When Truth Dies
Truth is the foundation of justice. It is what separates fact from fiction, reality from illusion. Without truth, there can be no accountability, no trust, no shared understanding of the world we live in. And yet, truth is fragile. It can be manipulated, distorted, even erased, not because it ceases to exist, but because those who control the narrative can make the world believe something else.
Truth does not exist in a snapshot. A single image does not tell the whole story. A moment in time, ripped from its context, can be repurposed, reframed, and repackaged to serve an agenda. In a world where attention spans are short, and headlines move faster than facts, the most dangerous weapon is not the lie itself, but the carefully chosen fragments of truth that obscure the bigger picture.
On October 7th, 2023, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and carried out the largest terrorist attack in the country’s history. They massacred families, burned children alive, raped women, beheaded civilians, and kidnapped the elderly, infants, and entire families. These are not opinions. These are not narratives. These are facts, corroborated by eyewitness testimonies, autopsies, first responders who recovered the bodies, and most important of all, the terrorists’ own live video feed, documenting their crimes in real time, leaving no room for debate.
And yet, within days, the attack was reframed as “resistance.” The atrocities committed against civilians were justified, denied, or simply ignored. Fabricated stories and manipulated images were disseminated to shift the global conversation. The same people who demand fact-checking and critical analysis in every other domain suddenly abandoned those principles when it came to this war. When falsehoods are repeated often enough, they gain traction, and soon, reality itself is put on trial.
Now, the world is watching footage of a hostage smiling on stage, wearing an Israeli uniform, waving to the cameras. A single moment, carefully staged for public consumption, designed to overwrite what happened before and what will happen after.
But truth does not exist in a snapshot.
A photo is not reality. A clip is not the full story. They are fragments, carefully chosen, surgically edited, stripped of context and depth, then presented as truth.
So, what else should we be seeing?
We should be seeing that these hostages were kidnapped in their pajamas, not uniforms, violently ripped from their homes, torn from their families.
We should be seeing that at some point, they were handed a fake Israeli uniform and dressed, against their will, to create an illusion.
We should be seeing that when they were released, it was not into the arms of their loved ones, but into a violent and dangerous mob, men screaming, grabbing at them, taking one final opportunity to humiliate, terrorize, and inflict pain.
We should be seeing Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, Eden Yerushalmi, 24, Ori Danino, 25, Alex Lobanov, 32, Carmel Gat, 40, and Almog Sarusi, 27, violently slaughtered in cold blood, in a dark tunnel underground.
We should be seeing the Bibas family, tiny baby Kfir, his toddler brother Ariel, and their mother, who have vanished without a trace, their fate unknown.
We should be seeing the hostages who are still there, enduring unthinkable horrors.
And yet, within hours, this singular image, this one carefully curated frame, dominates the media, as if it tells the full story.
This is how propaganda works. And disturbingly, it does just that. It works.
Propaganda does not simply spread lies, it engineers belief.
It feeds the world just enough to plant doubt, to twist the narrative, to make people forget what they are not seeing. It replaces full realities with digestible illusions, making the horrific palatable and the indefensible excusable.
A smiling hostage is paraded in front of cameras, and suddenly, people claim they were treated well. A single out-of-context clip is posted online, and suddenly, the massacre is “complicated”. The terrorist narrative is repeated often enough, and suddenly, the murderers become the victims, the victims become the aggressors, and the world moves on.
Truth exists. It is not subjective. Only one thing happens at one point in time. One reality. But that reality is witnessed, interpreted, and manipulated by countless people, each with their own vantage point, biases, and motivations. What is shared with the world is fractured, filtered through social media, distorted by political agendas, repackaged into convenient narratives. A single truth becomes a dozen conflicting versions, and in the noise, reality itself is buried.
But truth is not a headline. Truth is not a frame. Truth is not a viral post. Truth is the whole picture. And it is up to us to demand it.
It is up to us, the viewers, to ask: What am I not seeing? Who benefits from this narrative? What are the facts, not just the headlines?
Because truth is not what’s trending. Truth is not what’s convenient. Truth is what actually happened. Truth matters. Truth must be defended. Even when it is uncomfortable. Even when it is inconvenient.
Because when truth dies, justice dies with it.