MEDIA FRONT

PATRICK LAWRENCE—ISRAEL is a psychologically diseased nation that boasts as it inflicts this suffering on The Other that obsesses it. The world is invited—the ultimate in perversity, this—to partake of Israel’s sickness and said, in a Hague courtroom two weeks ago, “No.”   

Post–Gaza, apartheid Israel is unlikely ever to recover what place it enjoyed, merited or otherwise, in the community of nations. It stands among the pariahs now. The Biden regime took this risk, too, and it has also lost. Its support for the Israelis’ daily brutalities comes at great political cost, at home and abroad, and is tearing America apart—its universities, its courts, its legislatures, its communities—and I would say what pride it still manages to take in itself.

JAY JANSON—[The Hamas document] was sending a message to the International Court of Justice in The Hague that Hamas should not be judged solely by the events of October 7 without examining Israel’s conduct in the West Bank and Gaza over the past decades.

Hamas pointed to the historical origins of the conflict, saying “the battle of the Palestinian people against occupation and colonialism did not start on October 7, but started 105 years ago, including 30 years of British colonialism and 75 years of Zionist occupation.”

BRUCE LERRO—Most theories of celebrity focus in on the fields of entertainment. The first focus is on movies, then secondarily on sports and music. But like it or not, politicians have become celebrities and politics is not supposed to be about entertainment. How do we understand the relationship between fame and celebrity when it’s in politics?

LARRY JOHNSON—We are now in an era where I believe that the mainstream media, especially TV and Cable, are largely irrelevant. Yet the tradition of using those platforms is still firmly embedded in the establishment mentality. Politicians raise tons of money, or try to, just to buy time on conventional TV and Cable that a diminishing number of people are watching. The action has shifted to podcasts, X and other social media platforms. That is what the vast majority of Americans are watching.

DAVID EDWARDS: Contrary to the belief of some of our critics, we don’t hate to see positive examples of this kind that appear to contradict the thesis that state-corporate media function as a propaganda organ for powerful interests. In fact, we are only too pleased, because we have hoped for two main outcomes from our work. While our key aim has always been to increase public awareness and participation empowering progressive alternatives to ‘mainstream’ journalism, we have also hoped to encourage ‘mainstream’ journalists to improve their performance as far as they are able within the severe limits set by state-corporate media.