by Khalid Amayreh

As a Palestinian who has lived virtually all his adult life under Israel’s nefarious military occupation, I can testify that Zionist leaders, academics and propagandists are actually professional practitioners of mendacity as much as they are of murder and bloodshed.

In fact, from over 35 years of observing and monitoring Israeli-Zionist hazbara (propaganda) both in Israel and the United States, I could safely conclude that everything and anything said or written by the official Israeli-Zionist establishment, whether on Palestinian refugees or on “the only democracy in the Middle East” or, indeed, on “the” holocaust, should be thoroughly doubted and questioned, for Zionists are pathological liars and they should be treated as such until proven otherwise.

Indeed, Israel’s infamous and nefarious lies about the Palestinian plight and her continued misrepresentation of truth and reality about her genocidal torment of the Palestinian people, which transcends reality, should force all truth-seekers to think a hundred times before giving any Zionist story or narrative the benefit of the doubt.

Lying, of course, is not confined to Zionist Jews, and nobody can claim that mendacity is an exclusively Jewish-Zionist monopoly.

However, unlike the world’s other lying murderers, the big lie in the Israeli case happens to be a structural component of the misbegotten entity.

In fact, one could seriously claim that mendacity makes up the backbone of the Israeli State, which if thoroughly exposed and dissipated, the “moral” justification for the State’s very existence would collapse like a house of cards.

Moreover, unlike elsewhere in the world, concocting false statements and accounts about events, such as crimes committed by Israeli occupation troops and settler-cutthroats, is a systematic, institutionalized and organized task for which hundreds of millions of dollars are allocated every year and hundreds of mercenary writers, parroting columnists and unethical apologists are recruited and mobilized, all for the purpose of hallowing the unholy and converting the lie into a “truth” believed and accepted by millions of unsuspecting people around the world.

Take, for example, the indelible story of Muhammed al- Durra, the poor Palestinian kid who was so callously murdered by trigger-happy Israeli army soldiers last October as he was seeking, in vain, to escape the inescapable bullets of the heroes of Zionism.

In the beginning, the Zionist mill of mendacity claimed that al-Durra was actually killed deliberately by Palestinian “gunmen” in order to besmirch Israel’s “fine” image on the world’s arena.

When the lie proved to be too brash, the same mill fabricated the Satanic and cheap claim that Palestinians were pushing their kids to the front lines in order to embarrass the Israeli “defense” forces which killed them inadvertently and regretfully.

And even today, nearly five months after the monstrous crime, and far from saying a simple and genuine “sorry” for the vile deed, Israeli propagandists and apologists, including supposedly respectable diplomats, are still unashamedly ruminating and parroting the crass lie that al-Durra was pushed into the line of fire by his father (his father, too, was nearly killed) in order to score a propaganda victory for the Palestinian cause!

I don’t know why I chose to stress the case of Muhammed al-Durra as a classic Zionist lie, as there are thousands, perhaps millions, of graver Zionist lies about every demolished house, every uprooted tree, every obliterated village and every atrocity the lying murderers carried out. Maybe because the specter of his phantasmagoric death is still haunting us whenever the murder is re-enacted by Israel’s born-to-kill soldiers. Maybe because we unconsciously or subconsciously feel that we have to do something to compensate or atone for our collective guilt as humans for not doing enough to save the child from the ugly claws of a preventable death. Or just maybe because his death is still so vivid and so fresh in our exhausted individual and collective memories.

Of course, the Zionist robe of lying is so long, so much so that it takes a voluminous encyclopedia to record and document Zionist lies, particularly those disseminated since the Palestinian Nakba of 1948.

We all are aware of their classic lies, such as “the Arabs left their hometowns and villages voluntarily in 1948 and were not expelled by the Jews,” “a land without a people for a people without a land,” “What Palestinians?” and that “we may forgive Arabs for killing our children, but we shall not forgive them for making us kill theirs!”

Luckily, there are conscientious Jews who have exposed some of these lies. Their efforts should be greatly appreciated.

However, it should be equally stressed that the portion of unexposed lies still exceeds that of the barely-exposed lies by a million to one, at the very least. Why? Because the history of Israel and Zionism from Hertzl-the-infamous to Sharon-the-war-criminal is actually a long concatenation of lies.

Recently, the Israeli army protested and eventually succeeded in preventing the proposed release of historical documents dating back to 1948 about Palestinian refugees. Israel’s intelligence and defence establishment argued, rather convincingly, that the release of the “documents” to the public “now” would cause Israel’s political stance and image irreparable damage and would vindicate many of the Palestinian claims. One doesn’t have to read between the lines; the message these words carry is clear, perhaps too clear, for those whose job it is to maintain the lie and perpetuate the myth for as long as possible.

But the big lie goes on, unabated.

In mid-March, two Canadian rabbis castigated a conscientious fellow Jew for writing an article in which he rightly argued that Zionism was giving a very bad name to Judaism and that Judaism and the Torah of Moses were innocent of what Israel was doing in the name of Jews everywhere.

The two Zionist rabbis claimed that Israel, not the Palestinians, was under siege in the West Bank, and that Jews, instead of criticizing Israel, should rally behind Sharon, the hero of Sabra and Shatilla.

Why do Israel’s supporters lie in such a brash and primitive manner?

How could Israel, the fifth nuclear power in the world, be under siege when her occupation army is encircling every town, village, hamlet and refugee camp in the West Bank, effectively pushing the Palestinians to the brink of starvation, or maybe to the brink of Auschwitz?

Do these rabbis live in this world, or are they just talking to themselves? Indeed, how do they read the Biblical commandment “Thou shall not lie?” Do they read it as “Thou shall lie when and if it is expedient for you?” Isn’t this Israel’s and Zionism’s ultimate golden rule?

But if lying is Israel’s best policy, and it is in a certain sense, shouldn’t the world, particularly those who have been exposed and victimized by Zionist lies, doubt the Zionists’ official stories about other issues, such as the holocaust, for example?

In short, couldn’t Zionism, through its powerful propaganda machine, which has succeeded in thoroughly penetrating and engulfing much of the world’s media, show business, and even in the academic world, lie about the events which the Jews of Europe encountered during the Nazi era, as, indeed, it has been lying so abundantly and so “successfully” about the Palestinian plight?

As a Palestinian, an Arab and a Muslim who has been among the premier victims of Zionist mendacity, I believe I have the right to and am justified in doubting, questioning and even not believing much or most of what the Israeli and Zionist propagandists have been saying about the holocaust.

Indeed, if Zionists could lie about their present and ongoing torment of my people, usurpation of my homeland and arrogation of my rights, and they do it rather obscenely, couldn’t they likewise lie, equally obscenely, about the holocaust, an event that took place over half a century ago?

by courtesy & © 2001 The Palestine Times & Khalid Amayreh

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