In the midst of the Israel-Hamas war, fear-mongering has no place
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The death toll rises each day for all innocent victims of the Israel-Hamas war. As we watch video after video of mothers crying over their loved one’s bodies and children crying for their parents, one would assume humanity would prevail. But as misinformation runs rampant, the war’s turmoil has only worsened.
On Oct. 7, New York Representative Brandon Williams took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to insinuate that “many jihadist terrorists are in the United States right now.”
Williams made this statement without any data to back his claim. He responded to one user who asked for evidence of his claim that “thousands of illegal migrants evade our Border Patrol and law enforcement officers every single day.”
In a statement originally provided to The Daily Orange, Williams wrote that “more than 150 on the terror watchlist have been intercepted at the border just this year — we know that hundreds, if not thousands of illegal migrants evade our Border Patrol and law enforcement officers every single day. We would be terribly naive to think that our enemies are not taking advantage of our open border. I’ve seen it first hand, our southern border is anarchy. Vigilance is the price of freedom. Ignorance and wishful thinking are far too costly. Remember Pearl Harbor and 9/11, at dawn we slept.”
This isn’t a new verbiage for Williams, who reportedly lashed out in a town hall meeting this May in response to immigration policies in New York state. He equated a migrant crisis to a potential refugee issue as an excuse to promote his platform, whether it be through digital propaganda or a public outburst.
The looming threat of the southern border has also been covered by former President Donald Trump, who took to his TruthSocial account to warn of “the same people that raided Israel (are) pouring into our once beautiful USA” through that route.
These statements shift from mere opinions to dog whistles of Islamophobia and calls for the brutality and dehumanization of Palestinans. With Israel gaining unequivocal support from numerous countries, who is left to defend those in Gaza who only have “24 hours of water, electricity and fuel left” as of Monday before “a real catastrophe” sets in?
Here in the U.S, we’ve been bombarded with propaganda and disinformation. This especially stands for our elected officials, who are blatantly spreading misinformation and are fear-mongering.
President Joe Biden was one of those people. On Oct. 11, a White House spokesperson had to rescind Biden’s comments on “confirmed pictures” of Hamas “beheading children,” but only after his statement was plastered on every newspaper and social media page.
Biden made headlines in Western media as stories of infants being decapitated were used by some as a reason to justify the widespread punishment of all civilians in occupied Palestine. This is frightening on two levels: our president reiterates unverified reports and with just a few words, elected officials have the means to sign the death sentence of innocent people and justify collective punishment.
Going forward, know that politicians and the statements they make may be influenced by their political agendas. As much as people try to frame this as a purely moral issue, politics will always play a role. The U.S. still has a stake in how this war ends. In 2022 alone, the United States committed over $3.3 billion in foreign assistance to Israel, 99.7 percent of the aid going to the Israeli military. That is an investment our country wants payback on, even if it means aiding “a complete siege of the Gaza Strip” and further chaos in the West Bank.
We’re seeing the consequences already. On Oct. 15, a landlord broke into a Palestinian-American family’s apartment in Chicago and attacked them, stabbing a 6-year-old boy over 26 times with a large military-style knife while his mother was left wounded with over a dozen stab wounds. Police have charged the 71-year-old suspect with murder and hate crime, alleging he singled out the victims because of their faith and as a response to the war between Israel and Hamas.
On the local level, I’m seeing this hatred spread. Fellow students and peers my age share, repost and spread false reports and consequently making dangerous statements, villainizing a whole demographic of already vulnerable people. After analyzing social media content on the Israel-Hamas war, researchers find it difficult to authenticate information due to the rise in misleading content. Rebekah Tromble from George Washington University described the research as “close to impossible” compared to a year ago, exacerbated by reduced moderation on social media platforms.
The Islamophobic rhetoric and anti-Palestinian racism being spread by politicians, media outlets and social media platforms has consequences that spread beyond your immediate circle but to the barricaded people in Gaza who have had 6,000 bombs dropped on them since Oct. 7.
Those in high positions can shut their screens and remove themselves while Palestinians, both in the Middle East and in the U.S, suffer the consequences of these lies. To some, they are merely condemning Hamas, but to others, these violent political sentiments are an outright Islamophobic movement aimed to harm those they can get their hands on. As we’ve seen with the family in Chicago, a mother now has to live without her son because a man decided to kill over a war he barely understands.
Hamere Debebe is a Senior Staff Writer. She can be reached at hedebebe@syr.edu.
