MADRID - While the genocide in Gaza persists, with attention now turned to Rafah, and as half the world protests against this violence perpetrated by Israel and criticizes the leading role of the United States in it, American media oscillate between inaccuracy, at best, and complicity in the violence against Palestinians when reporting on events in Gaza.

As Palestinian writer and activist Mohammed El-Kurd pointed out in an article, "unfortunately, when it comes to Palestine, confusion and manipulation are tolerated. Commitment to truth disappears."

A deeper analysis reveals complicity, or what is known as the manufacturing of consent for genocide, which involves manipulating public opinion through propaganda by major media outlets in the United States. In this analysis, one can observe how the media language fuels Islamophobic and pro-Zionist propaganda in its coverage of events in Gaza. One of the most common tactics to achieve this is through selective moral outrage, which hides the pain and suffering of the Palestinian people, as well as structural injustices, such as the Zionist occupation of Palestine, which explain the origin of Hamas's response on October 7th.

In general, one can observe the use of selective discourse aimed at dehumanizing Palestinians, which in many cases perpetuates openly colonial language that facilitates the justification of violence against those who are portrayed as "less human."

Another widely used tactic to "explain" what is happening in Palestine is to refer to it as a war, presenting the image of two parties with a similar use of military power, which obscures the reality of genocide perpetrated against the civilian population. In many cases, there is not much difference between the coverage of certain American media outlets and Israeli hasbara accounts on social media, as both attempt to establish a false equivalence between Palestinian resistance and one of the most powerful armies in the region.

Examples of fake news and various distortions began shortly after Hamas's operation against Israel on October 7, 2023. One of the most notorious fabrications was that of "babies decapitated by Hamas" during the "Flood Al Aqsa" operation. This lie was initially created in Israel and quickly repeated ad nauseam by prominent and prestigious media outlets in the United States and the West. In this regard, it is important to note the similarities between the "decapitated babies" of Hamas and the babies allegedly removed from incubators in Iraq in the 1990s, which contributed to creating public consensus on the need to carry out the well-known "Operation Desert Storm" against the Arab country.

The need to construct a media narrative to maintain or defend a hegemonic position is a studied and recognized phenomenon. In this regard, African American writer James Baldwin, known for his critical stance against US politics, wrote in 1972 that "all realms require consent to function because no realm can be maintained solely by force." Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci was the father of the theoretical concept of hegemony, explaining how states, in their pursuit of justification and control, resort to consent rather than relying solely on the exercise of force.

In this sense, in the current context, many American media outlets play that role. That is to say, support for genocide cannot be sustained without a sustainable narrative that attempts to portray the suffering side as deserving of what is happening.

Many of the articles and reports published in Western media frame the genocide in Palestine within the paradigm of the "clash of civilizations," popularized by the American academic Samuel Huntington. Behind this narrative lies an attempt to create a sense of threat and danger based on the clearly Islamophobic idea that Palestinians behave violently and irrationally due to a supposed atavistic hatred towards Jews.

From the image of "inherently violent Palestinians and Muslims," a campaign was articulated that began first in Israel and then spread to the West, centered on the idea that Hamas attacks had begun in Israel and would then be directed towards the West. This campaign equated the Israeli response in Palestine with a war of the "free world" against "jihadist totalitarianism," represented by Hamas and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

One of the main media outlets responsible for what has been termed the manufacturing of consent for genocide in Palestine is The New York Times, often considered the most influential newspaper not only in the United States but globally. It can be argued that the newspaper has the power to influence the direction of news consumed worldwide. For example, its coverage of "weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" on its front page contributed at that time to generating consensus around the subsequent invasion of Iraq by the US military.

Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi, author of the book "Palestine: One Hundred Years of Colonialism and Resistance," considers The New York Times, in its coverage of Palestine and the region in general, as "an unreliable and extremely harmful agent."

In this sense, it can be argued that The New York Times functions as a highly precise ideological tool whose main objective is to create the necessary consensus to maintain the political-ideological status quo both globally and concerning the region. In recent months, since the start of the genocide in Gaza, the newspaper has portrayed Israeli military operations as "defensive actions," framing them within Israel's supposed right to defend itself. Furthermore, it has even gone so far as to blame Hamas for the mass killing of Palestinians, alleging that they use them as human shields.

As documented by the online publication The Intercept, The New York Times has hired several former Israeli intelligence agents with the dual purpose of fabricating sensationalist propaganda against the Palestinian Resistance and publishing articles clearly pro-Zionist. In this regard, along with other Western media outlets, the NYT regularly publishes statements from the Zionist army without conducting any independent verification, despite the long history of lies and fabrications from the said army.

The New York War Crimes, a journalistic project, explains that this collusion of the newspaper with the US political-military vision is not something new but rather part of the newspaper's long trajectory since the 1950s when it fabricated consent for the coup against Mossadegh in 1953 in Iran.

Similarly, it can be argued that US media outlets, including the NYT in particular, have manufactured consent for the Palestinian genocide by firstly concealing the intrinsic violence related to the founding of Israel in 1948. Furthermore, they have attempted to portray Palestinian resistance in a decontextualized manner, depicting it as "irrational violence" against Jews, omitting the historical background and injustices suffered by Palestinians over the years.

Reading The New York Times in recent months entails encountering articles where Israel responds to what is deemed an irrational attack by Hamas, an Islamic terrorist group with connections to Iran, with what is described as proportional force. Additionally, attacks on hospitals and schools, though "regrettable," are justified as necessary evils due to Hamas's alleged use of the civilian population as human shields. In this framework, the United States is portrayed as a criticizable ally but not as an accomplice to genocide. Israeli hostages are the subject of numerous editorials, while the thousands of Palestinians kidnapped and tortured go unnoticed in the coverage.

This is what the manufacturing of consent for genocide entails: not only a distortion of reality or bad faith, but also the willingness to dehumanize one group of people in comparison to another, with the aim of making their death considered acceptable.