“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Joseph Goebbels

I remember learning about the Nazi propaganda as I grew up.  What a masterful job they did spreading lies and breeding hatred.  Cartoons.  Videos.  Posters.  Slogans.  They kept at it, repeating the hate towards Jews until people believed it was true.  When I walk through Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum, they do an incredible job highlighting just how the Nazi’s did it.  With all the documentation available to us, I was sure the world wouldn’t fall for the same trick twice.  As the old saying goes, fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.

I was wrong.  Very wrong.  So wrong that it scares me.  I watched what happened on the campus of Columbia University and also at Harvard, Yale, UCLA, Michigan, and many others.  These ‘students’ who are supposed to be learning and challenging themselves were instead lemmings.  They were so strong in their chants yet so empty in their knowledge.  Most didn’t know what river or what sea.  Most didn’t even know what protesting was like or was about.  They expected catered meals.  Finals cancelled with everybody getting an A.  No consequences for their actions.  They weren’t protesting for things they believed in but rather for things they were told that aren’t true.  It was horrifying.  It was embarrassing. 

It escalated to potential violence many times until eventually there was violence.  The violence against Jewish students got minimal attention.  A woman stabbed in the eye at Yale.  Physically assaulted at Columbia.  Beaten unconscious at UCLA.  When it became clear that the University and the police were going to do nothing to protect them, the Jewish students and community tried to dismantle the tents themselves which resulted in more violence.  That violence did get media attention because it could be blamed on the Jews. 

I watch as ‘celebrities’ like Susan Sarandon, Mark Ruffalo, John Oliver, and John Cusack spew hate and lies.  Because of their celebrity status, they have a platform to spread their antisemitism and misinformation.  Key words like genocide, apartheid, famine, ceasefire are used to demonize Israel, regardless of any facts to back them up.  People believe what they hear, especially when it’s in bite size pieces and as Goebbels said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Chants are common now to ‘Globalize the intifada’ while most of those chanting it have no idea what the intifada was or what an intifada is.  Violent uprising.  Suicide bombers.  Innocent civilians murdered.  So, to stop innocent civilians from being killed during a war, we are going to murder innocent civilians.  Civilians killed in war at a ratio 9 times less than the UN and Red Cross accepted numbers is a genocide but calling for the murder of civilians because they are Jewish is acceptable?  This is the world we live in where Jew hatred is so strong that the obvious hypocrisy is allowed.

The use of the world genocide is right out of Goebbels playbook.  Genocide is a hot button word and is a horrific thing.  In Syria over 300,000 civilians were murdered by Assad.  Close to 200,000 people were killed in the Iraq war.  In 2022 more than 100,000 people were killed in the Ethiopian civil war.  Since 1996, more than 6 million people have been killed in the Congo war.  These are not called genocides despite the numbers being far more than the people killed in Gaza.  Yet despite not meeting the definition of genocide and the facts showing this war is anything but genocidal, the word keeps getting used over and over and over again.  There are people who now believe it because they have heard it so often.  What Hamas did on October 7^th was genocidal.  They wanted to eliminate every Jew and Israeli just because they were Jewish or Israeli.  They publicly admit to genocidal wishes and yet people excuse it.  This is the power of constant repetition until people believe it’s true even when it is not.

Apartheid is another word inappropriately used to delegitimize the State of Israel and Jews in general.  Israel is not an apartheid state.  Citizens have equal rights regardless of their status as Arab, Christian, Druze, Baha’i, Bedouin, or Jew.  Those who are not citizens, like in any country, don’t have the same benefits as those who are citizens. That isn’t apartheid.  There are Arab members of the Supreme Court, the Knesset, in universities, serving in the military, and in every part of Israeli society.  There is apartheid happening in the middle east – in the Arab countries that won’t allow Jews.  Gaza was an apartheid state where Jews were not allowed.  I remember going through the Rafah crossing in 1989 as I took the bus from Jerusalem to Cairo.  That wouldn’t have been possible in 2023. 

The other word that gets used improperly and often is genocide.  Genocide is defined as, “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.”  So, if you want to say Israel is committing genocide against Hamas, you might be correct.  They are a terrorist organization who had their own genocidal intentions on October 7^th and continues to say they will do what they did on October 7^th over and over and over again.  To say that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is simply false.  If they wanted to commit genocide, then on October 8^th they would have carpet bombed Gaza and nobody would be left alive.  Instead, Israel has been tactical.  They have done all they can to avoid civilian deaths.  This is shown in the ratio of combatants to civilians killed in this war.  According to the UN and Red Cross, the normal ratio is 9 civilians for every 1 combatant.  Depending on what Hamas numbers you believe, Israel is somewhere between 0.6 civilians to 1 combatant to 1.2 civilians to 1 combatant.  Well below the normally accepted ratio for every other country and every other war in the world.  Genocide is used to inflame people.  It’s used to inspire hate and physical attacks on Jews.  It is a bold-faced lie that gets repeated, especially by those celebrities, over and over and over again.

Occupation is the fourth word that gets used regularly.   Israel withdrew from Gaza and removed its citizens by force in 2005.  That’s the fact.  Since 2005, there has been no occupation of Gaza.  So, saying it is because of the occupation is simple another lie.  People may then talk about the blockade.  The blockade was put in place when Hamas took over and started firing rockets at Israel and building tunnels to kidnap Israelis.  It exists by both Egypt and Israel to do their best to limit rockets and missiles and guns from getting into Gaza.  It doesn’t limit food or medicine.  Saying occupation or blockade is merely a way for uneducated people to attempt to place the blame on Israel and the Jews.

The newest lie, which occurred tonight, is that Hamas accepted the ceasefire offered by Israel and Israel still attacked Rafah.  The reality is more like this:

Israel: Here is our ceasefire offer.

Hamas: No

Israel: Here is option 2 for a ceasefire.

Hamas: No

Hamas then bombs the reopened humanitarian corridor.

Israel: Fine, we will attack Rafah.

Israel begins to attack Rafah.

Hamas: We will take option 3 which you didn’t offer.  We accept the ceasefire that we negotiated with ourselves. 

The World:  Israel rejected the ceasefire offer that they offered, and Hamas accepted.

Once again, the truth doesn’t matter, and the lie gets repeated over and over and over again.  The media covers the lie.  The New York Times covers the lie.  Papers in Europe cover the lie. 

As we move into the next phase of the war, not just between Hamas and Israel but between those who hate Jews and Jewish people, we need to be vigilant with these lies.  We need to be loud and repetitive in combatting them and telling the truth.  We need to keep it simple and not give a lecture.  I recommend something like this:

Response to lie:  You are lying.

Response to lie:  That’s not true.

Response to lie:  False!!!

Response to lie:  You don’t know what’s true.

Response to lie:  Learn something before you lie about it.

Keep it brief.  Keep it simple.  If they want to know the truth, and most don’t, then they will ask, and you can tell them. 

This next phase will be the most challenging.  We see the violence occurring at UCLA and around the country.  We see it happening in Europe.  I’m afraid that the next phase will involve larger scale attacks against Jewish people, homes, and businesses.  Protect yourself.  Learn the law.  Take self-defense classes.  If you feel the need to be armed, make sure you both follow the laws of your state/country and get trained on how to use it.  The decision to be armed is not one to take lightly and it’s not a joke and guns are not toys. 

If Israel goes into Rafah and ends the war between Hamas and Israel, it will not end the war against the Jewish people.  It will not mean that we are safe in our countries.  It will not mean Israel is safe with Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran still attacking.  We are preparing to move into a new stage that we only saw a glimpse of with the protests on campuses.  Be prepared.  Never again isn’t just a slogan, it means we are going to take action and do what we have to ensure that it never happens again.