My latest: the biggest liars

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, some people will eventually believe it.

The author of that one, of course, was Joseph Goebbels, and he would know. Goebbels was the chief propagandist for Germany’s Nazi Party. He helped to devise and then cover up the Shoah – the Holocaust.

Goebbels would likely approve what has happened in the days following the modern Shoah, October 7. Since October 7, words and meanings have been giddily twisted and manipulated like a rag doll in a madhouse.

Every weekend, everywhere, angry voices – pro-Palestinian, but also pro-Hamas – can be heard on city streets, screaming “from the river to the sea.” The people who use that slogan insist, over and over, that those words are benign, and express no ill-will towards Jews.

And, yes, “from the river to the sea” – from the Jordan River in the East to the Mediterranean Sea in the West – doesn’t explicitly say every inch of “Palestine is for Muslims only, Jews are warmongering Zionist Nazis, and every Muslim has an obligation to wage holy war against them until they are all gone.”

But the Hamas 1988 Charter certainly says that, and plenty more. When he was celebrating the anniversary of said Charter, Hamas’ billionaire leader Khaled Mashaal made clear what “from the river to the sea” means. Said Mashaal: “Palestine is ours, from the river to the sea, and from the South to the North. There will be no concession on any inch of the land.”

No concession. Sorry, citizens of the Jewish state: “from the river to the sea” literally means there is no room for you, and no more Israel. Everyone, from Hamas to the Palestine Liberation Organization – who used it as their official slogan, and who asserted that “armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine” – know precisely what “from the river to the sea” means. It means no Jews, no Israel. Period.

Because they are disciples of Goebbels, the pro-Hamas propagandists are also careful about their use of the word “Jew.” They prefer “Zionists.”

Zionism is a political movement that seeks a Jewish homeland, in the part of the world Jews occupied for centuries before the birth of Christ – and thousands of years before the word “Palestine” was ever uttered. Saying you oppose “Zionists” – and “the Zionist project,” which is what they call Israel – is a lot less controversial than saying you are against the Jews.

No less than Dr. Martin Luther King is the best source on the distinction. As recalled by author Seymour Lipset: “When approached by a student who attacked Zionism, Dr. King responded: ‘When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism.’”

This week, this writer was on a Toronto radio panel with a man who proclaimed he was a “human rights lawyer,” but who revealed himself to perhaps regard some humans as having more rights than others.

The host, Greg Brady, did his best to challenge this man’s many whoppers, which included:

• Hamas hasn’t killed any Jews outside “occupied territories.”
• Firebombing a synagogue may not be anti-Semitic.
• A Montreal Imam who called for Jews to be exterminated, didn’t.

How can anyone, least of all a “human rights lawyer,” embrace such things, all of which are false? Who knows. The “human rights lawyer” wanted more “evidence” on the synagogue firebombing. He didn’t answer yes or no to Brady’s request that he agree that Hamas was a terrorist organization. He said the Imam called for “Zionists” to be exterminated, not “Jews” (see above).

And so on. That’s how it’s been pretty much everywhere, since October 7. The mobs – found in the streets, in faculty lounges, university classrooms and NDP caucus meetings – have manipulated and mauled language to justify, or minimize, Hamas’ mass-murder on October 7.

They have done that because they know, deep in their tiny black hearts, that they won’t win over public opinion by saying they favour eliminating every Jew in Israel. So they say they oppose the “Zionist entity” and want to merely liberate Palestine, “from the river to the sea.”

It’s all so dishonest and divisive and dangerous.

Goebbels would approve.