Why Israel Lies
Aug 3, 2014
By Chris Hedges
All governments lie, as
I.F. Stone
pointed out, including Israel and Hamas. But Israel engages in the kinds
of jaw-dropping lies that characterize despotic and totalitarian regimes.
It does not deform the truth; it inverts it. It routinely paints a
picture for the outside world that is diametrically opposed to reality.
And all of us reporters who have covered the occupied territories have
run into Israel’s Alice-in-Wonderland narratives, which we dutifully
insert into our storiesrequired under the rules of American
journalismalthough we know they are untrue.
I saw small boys baited and killed by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza
refugee camp of Khan Younis. The soldiers swore at the boys in Arabic
over the loudspeakers of their armored jeep. The boys, about 10 years
old, then threw stones at an Israeli vehicle and the soldiers opened
fire, killing some, wounding others. I was present more than once as
Israeli troops drew out and shot Palestinian children in this way. Such
incidents, in the Israeli lexicon, become children caught in
crossfire. I was in Gaza when F-16 attack jets dropped 1,000-pound
iron fragmentation bombs on overcrowded hovels in Gaza City. I saw the
corpses of the victims, including children. This became a surgical strike
on a bomb-making factory. I have watched Israel demolish homes and
entire apartment blocks to create wide buffer zones between the
Palestinians and the Israeli troops that ring Gaza. I have interviewed
the destitute and homeless families, some camped out in crude shelters
erected in the rubble. The destruction becomes the demolition of the
homes of terrorists. I have stood in the remains of schoolsIsrael
struck two United Nations schools in the last six days, causing
at least 10 fatalities at one in Rafah on Sunday and
at least 19 at one in the Jebaliya refugee camp Wednesdayas well as
medical clinics and mosques. I have heard Israel claim that errant
rockets or mortar fire from the Palestinians caused these and other
deaths, or that the attacked spots were being used as arms depots or
launching sites. I, along with every other reporter I know who has worked
in Gaza, have never seen any evidence that Hamas uses civilians as “human
shields.”
There is a perverted logic to Israel’s repeated use of the Big LieGroße
Lügethe lie favored by tyrants from Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin to
Saddam Hussein. The Big Lie feeds the two reactions Israel seeks to
elicitracism among its supporters and terror among its victims.
By painting a picture of an army that never attacks civilians, that
indeed goes out of its way to protect them, the Big Lie says Israelis are
civilized and humane, and their Palestinian opponents are inhuman
monsters. The Big Lie serves the idea that the slaughter in Gaza is a
clash of civilizations, a war between democracy, decency and honor on one
side and Islamic barbarism on the other. And in the uncommon cases when
news of atrocities penetrates to the wider public, Israel blames the
destruction and casualties on Hamas.
George Orwell in his novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” called this form of
propaganda doublethink. Doublethink uses “logic against logic” and
“repudiate[s] morality while laying claim to it.” The Big Lie does not
allow for the nuances and contradictions that can plague conscience. It
is a state-orchestrated response to the dilemma of cognitive dissonance.
The Big Lie permits no gray zones. The world is black and white, good and
evil, righteous and unrighteous. The Big Lie allows believers to take
comforta comfort they are desperately seekingin their own moral
superiority at the very moment they have abrogated all morality.
The Big Lie, as the father of American public relations, Edward Bernays,
wrote, is limited only by the propagandist’s capacity to fathom and
harness the undercurrents of individual and mass psychology. And since
most supporters of Israel do not have a desire to know the truth, a truth
that would force them to examine their own racism and self-delusions
about Zionist and Western moral superiority, like packs of famished dogs
they lap up the lies fed to them by the Israeli government. The Big Lie
always finds fertile soil in what Bernays called the “logic-proof
compartment of dogmatic adherence.” All effective propaganda, Bernays
wrote, targets and builds upon these irrational “psychological
habits.”
This is the world Franz Kafka envisioned, a world where the irrational
becomes rational. It is one where, as Gustave Le Bon noted in “The Crowd:
A Study of the Public Mind,” those who supply the masses with the
illusions they crave become their master, and “whoever attempts to
destroy their illusions is always their victim.” This irrationality
explains why the reaction of Israeli supporters to those who have the
courage to speak the truthUri Avnery, Max Blumenthal, Noam Chomsky,
Jonathan Cook, Norman Finkelstein, Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, Ilan Pappé,
Henry Siegman and Philip Weissis so rabid. That so many of these voices
are Jewish, and therefore have more credibility than non-Jews who are
among Israel’s cheerleaders, only ratchets up the level of hate
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_israel_lies_20140803#.U9_gSnfYjOc.twitter
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