In the war on Gaza, as in any modern war, propaganda plays a major role. The disparity between the forces, between the powerful Israeli army and the few thousand lightly armed Hamas fighters, is one to a million. In the political arena the gap between them is even wider. But in the propaganda war, the gap is almost infinite. Almost all the Western media initially repeated the official Israeli propaganda line. They almost entirely ignored the Palestinian side of the story.
The rationale of the Israeli government that the state must defend its citizens against the Qassam rockets has been accepted as the whole truth. The view from the other side, that the Qassams are retaliation for the siege that starves the one and a half million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, was not mentioned at all. Every war is the realm of lies.
Whether called propaganda or psychological warfare, everybody accepts that it is right to lie for one’s country. Anyone who speaks the truth runs the risk of being branded a traitor. The trouble is that propaganda is most convincing for the propagandist himself. And after you convince yourself that a lie is the truth and falsification reality, you can no longer make rational decisions.
Sandeep Ghiya
Mumbai, Maharashtra