Palestinians evacuate a survivor of an Israeli airstrike that hit a family building Sunday in Gaza. (photo: AP/Eyad Baba)
04 August 14
ll 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 stories—required under the rules of
American journalism—although 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 schools—Israel 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 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.”
There is a perverted logic to Israel’s repeated use of the Big Lie—Große Lüge—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.
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