporters of settler colonialism. 

Contrary to their stance, within the regime, a growing consensus has emerged that Netanyahu is avoiding a permanent ceasefire in order to preserve his fascist coalition to stay out of jail. 

Times of Israel revealed that senior Israeli officials issued a joint video message demanding an "end the war in Gaza", arguing that the regime has "racked up more losses than victories" and that the "fighting has dragged on for political reasons..."

The scathing attack is not from the South African government, whom SAJBD maligned as "immoral", but the view of 19 former Israeli military chiefs of staff, intelligence chiefs, Shin Bet and Mossad directors, and police commissioners. 

Backing them were former prime minister and Israeli army chief Ehud Barak, and former chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon and Dan Hakutz. 

There have also been reports about Israeli top army brass at odds with the Netanyahu cabinet over the continuation of what is increasingly turning into a disastrous war without any objectives.

Their message is clear: the game is over. In the US too, the political right, once almost unanimous in its support for Israel, is beginning to fracture. 

In recent weeks, a small but very significant group of MAGA-aligned conservatives has begun to voice unease, if not outright condemnation, of Israel's ongoing war in Gaza, according to media reports. 

The Zionist regime is "kapoots" as its heavily funded PR campaigns are shredded by disaster following disaster, unable to censor images of starving children saturating TV screens across the world. 

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