While wars are still fought with conventional armament, these days they can be sidelined, shortened, or even halted with a new type of weapon that is no less effective in winning the battle of public opinion.
The vicious lies and accusations, all meant to influence and appeal to society’s heightened sense of injustice and grievance, are the new and improved emotional and psychological weaponization that is changing hearts and minds, even without the need for substantiation or context.
Here’s just one example of how it works. A senior official in the Biden administration has left his position “citing the president’s handling of the conflict in Gaza.” In a letter sent to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, Tariq Habash, special assistant in the Education Department Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, stated that he “cannot stay silent as this administration turns a blind eye to the atrocities committed against innocent Palestinian lives, in what leading human rights experts have called a genocidal campaign by the Israeli government” (“US education official resigns over Biden’s Israel-Gaza policy,” The Jerusalem Post, January 4).
He never names the human rights experts who purport that Israel is committing genocide, nor does he refer to the initial heinous atrocities that took place in Israel on October 7 by the terrorist government of Gazans, which led to the present war that he apparently thinks should not be fought.
Habash, a Palestinian-American, must believe that a government whose people were brutally and savagely murdered should not respond in any way, because to do so constitutes genocide.
But there’s a good reason Habash doesn’t reveal the identities of these leading human rights experts, whose word he’s taking for the vicious lies and accusations that are being hurled at Israel. If he would, we might discover that they are the same “experts” who have accused Israel of being guilty of genocide even before October 7 – a patently absurd claim, given the exponential growth of Palestinians throughout the years – a number that is said to have “doubled about 10 times since 1948” (“WAFA Agency: Number of Palestinians worldwide doubled 10 times since Nakba, official figures show,” The International Middle East Media Center News, May 15, 2022).
A history of excoriating Israel
Human Rights Watch (HRW), for example, has a history of excoriating Israel. “HRW frequently levels baseless accusations against Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, while victims of authoritarian regimes in Iran, Syria, and Yemen consistently get a pass. Their arguments sometimes border on antisemitism” (“Five things you should know about Human Rights Watch’s Report on Israel,” AJC Global Voice, April 28, 2021).
They are not the only ones. In 2022, Amnesty International joined other human rights groups in their accusations of Israel committing apartheid. They claimed that “Israel maintained ‘a system of oppression and domination’ over the Palestinians going all the way back to its establishment in 1948,” (www.amnesty.org, February 1, 2022).
Similarly, B’Tselem, another renowned human rights group, has accused Israel of having a “regime of apartheid and occupation, inextricably bound up in human rights violations.” Their website brazenly states that they “strive to end this regime as the only way forward to a future in which human rights, democracy, liberty, and equality are ensured to all people, both Palestinian and Israeli, living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea” (www.btselem.org, January 12, 2021).
Funny how they use the same term – “the river to the sea” – which has traditionally been the battle cry for ridding Israel of all of its Jewish presence. They never say who the Israelis are, and don’t describe them as Jews. Of course, Arab Israelis are also part of the Israeli people, so, perhaps, a Jew-free presence is the goal of B’Tselem.
These are likely the “experts” to whom Habash refers, taking their word for the accusation of genocide and atrocities. And how much did Habash influence other staffers in the Biden administration – 17 of whom sent an anonymous letter, warning that Biden could lose voters over how he’s handling the Israel-Hamas war.
How many of those 17 did their own research on how Israel is conducting a surgical, methodical, and deliberate incursion, designed to minimize collateral deaths of Gazan civilians – the same people whom Hamas uses as human shields? My guess is none of them.
Why should these staffers make any effort to make up their own minds by making careful inquiry into what precipitated this war in the first place? Running with the unfounded claims of a fellow worker is so much easier, and since he is “supposedly informed” by “reliable sources,” why even bother to question?
THE WEAPONIZATION of these lies extends to South Africa, which has made its own assertion of genocide by filing a complaint in the International Court of Justice in the Hague against Israel. It claims that Israel “violated its obligations under the Genocide Convention,” stating that “acts and omissions by Israel… are genocidal in character” as they are committed with the intent to “destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial, and ethnic group” (“Countering the South African claims of genocide,” The Jerusalem Post, January 5).
When you think about it, who needs rockets, drones, and suicide bombers? These incendiary accusations are enough to win the war by portraying Israel as the perpetrator of evil, only rivaled by the Nazis. Such hate-filled allegations are enough to jeopardize Jews worldwide, because they, too, by extension, are guilty of these same propensities, especially if they identify in any way with the Jewish nation – even if it’s only by having a Jewish last name.
It is the reason Jewish students are frightened on their own campuses. It is the reason that outward identification, either through dress, jewelry, or door-post hangings, is being modified – for fear of being targeted as “the enemy.”
And finally, it is the reason that more applications for immigration to Israel have been received than at any other period since the establishment of the Jewish homeland.
Someone figured out that world opinion can be swayed very easily. It only requires the dissemination of bad information, made to sound reliable by tacking on the word, “expert,” and suddenly everyone listens.
When enough people are willing to forego personal investigation, in favor of joining forces with a trendy mob, the results are the demonization of a country whose people have no right to fight back when attacked by terrorists who have made no secret of the fact that total annihilation of the Jewish people is their end game.
The weaponization of lies and accusations not only slanders the nation and the people, but it cleverly seeks to punish them through international courts for defending themselves and doing what any morally sane government would be expected to do – protect their population from danger and the threat of extinction.
Israelis are apparently the only people on earth who have lost that right, because any military action, on their part, has been deemed to be genocide. It’s a shrewd tactic that has worked, but one that will, at some point, backfire, because when the first major terror attack is perpetrated outside of Israel, upon some group of hated Westerners, they will be the first to recognize that self-defense is not at all equal to genocide.
The writer is a former Jerusalem elementary and middle school principal. She is the author of Mistake-Proof Parenting, available on Amazon, based on the time-tested wisdom found in the Book of Proverbs.