In my last column, I discussed Benjamin Netanyahu’s proclivity to deceive, cheat and lie. During my research, however, I came across an article by Israeli journalist Amira Hass, who had a different take on the issue.
In her 2011 article in the Israeli daily Haartz, Hass argued that ‘Netanyahu is less of a liar than past Israeli PMs.’ She explained that unlike other Israeli prime ministers, Netanyahu ‘doesn’t bother to cover the gap between words and bulldozers.’
Political Zionism must have envisioned their apparent nemesis, Adolf Hitler’s quote ‘If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.’
It all started with their slogan: ‘A land without people, for a people without land.’
The unscrupulous Zionist media inculcated the myth until it became a reality. To quote another Zionist Henry Kissinger, ‘It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true.’
Creating a new perception, The New Testament ‘“ regarded as false by Zionists ‘“ for once became Zionism’s temporal document to ‘fool’ Christians. God turned into a real estate agent and the Old Testament a property deed to sanctify the appropriation of land and murder of people.
Former Israeli president Shimon Peres whom I described before as the ‘king of deception’, once told president John F Kennedy, ‘I can tell you most clearly that we will not introduce nuclear weapons to the region, and certainly we will not be the first.’
Decades later, Peres clarified that he did not mean to lie to Kennedy, but he couldn’t ‘deviate from what (Israeli PM) Ben Gurion had told Kennedy earlier.’ Peres had to lie in order to cover a master lie.
On another ‘perceived’ truth, it is incontrovertible that Israel started the 1967 war. However, in any public polling the perception of most Westerners is that ‘Arab Armies’ attacked Israel in 1967.
In 1969, Golda Meir told the Sunday Times that Palestinians ‘did not exist.’ The Ukrainian born and Milwaukee-reared Israeli premier couldn’t notice the millions of Palestinians who were either refugees or subjugated under her occupation.
Meir must have seriously internalised the big lie that Palestine was “without people.”
In 1989 Israeli premier Yitzhak Shamir lied to president George H W Bush on the illegal ‘Jewish only’ colonies, leading the president to oppose the $10 billion loan guarantee to Israel.
Israeli prime minister Aerial Sharon, once described by his minister ‘he sometimes tells the truth by mistake’, deceived the younger gullible Bush by presenting the evacuation of ‘Jewish only’ colonies from Gaza as ‘painful’ sacrifice for peace.
According to his senior adviser Dov Weissglass, Sharon’s action was intended to freeze the peace process and prevent ‘the establishment of a Palestinian state, discussion on the refugees, the borders, and Jerusalem.’
Weissglass described the disengagement as enough formaldehyde to the international community ‘so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.’
Ezer Weizmann, a former Israeli president and one of the so-called doves, once explained that security was not an issue if Israel withdrew from the West Bank, but Israel wouldn’t ‘exist according to the scale, spirit, and quality she now embodies.’
In 1972, another Israeli president Haim Herzog said, ‘I am not prepared to consider them as partners in any respect in a land that has been consecrated in the hands of our nation for thousands of years. For the Jews of this land there cannot be any partner.’
Yet, there is a Western ‘perceived’ belief that Israeli leaders do not oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state. Even though, no Israeli government has ever identified the exact location or geographic boundaries of the state they profess to accept.
If Pinocchio was a real character, he would have been more likely a Zionist card holding member and an expert in the Israeli art of confusing perception with reality.
Mr Jamal Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) who is one of the frequent contributors for The 4th Media writes regular newspaper column and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of “Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America. A version of this article was first published by the Gulf Daily News newspaper.