On 27 April, Benjamin Netanyahu, International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted Prime Minister of Israel, delivered one of his most comprehensive speeches on internal and regional policies of his government. His audience was, primarily, loyal members and friends of the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS).
First of all, JNS is a right-wing Jewish news agency which claims to distribute news to 100 publications. It primarily covers everything Jewish, inside Israel and abroad. It is based in the United States and receives funds from Israel’s staunchest supporters, like the billionaire casino mogul, Sheldon Adelson who, between 2011 and 2015, gave JNS some $1.5 million. The organisation also gets money from Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation. JNS is rated badly because of bias and poor resourcing of news.
Effectively, JNS is a mouthpiece of Israeli right-wing and settlers’ voices inside the US and, being as such, it is a perfect medium for Netanyahu— the uncrowned emperor of the extreme right.
So what did Netanyahu say?
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The man, wanted by the International Criminal Court, did not miss the opportunity and burst into a thunderous speech, urging his friends and supporters to tell the truth and nothing but the truth which, he said, is the best response to what he described as the lies that fill the media about the Palestinians, their suffering, their dispersion, their hunger and their helplessness.
He started off by commanding his loyal audience, after saluting some of the most loyal among them, for their telling of the truth; he emphasized that only the truth can stand to counter the konseptzia (a Hebrew-Latin for conception). What followed for the next 46-plus minutes was a barrage of lies and misinformation, very common among Israeli politicians and military leaders, too, as the genocide in Gaza has revealed over the last year and half.
Instead of “encapsulate some truths” for the audience, he repackaged factual news reports, old facts and historical realities into lies and distorted facts, all to deny the simple reality that Israel is occupying Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese lands against all international laws and commonly agreed realities of the world today.
One of the biggest lies he delivered is related to the simple fact that the creation of Israel, 77 years ago, led to the displacement of nearly one million Palestinians, some of whom still have the key to their homes across what became Israel. Instead, Netanyahu portrayed that historical fact in distorted form, by saying all the Zionists did was return to the “land of Israel” and they were not “interlopers”, as he put it. The big idea behind this false claim is the old Zionist lie that says Palestine was a “land without people” given to people, the Jews in this case, without land. This is one of the 19-20 Century fundamental claims made by earlier Zionist and some British supporters in seeking to justify the colonisation of Palestine.
His second big lie came when he talked of what all Israelis refer to as the “War of Independence of 1948”, which ended with the establishment of Israel. Indeed the Arab, including the Palestinians, lost that fight, but it is historically wrong to describe that war as an Israeli war of independence. In fact, the war was triggered by the Zionists who came to the region to establish what they call their homeland. So Israel did not exist then, and never did before, which means it was not Israeli land occupied by others, that is, the Palestinians, in this case. The historical fact is this: Palestine, as the land of the Palestinians (regardless of religious affiliation), was occupied by the British. And the Palestinians fought back to liberate their land, while the Zionist gangs used terrorism against the Palestinians and the British alike, to create something new that came to be Israel.
There is no such thing as “Israeli War of Independence” but, indeed, there is Zionist war of Occupation.
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Prolific liar, Netanyahu, went on to tell another lie: this time, in commenting on the 1967 war, in which Israel defeated three Arab countries and occupied the Gaza Strip, The West Bank, Sinai and the Golan Heights. He portrayed that war as defensive when, in fact, it was about expanding territories by occupying more Arab land. To prove the point, Israel went on to annex East Jerusalem right after the war and, in the 1980s, it was formalised, by passing laws to that effect – that annexation, along with that of the Golan Heights. Right-wing Israelis, extreme Zionist and their supporters today believe such territories are an integral part of Israel. Both annexations are illegal under international law just like the International Court of Justice declared that Israel’s Occupation of the West Bank is also illegal.
Netanyahu went on to trash the idea of a two state solution to the conflict, but in a very malicious way. He presented his lie by combining the illusion as truth and adds the other half, which is a lie. In repeating his rejection of a Palestinian State alongside Israel, he said “We just tried a Palestinian state in Gaza”, portraying Gaza as a state when it, effectively, is a concentration camp. No one ever considered Gaza as an independent state, because it is not. Even Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations never said that. What he wanted from this lie, directed at the foreign ambassadors among the audience, is to say that a Palestinian State is actually dangerous to Israel’s survival.
His biggest lie of all came when he talked about Iran. He said Israel is done with the Arabs, implying they are defeated and more inclined now to accept Israel, but the war is against Iran, because Tehran is behind everything that is happening against Israel. That is not only a lie, but also misrepresentation of facts. Iran was an ally of Israel up until 1979, when the Shah was toppled. Also the Palestinians and the Arabs fought several wars against Israel, long before Iran started supporting them, even in Lebanon and not only in Gaza.
It is not the first time a high ranking Israeli politician and military leader is caught lying. Over the course of their genocide in Gaza, they have deployed lies from day one and never stopped repeating them, particularly one lie. Last Sunday, Netanyahu repeated one of the most debunked fabrications, which claims that the Hamas fighters, on 7 October, 2023 burned babies and beheaded men.
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