On June 12, 2023, the Qatari daily Al-Watan published an image of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as Hitler as his mask slips. The image accompanied an article titled "The Mask of Democracy Has Slipped," which claims that the social and political situation in Israel is further proof that this country is not a "democratic oasis in the Middle East," as it is often described in the West.
The article in the Qatari daily
The article states: "This is Israel, the country that Western leaders present to their citizens over the media as an oasis of democracy in the Middle East. Since [Israel's] establishment, they have used this [Israeli] mask as an excuse to turn a blind eye to the occupation and to its illegal and inhuman actions. But now the false mask of democracy has slipped, and even many in Israelis admit this, in front of Tel Aviv's Western patrons. Cries of 'save us' are being heard, but this time they are not the cries of the Palestinians, who suffer from the occupation and from the silence of the Arabs and the international community. They are the cries of Israelis, who have discovered that their false democracy is [threatened by] the hammer of the extremist right and the fanatic settlers."[1]
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It should be noted that the image was originally published on February 3, 2023 by the news site arabicpost.net, as part of a different article by the same name,[2] which condemned what it called the anti-democratic orientation of Netanyahu's current government.[3] The website arabicpost.net was established in 2018 by Integral Media, a company founded by media figure Wadah Khanfar, formerly the director of Qatar's Al-Jazeera network.[4]
The image on the arabicpost.net news site
