Reprinted from Yellow Times
''The propaganda war: common myths held by the American public''
By Raff Ellis
YellowTimes.org Columnist (United States)
(YellowTimes.org) – Nearly every Internet user has received a mailing
describing an "Only in America" outrageous litigation and award. One
such is the man who won $74,000 after his hand was run over while he
was stealing hubcaps from his neighbor's car. These false tales take
on a life of their own that is incredible and are commonly known as
urban legends. That thousands believe such tales is somewhat
surprising but illustrates how gullible the general public is and how
susceptible to disinformation they are.
No area is more rife with false information than the Middle East. Our
government has certainly been guilty of such practices and is cranking
up the big lie machine in its drive to dignify war with Iraq. The
staunch supporters of the state of Israel in the media and government
assault the public stories that don't stand the light of day. But once
out there, they also take on a life of their own and the "man in the
street" repeats them without fail. Let's look at some of the most
common of these myths.
1. Israel has been attacked time and again by its enemies and is only
defending itself.
In actuality, the vast majority of the time Israel has been the
attacker. Certainly they claim provocation for these attacks but they
have lied and spread disinformation in many cases. In 1956, Israel
attacked Egypt, capturing the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip and was
forced to withdraw by President Eisenhower.
In 1967 Israel launched its six-day war against Egypt, Syria, and
Jordan, announcing it had been attacked. It used Egypt's military
maneuvers in the Sinai and the intent to blockade the Strait of Tiran
as its cover for the incursion and only after the war was over did it
admit it had launched a preemptive strike. If it was in the right, why
did it feel it had to lie? If Egypt was indeed attacking Israel, no
one bothered to ask why Egypt's entire air force was destroyed on the
ground. It has been documented (see former NSA operative James
Bamford's Body of Secrets, pp 139-239), that Israel had planned this
war for a long time.
When Egypt went to war in the Sinai in 1973, attempting to regain the
territory taken from it in 1967, it was in essence attacking its own
land, not Israel's.
In 1978 Israel invaded and occupied South Lebanon, which they held for
22 years. In 1982, they drove all the way to Beirut creating some
30,000 casualties in the process.
So, independent of all the "drive them into the sea" and "death to the
Arabs" rhetoric, who is the principal aggressor here? Israel has been
the attacker in almost all Middle East wars; at times has bombed Iraq,
Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia and even the United States via
its attack on the USS Liberty in June 1967. They tried to sink the
Liberty with all hands because they feared that the spy ship had
monitored communications wherein they lured Jordan and Syria into the
1967 war, and seen the war crimes they were committing in the Sinai.
None of the above countries has bombed Israel, save several Scud
missiles launched from Iraq during the Gulf War for which there were
virtually no casualties.
2. Israel wants peace with the Palestinians and its generous offers
have been rebuffed at every turn.
It is the Israelis who have successfully scuttled every so-
called "peace accord." The original Camp David Accords, under the
Carter administration, which returned the Sinai to Egypt, was supposed
to halt settlement activity in the West Bank. The Israelis have added
thousands more settlers since then.
The so-called "generous offer" by Ehud Barak two years ago, has taken
on a life of its own as standard by which Palestinian folly is to be
judged. The truth of this generous offer, which was never set forth in
writing, can be summarized as follows:
a. It denied Palestinians control over their own borders, airspace and
water resources while legitimizing and expanding the illegal Israeli
colonies.
b. It re-packaged the military occupation by keeping military outposts
for an "indefinite period" to protect their settlements
c. It required the annexation of nearly 9 percent of the Occupied
Territories in exchange for only 1 percent of Israel's current
territory and an additional 10 percent of the Occupied Territories in
the form of a "long-term lease."
d. It divided Palestine into four separate, surrounded cantons: the
Northern West Bank, the Central West Bank, the Southern West Bank and
Gaza subjecting movement of people and goods within their own country
to Israeli control.
This was Israel's generous offer, which no Palestinian leader of sound
mind could accept.
3. The Palestinians don't recognize Israel's right to exist.
Palestinians recognized Israel's right to exist in 1988 and re-
iterated this recognition on several occasions including Madrid in
1991 and Oslo in 1993. Israel has yet to recognize Palestine's right
to exist.
4. It is unreasonable for the Palestinians to insist on the right of
return because this would endanger Israel's security.
It is interesting that Jews from all over the world have
inherited "the right of return" to a place to which they have no
geographical or ancestral lien and yet, Palestinians, whose forbears
may have lived there for a thousand years or more, have no such
rights. The Palestinian refugees were never seriously discussed at the
last Camp David because Barak declared that Israel bore no
responsibility for the refugee problem or its solution, international
law and UN Resolutions notwithstanding.
5. The Palestinians really don't want peace with Israel.
The Palestinians are on record as willing to accept a settlement based
on UN Resolutions 242 and 338. Israel will not.
6. The Israeli government wants peace.
The Likud Party, of which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is the leader,
stands on its platform: There will be no Palestinian State; they will
strengthen settlements in the Occupied Territories; the eastern border
of Israel will be the Jordan River; Israel will maintain control of
the water resources in the West Bank; and Jerusalem will be the
undivided capital of Israel. That doesn't leave a whole lot for the
Palestinians does it?
7. The Palestinians are just a bunch of terrorists.
The Palestinians certainly didn't introduce terrorism to the Middle
East. In Menachem Begin's writings, he tells how successful the newly
founded Israeli state was in driving out the Palestinians by
terrorizing them with barrel bombs (which he claims to have invented),
slaughtering a whole village (Deir Yassin was publicized to encourage
flight), allowing Israel to grab over 40 percent more land than they
were given in the UN mandate.
Israel would have us believe that state sponsored activities such as
assassinations, home demolitions, confiscation of property, mass
deportations and myriad other humiliating human rights violations are
legal and justified as self defense. Resistance to these crimes is, of
course, terrorism.
8. The characterization that Jews control the media is but another
manifestation of anti-Semitism.
It seems that certain members of the Jewish community are trying to
perpetuate the media myth. Last year, media giant CanWest Global
Communications Corp., owned by Israel (Izzy) Asper and family,
announced that beginning Dec. 12, 2001, not one but eventually three
editorials a week would be written at corporate headquarters in
Winnipeg and imposed on 14 dailies, which include the Vancouver Sun
and Province, the Calgary Herald and the Montreal Gazette. CanWest
also owns 50 percent of the nationally distributed National Post,
which will be subject to the new directives as well.
Furthermore, in addition to the imposed editorials themselves, all
locally produced editorial column pieces will be forced to reflect the
viewpoints of the CanWest Global Corporation. CanWest last year became
Canada's dominant newspaper chain when it purchased Southam News Inc.
resulting in ownership of the 14 metropolitan dailies and 128 local
newspapers across the country.
The story came to light on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's As
It Happens radio program. Bill Marsden, an investigative reporter with
the Montreal Gazette, contended his editor had said CanWest was "very
sensitive" to editorial content. Marsden explained, paraphrasing the
directives, "That is to say they do not want to see any criticism of
Israel. We do not run in our newspaper Op-Ed pieces that express
criticism of Israel and what it is doing in the Middle East. We do not
have the free-wheeling debate there should be about these issues."
Add to this Ariel Sharon's declaration in a heated Knesset debate over
American concerns: "We own the banks and the media. Without us they
are a stupid people." It seems this stereotype might have some strong
Jewish sponsors.
9. The responsibility for the Palestinians rests with their Arab
brothers.
This is a popular theme of the Israeli "hard-liners," intending to
foist the problem they created on their neighbors. The "Arabs" and the
Palestinians are not one entity, as these right-wingers like to argue.
Common language or religion does not define ethnic or national groups.
It is but another attempt to portray the Israelis as the underdog, a
beleaguered people under threat of being overrun by the Muslim Arab
hordes. When Israel took over in 1948, it was estimated that up to 40
percent of Palestinian population were Christian. Most have left or
been driven out.
Even now, if the polls are to believed, Israelis approve
the "transfer" (a euphemism for ethnic cleansing) of Palestinians out
of the Occupied Territories. The lust for territory is at fever pitch
among the Likud and its followers as the current offensive against the
indigenous population can attest. Why else would the Israelis bulldoze
homes, uproot orchards, shoot and terrorize innocent civilians,
deprive the sick and wounded of medical services, destroy the
Palestinian Authority's infrastructure, roll their tanks over every
automobile and produce stand in sight, fire on and destroy ambulances,
if not to force the people into leaving their land?
10. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.
Israeli apologists love to trumpet the notion that Israel is awash in
a sea of repressive regimes while it is a pristine example of
democracy in action. The true test of a democracy rests on the
treatment of all its citizens equally. In fact, a million Israeli-
Palestinian citizens constitute a vast underclass of second-class
citizenry in this supposed democracy. They are not treated equally
with their Jewish counterparts in many ways; denial of construction
permits; special identification papers and license plates;
discrimination in employment and travel, etc. Free elections do not
make a democracy, for if that were the measure, Lebanon and Turkey
also qualify as democracies. At best, Israel is a theocracy, a country
based on religion that insists on maintaining its "Jewishness," a
notion that flies in the face of democratic principles.
This is the case against the Israeli propagandists and their
unsuspecting cohorts. It is neither complicated nor complex. Israel
has painted a canvas of fear and hatred in the Middle East while
picturing itself as the victim and the Palestinians as terrorists
instead of a dispossessed people. From the newspapers and TV op-ed
accounts, which parrot variations of the above, one can see that the
big lie is alive and well in the United States of America.
[Raff Ellis lives in the United States and is a retired former
strategic planner and computer industry executive. He has had an
abiding and active interest in the Middle East since early adulthood
and has traveled to the region many times over the last 30 years.]
Raff Ellis encourages your comments: rellis@YellowTimes.org
