- Norma Zager
Tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth; an adage among the most basic morsels of wisdom passed down to each generation.
Propaganda has always been a powerful tool for government's intent on spreading lies and deceptive information to the world. Used as an easy and effective way to disseminate doctored realities to suit a specific purpose, Israel has always found itself looking down the barrel of a shotgun of untruths and smear campaigns.
Although many politicos have distorted the truth for deceptive purpose, its use for evil has never been as effective as in WWII. Hitler's PR machine was a vital part of the entire German plan to conquer the world and was a highly effective tool.
Since a dictatorship controlled its media, lies were an integral part of government control and perpetuating Fascist philosophy.
The advent of a State of Israel as an entity should have made it more difficult to spread propaganda yet it hasn't. Why?
Ari Bussel related a recent incident that bears out how truly alive and well the ability of Israel's enemies to distort and corrupt the truth.
Ari was at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs front office in Sderot, half a mile away from Gaza (this translates to a 15-second warning to take cover in a protected structure). He recounts the day's events: "A reporter from Oslo called to check Hamas's claim that Israel is preventing convoys of humanitarian aid from passing into Gaza. Nothing could have been further from the truth--I had witnessed a convoy en route to Gaza just an hour earlier. As many as 93 truck loads passed each of the previous two days, along with a gift of five ambulances from Turkey. We provided the factual data both to the reporter on the phone and to every reporter who came in that day."
The interest, however, did not die.
Despite
(a) hundreds of truckloads of humanitarian aid and tens of thousands of gallons of fuel replenishment moving via Israel (all broadcast on a live feed available on the internet),
(b) warehouses full of supplies that cause the int'l aid organizations in Gaza to reject any more incoming shipments,
(c) Israel providing a three-hour daily offensive cessation "gap" to allow the distribution of supplies (time well spent by Hamas and its cohorts to fire rockets at Israeli cities),
(d) dual nationals evacuation via Israel and particularly
(e) Hamas's selling the product and deciding when and if to distribute it, people still cling to this fallacy. Israel even opened a special Desk, but that, too, is to no avail.
Egypt all along has not allowed humanitarian aid to pass via its territory.
For the past two and a half weeks, we have tried to provide relevant, timely, factual information. It includes the dissemination of the IDF Spox (spokesperson) twice-a-day dispatches, the MFA's and Prime Minister's main communiqués, information from the Government Press Office, highlights of what is seen from Israel, etc.
The lies and untruths perpetrated against Israel and the Zionists are successful because of two unfortunate realities. They are told often, and of course secondly, the world seems all too eager to believe the worst about the Jewish people.
Until the media in its current zeal to cover up the murder and destruction by terrorists initiates a campaign to print and disseminate truth, lies will stand, truth will be mute and the sounds of evil will be heard throughout the world.
Today more than ever the words of Joseph Goebbels come to haunt us:
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
Norma Zager is an award-winning journalist whose work has been celebrated in the Wall Street Journal, Columbia Journalism Review and numerous periodicals. In 2003 she was awarded Los Angeles Journalist of the Year and the coveted Best Investigative Journalist by the Los Angeles Press Club. Zager is passionately dedicated to truth in Journalism and promoting positive work for peace among nations. As a part-time instructor at California State University, she has sought to instill traditional Journalistic values to a new generation of reporters. Zager's "Postcards from Home" are intertwined with Bussel's "Postcards from Israel."
