Biden encourages a nation to surrender sympathy and embrace conspiracy
By casting doubt on the Palestinian casualty count, President Biden gave supporters of Israel permission to believe whatever they want.
Lenny Pozner wanted to know exactly where the bullets had entered and exited his son Noah’s body.
The grieving father consulted the local chief medical officer, who explained that his son likely died in a “dogpile” of other dead first graders. He collected countless images and pages of reports that explained how his Batman-loving, impish 6-year-old was murdered.
Not for his own closure, but to convince a growing number of self-appointed investigators around the country that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on Dec. 14, 2012, actually happened.
Sandy Hook was a flashpoint in America, not only for the ongoing gun control debate, but also for the unthinkable lies it spawned. In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy that claimed 28 lives, Infowars host Alex Jones questioned the truthfulness of the story, relying on nonexistent evidence and a network of crank conspiracists to spin a false narrative about a government cover-up with child actors as an intricate ploy to take guns away from law-abiding American citizens.
Pozner tried to wade through some of the most vitriolic online spaces containing the shooting’s most ardent skeptics in order to quell the abuse toward the victims’ families, including him and his wife. He had been attracted to Jones’ crackbrained theories after 9/11 and felt like he understood the denialist mindset more than most. Except this time, the individuals he was trying to connect with believed his son was either still alive or never existed.
Despite mounds of unassailable proof, it took Pozner nearly 10 years to deter the loudest voices that labeled him a faker. He told journalist Elizabeth Williamson, author of the 2022 book Sandy Hook, “If this hoax continues to spread, in thirty years it will be past the point of no return.”
This month has been rife with conspiracy, as the latest conflagration between Israel and Palestine has jolted a panoply of opportunists into overdrive. Many devoted supporters of Israel have been distraught over Oct. 7 and unable to harbor proportionate sympathy for the thousands of Palestinians being killed by a legion of retaliatory missiles. Any recent anti-Semitic attack, from vandalism to an airport riot, that has resulted globally from the massacres in the Middle East feels magnified in the current climate. And it’s no coincidence that the significant uptick in anti-Semitism — and Islamophobia — appears especially acute due to the severity of the offensives and their attendant outrage.
The hashtags #NeverAgainIsNow and #BringThemHome have unified grieving Jews and Israel allies and served as a reminder they are not alone in their anger, frustration and paralysis. They have enabled millions to use their platform to condemn anti-Semitism and amplified calls to release hostages.
Viral posts from influential activists, celebrities and pro-Israel advocacy organizations have seized on the immense sorrow to inform Jews everywhere that their safety and security is in grave jeopardy, and that Hamas — not the repressive right-wing Israeli government — is the common enemy. Many of these accounts have also been used to spread unverified information, and, at their worst, dangerous misinformation that either embellishes an event or misrepresents it entirely. On Wednesday, President Biden joined the cacophony of conspiracy.
“I have no notion,” Biden said to an assembled media, “that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war.”
He added, “I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”
In a vacuum, it sounds reasonable to question the Gaza Health Ministry’s tally, considering the organization is run by the political arm of Hamas. But there is ample footage of the destruction Israeli airstrikes have wrought. Vibrant cities have been reduced to a smoldering sheet of bricks. Fathers are carrying their dead babies, caked in dust and impaled by shrapnel. Fires rage. Wailing punctures the befouled air, interrupted only by more missiles.
To question the honesty of the Gaza Health Ministry, which consists of civil servants and — according to the United Nations — typically lines up with statistics accumulated by the humanitarian organization, isn’t simply a misstep for Biden politically (he is already facing intense backlash from Arab and Muslim Americans threatening to leave their ballot blank in 2024 if he’s the nominee). It’s a permission slip to those most protective of Israel’s plan for revenge to believe only the news they want coming out of Palestine. Everything else can be written off as a machination of the evil and bitter Hamas.
Biden may not ever command the type of cult following that trails his Republican rival Donald Trump, but his position as president of the most powerful country on earth still carries immense sway. Biden’s words during a crisis as emotionally charged as this have the ability to buttress even the most flimsy claims from the Israeli government. For example, the president’s assuredness about the culprit of the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital bombing in Gaza City on Oct. 17 led many Jews to believe the case was closed. (It is not).
Williamson writes in her book that there are three psychological motivators behind the spread of conspiracy rumors, one of which is “relationship enhancement.” Researcher Nicholas DiFonzo, an associate professor of psychology at Roberts Wesleyan, told Williamson he believes it to be the strongest of the motivators because “sharing conspiracy rumors and stories tends to solidify the identity of the group.” The Sandy Hook group was an aggrieved sliver of the country, united in chat rooms and Facebook groups over the concern that their weapons would be seized by the government. In Charlottesville in August 2017 and Washington, D.C., in January 2021, anti-Semitic and white supremacist factions were sparked to action by the Great Replacement, an unfounded theory that non-whites are being systematically brought into the United States and other Western nations to foster the white race’s extinction.
The Jewish diaspora is much more informed generally, much more diverse politically and far more expansive to be unilaterally driven to endorse wiping out the Palestinians to ensure the survival of their people. The same is true of Palestinians. While social media algorithms can push Jews to assume the worst, a vast majority of rallies for the liberation of Palestine are not anti-Semitic and include advocates of both Jewish and Muslim descent.
When Biden sows doubt about the veracity of Palestinian death, though, he is encouraging Jews already on edge to check their humanity at the door and retreat to their political bunker. He is treating Hamas as a boogeyman, instead of a strategic obstacle to justice. And he is deploying the tactics of some of the most reprehensible leaders, who sit atop thrones built from the bloodless distortion of reality.
The Gaza Health Ministry, likely in response to Biden’s misguided comments, on Thursday released a list that included the names, age, gender and ID number of 6,747 victims it reported have perished as a result of Israel’s siege on Gaza. The Health Ministry said 2,665 were children and 281 others had died but were unidentifiable, which would bring the deceased to more than 7,000.
To be sure, this count shouldn’t be sung as gospel. It’s certainly possible there are inaccuracies or even deliberate manipulation. But it doesn’t excuse Biden from discrediting it on the whole, because it’s abundantly clear the situation in Gaza is horrific. Bombs are killing and displacing Gazans at a rapid pace and leaving the Strip’s inhabitants increasingly despondent. Humanitarian aid is arriving too late and in too small an amount, and Israel’s ground invasion has begun razing the remaining structures.
Arab and Muslim Americans justifiably feel abandoned by the current administration. It has centered Israelis as its primary concern and paid mere lip service to Gaza. Biden has chosen to be a good ally instead of a good guy; he is already paying the price.
Jewish Americans emboldened by Biden’s rhetoric have a responsibility to not conflate their understandable hatred of Hamas with a disregard for the first-hand reports and journalistic accounts of the suffering of the Palestinian people. They cannot let a flurry of anti-Semitism nudge them further into red-threaded conspiracy of their own. It is easy to read Hamas’ original 1988 charter, replete with revolting rumors about the Jews, and draw a straight line to retribution in 2023. It is easier still to keep both feet on the ground and summon sympathy for a dying neighbor.
Over the weekend, Gaza experienced a 34-hour blackout, where communication in and out of the blockaded enclave was impossible. The battle for survival intensified, and so did the battle for information. In this helpless state, Gaza was silenced and Israel controlled an even larger slice of the narrative. Barbarism was dressed up as succor in an “urgent plea” from the IDF.
The IDF has been a diplomatic crutch for Biden and a source of hope for Jews. In times of chaos, citizens cling to tales of heroism and charity. They overlook inconsistency and aberrance and mistake their vision of the way things could be for the way they are. The IDF bravely came to the rescue of kibbutzniks in Otef Aza. Now, many Jews are entrusting the military as a verified news source. During the raids of the Al-Aqsa mosque, the evictions of Sheikh Jarrah, and the murder of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, the IDF was both a perpetrator and dishonest messenger.
Israelis had some hesitation then. And now, because their families have been slaughtered, information flows from the military to the public like a river into an estuary, with far less scrutiny.
Though the IDF can restore hope, it also plays an important role in heightening anxiety to boost civic pride. Jews, seeing enemies abound, are once again pondering their mortality.
Gazans haven’t had the opportunity to peer beyond their enclosure. If they are vanquished, their story, like their futures, is in peril of being hijacked.
They aren’t alone.
Overwhelmed with well-wishes and gifts, the Sandy Hook parents also confronted the possibility of their lived experience being upended and usurped for unsavory purposes. On some level, Pozner must have known that Jones’ blather about Sandy Hook would never be the consensus. Still, he couldn’t be too sure.
The possibility, however slim, that someone with even greater influence could turn rational thinkers — people with legitimate worries about their own children dying by gunfire inside institutions of learning and growth — into kooks was too real to ignore.
No one, Pozner knew, not even himself, was immune to fear-based propaganda.
“[R]elentless algorithms,” Williamson wrote, “would push those human lies to the top. In the eyes of the internet, all-powerful booster of outrage and denial, Noah could fade…to nothing.”