We expect politicians to lie—some more than others. We expect politicians to lie especially in wartime. That’s when lying becomes organized. It seems to me, however, that organized lying in Israel exists on a scale never before known.
I know of no Jewish member of the Knesset that does not lie habitually about peace or the possibility of peaceful coexistence between Jews and Muslims. Never mind the blatant fact that Muslims cannot even live in peace with each other. The “politics of peace,” which means lying about peace, is the alpha and omega of Israeli foreign policy.
The present writer knows from a meeting with Menachem Begin that he harbored no illusions about Anwar Sadat. I conclude that official statements about peace between Israel and Egypt are intended primarily for public consumption.
The day after Yitzhak Rabin shook hands with Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn, the godfather of internationalism terrorism spoke in Johannesburg and called for a jihad against Israel. But once politicians lie about the peace process, they must go on lying even while Israel soaks in Jewish blood. The lying is organized, relentless, and deadly.
Shimon Peres systematically lied about Arafat’s violations of the Oslo Agreement. Despite almost fourteen years of Oslo and 10,000 Jewish casualties, Benjamin Netanyahu continues to deceive the public when he calls for “reciprocity” in negotiations between Israel and the PLO-Palestinian Authority. He too speaks of peace with the “Palestinian people,” knowing that no such people exist.
Back in 1988 politicians and pundits began to describe Arafat as a “moderate.” How else could they justify negotiations with that arch-terrorist? Thereafter the lying became organized. The dead Arafat has been succeeded by his comrade in terrorism, Mahmoud Abbas, another “moderate”—or so we are given to believe by Israel’s current leader of mendacity Ehud Olmert.
Of course, Abbas’ reputation as a “moderate” is also bandied abroad, for example, by the Bush administration. Here, allow me to digress for a moment.
George Orwell once said that, as a general rule, governments move to the Right in moments of success and to the Left in moments of disaster. Notice that the Congress of the United States moved to the Left as American casualties in Iraq multiplied. Has this happened in Israel?
Israel has suffered one disaster after another since Oslo. Notice the consequence. Ariel Sharon, a right-winger, became the Left’s surrogate prime minister; and who has lied more brazenly than he about “unilateral disengagement”? But this is not all.
Organized lying is the modus operandi of Israeli politicians not only when they dither about “peace” but also when they intone the soporific of “Israeli democracy.” Here I will not burden readers with the abundance of evidence for this provocative assertion, which can be found in my website, foundation1.org. Instead, I ask: Is there a connection between the organized lying about peace and the organized lying about Israeli democracy? Indeed there is.
Lying about Israeli democracy as well as about peace endows Israel’s ruling elites with legitimacy and respectability. Consider what this means.
Democracy is based on the primacy of consent or persuasion as opposed to the primacy of force or coercion—which is why democracies incline to a foreign policy of peace. But given Israel’s reputation as a democracy, Israel’s ruling elites are expected to make concessions to Arab despots—which they do again, and again, and again at the cost of Jewish lives, Jewish land, and Jewish honor.
One example must suffice. Sharon adopted the Left’s policy of unilateral disengagement even though it was rejected by an overwhelming majority of voters in the January 2003 election, and even though he and 83 other members of the Knesset had campaigned against that policy (which had been rejected by Israel highest military and intelligence officials in testimony before the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee). Yet, when 67 members (of the same Knesset) enacted that policy into law, it was sanctified as a manifestation of Israeli “democracy.”
What did this mendacious display of Israeli democracy yield? In addition to the expulsion of 10,000 Jewish men, women, and children from their homes, Gaza was transformed into a Mecca of international terrorism, indeed, an advanced base for Israel’s most dangerous enemy, Iran. Weapons are now flowing from Gaza to Judea and Samaria and soon no city in Israel will be safe from missile attacks—the consequence of organized lying.
There you have it: Jerusalem, the venue of Israeli politicians, has lost its meaning. The City of Truth has become the City of Lies.
