The Art of Deception

by  Paul Balles

Quite often I start to write an article about the travesty of injustices heaped on the Palestinians by Israel. Almost as often, I stop at a point where I mumble to myself that I’ve said it all before, and others have said it better.

A number of years ago when I started to write about the injustices suffered by the Palestinians, I was reacting to events as they happened.

Every time a settlement thug destroyed Palestinian olive trees or an Israeli judge refused to grant restraining rights to Palestinians, my upset with another unpunished Israeli crime would seethe out.

Online websites would publish what a few of my friends and enemies labelled vitriolic. That didn’t upset me. On the contrary, I felt that my criticism of inexcusable Israeli behaviour might just wake a reader or two up.

I carried on reading and writing about the unjust treatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis.

What struck a deeper spot in this ongoing affair was the continued unabated support of Israel provided by America. According to the American government–the administration, the congress and the courts–Israel could do no wrong.

The same was true of corporate America. From the big banks, like Goldman-Sachs, to the military industrial complex supplying armaments to Israel, even when local firemen had their pay cut by 10% in order assure the billions of dollars going to support Israel’s misdeeds.

Every week, if not every day, news would come over the internet of another atrocity committed by Israel. Few of these misdeeds got reported in the Western media.

The world outside of the West–most of Europe, the United Kingdom and the US–got the news from local papers and TV stations. The Western media wouldn’t touch the real news.

That left the American public mostly unaware of what was going on in occupied Palestine. The few westerners, who dug for the news on the internet or in foreign local papers, discovered that trying to educate other Westerners with the truth had people in the West believing you were crazy.

After all, to report on events that had never seen the light of day on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC or ABC, never appeared in the print of the New York Times or The Washington Post would have even the educated shutting down their receptors. After awhile I got used to being considered a nut case by those who had been successfully propagandized by the Western media.

I reacted not only to the events but to the propaganda and lies about them. When Israel killed much of the crew of the Liberty, I thought surely the truth will come out one day. It still hasn’t managed to get far beyond the internet.

When Israel’s Mossad assured that US marines wouldn’t know they were about to be blown to bits, I thought that Victor Ostrovsky’s By Way of Deception would waken Americans. It didn’t.

The Turkish flotilla of 2010 would certainly arouse enough interest in and attention to the belief that no reasonable country would murder unarmed crew members trying to deliver needed aid to Gaza civilians. Israel satisfied its killing urges while the flotilla was still in international water.

When “terrorists” in Gaza decided to lob a few primitive missiles into land stolen from Palestinians in Southern Israel, the Israeli war mongers decided to throw everything they could, including white phosphorous bombs at everyone in Gaza–the aged, women and children.

Not only have they mastered the successful organized propaganda mill, Israel has mastered the stolen Arabic carpet under which they sweep all intimidating truths.