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Ah yes, the internet — that pesky little invention that ruined a perfectly good monopoly on “truth.” John Mearsheimer, in his own recent video, explains how things used to work so much more smoothly. Before the internet, almost everyone got their news about Israel, Gaza, and the special relationship from the same handful of respectable outlets. Conveniently, those outlets were rather well-managed. No messy videos of rubble, starving kids, or entire neighbourhoods erased. Just the approved narrative, delivered with gravitas. How civilised. Then the internet happened. Suddenly any teenager with a phone could post footage of what Israel is actually doing in Gaza. Outrageous. Platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Substack had the audacity to let criticism of Israel exist. Mearsheimer notes this is “guaranteed to make Israel look bad.” Imagine that — showing people the thing that is happening makes the thing look bad. Who could have predicted such a conspiracy? And after October 7? Israel apparently decided the best response to a prison break from what Mearsheimer calls a concentration camp was to try to empty Gaza entirely. When that didn’t work as planned, it morphed into a genocide that the entire planet watched live on their phones. Terribly inconvenient timing. If only those cameras had the decency to look the other way like the old media did. The old playbook of controlling the story no longer works when the evidence is on everyone’s phone. That’s why the lobby is now fighting over platforms, definitions of antisemitism, and speech itself. The pictures and videos keep circulating anyway.