|
|
Click lash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
|
 |
BIG LIES THAT HAVE CAUSED UNTOLD MISERY
By Maurice Ostroff
“If you tell a lie big enough and
keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it".
Tragically, the well-known quotation by Hitler's chief propagandist, Joseph
Goebbels has proven to be valid time and again. Goebbels was probably the most influential expert in using lies and deceit
to motivate an entire nation initially towards hubris, and eventually to abject destruction
His advice on effective propaganda techniques has also been successfully
adopted. He wrote “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle
is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over." Anyone familiar with
the Arab-Israel conflict will recognize how this lesson has been successfully applied. Raise any problem and the answer is
"the occupation". Mention terror and the immediate solution offered is "end
the occupation", ignoring the indisputable fact that terror against Jews was commonplace long before the occupation.
The universality of Goebbels' BIG LIE rule is evident from the straight line
that can be drawn from the Protocols of Zion to Dreyfus, Mein Kampf, Deir Yassin, Jenin and Al Dura. Let's take a closer look
at Deir Yassin and Al Dura.
Deir Yassin
The false story of atrocities in the battle for Deir Yassin
in1948 is a typical example of a BIG LIE demonizing Israel, based on fabricated evidence.
On April 12, 1948 Dana Schmidt wrote a "special to the New York Times" story about a massacre and rapes committed by Jews
at Deir Yassin. The story, attributed to Dr. Hussein Khalidi, secretary of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee at the time,
was taken at face value and spread like wildfire around the world. Even the Jewish Agency believed it and expressed horror
and disgust.
But, and this is a big BUT, startling indisputable evidence
came to light in 1998 revealing that the story of a massacre and rapes was a complete fabrication.
Unlike the immediate spread of the accusation, this refutation was and remains completely ignored, pointing to the dangerous
penchant, even among some respectable mainstream media, academics and influential politicians, to ignore readily available,
credible evidence that conflicts with their biased preconceived opinions.
The evidence of fabrication is indisputable because it originates from none
other than the person who prepared the original story, Hazem Nusseibeh, who was an editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service
in 1948.
The video clip that can be viewed by clicking on the link at the top of this page
is an extract from a a 1998 interview with Nusseibeh in a BBC series “Israel
and the Arabs: the 50 year Conflict”.
While explaining the flight of Arabs and their failure in the 1948 war to the BBC,
Nusseibeh indiscreetly admitted that on the direct instructions of Hussein Khalidi, he had fabricated the allegations of a
massacre and rapes. He told that Khalidi said to him: "We must make the most of this" and that they therefore embroidered
the press release with fictional allegations that the children of Deir Yassin were murdered and pregnant women were raped,
though neither ever happened. Their intention was to encourage the Arab countries to join in the battles soon to begin. He
added that these atrocity stories were "our biggest mistake," because Palestinians fled in terror and left
the country in huge numbers after hearing them. This statement adds a
new facet to research about the reasons so many Arabs fled in 1948. See also http://www.2nd-thoughts.org/id38.html
According to Nusseibeh, Khalidi said to him: "We must
make the most of this" and the story was created in collusion with survivors of Deir Yassin and Khalidi. The press release
stated that the children of Deir Yassin were murdered and pregnant women were raped, though neither ever happened.
In the same TV program, a former resident of Deir Yassin
confirmed there were no rapes but that Khalidi convinced them they had to say there were. "We said, there was no rape."
But Khalidi said, "We have to say this, so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine
from the Jews".
Although this evidence has been available in publicly
available archives since 1998, it has been almost universally ignored. For example On November 28, 2001 in an article “The Sharon files” The Guardian, repeated the fabrication
in referring to “the Palestinian village where 254 villagers were massacred in April 1948, in the most spectacular single attack in the conquest of Palestine”.
Ignoring the readily available contrary evidence, Deir Yassin continues to
be a symbol of Jewish barbarity and it is regularly quoted by anti-Israel boycott activists. The myth is kept alive by an
organization called “Deir Yassin Remembered", dedicated to perpetuating the fiction of a massacre
It is relevant to recall that this occurred in April 1948,
before the state of Israel was declared. Many have been led to believe that Deir Yassin was a quiet village just outside Jerusalem, whereas in fact it was a heavily armed Arab village harboring
some foreign militants who together with the villagers were attacking nearby Jewish neighborhoods and traffic on the Jerusalem-Tel
Aviv highway.
If Deir Yassin was in fact a quiet village, it would have
enjoyed the same fortune as other quiet villages such as the nearby village
of Abu Ghosh, which remained neutral in 1948. In an article in the Jerusalem Post in 1997, Sam Orbaum quoted Mohammed Abu
Ghosh as saying, "What we did, we did for Abu Ghosh, for nobody else. Others who lost their land, hated us then, but now
all over the Arab world, many people see we were right. If everyone did what we did, there'd be no refugee problem . . . And
if we were traitors? Look where we are, look where they are."
Deir Yassin was probably one of the earliest examples
of the effectiveness of the well- funded Arab propaganda machine and the ineptness of Israel's PR response. It was certainly an example of Israel's mea culpa syndrome, admitting guilt where none exists, that continues to this day. The fabricated story was so convincing that even the Zionist Leaders accepted
it.
Frequent reference is made in to a statement by then agriculture,
minister Aharon Cizling, in support of the claim that atrocities did take place. In a cabinet meeting, Cizling said, "Jews
too have behaved like Nazis and my entire being is shaken". His outburst
should be seen, not as an admission of guilt, but as a manifestation of Israeli sensitivity to allegations, albeit false,
of Jewish atrocities. He was so deeply moved by the fabricated reports of the kind of behavior that is not tolerated in the
IDF doctrine, that he used the exaggerated and offensive Nazi comparison.
Al Dura
There have been several successful emulations of the Deir Yassin BIG LIE over the years. Notable among these was the Muhammed al Durah affair in which the
12 year old boy became the symbol of the intifada when he was caught with his father in the crossfire between IDF soldiers
and Palestinians at Netzarim Junction. In pictures filmed by a Palestinian cameraman and broadcast by French television, he
is allegedly seen shot and killed.
Israeli physicist, Nahum Shahaf, examined the evidence and claimed it was a hoax.
Among those whom Shahaf convinced, was Professor Richard Landes
of Boston University who saw the original unedited footage of the scene and produced a three-part documentary about the event,
first Pallywood, a study of systemic staging of “news” by “the
street” acting for Palestinian cameramen, (see: http://tinyurl.com/ydleswh), then a detailed analysis of the evidence
in Al Durah, Birth of an Icon (http://tinyurl.com/yaf4xvy ), and finally a study of the hoax’s
disastrous impact on global culture, Icon of Hatred (http://tinyurl.com/yajvjmo )
Meanwhile, Philippe Karsenty, head of a French media watchdog
group, accused France2 and their Middle East correspondent, Charles Enderlin, of broadcasting
staged footage. France2 sued Karsenty for defamation, and won the initial round. Professor Landes' thorough work played a
significant role in the eventual reversal of the judgment on appeal in French court, ruling that Karsenty was not guilty of
defaming Enderlin and France2. Al Dura nevertheless remains an international icon of Israel's supposed cruelty confirming
Goebbels contention that If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it,
people will eventually come to believe it
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
What Hazem Nusseibeh told the BBC
about Deir Yassin
The video focuses on an interview with Hazem Nusseibeh, a member
of one of Jerusalem's most prominent Arab families. In 1948 he was an editor of the Palestine
Broadcasting Service's Arabic news.
In this interview with the BBC he admits that in 1948 he was instructed
by Hussein Khalidi, a prominent Palestinian Arab leader, to fabricate claims of atrocities at Deir Yassin in order to encourage
Arab regimes to invade the expected Jewish state. He made this damming admission
in explaining why the Arabs failed in the 1948 war. He said "this was our
biggest mistake", because Palestinians fled in terror and left the country in huge numbers after hearing the atrocity
claims.
Nusseibeh describes an encounter at the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem's
Old City
with Deir Yassin survivors and Palestinian leaders, including Hussein Khalidi... 'I asked Dr. Khalidi how we should cover
the story,'. He said, "We must make the most of this. So we wrote a press release stating that at Deir Yassin
children were murdered, pregnant women were raped, all sorts of atrocities"
In the video clip Abu Mahmud, who was a Dir Yassin resident in 1948,
told the BBC that the villagers protested against the atrocity claims: We said, "There was no rape. But Khalidi said,
We have to say this, so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine
from the Jews."
This false press statement was released to New York Times correspondent,
Dana Schmidt leading to an article in the New York Times on April 12, 1948, claiming that a massacre took place at Deir Yassin
that was reprinted worldwide and cited even in Israel
as proof of Israeli atrocities
Dr. Hazem Nusseibeh was a representative of Jordan at
the Mixed Armistice Commission and he was Minister of Foreign Affairs.He was also the Permanent Ambassador of Jordan to the
UN and has authored several books, including The Ideas of Arab Nationalism, Palestine and the United Nations and A History
of Modern Jordan.
________________________________________________________________
Reproduced with permission from Jock Falkson's blog "Israel Defender" http://breasy.com/israeldefender/?p=976
One would have thought, rightly, that an episode such as the 1948 battle for Deir Yassin would have been forgotten by now.
You’d be wrong. It is still being used to besmirch Israel in the world’s media and especially on the internet.
Sixty two years after this so called atrocity Google offers 44,200 Deir Yassin references the year 2,009 – to be
compared with 42,400 for 2009 for the Hiroshima atom bomb. Isn’t it a disgrace on the part of Israel’s enemies
who apparently think it not unreasonable to compare these two events as if they were in any way similar?
Here in Mr. Begin’s own words is what actually happened – excerpted from his book The Revolt published in 1951.
“Apart from the military aspect, there is a moral aspect to the story of Dir Yassin. At that village, whose name
was publicized throughout the world, both sides suffered heavy casualties. We had four killed and nearly forty wounded.
The number of casualties was nearly forty per cent of the total number of attackers. The Arab troops suffered casualties three
time as heavy. The fighting was thus very severe. (Emphasis added.) Yet the hostile propaganda, disseminated throughout
the world, deliberately ignored the fact that the civilian population was actually given warning before the battle began.
One of our tenders carrying a loud speaker was stationed at the entrance to the village and it exhorted in Arabic all women,
children and aged to leave their houses to take shelter on the slope of the hill. By giving this humane warning our fighters
threw away the element of complete surprise, and thus increased their own risk in the ensuing battle. A substantial number
of the inhabitants obeyed the warning and they were unhurt. A few did not leave their stone houses – perhaps because
of the confusion. The fire of the enemy was murderous – to which the number of our casualties bears eloquent testimony.
Our men were compelled to fight every house; to overcome the enemy they used large numbers of hand-grenades. And the civilians
who had disregarded our warnings suffered inevitable casualties.
“The education which we gave to our soldiers throughout the years of revolt was based on the traditional laws of
war. We never broke them unless the enemy first did so and thus forced us, in the accepted custom of war to apply reprisals.
I am convinced, too, that our officers and men wished to avoid a single unnecessary casualty in the Dir Yassin battle. But
those who throw stones of denunciation at the conquerors of Dir Yassin would do well not to don the cloak of hypocrisy.
“In connection with the capture of Dir Yassin the Jewish Agency found it necessary to send a letter of apology to
Abdullah, who Mr. Ben Gurion, at a moment of great political emotion called ‘the wise ruler who seeks the good of his
people and his country.’ The ‘wise ruler’ whose mercenary forces demolished Gush Etzion and flung the bodies
of its heroic defenders to the birds of prey replied with feudal superciliousness. He rejected the apology and replied that
the Jews were all to blame and that he did no believe in the existence of ‘dissidents’. Throughout the Arab world
and the world at large a wave of lying propaganda was let loose about ‘Jewish atrocities’.
“The enemy propaganda was designed to besmirch our name. In the result it helped us. Panic overwhelmed the Arabs
of Eretz Israel. Kolonia village, which had previously repulsed every attack of the Haganah, was evacuated overnight and fell
without further fighting. Beit-Iksa was also evacuated. These two places overlooked the main road; and their fall, together
with the capture of Kastel by the Haganah, made it possible to keep the road open to Jerusalem. In the rest of the country
too, the Arabs began to flee in terror, even before they clashed with Jewish forces.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
