As we go about our personal business each day, we are confronted with information, which we as individuals must evaluate quickly to determine whether the “input” we are receiving is true or false. It could be as simple as driving down the interstate at 65 mph and seeing the sign that says, “Right Lane Closed.” If it’s the middle of rush hour, the input might have you think, “the road sign is giving me false information,” because you know that road crews are usually not working on the roads at rush hour. So, you decide, “I’ll just stay in the right lane.” If you received the same input at 10:00 PM, you might decide that you should move to the left lane because road crews more often than not work on road repairs at night. So, it is more than likely that “the road sign is giving me truthful information.”
With that thought in mind, let’s consider that we are now confronted with a war in Israel, a war that was initiated by the terror group known as Hamas. For any who are current on the news, you know that these terrorists stormed the border in southern Israel and slaughtered more than a thousand men, women and children, while committing the most despicable and heinous of crimes against humanity.
They also took hostages and at the same time, they launched their propaganda campaign accusing the Israeli Defense Forces of violating their (Hamas’s) sovereignty by counter-attacking with an intense bombing campaign in Gaza after the Israeli government declared war.
Now before going on, I would like to introduce you to a method of propaganda … a technique, a process or whatever you wish to call it … well, it is actually, most accurately, called THE BIG LIE! As defined in Wikipedia: A big lie (German: große Lüge) is a gross distortion or misrepresentation of the truth primarily used as a political propaganda technique. The German expression was first used by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf (1925) to describe how people could be induced to believe so colossal a lie because they would not believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."
According to historian Jeffrey Herf, the Nazis used the idea of the original big lie to turn sentiment against Jews and justify the Holocaust. Herf maintains that Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi Party actually used the big lie technique that they described – and that they used it to turn long-standing antisemitism in Europe into mass murder. Herf further argues that the Nazis' big lie was their depiction of Germany as an innocent, besieged land striking back at "international Jewry," which the Nazis blamed for starting World War I. Nazi propaganda repeatedly claimed that Jews held power behind the scenes in Britain, Russia, and the United States. It further spread claims that the Jews had begun a war of extermination against Germany, and used these to assert that Germany had a right to annihilate the Jews in self-defense.
Now fast forward to October 17th --- the war has been underway for about 10 days and the Hamas propaganda machine has kicked in! Here are a few examples of the “information” we see splashed across every media outlet with which we come into contact: The AP News Wire … Blast kills hundreds at Gaza hospital ... Hamas called Tuesday's hospital blast “a horrific massacre,” saying it was caused by an Israeli strike. The BBC … The Hamas-controlled Palestinian authorities in Gaza immediately blamed Israel, claiming it was a deliberate air strike. And of course, our own taxpayer-funded PBS provided the following: Tuesday, Gaza's health ministry, controlled by Hamas, blamed Israel for an explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital and said hundreds died …
Let’s take a moment to remember what Adolf Hitler told us: … people could be induced to believe so colossal a lie because they would not believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”. If nothing else, Hamas took their inspiration from old Adolf and on October 17th, they perpetrated their own version of “THE BIG LIE”. The media around the world ran with it. You have already seen the headlines and you should know that all of our favorites here in the US … i.e., CNN, MSNBC, CBS and all of the cable channels … without a bit of investigative inquisitiveness, spread THE BIG LIE.
After all, it must be true … Hamas could never have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Hamas perpetrated the information that Israel intentionally bombed a hospital killing 500 people. “X”, formerly Twitter, was on fire with accusations and counter-accusations. Instagram was burning up and THE BIG LIE was getting passed around without one media organization saying: Slow your roll there and let’s see what really happened! And the most unethical, unkindest liar of all, Rashida Tlaib, a member of the United States Congress and avowed Palestinian and Hamas supporter, continued to tell THE BIG LIE even after she knew it was false!
And what a difference a day can make. They all knew it was false from the very beginning. They also heard the same information that you and I did, i.e., Israel’s MOD told us they were not bombing at that time. However, the MOD was defending against a rocket attack that was coming from that general vicinity. So, if it was not an Israeli bomb, what was it? Well, you need to do your own environmental scan and evaluate all the information available to you. Remember, Israel was being attacked with rockets at the time. And statistically, about 30% of the homemade rockets made in Gaza are misfires and fall back on the Palestinian people. That is exactly what happened here. A misfire, from a Hamas launch site just behind the hospital, fell in the parking lot of the hospital destroying the cars parked there. Some people may have been hurt to be sure … the warhead exploded and ignited the rocket motor fuel creating a big fire ball --- that is visible in some of the images we have seen.
So, what we now know is this was the first of many Hamas “BIG LIES” to come. Old Adolf would be proud of Hamas and the speed with which the Hamas Lie spread.
Regardless of where you get your news, it is more important, now more than ever before, that you question what you see and hear no matter who is providing the information. Make no mistake about it, there will be many more BIG LIES perpetrated and spread about the Israeli Defense Forces as they conduct military operations in the Gaza Strip to root out and destroy the Hamas infrastructure. This is a war … soldiers, terrorists, and the innocents on both sides will die. To date, there are 32 confirmed Americans killed in this war and they were not combatants. They were simply tourists visiting the Holy Land. This war is going to go on for a while and every one will need to judge for themselves how they will deal with the next “BIG LIE.”