A conversation between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the Republican senator offered an incredible historical document showing how the U.S. views its role in the Middle East.
A discussion between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Sen. Mitt Romney over the weekend included what one critic called an incredible mask-off moment, with the two officials speaking openly about the U.S. government’s long-term attempts to provide public relations work for Israel in defense of its policies in the occupied Palestinian territories — and its push to ban TikTok in order to shut down Americans’ access to unfiltered news about the Israeli assault on Gaza.
At the Sedona Forum in Sedona, Arizona on Friday, the Utah Republican asked Blinken at the McCain Institute event’s keynote conversation why Israel’s PR been so awful as it’s bombarded Gaza since October in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack, killing at least 34,735 Palestinians — the majority women and children — and pushing parts of the enclave into a famine that is expected to spread due to Israel’s blockade.
The world is screaming about Israel, why aren’t they screaming about Hamas? asked Romney. ‘Accept a cease-fire, bring home the hostages.’ Instead it’s the other way around, I mean, typically the Israelis are good at PR. What’s happened here? How have they, and we, been so ineffective at communicating the realities there?
Blinken replied that Americans, two-thirds of whom want the Biden administration to push for a permanent cease-fire and 57% of whom disapprove of President Joe Biden’s approach to the war, are on an intravenous feed of information with new impulses, inputs every millisecond.
And of course the way this has played out on social media has dominated the narrative, said the secretary of state. We can’t discount that, but I think it also has a very, very challenging effect on the narrative.
Romney suggested that banning TikTok would quiet the growing outrage over Israeli atrocities in the United States.
Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down, potentially, TikTok or other entities of that nature, said Romney. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites, it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts.
The interview took place amid a growing anti-war movement on college campuses across the U.S. and around the world, with American police forces responding aggressively to protests at which students have demanded higher education institutions divest from companies that contract with Israel and that the U.S. stop funding the Israel Defense Forces.
