farce

For more than 21 months, much of the international media danced around the truth about Israel’s war on Gaza. The old newsroom cliche – “if it bleeds, it leads” – seemed to apply, for Western media newsrooms, more to Ukraine than Gaza. When Palestinian civilians were bombed in their homes, when entire families were buried under rubble, coverage came slowly, cautiously and often buried in “both sides” framing.

But when the images of starving Palestinian children began to emerge – haunting faces, skeletal limbs, vacant stares – something shifted. The photographs were too visceral, too undeniable. Western audiences were confronted with what the siege of Gaza truly means. And for once, the media’s gatekeepers could not entirely look away.

The world’s attention, however, alerted Israel, and a new “hasbara” operation was deployed. Hasbara means “explaining”, but in practice, it’s about erasing. With Tel Aviv’s guidance, pro-Israel media operatives set out to “debunk” the evidence of famine. The method was fully Orwellian: Don’t just contest the facts. Contest the eyes that see them.

We were told there is no starvation in Gaza. Never mind that Israeli ministers had publicly vowed to block food, fuel and medicine. Never mind that trucks were stopped for months, sometimes vandalised by Israeli settlers in broad daylight.

Israeli officials, speaking in polished English to Western media, assured the public this was all a Hamas fabrication, as though Hamas had somehow managed to trick aid agencies, foreign doctors and every journalist in Gaza into staging hunger.

The propaganda machine thought it had struck gold with one photograph. A New York Times image showed a skeletal boy, Mohammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq. Israeli intelligence sources whispered to friendly outlets: He’s not starving. He has a medical condition. As if that somehow makes his horrific condition acceptable.

The Times went ahead and added an editor’s note to “correct” the record.

That’s how hasbara works – not by persuading people but by exhausting them. By turning every fact into a dispute, every image into a row. By pushing editors to “balance” a photograph of an emaciated child with a government news release denying he is hungry.

Imagine a weather report where one source says, “It’s raining,” and another insists, “No, it’s sunny,” while everyone stands outside, soaked from the downpour. Gaza is that drenched truth, and yet much of the Western news media still feels obliged to quote the weatherman in Tel Aviv.

Every honest report is met with a barrage of emails, phone calls and social media smears, all designed to create just enough doubt to make editors pull back.

But the claim “He’s not starving. He’s just sick” is not an exoneration. It’s an admission.

A child with a pre-existing medical condition who is brought to the point of looking like a skeleton means he has been deprived not only of the nutrition he needs, but of the medical care. This is forced starvation and medicide side by side.

Palestinian journalists inside Gaza, the only ones reporting since Israel banned all foreign media and killed more than 200 Palestinian journalists, are starving alongside the people they report on. In a rare joint statement, the BBC, AFP and Associated Press warned that their own staff members face “the same dire circumstances as those they are covering”.

At the height of the outrage over these photos last week, Israel allowed in a trickle of aid – some airdrops and 30 to 50 trucks a day when the United Nations says 500 to 600 are needed. Some trucks never arrived, blocked by Jewish extremists.

Meanwhile, a parallel mechanism for aid distribution has been funnelled through Israeli-approved American contractors, which purposefully create dangerous and chaotic conditions that lead to daily killings of aid seekers. Crowds of starving Palestinians gather, only to be shot at by Israeli soldiers.

And still, the denials persist. The official line is that this is not starvation. It’s something else – undefined but definitely not a war crime.

The world has seen famine before – in Ethiopia, in Somalia, in Yemen, in South Sudan. The photographs from Gaza belong in the same category. The difference is that here, a powerful state causing the starvation is actively trying to convince us that our own eyes are lying to us.

The goal is not to convince the public that there is no hunger but to plant enough doubt to paralyse outrage. If the facts can be made murky, the pressure on Israel diminishes. This is why every newsroom that avoids the word “starvation” becomes an unwitting accomplice.

Starvation in Gaza is not collateral damage. It is an instrument of war, measurable in calories denied, trucks blocked and fields destroyed.

Israel’s strategy depends on controlling the lens as well as the border. It goes as far as prohibiting journalists allowed on airplanes airdropping food from filming the devastation below.

For a brief moment, the publication of those photos of starving Palestinians broke through the wall of propaganda, prompting minimal concessions. But the siege continues, the hunger deepens and the mass killing expands. Now the Israeli government has decided to launch another ground offensive to occupy Gaza City, and with it, the genocide will only get worse.

History will record the famine in Gaza. It will remember the prices of flour and sugar, the names of children and the aid trucks turned back. And it will remember how the world allowed itself to be told, in the middle of a downpour, that the sky was clear.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

La migra spread across MacArthur Park yesterday morning like a platoon ready for war.

Federal agents on horseback with a white steed in the middle trotted through a soccer field. Others dressed like they were ready for Fallujah walked across lawns that just minutes earlier hosted a kid’s summer camp. Humvees complete with gun turrets parked on Wilshire Boulevard.

A Black Hawk helicopter buzzed above.

It was meant to be a show of force. It was more of a farce.

The park was mostly empty thanks to social media posts that had been warning Los Angeles about the coming incursion since Sunday. A furious Mayor Karen Bass arrived, got on the phone with U.S. Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino — who was strolling around while a photographer took glam shots — and told him to pull back. Activists showed up instead of the regular crowd to laugh at and film la migra and cuss them outta there.

It was like the climactic scene in “Blazing Saddles,” when incompetent villain Hedley Lamarr tried to invade a small town with the baddest of hombres besides him only to find a Potemkin village. The Non-Battle of MacArthur Park even had a “cowboy” (those quote marks are getting some serious “air” time as I write this)With his straw cowboy bat and rifle slung over his shoulder, Assistant Chief Border Patrol Agent David Kim seemed to be channeling his inner Alex Villanueva, the ex-L.A. County sheriff who wore Stetsons anywhere and everywhere in urban L.A. because he thought that showed power.

This was the Battle of the Photo Op. Written in D.C. and paid for by taxpayers.

For the past 30 days, President Donald Trump has laid siege to L.A. like a potentate trying to quash a far-away rebel province. Over 1,600 people detained, citizens and noncitizens alike. A parade of his lackeys — Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem, Vice President JD Vance, border policy advisor Tom Homan — parachuted in to lecture L.A. about how out of control it is and vow retribution. California’s senior U.S. senator, Alex Padilla, briefly handcuffed for daring to question Noem during a press conference.

Trump and his troupe keep squawking about getting “the worst of the worst,” but they’re mostly not. This operation doesn’t seem to make much of a distinction between snatching an immigrant with a criminal record or a guy armed with a stockpile of tamales he’s trying to sell to make a living.

Masked men grabbing anyone and everyone in the fashion of paramilitary squads from countries we deem uncivilized. Straight-up invasions of workplaces and residential neighborhoods, parks and street corners. Thousands of members of the National Guard and hundreds of Marines called up.

What the city is weathering is supposed to be a warning to all other immigrant-friendly municipalities across the country: submit, or else.

Well, L.A. chose the something else. And Trump and his goons are getting more and more angry — and reckless.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks to the National Guard before their lunch at the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles on June 12.

(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)

People are scared, sure — even terrified. That’s part of Trump’s strategy, along with making life so miserable that he hopes Angelenos will turn on each other. Instead, they’re uniting and hunkering down for more. Support networks and neighborhood watchdog groups are blooming across the region. Everyone with a smartphone and a social media account is now a reporter, capturing la migra at its worst and letting the world know what’s really going on. Lawsuits are being filed. More and more average citizens are joining the resistance.

What’s happening reminds me of the concluding line Lisa Simpson sang when Springfield Nuclear Power Plant workers went on strike against Mr. Burns and his heavies:

They may have the strength, but we have the power.

I get it, America: You think what’s happening in L.A. will never come to you. And you sort of like seeing the big, bad City of Angels getting smacked around with promises of even worse things to come. There’s a reason sports fans chant “Beat L.A.” and not “Beat Salt Lake City” or even New York.

But what happened yesterday at MacArthur Park is a microcosm of Trump’s vision for the rest of the country: a massive show of nada that does absolutely nothing to make life better for Americans. A gigantic waste of money. Spectacle over substance. Venom for anyone who dares speak out.

That should concern anyone who cares about a functioning democracy. Including L.A. haters.

The last month of raids across Southern California has shown that when the going gets tough, Trump goes for the easy. Sure, the Department of Homeland Security and its toxic alphabet soup of agencies participating in Trump’s deportation deluge are churning out social media posts featuring grainy photos of some of the people they’ve caught along with their alleged crimes. But that’s a way to mask the reality that these people taken in raids are mostly not criminals. A Times analysis of data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at UC Berkeley Law found that nearly 70% of those arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement from June 1 through June 10 had no criminal convictions.

The sad irony about what happened yesterday in MacArthur Park is that if ever there was a place in L.A. that might have welcomed a helpful assist from the feds … it’s MacArthur Park.

As my fellow columnista Steve Lopez has written about for years, it’s a jewel of a green space with serious problems that city officials have allowed to fester over the decades and has made it a no-go zone for many Angelenos. Gangs have long extorted businesses in the neighborhood and terrorized everyone else — including immigrants. Too many unhoused people pass through with nowhere else to go. Drug use is as prevalent as sunbathing: When I walked through it earlier this year on the way to Langer’s for lunch, I saw a man smoke a meth pipe within eyesight of an LAPD officer who didn’t even blink.

But this wasn’t about saving MacArthur Park from the bad guys. Instead, the deployment of masked troops in tactical gear showed Trump and his berserkers only care about optics, up to and including a man on horseback leading his fellow cavalry in a straight line while holding an American flag as colleagues whipped out their smartphones. The charade looked like something out of a Western movie — American military subjugating yet another Native American tribe.

Federal immigration agents near MacArthur Park on July 7.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

More is going to come, most likely worse. Trump’s Bloated Bullplop Bill has allocated $170 billion to immigration enforcement. Homan is relishing the idea of increasing the number of ICE agents from 5,000 to 15,000 — as if all that migra will improve the economy or make up for the rise in taxes and loss in Medicaid that millions of American citizens will suffer in order to support an agency whose increased budget will put it above the military of most of the world’s countries.

Are you paying attention yet, America?

After the MacArthur Park action, Trump’s disciples proclaimed victory. Bovino bragged to Fox News reporter Bill Melugin — the de facto media stenographer for Trump’s migra mission — that he told L.A. Mayor Karen Bass during their phone call, “Better get used to us now, ’cause this is going to be normal very soon. We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller went on Fox News later to thunder, “The Democrat Party’s objective is to flood the West with millions upon millions of illegals from the developing world” as footage of what happened earlier that day rolled next to him.

Big words from little men who act like they’re living some “Apocalypse Now” fantasy.

I preferred what L.A. councilmember Eunisses Hernandez — whose district encompasses MacArthur Park — said shortly after the sweep at a City Hall press conference, something as true as the sun rising in the east: “We are the canary in the coal mine. What you see happening at MacArthur Park is coming to you.”

“Sirens,” premiering Thursday on Netflix, is an odd sort of a series, an interesting mix of hifalutin ideas, family drama and what might be called dark farce.

Set over Labor Day weekend on a Cape Cod island peopled by rich folks whose taste runs to pastels and floral prints, it stars Julianne Moore as Michaela, formerly a high-powered attorney who has given that up for marriage to hedge-fund billionaire Peter (Kevin Bacon) and a life dedicated to rescuing birds of prey. The queen of all she surveys, she speaks in moony aphorisms, is posing for Vanity Fair and orchestrating a fundraising gala, among minor entertainments.

Meanwhile, in Buffalo, we meet Devon (Meghann Fahy) a working-class hot mess, making her entrance out a police station door, wearing a short black dress, looking the worse for wear. Struggling to care for her father Bruce (Bill Camp), diagnosed with dementia, she goes in search of her sister, Simone (Milly Alcock), who has been working as Michaela’s personal assistant. After traveling 17 hours — carting, for reasons of comedy, the giant edible arrangement Simone has sent in lieu of an actual response to her call for help, still wearing her night-in-jail clothes — Devon will discover that her sister has been transformed: She’s removed the matching tattoos they got together, had a nose job and presents as something like the Disney version of “Wonderland’s” Alice, minus the curiosity. (“You’re dressed like a doily,” says Devon.) Ingmar Bergman fans will note the meant-to-be-noted crib from “Persona,” underlining Devon’s observation that Simone loses herself in other people.

Simone, for her part, is delighted that she gets to call Michaela “Kiki,” “which is really a special honor,” and faithfully amplifies Michaela’s mercurial requests to the staff, personified by Felix Solis’ Jose, who hate her. (They maintain a text chain to joke about her.) For all that she’s loyal to Michaela, and considers her a best friend, she’s been hiding both her working-class roots and the fact that she’s been sleeping with Ethan (Glenn Howerton), Peter’s also-rich pal and neighbor.

Ethan (Glenn Howerton), Simone (Milly Alcock) and Devon (Meghann Fahy) during a gathering at Michaela’s home.

(Netflix)

Though Michaela worries he might be having an affair, Peter, for his part, comes across as an essentially good guy, for a hedge fund billionaire. He’s friendly with the help, who worked for him before his marriage to Michaela — there are a first wife and adult children offstage — can cook for himself and hides away from the pastel people in the mansion’s tower, where he strums a guitar and smokes a little pot. But room has been left for surprises.

“Sirens” is the sisters’ shared special code for “SOS,” which seems less practical than, you know, SOS, but ties into the vague Greek mythological references with which the series has been decorated — more suggestive than substantial, I’d say, though it’s possible that is my lack of classical education showing. The house Siri system is called Zeus. One episode is titled “Persephone,” after the goddess of the dead and queen of the underworld; Simone does indeed say to Michaela, “You are literally a goddess” — she does dress like one, in flimsy, flowing gowns — while Devon thinks that something’s gone dead behind Simone’s eyes, that she’s been zombified: “You’re in a cult.”

It was the sirens’ sweetly singing, of course, that drew sailors to their deaths in the old tales, and at one point Michaela looks out over the ocean and muses on the boats of whalers crashing bloodily on the rocks. (She is particular about the blood.) There is, in fact, a sailor in the series, Jordan (Trevor Salter), who captains Ethan’s yacht and whom Devon picks up in a hotel bar, but he is perhaps the least likely character in the show to crash into anything. And Michaela is attended by a trio of women (Jenn Lyon as Cloe, Erin Neufer as Lisa and Emily Borromeo as Astrid) who, suggesting the title creatures, speak in harmony and act as one, but they are more the embodiment of a notion, a throwaway joke, than active participants in the story. Michael Abels’ score features a choir of female voices, opts for something that one might well identify as ancient Greek music even with no notion of what ancient Greek music might have sounded like.

Kevin Bacon plays Peter, a hedge fund billionaire married to Michaela.

(Macall Polay / Netflix)

The core of the series is the struggle between Devon and Michaela for the soul of Simone, though there are ancillary battles that will help decide the fate of the war. For a viewer, it’s natural to side with Devon, who, after locking horns with Michaela, will go undercover at the mansion, dressing according to the house rules while she pokes around. (There is the suggestion of a murder mystery.) However hot a mess she may be, she isn’t pretentious; she has energy, boldness and consistency, and whatever she gets wrong, she lives in the world that most of us do. (I am assuming you are not a billionaire with a mansion on a cliff, a birdhouse full of raptors and a large staff to tend to your needs and whims, but if you are — thanks for reading!) That isn’t to say that Michaela doesn’t have her troubles — indeed, her neediness, which expresses itself as caretaking, resembles Devon’s. “I take care of everything in my orb,” says Michaela, “big and small, prey and predator.”

I hadn’t known when I watched “Sirens” that it was based on a play, the 2011 “Elemeno Pea,” by Molly Smith Metzler, who created the series as well, but I thought it might be. It had the scent of the stage in the way characters — including Bruce and Ray (Josh Segarra), Devon’s boss and adulterous occasional hookup — kept piling in, along with its farcical accelerations, its last-act revelations and reversals.

At “only” five episodes, it stays more focused than most limited series, though the tone shifts a bit; some characters come to seem deeper and more complex, which is good on the face of it, but also can feel a bit manufactured. Some bits of business are planted merely to bear practical fruit later. The ending I found half-satisfying, or half-frustrating, from character to character, but there are great, committed performances along the way, and I was far more than halfway entertained.