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(LifeSiteNews) — With the anniversary of the October 7 attacks, a new documentary from The Grayzone sought to correct the public record of the day Hamas launched Operation Aqsa Flood.

Max Blumenthal’s film Atrocity, Inc. makes a powerful case for the capture of the American mind by the staging and transmission of “atrocity propaganda,” which came to obscure the actual atrocities which took place on the day.

Lurid stories of “40 beheaded babies,” of babies “burned in an oven,” and babies hung on washing lines were broadcasted around the world. U.S. leaders repeated them without question. President Joe Biden claimed to have seen pictures which showed these appalling acts of brutality.

The problem was that these pictures did not exist, because – as Israeli TV itself reported – these things “simply did not happen.”

An Israeli journalist recounts 3 eyewitness testimonies of the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7. There’s just one problem, he says: “It never happened. They all lied.” pic.twitter.com/olJeCnkg4Q

— Expat Vibes (@expatvibes) October 7, 2024

Using footage from Israeli news media and reports from Israeli outlets, Blumenthal’s documentary shows how a false narrative of inhuman atrocity was created – to sell Israel’s brutal war in Gaza to Americans.

Commentators such as retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor have praised Blumenthal for his “courageous” work in challenging the powerful vested interests behind a narrative designed, says Blumenthal, to justify a campaign of genocide.

“I hold Max in very high esteem and I think he’s a very courageous person,” Macgregor told Judge Andrew Napolitano in a video from October 16.

Macgregor praised Blumenthal’s Grayzone and its journalists, saying “they’re simply interested in getting at the truth. The truth is not very popular here with American media, or certainly in Israel, or for that matter in Ukraine.”

Macgregor agrees with former diplomats Chas Freeman, Alastair Crooke, and the United Nations assessment that Israel is waging “a war of extermination” against all non-Jews in the proposed Greater Israel region.

Following the passage of a controversial 2018 law, Israel has proclaimed itself the nation state of Jews alone.

Netanyahu explained this in 2019, “Israel is not the state of all of its citizens. According to the nation-state basic law that we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people – and of it alone.”

Critics of Israel argue that the current government is pursuing a policy of elimination and expulsion of the non-Jewish population to secure this vision of Israel as a Jewish ethnostate. It is a claim echoed in Blumenthal’s documentary, and widely supported by evidence.

Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli minister responsible for “settlements,” has recently echoed this supremacist view. Smotrich, who lives in an illegal “settlement” himself, outlined his belief in the right to a “Greater Israel” as he sought not only to seize land from Palestinians to secure this, but also to absorb regions of neighboring nations such as Lebanon, Syria, and others.

Following Smotrich’s call for a “million more” Zionist “settlers”, one of the last remaining Christian families in the Bethlehem area saw their home destroyed and their land seized by armed “settlers” – backed by Israeli soldiers.

READ: Israel is evicting one of the last Christian families near the birthplace of our Lord Jesus

This process of elimination and expulsion, Blumenthal argues, is concealed by horrors manufactured and sold to Americans – to steer their attention away from Israel’s actions. Israeli media now reports, following a New York Times investigation, that the Israeli government knew in advance of Hamas’ attack plans.

As the “atrocity propaganda” about “beheaded babies” was discredited, a new narrative was produced of mass rape. This too, shows Blumenthal, was based on discredited reports.

Again, in reality, Israel was committing similar atrocities. Blumenthal’s video shows Israeli television footage of Israeli soldiers anally raping detainees. Israeli pundits discuss the sodomy of prisoners with metal rods, with one saying that this is not only acceptable – but “they deserve it.”

Yehuda Shlezinger, who made that remark, issued an “apology” which framed the victims of Israel as “Amalek” – recalling Netanyahu’s use of the biblical term in justifying a war of extermination.

A debate in the Israeli parliament produced the view that the rape of prisoners was legitimate, and that in fact “everything” that Israel wished to do to its captives was legitimate. An Israeli journalist “pressed for rape to become Israeli state policy,” according to reports.

Blumenthal has returned in recent days with an appearance on Judge Napolitano’s “Judging Freedom,” in which he documents the Israeli “use and abuse” of the Western media.

During his appearance, Blumenthal explained his motive in making his documentary.

“I thought it was necessary to make this film to … show how the media colluded with apartheid Israel in a campaign to shock the Western public into supporting … a genocide,” he said.

Blumenthal said this “genocide” was “stated from the beginning,” quoting the Israeli defense chief Yoav Gallant, who said, “I have ordered a complete siege … on the human animals” in Gaza.

In recent days, the Biden-Harris administration has condemned Israel’s refusal to allow food, water, and medicine into Gaza, threatening to halt arms supplies unless this “siege” is lifted. Reports indicate that far from lifting the blockade, Netanyahu is planning to expand it.

Reuters reported on September 22 that “Israel is examining a plan to use siege tactics against Hamas in northern Gaza,” using the presence of Hamas to collectively starve and punish the general population.

Recent figures from Brown University state the death toll in Gaza exceeds 100,000 in one year, with the addition of 67,000 victims of starvation and those dying of the lack of medical treatment to the 40,000 killed directly by the war.

It is clear the “siege” is working – and even the U.S. government is taking note. Yet Americans distracted by atrocity propaganda remain unaware of these facts, says Blumenthal, who says “mainstream American newsrooms” present Palestinians as “barbaric savages.”

American journalists who tell a different story, however, can suffer imprisonment or death. Blumenthal highlights the case of one of his own Grayzone journalists, Jeremy Loffredo, an American who was arrested by the Israelis for reporting war details already published by Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Whilst a PBS reporter also covered the sites of Iranian missile strikes on Israeli military bases, it was only Loffredo who was arrested and “accused by the Israeli police of supporting an enemy during wartime” for reporting facts already in the public domain.

Loffredo has a Jewish mother, with his father being Italian-American. Blumenthal says that the State Department has “remained silent” on his exceptional detention.

With satellite images of the damaged sites published by the Washington Post, the only motivation for singling out Loffredo is “to attack The Grayzone,” Blumenthal says – recalling Col. Macgregor’s charge that neither the Israelis nor the U.S. government have an interest in independent reporting reaching Americans. U.S. news outlets such as CNN run their coverage of Israel’s war through their Jerusalem offices, which is under the direction of the Israeli censor.

Loffredo is out of jail, but he may face more charges and is forbidden to leave Israel pending further investigation.

That the U.S. State Department would abandon a U.S. citizen should come as no surprise. In January 2024, U.S. citizen and journalist Gonzalo Lira died in Ukraine, following his imprisonment and torture by Ukrainian authorities. His crime was also journalism, and despite a heartfelt appeal by Lira’s father to the State Department, nothing was done to help him.

Max Blumenthal makes a strong case in revealing the enormous efforts undertaken to deprive Americans of accurate reporting, and to replace it with pro-war propaganda. His argument is that without reliable information, the U.S. public cannot give informed consent to the actions of its government.

What is perhaps most remarkable is the realization that if the American public were informed, there would be little consent at all.

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