What makes a person believe lies, in the face of truth? We’ve all done it at one point or another, haven’t we? The pain of facing unwelcome truths is a staple of the human condition, however one sign of a mature intellect is a willingness to be wrong for the right reasons.
Some, though – a concerning number of folk in fact – appear afflicted with a sickness of the mind. One that violently says black is white, up is down and night is day. They refuse to move, angry and belligerent in their defiance of fact.
Why, though? And how?
There are still people who think the earth is flat, for example. Who believe that chem trails are polluting the sky. There are people who firmly believe the government controls the clouds. That green smoothies and good vibes will cure a terminal disease.
There are people, I’ve learned sadly, who believe rape is resistance. Who believe the bullshit, fabricated narrative of a proscribed terror organisation over the documented fact of a functioning democracy. Who are so ill of intellect they believed something as questionable as the Hamas Health Ministry when it said Israel had bombed a hospital. Until, of course, it swiftly emerged that no such thing had happened.
There are those who believe Israel is a coloniser. I mean, in fairness they’d have to be the worst colonisers on earth given the population of Israel, just 7.2 million, is surrounded by 481 million people spread across the 22-member states of the Arab League. But sure, let’s play pretend. God knows, most of the Western media has been.
There are those who believe that Israel is an apartheid state. It’s a bit sad, isn’t it? Young people you can excuse to a degree, but adults using that word about the most liberal, pluralistic country in the region is an insult.
For those who’ve lost touch with South Africa’s attempt to sue Israel in the International Court of Justice for committing genocide, the South African government has just this week asked for more time to submit evidence to support the claim, which is due at the end of October.
The reason for this request? It can’t find any evidence. But still, the cretins among us parrot the lie in the face of truth. The Australian Greens, stablemates of Australian Labor, purveyors of violence, discord and havoc, perpetuate this lie more than any other.
So, what makes someone believe lies in the face of truth? Is it fear, or is it laziness? Does it happen swiftly, or over time? Is a person born that way, or formed? Nurture, or nature?
This awful war that Israel didn’t start, but has been left alone to fight and finish, has exposed the best and worst of us. The worst, though, is very bad indeed. Sobering, frightening and telling.
This past week, with the permission of their families, the Israel Defence Forces released footage of the fetid, dank tunnels in which six hostages were kept and, as freedom and rescue knocked, were summarily executed. It’s suffocating to watch it, if that’s even possible. For me it was the mundane and familiar among the blood and filth and bottles of what looked like urine.
A hairbrush. Shopping bags. The execution of these hostages represents a war that presents the most significant, present threat to Western freedoms and values since 9/11 and, just a week later, it feels like people have already moved on. God, awful, yes, terrible okay, what’s for dinner?
Hamas doesn’t want a two-state solution. It wants what its masters in Tehran and Qatar want: the eradication of Israel. The establishment of a caliphate across the region and beyond. You want colonisation? Look no further. Yet in the face of documented fact, things like population data, things like the stated political aims of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Muslim Brotherhood. In the face of these and many other things some still choose to believe the lies.
If someone could explain the how, I’d be grateful. Perhaps it’s like some kind of weird, psychosomatic exercise in self-soothing? There is no greater representation of what I’m talking about than Queers for Palestine. Nobody is gay in the Middle East and thinking, I know, sharia law will be a great umbrella under which to shelter. Might go live my life in peace in Ramallah and start touring my one-woman show on how I came out as a teenager.
Ahmad Abu Marhia was a 25-year-old gay Palestinian. He had sought asylum in Israel after fleeing the West Bank. He was decapitated, his severed head and torso dumped near his family’s home. There are many stories like his. I found them, reading just one report of the European parliament that spoke of the murder of Palestinians for being gay, and how those who can, flee to Israel for asylum.
Staring facts in the face and blithely remaining cocooned in lies.
How many in our society have decided to go for the bad guys staggers me. Defeats me, in some ways. I received an email this week from a reader who made the following lament-filled observation: “Our politicians and university chancellors are appeasing people who place evil over good, wrong over right and it makes no sense.”
Is it because, for what seems like the longest while, there are no consequences to anything, ever?
University of Sydney professor Sujatha Fernandes told first-year students that Hamas’s mass rape and sexual violence on and after October 7 was “fake news” and a “hoax” concocted by Western media to shore up Israel’s position. What do you think happened to her? The university won’t say but she’s still employed, still teaching students, avoiding any serious punishment.
Even the UN, who any sober-minded person can see is mostly corrupt, complicit and captured, found thousands of pieces of evidence in relation to October 7.
Special envoy Palmilla Pratten documented the horrendous evidence, and it has been accepted by the UN unchallenged.
But Fernandes is allowed to keep her job and keep teaching students. Imagine if she had said to her students “the whole idea of being trans is a hoax? It’s just a thing to prop up the political left.” We all know how that would have been dealt with.
I’ve heard some people say, what does it matter? Who cares? Why should a conflict on the other side of the world affect us? Because it is already affecting us.
Just look at the violent chaos in Melbourne on Thursday and Friday, driven by the anti-Israel mob ably supported by the Greens. They are the River to the Sea collective. The “peaceful protesters” who assault horses and throw acid at police.
What emboldens people to act this way? A lack of consequences. A knowing that the worst that will come their way is a half-hearted scolding.
It didn’t start on the night of October 9, when that feral mob was allowed to roam unchecked on the steps of the Opera House behaving in a way no Australian wants to see. But that was definitely a catalyst for escalation to a frightening and unseen level of consistent lawlessness enacted by the pro-Palestinian camp. And why wouldn’t they? There were no consequences.
The obvious question is how to turn the tide. I mean, just imagine if the federal government was in a position to do something about this. Just imagine, for example, if they made our embarrassing tertiary education sector accountable for outcomes not just bums on seats. Imagine if back on October 9, 2023, that angry mob had been dealt with, first time. A message sent. Just imagine.
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