Babies in incubators: War propaganda and American hypocrisy
American leaders let out a lot of fire and fury over the fake news of Hamas beheading babies, but they are eerily quiet over the Gazan babies forced out of incubators to die.
On October 10, 1990, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah gave a testimony before the United States Congressional Human Rights Caucus.
Here are some relevant bits from Nayirah’s tearful testimony, which was about 3 minutes and 30 seconds long: “Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, my name’s Nayirah, and I just came out of Kuwait…What I saw happen to the children of Kuwait and to my country has changed my life forever. It has changed the life of all Kuwaitis, young and old. We are children no more.”
“The second week after invasion, I volunteer — volunteered at the Al Adan hospital with twelve other women who wanted to help as well…While I was there I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns. They took the babies out of incubators, took the incubators, and left these children to die on the cold floor. It was horrifying. I could not help but think of my nephew who, if born premature, might have died that day as well.”
The testimony was widely publicised and referenced by American politicians and then-US President George H.W. Bush to curry the American public’s support for Kuwait in the Gulf War.
A couple of years later, it was revealed that the girl’s full name was Nayirah Al-Sabah. She was the daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the then-Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, and the whole testimony was a stunt overseen by the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton on behalf of the Kuwaiti government.
The revelation came too late. The propaganda had done its job. Public sentiment was indelibly turned against the Iraqis. Their dehumanisation was complete.
Over 33 years have passed since that classic case of atrocity propaganda, but nothing seems to have changed. The leaders of the free world still treat their citizens as unthinking sheep who can be herded in any direction by the propaganda they are fed. The events since October 7 have been a perfect illustration of this fact.
The latest round of atrocity propaganda was unleashed following the incursion of the Palestinian resistance fighters in Israeli territory on October 7. Soon after the attack, the Israeli and Western leadership were foaming at the mouth, talking about how Hamas fighters had “beheaded 40 babies” and incinerated one child in an oven. The Western mass media further amplified their lies.
And despite the thorough debunking of the “beheaded babies” propaganda, it persists. None other than US President Joe Biden has continued to repeat the falsehood, despite the White House having walked back on his claim the first time he made it last month.
How much Biden, his fellow Western leaders, and the mass media actually care about the death of children has been illustrated by their complete silence on the massacre of over 5,000 children — including babies in incubators — in Gaza by the Israelis since October 7.
Their hypocrisy has been marked most starkly by the plight of 39 babies in incubators at Al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital.
After the genocidal Israel Occupation Forces (IOF) cut off all supplies to the hospital, including fuel and oxygen, the incubators of the premature babies became dysfunctional. As a result, the babies had to be taken out of their incubators. Doctors tried to save them by wrapping them in blankets and tin foils, but to no avail. The last reports from the hospital about the babies said that 3 of the 39 had died.
There has been no voice of outrage over this heinous crime being committed against days-old premature babies in incubators. None of the leaders of the free world is foaming at the mouth about the atrocities meted out to the Gazan babies. None of them is talking about the inhuman Israelis whose acts put the lives of the struggling babies in grave danger. None of them is talking about their “rules-based order.”
Let alone calling for a ceasefire in this appalling genocidal campaign being conducted in the full glare of the world’s eyes, the White House is refusing to even draw red lines to stop the Israeli war crimes.
When Biden was asked about the possibility of a ceasefire in Gaza, he was adamant: “None, no possibility.” In an act that would illustrate how seriously the US government takes the lives of innocent children, Biden broke into a little dance after making the heartless remark. Furthermore, he has kept repeating the false accusation about Hamas beheading Israeli babies without ever producing any evidence to substantiate his claims.
Earlier this month, when the White House Spokesman John Kirby was asked if it is still the case that “the administration is not drawing any red lines for Israel” despite the piling bodies in Gaza, Kirby was unequivocal: “That is still the case.”
It’s the same Kirby who was choking up when talking about the death of Israelis on October 7. Clearly, Palestinian lives don’t carry the same value in the eyes of the US government. It’s a grotesque charade.
The message from the American leadership has been loud and clear: they won’t let the truth come in the way of their propaganda. Palestinians may keep dying by the thousands, including premature babies forced out of their incubators.
The propaganda-spouting, perpetually-lying, “rules-based order” hissy fit-throwing nature of the US leadership becomes all the more clear when their attitudes to the Israeli genocidal campaign in Gaza are compared to their remarks made during the course of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Last October, Hilary Clinton tweeted, “If Russian leadership would rather not be accused of committing war crimes, they should stop bombing hospitals.”
Meanwhile, she has kept mum about the Israelis bombing Gazan hospitals, sniping inside the Al-Shifa hospital, and forcing out babies from their incubators to die.
The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has also been giving stark examples of American “rules-based order” hypocrisy.
In February this year, he indignantly declared: “We can never let the crimes Russia is committing become our new normal. Bucha is not normal. Mariupol is not normal. Irpin is not normal. Bombing schools and hospitals and apartment buildings to rubble is not normal.”
Blinken has been flying to Tel Aviv every few days and affirming the United States’ commitment to the Israeli genocide in Gaza — none of the lecturing of the Russian kind for the Israelis from America’s top diplomat — even when the Zionist regime has bombed “schools and hospitals and apartment buildings to rubble.”
If American leadership is to be believed, the non-event of Iraqi soldiers throwing babies out of incubators was a criminal act. The non-event of Palestinian resistance fighters beheading babies was also a criminal act.
But the Israeli Occupation Forces literally forcing babies out of incubators and leaving them to die in the full glare of the cameras for the whole world to see isn’t a criminal act.
The American hypocrisy isn’t a new thing, not least for the observers in third-world countries, but its nakedness was never this lurid.
It is, to borrow from Nayirah, “horrifying.”
Your support is invaluable for this newsletter. If you enjoyed the read, I would greatly appreciate if you left me a tip here, so that I may continue researching, writing, and bringing you interesting stories like this one.
Alternatively, you can show your support with a monthly/yearly/founder pledge. Thank you.
