Jonathan Cook: Israel’s Deceptions a Way of Life
September 1st, 2006 by ktula
Israel’s Deceptions a Way of Life
by Jonathan Cook
August 31 2006
antiwar.com
In a state established on a founding myth – that the native Palestinian population left of their own accord rather than being ethnically cleansed – and one that seeks its legitimacy through a host of other lies, such as that the occupation of the West Bank is benign and that Gaza’s has ended, deception becomes a political way of life.
And so it is in the “relative calm” that has followed Israel’s month-long pounding of Lebanon, a calm in which Israelis may no longer be dying but the Lebanese most assuredly are as explosions of U.S.-made cluster bombs greet the South’s returning refugees. The anonymous residents of Gaza perish by the dozens each and every week under the relentless and indiscriminate strikes of the Israeli air force while the rest slowly starve in their open-air prison.
Israeli leaders deceive as much in “peace” as they do in war, which is why it is worth examining the slow trickle of disinformation coming from Tel Aviv and reflecting on where it is leading.
Many of Israel’s war lies have already been deeply implanted in Western consciousness by the media:
- that Hezbollah “started” the war by capturing two Israeli soldiers rather than that Israel maintained a hostile and provocative posture for the previous six years by daily sending its warplanes and spy drones into Lebanese airspace;
- that Hezbollah’s launching of rockets into Israel was an act of aggression, even though they were fired after, and in response to, Israel’s massive bombing of civilian areas in Lebanon;
- that Hezbollah, unlike Israel, used the local civilian population as human shields, even though Israel’s continual and comprehensive aerial spying on south Lebanon produced almost no evidence of this;
- that Hezbollah, not Israel, targeted civilians, despite a death toll that suggests the exact opposite;
- and that Hezbollah’s arming by Iran is entirely illegitimate, even though the weapons were used to defend Lebanon from a long-prepared Israeli attack, while Israel has an absolute and unchallengeable right to receive its arsenal from the U.S., even though those armaments have been used offensively, mostly against Lebanese and Palestinian civilian populations.
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