A War of Words

Black and Blue
And who knows which is which and who is who
Up and Down
And in the end it's only round and round and round
Haven't you heard it's a battle of words...
And most of them are lies.
-Pink Floyd, "Us and Them" The Dark Side of the Moon (1973)

My travels through the twitterverse have lead me, inevitably, into contact with many "activists" seeking to promote the Palestinian cause. I am being דן לכף זכות in saying this is their intention - strictly judging by their comments and pictures, they seek to demonize Israel, to paint it as a ragtag group of monsters, hellbent on genocide and destruction. They create arbitrary distinctions between "Jews" and "Zionists", rewrite genetic science and world history, deny basic accepted (biblical) archeology, and above all, present "facts" that are absolutely false, twisted, and misleading.
These people pretend to be engaged in conversation, while trumpeting their prior "knowledge of the facts". They refuse to entertain any notion, and suggestion, any intimation that there is another side to the story.
I have been lectured that women carrying fake pregnant bellies packed with explosives attempting to blow up hospitals is no excuse to deny "poor Palestinians" health care, since Israeli hospitals are better than Palestinian ones. When asked why they are entitled to this health care, especially when doing so leaves our citizens in danger, they respond with attacks on Israeli soldiers manning checkpoints being apartheid. When presented with the facts that those checkpoints have decreased terror attacks by a ludicrous number, they respond with Israeli "attacks" on Gaza infants. When asked what they would do if 14,000 rockets were fired into their cities, they say its about checkpoints and healthcare again. Circular logic, around and around and around we go...There is no logic, no reason, no give and take. Just throwing words at the wall, hoping one sticks, and leaving the trail sliding down said wall as incitement for readers to take up the mantle of demanding "justice".

As a child, the gallows humor that is the cultural inheritance of Ashkenazi Jewry was consistently heard about the "piece process (give them a piece of land, be attacked. Repeat as necessary, or until standing in the surf near Tel Aviv)", about the discrepancies between what Arafat would say in English and in Arabic ("we want peace. Mach al yahud!"), about the silly leftist Israelis who were trying to destroy themselves for some unattainable dream of "peace".
But the youth knew better than those dumb adults, we were going to change the world! Of course if we can just talk, negotiate, get to know one another as citizens of the world together, there could be peace! We can tour the sites and sights in their country and they can do the same, we can lay down our weapons....
One of the more striking things, for me, was to watch the leftists who were out there helping poor Palestinian farmers pick their olives in the ancestral groves denied them by the evil occupying Israeli army, protesting the policies of their country, slowly stop talking about their vision as the bombings increased and the missiles fell. When the Fogel family, hy"d, was stabbed in their beds, adult and child alike, some lefty journalist in Ma'ariv or another announced he wanted to hide under Daniella Weiss' skirt. Gradually, the horror of talking to the empty air, negotiating with ourselves, being the "frier" in the dance of international politics, sank in...and was replaced by cynicism, sarcasm, and a grim determination to take care of ourselves. Those who still talk of peace do so with unilateral plans; the government continues to walk the tightrope of peace and war.

But the battle of words has not abated, nor slowed down. The Internet gives a stage to all and any who wish for one, with no need to justify your speech. In an age where attention spans are measured in instants, where the search for truth and fact has been relegated from media and academia to the psychiatric wards, and where postmodernist sensibilities (there is no Truth, all of us have our own truth!) have replaced common sensical ones, the sound bite, whether accurate or not, has the power to paint realities on a global landscape.
[If the previous sentence seems to run on forever, I insist it is a properly structured sentence :) ]
Scandals are created out of thin air (The Jewish Agency gives Ethiopians birth control forcibly against their will!), out of misrepresentations of events (an Israeli air strike killed Omar Mishrawi's baby!), or from sheer stupidity (Israelis only rape white women and not Arabs, proving their racism!). Intellectual frauds like Shlomo Sand spread historical lies faster than anyone can point out his errors. Memes pop up with messages containing basic accounting errors (75% of Gaza is in prison!) and factual inaccuracies (Israel kills Arabs in prison without a trial!). Hell, someone will quote this blog, using those parenthesis as proof, of those statements. By the time someone fact checks it, and discovers their context, the liar will be on to the next "source".
As the famous saying goes, a lie can make it halfway across the world before the Truth gets its boots on. Sadly, once the Truth straps on its boots and heads to battle, the lies lay in wait, documenting "atrocities" that do not happen (Jenin) and "deaths" that do not occur (Mohammed al-Dura).

Which leaves our people stuck. As I have said many times, and continue to do so, Jews wish to build a world with words, not wars. But when there is no one listening, no one willing to talk....the הן עם לבדד ישכון returns, and a nation/people forlornly wishing for a way to engage the world meaningfully.