<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<br>
<div class="moz-forward-container"><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;
charset=ISO-8859-1">
<div class="post-headline">
<h1><big><big>Chris Hedges: Why Israel Lies</big></big></h1>
<big><big> </big></big></div>
<big><big> </big></big>
<div class="post-byline">
<div id="single_post_category_images" class="bfa_widget_area">
<div id="linkabletitlehtmlandphpwidget-3" class="widget
widget_text"><big><big> </big></big>
<div class="textwidget"><big><big><img scale="0"
src="cid:part1.09090707.04060100@comcast.net"
class="attachment-580x387 wp-post-image" alt="Screen
Shot 2014-08-04 at 11.56.08 PM" height="385"
width="580"></big></big></div>
<big><big> </big></big></div>
</div>
<big><big> </big></big>
<div class="cat-date-line"><big><big><span
class="cat-date-line2"><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.popularresistance.org/category/educate/"
title="View all posts in Educate!" rel="category tag">Educate!</a></span>
<span class="cat-date-line3"> <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/chris-hedges/"
rel="tag">Chris Hedges</a>, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/israel/"
rel="tag">Israel</a>, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/palestine/"
rel="tag">Palestine</a>, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/propaganda/"
rel="tag">Propaganda</a> </span> <br>
<span class="cat-date-line4">By Chris Hedges, <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/why_israel_lies_20140803"
target="_blank">www.truthdig.com</a><br>
August 5th, 2014</span><br>
</big></big></div>
<div id="google_translate_element">
<div style="" dir="ltr" class="skiptranslate goog-te-gadget"><big><big> Powered
by <span style="white-space:nowrap"><a
moz-do-not-send="true" class="goog-logo-link"
href="https://translate.google.com" target="_blank"><img
scale="0"
src="cid:part8.07020901.01000701@comcast.net"
style="padding-right: 3px" height="13px"
width="37px">Translate</a></span></big></big></div>
</div>
</div>
<big><big> </big></big>
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style "
addthis:url="http://www.popularresistance.org/chris-hedges-why-israel-lies/"
addthis:title="Chris Hedges: Why Israel Lies "><big><big><a
moz-do-not-send="true" class="addthis_button_facebook_like
at300b" fb:like:layout="button_count">
<div
fb-iframe-plugin-query="action=like&app_id=172525162793917&font=arial&href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.popularresistance.org%2Fchris-hedges-why-israel-lies%2F&layout=button_count&locale=en_US&sdk=joey&send=false&show_faces=false&width=90"
fb-xfbml-state="rendered" data-send="false"
data-href="http://www.popularresistance.org/chris-hedges-why-israel-lies/"
data-font="arial" data-width="90" data-action="like"
data-show_faces="false" data-layout="button_count"
class="fb-like fb_iframe_widget" data-ref=""><span
style="vertical-align: bottom; width: 75px; height:
20px;"><iframe class=""
src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?action=like&app_id=172525162793917&channel=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.ak.facebook.com%2Fconnect%2Fxd_arbiter%2FoDB-fAAStWy.js%3Fversion%3D41%23cb%3Df15c651ad6fc3bc%26domain%3Dwww.popularresistance.org%26origin%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.popularresistance.org%252Ff162699d28deb74%26relation%3Dparent.parent&font=arial&href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.popularresistance.org%2Fchris-hedges-why-israel-lies%2F&layout=button_count&locale=en_US&sdk=joey&send=false&show_faces=false&width=90"
style="border: medium none; visibility: visible;
width: 75px; height: 20px;" title="fb:like Facebook
Social Plugin" allowtransparency="true"
name="f1d59b6ac79d4bc" frameborder="0"
height="1000px" scrolling="no" width="90px"></iframe></span></div>
</a><a moz-do-not-send="true" class="addthis_button_tweet
at300b"><iframe style="width: 106px; height: 20px;"
data-twttr-rendered="true" title="Twitter Tweet Button"
class="twitter-share-button twitter-tweet-button
twitter-share-button twitter-count-horizontal"
src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/tweet_button.1406859257.html#_=1407345482342&count=horizontal&counturl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.popularresistance.org%2Fchris-hedges-why-israel-lies%2F&id=twitter-widget-0&lang=en&original_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.popularresistance.org%2Fchris-hedges-why-israel-lies%2F&size=m&text=Chris%20Hedges%3A%20Why%20Israel%20Lies%20&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.popularresistance.org%2Fchris-hedges-why-israel-lies%2F&via=PopResistance"
allowtransparency="true" id="twitter-widget-0"
frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe></a><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
class="addthis_button_pinterest_pinit at300b"><span
class="at_PinItButton"></span></a><a
moz-do-not-send="true" class="atc_s
addthis_button_compact"><span></span></a><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.popularresistance.org/chris-hedges-why-israel-lies/#"
title="View more services" target="_blank"
class="addthis_button_expanded">16</a></big></big></div>
<div class="pf-content">
<div class="printfriendly pf-alignright"><big><big><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.printfriendly.com/print?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.popularresistance.org%2Fchris-hedges-why-israel-lies%2F"
rel="nofollow" onclick="window.print(); return false;"><img
scale="0" style="border:none;-webkit-box-shadow:none;
box-shadow:none;"
src="cid:part15.06060602.02000108@comcast.net"
alt="Print Friendly"></a></big></big></div>
<p><big><big><em>Palestinians evacuate a survivor of an Israeli
airstrike that hit a family building Sunday in Rafah, in
southern Gaza. <small>AP/Eyad Baba</small></em></big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>All governments lie, as <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.ifstone.org/biography-refuted.php"
target="_blank">I.F. Stone</a> 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 stories—required under
the rules of American journalism—although we know they are
untrue.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>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 <i>children caught in crossfire.</i> 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 <i>a surgical strike on a bomb-making factory.</i>
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 <i>the demolition of the homes of
terrorists.</i> I have stood in the remains of
schools—Israel struck two United Nations schools in the
last six days, causing <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/03/israel-air-strike-un-school-gaza-rafah"
target="_blank">at least 10 fatalities</a> at one in
Rafah on Sunday and <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/07/gaza-un-school-hit-201473041918975321.html"
target="_blank">at least 19</a> at one in the Jebaliya
refugee camp Wednesday—as 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.”</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>There is a perverted logic to Israel’s repeated use
of the Big Lie—<i>Große Lüge</i>—the lie favored by
tyrants from Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin to Saddam
Hussein. The Big Lie feeds the two reactions Israel seeks
to elicit—racism among its supporters and terror among its
victims.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>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.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>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
comfort—a comfort they are desperately seeking—in their
own moral superiority at the very moment they have
abrogated all morality.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>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.”</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>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
truth—Uri Avnery, Max Blumenthal, Noam Chomsky, Jonathan
Cook, Norman Finkelstein, Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, Ilan
Pappé, Henry Siegman and Philip Weiss—is 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.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>But the Big Lie is also consciously designed to
send a chilling message to Gaza’s Palestinians, who have
lost large numbers of their dwellings, clinics, mosques,
and power, water and sewage facilities, along with schools
and hospitals, who have suffered some 1,650 deaths since
this assault began—most of the victims women and
children—and who have seen 400,000 people displaced from
their homes. The Big Lie makes it clear to the
Palestinians that Israel will continue to wage a campaign
of state terror and will never admit its atrocities or its
intentions. The vast disparity between what Israel says
and what Israel does tells the Palestinians that there is
no hope. Israel will do and say whatever it wants.
International law, like the truth, will always be
irrelevant. There will never, the Palestinians understand
from the Big Lie, be an acknowledgement of reality by the
Israeli leadership.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>The <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.idfblog.com/blog/2014/08/01/hamas-holy-places-in-gaza-as-terrorist-facilities/"
target="_blank">Israel Defense Forces website</a> is
replete with this black propaganda. “Hamas exploits the
IDF’s sensitivity towards protecting civilian structures,
particularly holy sites, by hiding command centers,
weapons caches and tunnel entrances in mosques,” the IDF
site reads. “In Hamas’ world, hospitals are command
centers, ambulances are transport vehicles, and medics are
human shields,” the site insists.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>“… [Israeli] officers are tasked with an enormous
responsibility: to protect Palestinian civilians on the
ground, no matter how difficult that may be,” the site
assures its viewers. And the IDF site provides this quote
from a drone operator identified as Lt. Or. “I have
personally seen rockets fired at Israel from hospitals and
schools, but we couldn’t strike back because of civilians
nearby. In one instance, we acquired a target but we saw
that there were children in the area. We waited around,
and when they didn’t leave we were forced to abort a
strike on an important target.”</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron
Dermer, in a Big Lie of his own, said last month at a
conference of Christians United for Israel that the
Israeli army should be given the “Nobel Peace Prize … a
Nobel Peace Prize for fighting with unimaginable
restraint.”</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>The Big Lie destroys any possibility of history and
therefore any hope for a dialogue between antagonistic
parties that can be grounded in truth and reality. While,
as <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arendt/">Hannah
Arendt</a> pointed out, the ancient and modern sophists
sought to win an argument at the expense of the truth,
those who wield the Big Lie “want a more lasting victory
at the expense of reality.” The old sophists, she said,
“destroyed the dignity of human thought.” Those who resort
to the Big Lie “destroy the dignity of human action.” The
result, Arendt warned, is that “history itself is
destroyed, and its comprehensibility.” And when facts no
longer matter, when there is no shared history grounded in
the truth, when people foolishly believe their own lies,
there can be no useful exchange of information. The Big
Lie, used like a bludgeon by Israel, as perhaps it is
designed to be, ultimately reduces all problems in the
world to the brutish language of violence. And when
oppressed people are addressed only through violence they
will answer only through violence.</big></big></p>
<p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/sy9XRvvLAW0"
allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0"
height="339.1525423728814" width="580"></iframe></p>
</div>
<h3>Related Posts:</h3>
<ul>
<li><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.popularresistance.org/israel-attack-on-gaza-founded-on-lies-upon-lies/"
class="crp_title">Israel Attack On Gaza Founded On Lies Upon
Lies</a><span class="crp_date"> July 10, 2014</span> </li>
<li><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.popularresistance.org/chris-hedges-and-noam-chomsky-33/"
class="crp_title">Chris Hedges And Noam Chomsky (3/3)</a><span
class="crp_date"> June 21, 2014</span> </li>
<li><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.popularresistance.org/chris-hedges-the-power-of-imagination/"
class="crp_title">Chris Hedges: The Power of Imagination</a><span
class="crp_date"> May 13, 2014</span> </li>
</ul>
<br>
</div>
<br>
</body>
</html>