As someone who has a Substack dedicated to telling the truth about the Middle East I have spent a considerable time reviewing the disparaging and defaming lies against Israel. And I've started to notice a few recurring themes. In all the various dishonest claims that are made, I've observed two notable common threads.
What are they?
The first recurring motif that I've noticed in most of the disparaging anti-Israel narratives is the consistent erasing and ignoring of what the Palestinians have done. According to these narratives the Palestinians are some kind of static amoebas, existing while not doing anything. Which is obviously not the case. They are very busy trying to murder Israelis and destroy Israel.
This is a conflict between two sides and yet, according to these absurd distorted narratives, one side is not doing anything. When in actuality they are doing many horrific and violent things and are the ones who are instigating all of the violence in the conflict.
This misleading view in which what one side is doing is not acknowledged and is disregarded creates a weird and distorted perspective where Israel is doing all kinds of bad things for no reason, which then leads to the conclusion that 'Israel is bad'. But this is only because the reason for all of Israel's actions, which is what the Palestinians have done, has been ignored and erased from the narrative.
There are many examples. Here are some of them.
The first one is the disparaging of Israel because of the war in Gaza and the destruction that is a result of that. What is always left out? The reason for the war which is that the Palestinians massacred Israelis on October 7th. The war is a natural response to such an attack on a sovereign country. And even more importantly, the Palestinian terrorists have declared time and time again that they would continue to attack Israel and are in fact actively trying to do that (the only reason they aren't succeeding is because the IDF is in Gaza stopping them). Totally ignoring that the Palestinian terrorists are currently trying to attack Israel and murder Israeli civilians (which is the reason that the IDF is fighting in Gaza, trying to prevent it) makes Israel some aggressive villain that just wants to fight a war. But that's only because of the absurdity that half of the story - the murderous Palestinian one - has been erased and ignored.
Another example is blaming Israel for the fact that the Palestinians lost their homes in 1948. What they always conveniently leave out is the fact that five Arab countries, and the local Arabs with them, attacked Israel, unprovoked, in 1948 with the intention to destroy the day-old country and displace all the Jews living in it. And it was as a result of that war that the local Arabs lost their homes. What is also erased is that the leaders of the invading Arab armies told the local Arabs to leave for the duration of the war while promising them they could return after they defeated the Jews, which is what caused many of them to flee. It was the Arabs' actions that got them displaced. But if you erase the war they started and their instructions to leave we're left with the only other fact from 1948 which is the creation of the state of Israel. And so we get the distorted conclusion that the creation of the state of Israel, and the Israelis, caused this. If they had not started a war against Israel in 1948 and had not fled their homes they would not be displaced.
Another deceptive narrative is that Israel is oppressing the Palestinians. They are holding them up in checkpoints, destroying their houses, detaining them. What this narrative erases is that the Palestinians are constantly trying to murder Israeli civilians. All these actions are a response to that horrific fact. They try to send suicide bombers to blow up women and children in Israel and the checkpoints are there to apprehend them before they can do that. The houses that are destroyed belong to terrorists who have murdered innocent civilians and this is a form of punishment meant to deter them. Those who are detained have been suspected of trying to murder Israelis and detaining them and interrogating them can save lives. It is ignored that the Palestinians are trying to murder Israeli women and children. All the so-called 'oppressing' measures are there for self-defense and to try to prevent the murderous intentions. But when you leave out that fact because you erase everything the Palestinians are doing then you get that Israel is 'oppressing'.
In all the deceptive narratives everything the Palestinians are doing is overlooked. And yet they have done and are trying to do the most atrocious things and instigating the violence in every flair-up of the conflict. But if you acknowledge that obvious truth then that would mean that Israel is justified in the actions it has taken against them and you wouldn't be able to disparage it. And so in order to disparage Israel you have to ignore what the Palestinians are doing. If you included their actions in the story it would turn out that they are the bad guys and that would be a problem if you wanted to paint the picture that Israel is the villain.
What is the second pattern?
Those who are disparaging Israel always use general words. They rarely mention tangible and concrete examples. This is unlike Israel which, unfortunately, has many actual examples when it is talking against the Palestinians. In psychology, a well-known sign of truthfulness is the ability to provide details and not just talk in general terms.
The disparagers of Israel always use bombastic words but never give examples or evidence to back them up. They always focus on the word. And when they do give examples they never correlate to the defaming word.
There are many examples but here are just a few. The first is the claim that Israel has Apartheid. The ones saying it never give an example of how Apartheid expresses itself in Israel (because it doesn't ...). Another one is saying Israel is doing genocide in Gaza when there is no evidence of any intent to wipe out the Gazans, Israel has designated safe zones to prevent civilian casualties and the population has actually grown. Another example is saying that Israel is oppressing the Palestinians. They usually just keep it at that and don't go into specifics. Because if they did everything they would say would be proven to be a response to their murderous intentions.
Using these two patterns can easily debunk any defaming and disparaging narrative against Israel. We only need to ask one of these two questions -
What did the Palestinians do (to cause this)?
What is an example (evidence) for that?
An interesting instance of that happened to me here on Substack. In my previous post I wrote about how most of the displaced Palestinians from 1948 fled of their own accord. I got a comment on the post from someone who said that what I had written was a lie. And that there was a whole book about it. I replied and asked him to give one evidence-based fact from the book that disproves what I had written in my post. He deleted his comment.
The disparaging lies against Israel are diverse and span many topics but they all just come down to a few dishonest patterns - eliminating anything the Palestinians are doing in the conflict and speaking in general terms with no tangible examples. It really is easy to debunk lies. All you have to do is tell the obvious truth.
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It didn't happen and it was justified, anyway, in other words.