Time to use community cash and creativity to push back all the lies and libels

Tony Blair’s mantra “education, education, education” has been playing on a loop in my head since I saw the film “September 5” about the deadly attack on Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the Munich Olympics. It resonated because it highlighted the contrast between the public reaction to that atrocity and to Oct 7th when Palestinian terrorists slaughtered, mutilated, raped and burned-alive some 1,200 Israeli citizens – mostly non-combatants, including babies, infants, pensioners and women – and abduced some 230 more.

It’s safe to say that in 1972, those supporting Palestinian terrorists would have fitted inside a London phone box. If we ignore street mobs in Damascus, Tripoli, etc, the overriding public reaction was abhorrence for the terrorists and sympathy for Israel.

But as we know, the public reaction to Oct 7th 2023 was rather different. Despite, in the intervening 51 years, Israel signing (and honouring) peace deals, handing back territory (including Gaza) and giving autonomy to the Palestinian Authority, an alarmingly high number of people(including the Secretary-General of the UN) seemed to feel that Palestinian terrorists were somehow “justified” in slaughtering, butchering, raping and kidnapping citizens of a sovereign nation. Israel was condemned for defending itself against such savagery and accused it of “genocide” for seeking to eradicate the terrorist threat – despite terrorist leaders openly declaring their intention to repeat the atrocity.

The first question is: What changed between September 5 1972 and October  7 2023 to cause this inhumane reaction and a side-order of antisemitism? But I think we know why – and forgive me for repeating myself. It is because a vast cohort, including some quite intelligent people, has been persuaded to believe a flimsy, Soviet-fabricated narrative. They have been persuaded to believe that Palestinians are “victims” despite Palestinians having been slaughtering Israeli non-combatants – and diaspora Jews – relentlessly for the past 51 years.

This vast pool of credulous people – including quite a few Jews – are suffering a kind of mass delusion that is reinforced by others suffering the same delusion, and then re-reinforced by the media that’s suffering the same delusion and has become actively biased. It’s as if they’ve all been caught up in a vast, multinational Pyramid Selling scheme where the top-tier – Iran or its stooges and surrogates – has recruited the next tier, which then recruits the next, and so on. But instead of selling skincare they are “selling” the erroneous belief that Israel “stole” Palestine and therefore has no right to exist.

The tsunami of disinformation generated is already having tangible and frightening consequences for young British Jews in universities and for British Jews of all ages everywhere else, so the next question is: What can we do about it?

For me the answer is simple. It lies in that mantra about “education” that’s been on a loop in my head. Our community is suffering the fall-out from this mass delusion so now our community needs to educate the deluded; needs to refute the lies, and most of all needs to counter the ever-expanding media bias.

Individual organisations have been doing a wonderful job individually, but now most urgently, we need to put aside ideological differences or differences of degree, and concentrate on the immutable truth which is that Israel is a legitimate nation; that Jews did not steal anybody’s land and that virtually every hostile act Israel has committed since its establishment has been in defence of its right to exist.

And the way to do it is through advertising because if we “buy” space, airtime or billboards we bypass the filter of a biased media. We state empirical truths. We don’t criticise, infer, imply, suggest or  offer opinions.  We just educate the deluded fools with hard facts which prove that Israel did not “steal” a Muslim land; that Jews have had a continuous presence in that land for thousands of years; that more Jews were forced to leave Arab lands in 1948, than Palestinian Arabs left Palestine; that “Yahudi”– Jews – have been the real victims for 77 years (of Arab imperialism, Muslim expansionism, terrorism and Islamist racism).

We have to put those facts (and more) on TV screens, in newspapers, on websites, on station platforms, in tube carriages, alongside escalators, on hoardings and billboards and on the sides of buses across the UK – and perhaps across the US and European cities, too. We have to reproduce text from censuses and population statistics in six-foot high letters. We have to reproduce maps showing that Israel is not some vast empire but a nation so tiny you can drive between all its borders in under eight hours without breaking the speed limit. We  have to try to show that though it has had to defend itself – often forcefully – Israel is not the aggressor. Ideally, we have to find a way to show the truth of Golda Meir’s words that if the Arabs laid down their arms, there would be no more war, but if Israel laid down its arms, there would be no more Israel.

And yes, I know posters would be torn down or defaced; that the deluded would shake their fists and shout at TV screens, but we’ve had to face a tsunami of disinformation, and now it’s time for the deluded, demonic and Iranian stooges to face a tsunami of facts that refute their lies and libels.

Our community has the fiscal resources and an insane amount of creative genius. We need to harness both and unite to push back this tsunami of disinformation. Before it is too late.

We just need the will to do it.