EMPIRE OF LIES—Howe’s War on Truth, Dean’s Descent Into Madness

Rupert Murdoch is not a man accustomed to failure. The media baron, long the architect of right-wing propaganda and enabler of state terror, has built an empire on control. Yet now, at 94, he is confronted with something he cannot buy or bully into submission: the collapse of the narrative he has so ruthlessly pushed about Israel and Palestine.

Enter Alan Howe, longtime editor of the Sunday Herald Sun and for Opinion pages editor at The Australian, is one of Murdoch’s most loyal foot soldiers. 

 

For decades, Murdoch’s devotion to the Zionist cause has seen his newspapers and broadcasters launder Israeli crimes into stories of victimhood and virtue. His empire has flooded the public with lies and distortions, painting Israel as the beacon of “light” while branding Palestinians as agents of “darkness.” That propaganda once held sway. But the world has changed. Public opinion is shifting, Israel is increasingly recognised as a pariah state, and Murdoch is scrambling to control a narrative that is slipping from his grasp.

This desperation is most visible in the shrill dishonesty of his flagship outlets, The Australian and Sky News. Their coverage of Gaza is not journalism but propaganda — a weaponised campaign to demonise Palestinians and excuse genocide.

Howe claims the conflict is a battle between “enlightened” Israel and “barbaric” Palestinians. Yet who is levelling entire neighbourhoods, starving civilians, bombing hospitals, and killing tens of thousands? Not Hamas. Israel, backed by the United States and cheered on by Sky News, is carrying out a campaign of collective punishment so severe that UN experts, human rights groups, and the International Court of Justice have all described it as plausibly genocidal. To call Israel “good” while it drops U.S.-made bombs on refugee camps is not journalism. It is complicity.

Howe portrays Hamas and Hezbollah as death cults divorced from reality. But history tells us that resistance is always branded terrorism by the occupier. The French Resistance was once dismissed as a terrorist network by Nazi Germany. Nelson Mandela remained on the US terror watchlist until 2008. Palestinians resisting occupation and dispossession are smeared in exactly the same way. This doesn’t mean every tactic of Hamas or Hezbollah must be defended. It means recognising that these movements exist because of Israel’s relentless colonisation and violence — not because Palestinians are “irrational savages,” as Howe implies.

Howe fixates on Ismail Haniyeh’s calm response to the deaths of his children, presenting dignity in grief as evidence of fanaticism. He ignores that Palestinian families have endured generations of loss under Israeli siege and bombardment. Resilience is not fanaticism — it is survival.

Meanwhile, Israel’s leaders openly invoke biblical genocide. Netanyahu has called Gaza’s war a “battle of light against darkness.” His ministers describe Palestinians as “human animals.” Settlers in Jerusalem chant “death to Arabs.” Yet Howe insists it is Palestinians who embody hate. Who, then, are the extremists? Those resisting occupation, or those using F-16s to erase an entire people?

Howe repeats the tired propaganda that Hamas “stole aid” and “turned pipes into rockets.” This ignores the reality of a siege that has lasted nearly two decades, during which Israel has blocked or restricted basic materials needed to build homes, hospitals, and sanitation systems. Gaza is kept deliberately unlivable. If children die of disease and hunger, it is because Israel designed it so. Blaming Palestinians for their misery is extraordinary victim-blaming.

Even Howe’s descent into tabloid gossip — harping on the alleged wealth of Hamas leaders — is a diversion. Corruption is hardly unique to Palestinians; Israel’s own Prime Minister stands trial for bribery and fraud. That detail, naturally, is absent from Howe’s sermon.

Rowan Dean’s Descent Into Madness

This propaganda is not isolated. It is part of a coordinated Murdoch campaign to silence dissent and smear critics of Israel. Just this week, Sky News’ Rowan Dean accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of “throwing the Jewish community under the bus” — a grotesque falsehood that conflates criticism of Zionism with antisemitism. And this morning Dean spiralled further into hysteria, labelling the Albanese government a “bunch of radical communists” who must be “destroyed.”

This is not analysis. It is unhinged ranting — the kind of language that corrodes democratic debate and exposes just how untethered Murdoch’s empire has become. For a broadcaster that claims to defend “Western civilisation,” Dean’s rhetoric is a dangerous echo of authoritarianism, where political opponents are not disagreed with but annihilated. It is the same logic that underpins the propaganda Howe peddles in print: a worldview where opponents are stripped of legitimacy and human rights are trampled in the name of power.

Journalism should be exposing why Israel has been allowed to wage war on Gaza with US and Australian backing, why Palestinians are still denied the right to self-determination under international law, why Western leaders who cheer Ukrainian resistance to Russian occupation condemn Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, and why criticism of Israel is smeared as antisemitism when it is, in truth, solidarity with human rights.

These questions terrify editors at Murdoch outlets, because they reveal the truth: Israel is not the victim but the aggressor, and Palestinians are not the evil but the oppressed.

The real “gulf between good and evil” isn’t between Israel and Palestine. It’s between those who defend human rights and those who excuse genocide. Howe, Dean, Murdoch, and The Australian have chosen their side: with Netanyahu, with US bombs, with the machinery of oppression.

Australians [and all people] deserve journalism that exposes power, not journalism that apologises for its crimes. Until then, Howe’s work — like Dean’s rants — should be read not as reporting, but as propaganda.