The Lies We Choose to Believe

Torah was given as the LORD’s instruction to His people, through Moses, regarding Life; how to live so that His Presence would provide protection and blessing for them. After the construction of the Tabernacle was completed, precisely according to the instructions Moses received directly from God Almighty, we are told, “Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because the cloud had settled upon it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle”. This Presence became their TRUTH, their WAY and their LIFE. Whenever the Presence lifted and moved, they packed up and moved till the Presence came to rest. At that place, they settled till they were again prompted to move. Although there were many instances of “disobedience”, and consequent punishment in which, sometimes, thousands died, this was to be the pattern for their lives.

With Joshua, 400 years after it was promised to them, they entered and conquered the Promised Land. Here, as in the Wilderness, whenever they veered from the TRUTH, from obedience to the LORD’s instruction, they suffered defeat. Jericho’s fall, after their obedient circling of the fortified city caused the walls to collapse, is the first occasion in the land for disobedience to surface. Achan coveted a few beautiful things, and acting on that impulse, took and hid them under the floor of his family tent. Nobody knew. However, when they moved to take the next town, Ai, they suffered defeat in a situation that, in the natural, should have been an easy battle. Turns out that Achan’s disobedience removed Israel as a whole from under the protection and blessing of the Presence. According to the story, Achan, the stolen treasure, his entire family and all his property had to be totally destroyed to cleanse the Nation and bring them back to the TRUTH of the Presence. Immediately following this cleansing, Ai is taken with ease as Israel moves forward, again in obedience, following the Presence.

Whatever has happened to this necessity to be true, or obedient to the TRUTH in which we are directed to live?

It seems that someone like Saeb Erekat, mentioned last week, can glibly claim heritage that no historian will corroborate, and expect to be believed.

Thank God, people like Nadav Shragai, Eric Rozenman, Dr. Daniel Pipes and others are there to address such claims and set the records straight.

As Rozenman says, “Erekat was not exaggerating. He was inventing. The ‘Palestinian narrative’ of millennia-deep roots in eretz Yisrael/Palestine is neither solid, liquid nor gas; it’s a vacuum.” In other words, the claim is an outright lie.

If that was the end of the matter, that a man has lied about his ancestry, one might just let him live with his delusion and forget about it. But, he is the official PA negotiator, speaking to world leaders about the relationship between Israel and the PA; negotiating a way for Jews and Arabs to live in peace with each other. How can we trust he will negotiate with integrity? For that matter, what is the truth from which the PA itself negotiates?

According to Itamar Markus, of Palestinian Media Watch, the PA media is continuously broadcasting support of terrorists and holding them up as models for their children to follow. Thankfully, his information does makes a difference. Although I could give multiple examples of his information causing world leaders to take a second look at the information to which they have been giving credence, I am including only this one. In the Wednesday, February 26 PMW Bulletin, he says, “This week, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a press release criticizing Palestinian Authority incitement. The government's release included a section entitled "Examples of Incitement" with examples taken from Palestinian Media Watch reports. PMW welcomes the Israeli government's utilization of our findings.” (You can find PMW online and read the Government Ministry report there).

Finally the Israeli Government is going public with the misinformation they know is being used against them. But, they have been very slow to clearly defend themselves. And, one might add, once these fabrications have been broadcast by media who have not bothered to dig for truth, a great deal of damage has already been done, even if the truth does finally come out.

 Take the “water issue” as another instance. On Wednesday, February 12^th, European Parliament President Martin Schultz, in a speech before the Israeli Knesset, made a comment about the plight of the Palestinians regarding unfair water distribution. He obviously had not done his research, because the remark was quite in error. His defense was that he was just repeating what a Palestinian youth had told him. Needless to say, he was rather harshly criticised by many Israelis. Hopefully, he felt embarrassed at least, but more so regret for sloppy preparation; and perhaps determined not to make unverified statements again.

He is certainly not the only one misinformed about this issue. The truth is very far from the generally accepted narrative of the unfair distribution of water which is causing hardship for the Palestinian people. This is not to say that there is no hardship; but for an extended explanation of the situation, please Google Professor Haim Gvirtzman, professor of hydrology, for his article “The Truth Behind the Palestinian Water Libels”.  Among other information, this study clearly indicates that the suffering endured by some ordinary Palestinians is actually inflicted on them by the deliberate actions of the PA. The PA knows that this “suffering” they have created for their own people will be picked-up by world media and broadcast as though it was inflicted by the “oppressor”, Israel; and that, of course, serves their purpose very well. Nations will take the bait and designate more money as aid for “the poor Palestinians deprived of water by the bully Israel”, send it to the PA, who will, as the saying goes, “laugh all the way to the bank”.

If that was the worst example, we could rest at ease; but Hamas and PA fighters as well, routinely work within civilian areas so that if Israel does take action, the likelihood of civilian casualties is high. And, of course, civilian casualties, made to appear as though they were perpetrated by Israelis, are great publicity for the PA cause.

I must make this very clear, I sympathize with genuine suffering, and there is suffering among Palestinians. We personally witnessed some of it in Bethlehem last year; but I also believe that the truth regarding suffering that is deliberately created by the PA must be broadcast.

Finally, although I am pleased with Canada’s position of support for Israel, as expressed by Prime Minister Harper, I am embarrassed to be a citizen of the country in which the University of Toronto flourishes in freedom, but is the originator, in 2005, of the heinously anti-Semitic “Israel Apartheid Week”. Not only did this occasion for false propaganda originate in our Toronto University, but this year, on the Israel Apartheid Week-Toronto Facebook page, they are advertising a talk by Tha’er al-Ahali, a Palestinian-Syrian filmmaker who “will talk about the experience of Palestinian-Syrians and the experience of the Yarmouk camp”. What link can there possibly be between the atrocities of Syria and Israel? But the intended implication is obvious.

The truth regarding Israel and Syria is that the IDF, in which Christian Arabs proudly serve their country, Israel, together with their Jewish fellow-soldiers, last year set up a new field hospital in the Golan Heights designed especially to treat wounded Syrian soldiers and civilians caught in the crossfire. Please, organizers of “Israel Apartheid Week” everywhere, make sure that you give this information to those who attend your University events. They deserve to know!

Why is there no international outcry? Why, instead of outcry, does the UN take a consistently Israel-demonizing stance in their many critical resolutions (21 in 2013) against Israel and deliberately speak nothing (well, 4 times) of human rights abuses in North Korea, China, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Egypt and the rest of the world?

Why is the world not hearing that today there are 170,000 rockets aimed at Israel? Why do we not know that since 2001, more than 12,800 rockets and mortars have been fired into civilian territory in Israel from Gaza? This is in addition to fatal terrorist attacks, 7 in 2013 alone, and many more in previous years. (Since Oslo, 1,535 Israelis have been killed by Arab terrorist attacks). You can easily Google this information, and it really does not take that long to do.

Until recently, like some of you, I claimed ignorance; but when truth comes to light, what then?  Shall we simply, like Pilate, ask “What is Truth?”, wash our hands and then stand by to let Evil and Violence unfold as they please? I suggest that Pilate’s way moves us out from under the Protection and Blessing of the Presence. Where would I/you rather be?