In years to come, students in university departments around the world will be studying the propaganda embedded in this headline. As someone who regularly lectures in sociology, journalism and media studies, I could teach an entire lesson on the title alone. For example:

1. Treating the 4 Israeli soldiers as more important than the 23 Palestinian children (by leading the story with their deaths and just chucking in the others at the end) implies their lives are of higher value.

2. Infantilizing active duty soldiers as “teenagers” while not emphasizing the age of the schoolkids, despite many of them being demonstrably younger.

3. The classic use of the passive voice: Israelis are “killed” while Palestinians merely “die”.

4. Putting scare quotes around “23 die” subtly undermines the credibility of that claim. Maybe no one died, and the Palestinians are just lying?

5. Using the word “attack” for Hezbollah actions, but choosing a more neutral, clinical word like “strike” for Israeli aggression.

6. Allowing Israeli sources to dictate the framing of the story (“Israel names teenage soldiers”) etc.

7. Actually naming the Israeli soldiers, but not doing the same for the far greater number of Palestinians, again sends the message to the reader that Palestinian lives don’t matter nearly as much, if at all.

It’s truly incredible how much propaganda has been packed into 16 words. We are swimming in an ocean of propaganda. That’s why it is crucial to deconstruct it and critically assess everything you read, see and hear.

Sky News, is, of course, operated by Rupert Murdoch, a fanatical Zionist with deep political and economic ties to the Israeli state. To understand more on that, please check out this thread and my investigation linked within it.

Sky News called a murdered Palestinian toddler a “lady”, but describes four active IDF soldiers hit by Hezbollah as “teenage victims”. What accounts for this bias in infantilizing Israeli soldiers but treating Palestinian babies as adults? A thread. x.com/Lowkey0nline/s…

“A bullet found its way into the van and killed a 3 or 4-year-old young lady.” He is describing Israel killing a Palestinian child.

Sky News is owned and controlled by billionaire media baron Rupert Murdoch, a lifelong passionate Zionist, with close ties to the Israeli government, as my new investigation explores.
He is a leader in the fight against the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, claiming that it represents an “ongoing war against the Jews.” His outlets smear the movement constantly.

Rupert Murdoch, funded Benjamin Netanyahu in the past? Lowkey: I show a handwritten note by Netanyahu which suggests he did.
Macleod: In 2010, an Israeli newspaper published a list, handwritten by Benjamin Netanyahu, of his closest and richest benefactors, sponsoring his political campaigns. Murdoch’s name was number 2 on that list.

Earlier this year, Rupert’s son Lachlan traveled to Israel for secret talks with Netanyahu and former Israeli PM Benny Gantz, to discuss how better his media empire could support the Israeli government in their war against Palestine. Murdoch has had an extremely close relationship with successive Israeli PMs, going back as far as the early 80s, when he used to regularly holiday with Ariel Sharon. He also has huge financial interests in the Israeli occupation. In 2010, he purchased an equity stake and joined the board of directors of Genie Energy, a company that illegally drilled for oil and gas in the occupied Golan Heights. Murdoch also indirectly funds the Israeli Occupation. News Corp, owner of Sky News, has given money to the Jerusalem Foundation, a group that builds illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem.

Ideologically, Murdoch has two goals: 1) Spreading reactionary right-wing politics worldwide. 2) Supporting Israel’s expansion. Here is a quote from a speech he gave in 2009 at American Jewish Committee, explaining how he saw Israel as the linchpin of Western civilization.

In 2005, he wrote the forward to the book, “Israel In The World: Changing Lives Through Innovation,” where he fawned over Israel’s supposed global leadership.

Murdoch owns dozens of outlets around the world, including much of the Fox network, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post, who regularly pump out anti-Palestinian propaganda such as this:

Racist coverage in the news

27 Feb 2022: @AlanRMacLeod
The most racist Ukraine coverage on TV News. 1. The BBC – “It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed” – Ukraine’s Deputy Chief Prosecutor, David Sakvarelidze

27 Feb 2022: CBS News “This isn’t Iraq or Afghanistan…This is a relatively civilized, relatively European city” – CBS foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata

27 Feb 2022: Al-Jazeera “What’s compelling is looking at them, the way they are dressed. These are prosperous, middle-class people. These are not obviously refugees trying to get away from the Middle East…or North Africa. They look like any European family that you’d live next door to.”

Feb 2022: BFM TV (France) “We are in the 21st century, we are in a European city and we have cruise missile fire as though we were in Iraq or Afghanistan, can you imagine!?”

BFM TV (France) (again) “It’s an important question. We’re not talking here about Syrians fleeing…We’re talking about Europeans.”

The Daily Telegraph: This time, war is wrong because the people look like us and have Instagram and Netflix accounts. It’s not in a poor, remote country any more. – Daniel Hannan

ITV (UK) “The unthinkable has happened…This is not a developing, third world nation; this is Europe!”

If you speak French, sample from the racism buffet on offer.

Guy on Spanish TV news channel La Sexta: “These aren’t like the other children that we’ve become accustomed to see suffer on TV, these children are blond with blue eyes, [so] this is very important”

The New York Times. On US veterans going to Ukraine, it not-so-subtly suggests that Middle Easterners love dictatorships. “After years of serving in smoldering operations, trying to spread democracy IN PLACES THAT ONLY HAD A TEPID INTEREST IN IT”.

Star UK media personality Matthew Wright on ITV’s flagship show, “This Morning”: “The US has used [a thermobaric bomb] before in Afghanistan. But the idea of it being used in Europe is stomach-churning.”