The Big Lie and the Media War Against Israel
Joel Fishman
Jewish Political Studies Review. 19: 1-2 (Spring 2007).
Updated July 20, 2007

Woe unto them that call evil good,
And good evil;

That change darkness into light,
And light into darkness;

That change bitter into sweet,
And sweet into bitter.

ISAIAH 5:20

From the 1960s, inversion of truth and reality has been one the most favored propaganda methods of Israel's adversaries. One of its most frequent expressions has been the accusation that the Jewish people, victims of the Nazis, have now become the new Nazis, aggressors and oppressors of the Palestinian Arabs. Contemporary observers have identified this method and described it as an "inversion of reality," an "intellectual confidence trick," "reversing moral responsibility," or "twisted logic." Because Israel's enemies have, for nearly half a century, repeated such libels without being challenged, they have gradually gained credence. Since inversion of reality constitutes the basic principle of current anti-Israeli propaganda, it is important to understand what it is and how it works. This propaganda method is a product of Nazi Germany. It is totalitarian both in its methods, particularly the use of the paranoiac myth, and in the absolute solution it advocates. It totally denies all of Israel's claims and leaves no room for introspection and compromise.

The Problem in Historical Perspective: Israel and the Media War
From the 1960s, inversion of truth and reality has been one the most favored propaganda methods of Israel's adversaries. One of its most frequent expressions has been the accusation that the Jewish people, victims of the Nazis, have now become the new Nazis, aggressors and oppressors of the Palestinian Arabs. Contemporary observers have identified this method and described it as an "inversion of reality," an "intellectual confidence trick," "reversing moral responsibility," or "twisted logic." Because Israel's enemies, for nearly half a century, have repeated such libels unchallenged, some people have begun to believe them. Since inversion of reality constitutes the basic principle of current anti-Israeli propaganda, it is important to understand what it is and how it works.

It should be noted that scholars of an earlier generation have researched different aspects of the problem,[1] but from the mid-1980s on, this subject has attracted much less attention. There are several explanations. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the East bloc (1989-1991), there was a feeling that the world was on the threshold of a new democratic era. And with the signing of the Oslo Accords (13 September 1993), many actually believed that anti-Israeli propaganda would cease. Denial may have played a part, because the persistence of intense anti-Israel and anti-Semitic agitation represented "inconvenient information." Drawing attention to the problem became politically incorrect and sometimes dangerous for those who wished to advance in the academic world.[2]

Since the subject of this essay is the history of propaganda and fabrication, it is appropriate to add a word about methodology. Marc Bloch, the eminent historian and medievalist, in his famous book, The Historian's Craft, explained that proving the existence of a falsehood is not enough. If one hoped really to learn from a lie, it would be necessary to identify the perpetrator and his motivation:

The purpose of this essay is to describe the origins of the Big Lie and, to the extent possible, identify its modern derivatives.

Definition of the Problem in Historical Perspective
Since many members of Israel's political elite consider that the country's problem is one of public relations, they have been unable to come to terms with the fact that the state is confronted with a media war. It follows, therefore, that there is a need for a modern definition of propaganda, its main component. According to Prof. Philip M. Taylor, director of the Institute of Communications Studies at the University of Leeds,

One of the tactical tools of ideological warfare is propaganda, which has been defined simply "as an attempt to influence the attitudes of a specific audience through the use of facts, fiction, argument or suggestion-often supported by the suppression of inconsistent material-with the calculated purpose of instilling in the recipient a certain belief, values or convictions which will serve the interests of the source, by producing a desired line of action."[4]

To this definition one may add the statement of Dr. Joseph Goebbels that "propaganda as such is neither good nor evil. Its moral value is determined by the goals it seeks."[5] Here is the classical argument that the ends justify the means. One may ask, however, if in certain cases the very means can be morally defective.

In the twentieth century, propaganda served as an important weapon of war, and its effects could be devastating. Indeed, certain totalitarian ideologies, when brought to their logical conclusion, have been genocidal. Historian Jeffrey Herf describes the function and logic of propaganda in Nazi Germany's war against the Jews:

In his text Herf gave a chilling example of the link between propaganda and genocide, namely, Hitler's annual speech to the Reichstag of 30 January1939 which presented "what became the core Nazi narrative of the coming conflict":

In addition, Herf referred to Hitler's New Year's address to the nation on 1 January 1940 which contained the "imputation of genocidal war aims to Nazi Germany's enemies, especially the Jews": "‘The Jewish-capitalist world enemy that confronts us has only one goal: to exterminate Germany and the German people...."[8]

Interpreting this language, Ernst H. Gombrich explained that the ultimate aim of Nazi propaganda was "the imposition of a paranoiac pattern on world events" in the form of a "paranoiac myth."[9] According to Gombrich, this procedure represented the "core of the technique":

Inversion of reality as a tool of media war, with its paranoiac state of mind, has persisted to the present. Although contemporary observers have been able to describe its manifestations with considerable accuracy, many have not placed it in historical context. It was in this sense, for example, that the French researcher and philosopher Pierre-André Taguieff applied the term "absolute anti-Semitism"[11] to describe the post-1967 outlook of the Palestinians. He wrote that for them, "Zionism, then, is a new ‘Nazism' threatening to dominate and destroy the whole human species.... Thus, in a context where Western elites never tire of calling for the avoidance of ‘Islamophobic' utterances, the head of the Islamic Center in Geneva, Hani Ramadan, coolly denounced ‘the genocide being organized against the Muslims.'"[12]

It is noteworthy that Ramadan's story line is nearly identical to that of Nazi propagandists. Both presented themselves as targets of a Jewish conspiracy, and the potential outcome of their "logical process"-to use Hannah Arendt's expression-was genocide. Although both have inverted the truth, their assertions contain an additional feature which is disturbing and dangerous: the inversion of morality which leads to criminal behavior and violence without constraint.

More recently, Melanie Phillips, an outspoken British journalist and blogger, cited an article by Leo McKinstry, a Belfast-born author and journalist who writes regularly for the Daily Mail, Daily Express, and Sunday Telegraph.[13] McKinstry identified the inversion of reality in British public discourse with regard to Israel and called it by its real name:

Inversion of reality as a tool of political warfare may also be used against non-Jews. For example, its use in December 2006 resulted in a sharp diplomatic clash between the governments of Poland and Germany when "a group representing Germans expelled from present-day Poland after World War II filed suit at the European Court of Human Rights, seeking restitution of their property." In a statement on 11 December 2006, Polish foreign minister Anna Fotyga condemned the German claims as "an attempt at reversing moral responsibility for the effects of World War II, which began with the German attack on Poland and caused irreparable losses and sufferings to the Polish state and nation."[15]

Inversion of Reality as a Propaganda Method: Historical Roots
If one studies the development of inversion of reality as a propaganda weapon, it is clear that Nazi ideologues perfected it. They openly took pride in their accomplishment but credited the British for showing them the way. During the Great War, British propaganda had successfully encouraged the desertion of Central Powers troops from the frontlines and demoralized the public at home. Hitler, for his part, emphasized the British use of atrocity propaganda and complained that Imperial Germany never understood the importance of propaganda and those who dealt with it were incompetent.

The British, under the leadership of Lord Northcliffe, proprietor of The Times, were the first to exploit the advances of mass media and advertising in order to target mass public opinion rather than the elite.[16] Their strategic objective was to "reveal to the enemy the futility of their cause and the certainty of allied victory."[17] For this purpose, they devised a number of original propaganda stratagems such as targeting messages to the civilian population in order to undermine its support for the government.[18] They also endeavored to break up the Habsburg Empire by fomenting sedition among its various peoples. In their efforts, British propagandists first coined the term "national self-determination," a weapon of political warfare.[19]

One tool which the British employed was atrocity propaganda. Their most remarkable accusation was that Imperial Germany created a "cadaver exploitation establishment," the so-called Kadaververwerkungsanstalt, for the production of soap. British atrocity propaganda demonized the enemy, but after the war, the public felt duped. It left a residue of skepticism, betrayal, and a mood of postwar nihilism. Although this approach worked in the short term, it opened a Pandora's Box.

On the eve of World War II, the memory of atrocity propaganda provided a compelling argument against American intervention on the side of Britain and contributed to the denial of compassion to the Jews in their moment of dire need. In the United States, where isolationist sentiment ran strong, influential politicians accused the British of having "tricked America into war." Furthermore, when, in the 1930s, Nazi Germany began to perpetrate major atrocities, many refused to believe the reports.

In The Case for Auschwitz, historian Robert Jan van Pelt reported that:

After the liberation of the concentration camps, General Dwight D. Eisenhower arranged for visits of American delegations to bear witness to the greatest atrocity of all time.[21]

The Big Jump: Some Principles of Nazi Propaganda Theory
During the Great War, the British disseminated propaganda over a finite period but stopped with the conclusion of hostilities. Fearing that Britain's wartime propaganda machinery would be turned against him, Lloyd George quickly dismantled it.[22] Nevertheless, World War I paved the way for the rise of totalitarian dictatorship. It not only undermined the traditional order in Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy but also "hastened the development of the industrial arts, weapons, communications, and management which facilitated the totalitarian thrust."[23]

According to Hitler and Goebbels, British propaganda produced the original "Big Lie," but they exploited this breakthrough for their own ends. For example, they adopted an interpretation of history which embodied the paranoiac myth that represented Imperial Germany as the innocent victim of British mendacity. A few citations from Vol. 1, Ch. 6, "War Propaganda," of Mein Kampf, published in1925 and 1926, clearly reveal Hitler's grasp of the methods of war propaganda. According to his account, the British spread certain lies, namely, the accusation of atrocities and that "the German enemy" was "the sole guilty party for the outbreak of war." Later in the same chapter, he analyzed their methods and commented on cost effectiveness:

Here, too, the example of enemy war propaganda was typical; limited to a few points, devised exclusively for the masses, carried on with indefatigable persistence. Once the basic ideas and methods of execution were recognized as correct, they were applied throughout the whole War without the slightest change. At first the claims of the propaganda were so impudent that people thought it insane; later, it got on people's nerves; and in the end, it was believed. After four and a half years, a revolution broke out in Germany; and its slogans originated in the enemy's war propaganda.

And in England they understood one more thing: that this spiritual weapon can succeed only if it is applied on a tremendous scale, but that success amply covers all costs.[24]

Hitler went further. He explained in Mein Kampf that it really was more worthwhile to tell big lies rather than small ones:

The Big Lie would characterize Nazi propaganda, and although, after World War II, the Soviet Union would later adopt this method, their techniques of misrepresenting reality, based on dialectical thinking, were essentially different. Doublespeak was not to be found in the Nazi lexicon.

A Totalitarian Tool
Having the means of controlling the total environment, blocking competing information through the use of terror and coercion, and projecting their messages both domestically and abroad, the new totalitarian regimes could bend the truth as long as their power held out. Thus, they were able to transform what originally had been a defined moment of untruth into a sustained fictional reality. The difference between the mass propaganda of World War I and the fictional reality of the totalitarian state was one of degree and intensity.

Political scientist Carl J. Friedrich explained that:

Indeed, the Bolsheviks were the first to adopt the practice of propaganda in peacetime. [27] Shortly thereafter, Hitler emulated them.

In retrospect, Hannah Arendt explained how totalitarian propaganda constructs a sustained, competing fictional world of untruth, possessing its own internal logic. Herein one may identify the big jump from the inversion of the truth to the inversion of reality. Nazi propagandists took the idea of the Big Lie and prolonged its duration to create a new reality based on the paranoiac myth which Gombrich described:

Historian Omer Bartov, in his study Hitler's Army, demonstrated the deep penetration of the paranoiac myth in German consciousness. He explained that the Wehrmacht was really an integral part of German society. During the invasion of Russia, when it became clear that Germany could not win the war, propaganda gained almost a religious dimension as a binding force for the soldiers. Under the harsh conditions in mid-July 1941, a Wehrmacht noncommissioned officer wrote home, producing a document which reveals the absolute and genocidal effects of Nazi propaganda:

Bartov explained that this soldier's perception was a striking inversion of reality, which ascribed the unprecedented brutality of the Wehrmacht and the SS to their victims, [and] was the most characteristic feature of the German soldier's "coming to terms" with his actions in the Soviet Union.... It is precisely this distorted perception of reality which gives us the measure of success of Nazi propaganda and indoctrination.[30]

Bartov's remarkable study demonstrated how the paranoiac myth of Nazi propaganda was so powerful that its logical consequence was an inversion of morality. Even after Germany's defeat, its effects were so pervasive that some Nazi veterans continued to mouth these fictions in order to justify their own criminal deeds.[31]

Using the Inversion-of-Reality Method against Israel and Jews from the 1960s to the Present
During the first postwar decades, the propaganda method of inversion of reality and the Big Lie appears to have fallen into temporary disuse, with one notable exception. Prof. Arnold Toynbee delivered a lecture in Montreal in January 1961 in which he "compared from a moral standpoint, the attitude of Israel to the Arabs in 1947 and 1948 with the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews." The ambassador of Israel to Canada, Yaakov Herzog, read this statement in the Montreal newspapers and challenged Toynbee to a debate which followed on 31 January 1961 at McGill University.[32] Ambassador Herzog did well in this disputation, but it is not clear if Arnold Toynbee's statement represented an isolated event or, in the years which followed, provided a source of inspiration to others. (Two years later, in April 1964, Arnold Toynbee came to Egypt on a twelve day visit to lecture at Egyptian universities. It would be interesting to know, if, beyond considerations of academic scholarship, an authoritarian regime such as Nasser's Egypt had other motives for showing Toynbee such a public sign of great favor.)[33]

During the 1960s, and particularly after the Israeli victory in the Six Day War in 1967, the Soviet Union and its allies in the Arab world reintroduced some of the old propaganda themes. Israel's victory represented a humiliation to the Soviet cause and posed an internal danger because it shook the foundations of authority. Domestically, it heartened the minorities in the Soviet Union, not least the Jews. Having suffered a major reverse, the Soviet Union and the Arab countries decided to use political anti-Semitism as a means of shifting world attention from their defeat. They endeavored to delegitimize Israel, to brand Israel as the aggressor, and to bring about its isolation. Some elements of the new propaganda campaign were:

Both the Arab world and the Soviet Union used inversion of reality as a method and drew on the idiom of Nazi propaganda. The transfer of this expertise cannot be traced in detail because documentary information is incomplete. It is known, however, that many Nazi fugitives found refuge in the Arab world. From 1953, Egypt absorbed some two thousand of them. Some worked in Nasser's secret service and administered concentration camps. Others were involved in the design and construction of rockets.[34]

Among this population were specialists in anti-Semitic propaganda. From Egypt, they disseminated anti-Semitism and the doctrine of Holocaust denial in the Arab world and beyond. Writing in 1967, historian Kurt Tauber described the contemporary situation in Nasser's Egypt:

Matthias Küntzel described a major outcome of the Egyptian propaganda project:

"Hitler's Number One Anti-Semite": The Case of Johann von Leers, [37]
Because issues of historical continuity and particularly the transfer of ideas and are a matter of importance, special mention should be made of Prof. Dr. Johann von Leers (1902- 1965). He was one of the most important ideologues of the Third Reich and later served in the Egyptian Information Department.

In April 1938 von Leers was named professor at the Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena, and his area of expertise was "Legal, Economic, and Political History on a Racial Basis" (Rechts-, Wirtschafts- und politische Geschichte auf rassischer Grundlage). He mastered five languages: English, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Japanese.[38] As a young man he participated in the nationalistic youth movement Adler u. Falken (Eagles and Hawks), where he formed a lifelong association with Heinrich Himmler. He was one of the early members of the Nazi Party, and in 1929 Goebbels made him his protégé. [39]

Von Leers had been a committed member of the German Movement of Faith, a project under Himmler's patronage whose purpose was to "free Germany from the imperialism of Jewish-Christianity" by creating a new pagan religion to take its place.[40] An Israeli researcher found indications that, in cooperation with a certain Friedrich Lamberty-Muck[41] who advocated polygamy, von Leers became one of the initiators of a plan to increase the Aryan race through breeding, an initiative which Himmler enthusiastically adopted and subsequently resulted in the Lebensborn project.

Von Leers was the expert in Jewish affairs. An open advocate of genocide, he was one of the most radical anti-Semitic publicists of the Third Reich. The Jewish philosopher Emil Fackenheim explained that von Leers took the position that "states harboring Jews were harboring the plague, and that the Reich had the moral duty and by the principle of hot pursuit, the legal right to conquer such countries, if only to wipe the plague out." [42]

In a personal communication to Fackenheim, historian Erich Goldhagen explained "that whereas of course the bacilli idea was common among Nazis, von Leers had the unusual distinction of not bothering to veil his call for mass murder in euphemistic language." After his death, "his widow [Gesina Fischer née Schmaltz], who shared his views, returned to Germany, where she embarrassed Neo-Nazis by defending Hitler's ‘extermination' of the Jews openly, instead of classifying it among his ‘mistakes.'"[43]

Von Leers possessed undeniable talent and applied it to construct an ideological foundation for National Socialism and Islam based on their shared hatred of the Jews. [44] He continued this endeavor in Egypt after the war, and his efforts were welcomed and reciprocated.

Herf reports that in December 1942, von Leers published an article in Die Judenfrage, a journal which belonged to the anti-Semitic intellectual world, entitled "Judaism and Islam as Opposites." As the title indicates, the author's perspective is Hegelian, presenting Judaism and Islam in terms of thesis and antithesis. This essay also reveals the ingratiating National Socialist perspective which von Leers projected on the Islamic past as well as the intensity of his hatred for Judaism and Jewry. The following passage is part of the original text. The author thanks Prof. Herf for sharing this remarkable document, parts of which he first published in paraphrase with direct citations:

For his part, the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini in his conversation with Hitler of 21 November 1941 and his radio broadcasts contended that Jews were the common enemy of Islam and Nazi Germany.[47] The ex-Mufti frequently went on tour to encourage the Balkan SS Muslim units, and the Axis radio stations faithfully covered these visits. During his broadcast of 21 January 1944, he proclaimed:

After the war, von Leers lived incognito in Italy until 1950 when he fled to Argentina, where he served as editor of the Nazi monthly Der Weg and entered into close contact with Adolf Eichmann. After the fall of Peron in 1955, he moved to Cairo where he served in the Egyptian Information Department. Encouraged by the ex-Mufti who was also living in Egypt, he converted to Islam and assumed the names Mustafa Ben Ali and Omer Amin Johann von Leers.[49]

Von Leers sponsored the publication of an Arabic edition of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, revived the blood libel, organized anti-Semitic broadcasts in numerous languages, cultivated neo-Nazis throughout the world, and maintained a warm correspondence encouraging the first generation of Holocaust deniers, one of whom was Paul Rassinier.[50] One source reported that von Leers was the first to launch the idea of a separate Palestinian nationality as part of the wider war against Israel.[51]

In addition to the professional obligations of his day job, Johann von Leers was "active as the contact man for the organization of former members of the SS (ODESSA) in Arab territory."[52] It is reported that his old friend, Haj Amin al-Husseini, secured his post as political adviser in the Egyptian Information Department, but another source suggests that a political officer at the Egyptian embassy in Buenos Aires recruited him.[53] When von Leers arrived in Cairo, the ex-Mufti, Haj Amin, publicly welcomed him: "We thank you for venturing to take up the battle with the powers of darkness that have become incarnate in world Jewry."[54]

If today's Arab anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish propaganda strongly resembles that of the Third Reich, there is a good reason.

East-Bloc Anti-Semitism
An immediate consequence of Israel's victory in the Six Day War was the unleashing of a virulent campaign of state-sponsored anti-Semitism in the East bloc.[55] According to Stefan Possony, an American strategist and specialist in East European affairs, Komsomolskaya Pravda published the real message of this propaganda on 4 October 1967:

On September 6, 1968, Dr. Simon Wiesenthal held a press conference in Vienna where he accused the German Democratic Republic for its use of language identical to the Nazi era in its condemnation of Israel. The title of the publication which he distributed on this occasion was, The Same Language: first for Hitler - now for Ulbricht. In this solidly documented publication Wiesenthal and his staff identified thirty-nine Nazis with excellent credentials who found their way into the service of the G.D.R.[58] Some were extremely well placed. Not surprisingly, one of the tools of propaganda which they used was inversion of reality, accusing Israel of being the aggressor.

J. H. Brinks, in his essay "Political Anti-Fascism in the German Democratic Republic," wrote that there was no ideological impediment to prevent the cooperation between Communist party members and National Socialists, as they had once been allies. [59] That is, until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, there remained positive feelings in favor of Russian-German friendship which were based on considerations of history and geography. For example, after the First World War, in 1922, Weimar Germany concluded the Treaty of Rapello which took Bolshevik Russia out of diplomatic isolation. This transaction became the forerunner of subsequent military and political arrangements. For example, Chief of the Army Command, General Hans von Seekt, "arranged for exchanges of military instructors, the manufacture of weapons [such as aircraft, heavy artillery, tanks, and poison gas] forbidden to the Germans by Versailles and close cooperation in other military fields."[60] Charles W. Thayer, an American career diplomat who served in Germany shortly after the war recounted also that some of the great German industrialists nostalgically remembered that Russia had once been a major market and they hoped one day it might again come back to life.

After the war, some ultra-conservatives and unrepentant Nazis remained convinced that historical and geographical reasons made Russia a natural ally, and these transcended the fact that it was under Communist rule. Members of this school held that for reasons of traditional policy dating back to Frederick the Great, Russia should be an ally, and, that if reunification were ever to be, its good will would be of critical importance. Von Leers belonged to this group.[61]

The real statement of the Soviet party line took the form of a short book titled Beware Zionism! Essays on the Ideology, Organization, and Practice of Zionism. Its author was given as Yuri Ivanov, a party Central Committee specialist on Zionism, and at the beginning of 1969 the Moscow Political Literature Publishing House (Krasny Proletary) distributed this pedantic book of some 173 pages in an edition of seventy-five thousand copies.[62] (It was priced to move at a modest 27 kopeks.) William Korey wrote, "The voice of the official Soviet Authority was not disguised. It spoke clearly through Pravda: ‘From the pages of Yuri Ivanov's book emerges the true evil image of Zionism and this constitutes the undoubted importance of the book.'"[63]

Beware Zionism! is interesting with regard to its antisemitic content. Its thesis, based on the Protocols, was that that world Jewry possessed ubiquitous control of world politics. Indeed, the structure and content of Beware Zionism bear a remarkable resemblance to Johann von Leers' book, The Forces behind Roosevelt [Kraefte hinter Roosevelt] which he published in Berlin in 1942.[64]

The language of Komsomolskaya Pravda, in contrast, represented a change of direction toward a major inversion of reality compressed into slogans, such as "Zionism is racism."[65]

Bernard Lewis reported the use of these new slogans at the World Conference of the International Women's Year held in Mexico City in late June and early July 1975. He noted that: "the ‘Declaration on the Equality of Women' issued on that occasion repeatedly stresses the share of women in the struggle against neocolonialism, foreign occupation, Zionism, racism, racial discrimination and apartheid."[66]

It should be added that with France's change in diplomatic orientation in favor of the Arab cause, and as a consequence of its great influence in Europe, anti-Israeli information steadily gained currency. Historian Bat Ye'or remarked that the Second International Conference in Support of the Arab Peoples, held in Cairo in 1969, was a turning point for Europe. Its chief objective was to "demonstrate hostility to Zionism and solidarity with the Arab population of Palestine." British historian Arnold Toynbee and French Arabist Jacques Berque participated in this event.[67]

It did not take long for the cold winds to blow. At the end of 1968, Bertrand Russell published an open letter to Wladyslaw Gomulka, first secretary of the Polish Communist Party, protesting the outbreak of state-sponsored anti-Semitism in Poland. Russell bluntly likened this new anti-Semitism to that of Nazi Germany and used the term "twisted logic" to describe the method of inverting reality:

The Soviet Union spread several other fictions in its new propaganda war against Israel. One of these was the accusation that Israel was the aggressor in the Six Day War. Probably the very first observer to identify and describe this distorted logic was Prof. Richard Pipes of Harvard University. He called it a "successful technique employed by Moscow to turn the tables on the opponent by confusing the real issues at stake." Pipes explained that, normally, when a state is aggressed and succeeds in defending itself, it sets its terms in the negotiations which follow. Redress indeed may include taking possession of some of the aggressor's territory:

The Covenants of the PLO and Hamas
When discussing the developments of this era, one must include the PLO Covenant in its different versions from 1964 onward. It provided a codified ideological statement which embodied Palestinian myths and claims. At first it did not have much impact, but later, particularly after 1973, it became the PLO credo. It is noteworthy that Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former chief of the Romanian secret service who came over to the West, disclosed that:

Prof. Yehoshafat Harkabi was probably the first to recognize the importance of this document and carefully analyzed its content and language. In the introduction to his publication of the text of the Palestinian Covenant, Harkabi stated in his commentary that the absoluteness of the Palestinian inversion of reality was inherently totalitarian:

The PLO Covenant is central to our understanding of today's Palestinian Authority. The fact that Yasser Arafat refused to amend this document, even though he pretended to do so in the presence of President Clinton on 14 December 1998, is the best indication of his real intentions.[72] Of related interest is the Hamas Charter of 1988, the text of which may be found on the Internet.[73] Küntzel traced its distinctive inversion of reality to Nazi sources:

The importance of these charters has not been sufficiently appreciated. Nevertheless, the myths which they embody have become part of the fictional, paranoiac, and coherent worldview which Palestinian propaganda has imposed on reality.

"Zionism Is Racism"
On 10 November 1975, the Soviet Union and its supporters passed UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, "Zionism is racism," which transformed an anti-Semitic slogan into an internationally accepted "truth."[75] Rabbis Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman explained that "the term ‘racism' was coined in 1936 to rally scientific and political opinion against Nazi doctrines of ‘Aryan superiority' over Jews and other alleged untermenschen."[76] According to the original meaning of the term, then, "racism" denotes one of the great abuses of Nazism. Thus, to equate Zionism with racism represents a serious accusation and inversion of reality.

Although Resolution 3379 was finally rescinded on 16 December 1991, and the Soviet Union passed into history shortly thereafter (26 December 1991), the damage to Israel's cause was considerable. By reducing a complicated issue to a slogan, this libel, which inverted reality, prevented rational discussion of the real problems of the Middle East. In an era of mass media, when the study of the past has gone out of fashion, slogans such as "Zionism is racism" have taken the place of facts. They have penetrated the popular mainstream idiom and the consciousness of uncritical mass audiences.

Israel's enemies made many accusations during the years following Resolution 3379 and for a time they spared Israel another massive assault on its legitimacy. This changed with the UN World Conference against Racism which took place in Durban, South Africa, from 28 August-8 September 2001. Durban became the scene of anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli speeches and agitation of a ferocity unknown since the 1930s.

Some of the main players who joined this effort were the UN high commissioner for human rights and secretary-general of the conference, Mary Robinson;[77] Arafat, Hanan Ashrawi, and Farouk Kaddoumi for the Palestinian Authority; Ahmed Maher and the Arab Lawyers' Union for Egypt; Farouk al-Shara for Syria; and the Iranian delegate. Others included the representatives of the NGOs, the European Union, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Cuba, China, Sudan, Iraq, Chile, Jamaica, Finland, and South Africa.

Squarely in the tradition of "Zionism is racism," the Durban Conference made ample use of the inversion of reality. Indeed, the NGOs called "for the reinstatement of the UN resolution equating Zionism with Racism" and "the complete and total isolation of Israel as an apartheid state." They condemned "Israeli crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide."[78]

This message was essentially the same as those of the 1960s and 1970s cited above. It fit in well with the statement of Komsomolskaya Pravda of 4 October 1967 and the "Declaration on the Equality of Women" of the 1975 World Conference of the International Women's Year.[79] Repetition of the same message, even over decades, remains one of the known characteristics of modern mass propaganda.

The significance of Durban is yet to be appreciated fully, particularly because the malicious intentions of its sponsors-Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, which are supposedly at peace with Israel, and those of Iran-have not been fully acknowledged. Their excesses even surpassed Resolution 3379. At one time, those who advocated reinstatement of the original "Zionism is racism" resolution argued that opposing Zionism was not anti-Semitic. Now, after Durban, all pretenses vanished. Anti-Semitism in the name of Palestinian justice became acceptable. A condition of "convergence," to use Jeffrey Herf's term, had been reached. That is, Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism merged, probably for the first time since the Nazi era.[80]

According to Anne Bayefsky and Rabbis Cooper and Brackman, some of the propositions which found expression at Durban were:

Method, Content, and Intent
Shortly before his death, French statesman Georges Clemenceau met with a friendly representative of the Weimar Republic who raised the question of guilt for the outbreak of World War I. He asked Clemenceau, "What, in your opinion will future historians think of this troublesome and controversial issue?" He replied, "This I don't know. But I know for certain that they will not say Belgium invaded Germany."[82] In his time, "the Tiger" enjoyed a sense of certainty which has since disappeared.

How many people still remember that in June 1967, Israel, in an act of self-defense, foiled the plans of the real aggressors? These were the Soviet Union which encouraged the Arab states to foment a crisis, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt who built an alliance with King Hussein of Jordan and Hafez al-Assad of Syria for the purpose of annihilating the Jewish state. And how many remember that the Egyptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran in May 1967 was an act of war?[83]

It has been the purpose of this study to follow Marc Bloch's recommendation, to consider the lie as a form of evidence, and to the extent possible to identify its origins and the motives of those who propagated it. For more than half a century, inversion of reality has been the essential characteristic of a media war against Israel and has caused considerable harm. Its basic untruth rests in the accusation that Israel is the aggressor.[84] The purpose of this lie is to negate the legitimacy of the Jewish state, to deprive Israel of its sovereign right to defend itself, and to justify future aggression against Israel and violence against Jews in the Diaspora. This propaganda method descends directly from the paranoiac myth of Third Reich, which framed world Jewry as endeavoring to destroy Germany and its people. It is totalitarian in it method and in the "absolute" its telos, or logical consequence. It totally rejects Jewish nationhood and all of Israel's claims. Nor does it leave any room for introspection and compromise. Following the same strategy which the international community applied against South Africa, the long-term strategic objective of Israel's enemies is to destroy the Jewish state incrementally, even if it takes decades. In the context of the media war, their choice of means reveal their ultimate goal.

For its part, Israel has a strategic need to defend itself on the battlefield, but in order to exercise this sovereign right, it must effectively safeguard its legitimacy in the forum of public opinion. Accordingly, Israel must first recognize the type of war in which it is engaged and then formulate an effective strategy based on solid information.[85]

It would be a mistake to overlook the moral dimension of this problem. As noted above, Goebbels asserted that: "propaganda as such is neither good nor evil. Its moral value is determined by the goals it seeks."[86] Because the technique of inversion of reality rests on the violation the truth, it leads to an inversion of morality and moral responsibility. Accordingly, this method is inherently flawed, because one may not use lies in the service of a "Greater Truth" without becoming a liar. In most cases, when one lies in the cause of some "Greater Truth," the so-called "Truth" may well turn out to be another lie. Inversion of truth and reality can never serve a morally positive purpose.

Can a cause possess real virtue if it can be advanced only the use of untruth? Beyond the specific circumstances, inversion of truth constitutes an assault on empirical and rational thought, the foundations of modern culture. If this assault succeeds, there is a danger that language will be debased and society will regress to a condition of confusion and anomie. There is, therefore, an urgent need to expose the lies which have become part of the media war and to discredit those who spread them.

* * *

Notes

* The author wishes to acknowledge the kind help and advice of Prof. Jeffrey Herf, Department of History, University of Maryland; Dr. Matthias Küntzel, faculty member of the Technical College, Hamburg and research fellow at the Vidal Sassoon Institute, Hebrew University; Dr. Daphne Burdman, research associate, Truman Institute, Hebrew University; Mr. Amnon Lord of Jerusalem; Dr. Shaul Baumann, member of the Vidal Sassoon Institute, Hebrew University, and Dr. Kevin Coogan of Long Island City, New York.

[1] E.g., Leon Poliakov, De l'antisionisme a l'antisémitisme (Paris: Calman Levy, 1969) [French]; Institute of Jewish Affairs, Soviet Antisemitic Propaganda: Evidence from Books, Press and Radio (London: Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1978); Robert Wistrich, Hitler's Apocalypse: Jews and the Nazi Legacy (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985); Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986). For a particularly helpful source with regard to Nazi thought and of the extreme right in post-war Europe, see: Kevin Coogan: Dreamer of the Day. Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International (New York: Autonomedia, 1999).

[2] See Yigal Carmon, "Was ist arabischer Antisemitismus?" in Klaus Faber, Julius H. Schoeps, and Sacha Stawski, eds., Neu-alter Judenhass: Antisemitismus, arabisch-israelischer Konflikt und europäische Politik (Berlin: Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, 2006), 209-10 [German]. Carmon wrote:

Despite all these widely known manifestations, anti-Semitism in the Arab world has for a long time been ignored even in Israel. Barring a few exceptions, the overwhelming majority of Near East experts in and out of Israel have avoided this theme. Here, the notion that the Zionist enterprise should have solved the problem of anti-Semitism definitely plays a part. The conclusion that a hatred that the Jews believed to have escaped should also strike them in the Near East is something that many would prefer not to admit. Also, the well-founded fear that the revelation of antisemitic tendencies on the other side would strengthen a political unwillingness in Israel to yield and rather helps those political groups that would turn down any territorial compromise, may have contributed to this denial. (author's translation)
Also, Martin Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001).

[3] Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft, tr. Peter Putnam (New York: Vintage Books, 1953), 93. For the original text, see: Apologie pour l'histoire ou Métier d'historien, annoté par Etienne Bloch (Paris: Armand Colin, 2004), 96.

[4] Philip M. Taylor, "Propaganda from Thucydides to Thatcher: Some Problems, Perspectives and Pitfalls" (1992), http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm?outfit=pmt&requesttimeout=500&folder=25&paper=48.

[5] "Goebbels on Propaganda," Der Kongress zur Nürnberg 1934 (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Frz. Eher Nachf., 1934), 130-41 [German], as cited by Phil Taylor's website, http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm?outfit=pmt&requesttimeout=500&folder=715&paper=2159.

[6] Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006), 270-71.

[7] Ibid., 51-52.

[8] Ibid., 64-65.

[9] Ernst H. Gombrich, Myth and Reality in German Wartime Broadcasts (London: University of London, The Athlone Press, 1970), 14, 23. The author thanks Dr. Matthias Küntzel for this reference.

[10] Ibid., 23.

[11] Pierre-Andre Taguieff, Rising from the Muck, trans. Patrick Camiller (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004), 62.

[12] Ibid., 69.

[13] www.thefirstpost.co.uk/atoz.php.

[14] "The Monstrous Inversion," 6 January 2006, www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1100.

[15] Mark Landler, "German-Polish Ties Plummet to New Low; Post-World War II Treaty Is Challenged," International Herald Tribune, 22 December 2006.

[16] Philip M. Taylor, British Propaganda in the Twentieth Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), 27-29.

[17] Ibid., 23.

[18] Campbell Stuart, Secrets of Crewe House: The Story of a Famous Campaign (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1920), 64.

[19] Taylor, British Propaganda, 56-57.

[20] The Christian Century, as quoted by Robert Jan van Pelt, The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 133-34.

[21] Ibid., 133.

[22] Taylor, British Propaganda, 231.

[23] Carl J. Friedrich, "The Rise of Totalitarian Dictatorship," in Jack J. Roth, ed., World War I: A Turning Point in History (New York: Knopf, 1968), 53-54.

[24] "Hitler on War Propaganda from Mein Kampf, Volume One: A Reckoning,
Chapter VI: ‘War Propaganda,'" Phil Taylor's Website, http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm?outfit=pmt&folder=715&paper=2499. See particularly Eberhard Jäckel, Hitler's World View: A Blueprint for Power, trans. Herbert Arnold (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981); Gombrich, Myth and Reality, 4.

[25] Mein Kampf (James Murphy translation, 134), as cited by Wikipedia sv, "Big Lie," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie. The original German of this passage occurs in Book 1, early in Ch, 10, and is under the rubric #252: "Moralische Entwaffnung des gefährlichen Anklägers."

[26] Friedrich., 57.

[27] E. H. Carr explained that: "The Bolsheviks, when they seized power in Russia, found themselves desperately weak in the ordinary military and economic weapons of international conflict. Their principal strength lay in their influence over opinion in other countries; and it was therefore natural and necessary that they should exploit this weapon to the utmost." E. H. Carr, Propaganda in International Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), 13.

[28] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2nd ed. (New York: Meridian, 1958), 361.

[29] Omer Bartov, Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 106.

[30] Ibid.

[31] Ibid., 140, 141.

[32] Misha Louvish, ed., A People that Dwells Alone; Speeches and Writings of Yaakov Herzog (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975), 21.

[33] "Toynbee visits Egypt," Washington Post, 8 April 1964.

[34] Jennie Lebel, Haj Amin ve-Berlin (Haj Amin and Berlin) (Tel Aviv: by the author, 1996), 210-13 [Hebrew]. See also Sanche de Gramont, "Nasser's Hired Germans," Saturday Evening Post, 13-20 July 1963, 60-64.

[35] Kurt P. Tauber, Beyond Eagle and Swastika; German Nationalism since 1945 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967) II, 1115. The author thanks Kevin Coogan for this reference.

[36] Matthias Küntzel, Jihad und Judenhass: Über den neuen antijuedischen Krieg (Freiburg: ca ira, 2002), 50-51. [German]

[37] Description of Kurt P. Tauber, Beyond Eagle and Swastika, II, 1269.

[38] Bundesarchiv-Findmittelinfo, www.bundesarchiv.de/foxpublic/C22B50860A062212000000001FEE00A6/findmittelinfo.html. See also Robert S. Wistrich, Who's Who in Nazi Germany (London: Routledge, 1995), 153.

[39] Schaul Baumann, The German Movement of Faith and Its Founder Jakob Wilhelm Hauer (1881-1962), doctoral dissertation, Hebrew University, 1998, 241, n. 49. See also Ulrich Nanko, Die Deutsche Glaubensbewegung: Eine historische un soziologische Untersuchung (Marburg: Diagonal, 1993), passim. [German]

[40] Karla Poewe, New Religions and the Nazis (New York and London: Routledge, 2006), 25.

[41] Schaul Baumann, Die Deutsche Glaubensbewegung und ihr Gruender Jakob Wilhelm Hauer (1881-1962), trans. Alma Lessing (Marburg: Diagonal-Verlag, 2005), 171, n. 358. [German]

[42] Emil L. Fackenheim, To Mend the World: Foundations of Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought (Bloomington and Indianopolis: Indiana University Press, 1994), 184.

[43] Ibid., footnote.

[44] See: Jeffrey Herf, "Convergence: The Classic Case, Nazi Germany, Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism during World War II," The Journal of Israeli History 25: 1(March 2006), 66-79. Here, Herf established that it was official policy and "part of a broad strategic effort," as reflected by press directives and the texts in their own right, "to woo the Arabs to the side of the Axis powers" (p. 67). This resulted in "The convergence of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in the Nazi regime..."(p. 72).

[45] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mellah.

[46] "Judentum und Islam als Gegensaetze," Die Judenfrage, Vol. 6, No. 24 (15 December 1942): 278, quoted and paraphrased by Herf, The Jewish Enemy, 181.

[47] Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 101-05. This chapter describes the ex-Mufti's visit to Hitler on 21 November 1941 and contains the protocol of their discussion.

[48] Maurice Pearlman, Mufti of Jerusalem: The Story of Haj Amin el Husseini (London: Gollancz, 1947), 64.

[49] Lebel, Haj Amin, 212.

[50] Les amis de Rassinier.

[51] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_von_Leers.

[52] Bundesarchiv-Findmittelinfo.

[53] Wistrich, Hitler's Apocalypse, 176.

[54] Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites, 207.

[55] Mikhail Heller and Aleksandr M. Nekrich, Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present, trans. Phyllis B. Carlos (New York: Summit Books, 1986), 670:

The Six Day War in 1967 opened a new chapter in the history of Soviet anti-Semitism. After that, the authorities ceased to be ashamed of anti-Semitism, and it acquired full rights. Zionism became the latest approved and authorized object of hatred, just as Nepmen, wreckers, and kulaks had once been. In books and periodicals, published in millions of copies, and in movies and television broadcasts, Zionism was depicted as a most serious threat to the Soviet state. A Permanent Commission was established under the Social Sciences Section of the USSR Academy of Sciences "to coordinate research dedicated to the exposure and criticism of the history, ideology, and practical activity of Zionism."
[56] Stefan T. Possony, Waking Up the Giant (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1974), 473. This book is written in the form of a fictional account, but the author has found that his references are consistently reliable.

[57] Poliakov, De l'antisionisme, 147. According to Martin A, Lee, the title of the pamphlet in question was, "America - A Zionist Colony." Martin A. Lee, The Beast Reawakens (New York: Routledge, 2000), 168. The author has been unable to find the pamphlet.

[58] Die gleiche Sprache: Erst feur Hitler - jetzt feur Ulbricht; Pressekonferenz von Simon Wiesenthal am 6. September 1968 in Wien (Bonn: Deutachland-Berichte, 1968).

[59] See particularly: J. H. Brinks, "Political Anti-Fascism in the German Democratic Republic," Journal of Contemporary History, Vol 32, No. 2 (April 1997): 214. The author thanks Alexander Arndt, Aspen Intern at the JCPA, for this reference.

[60] Charles W. Thayer, The Unquiet Germans (New York: Harper, 1957), 115-116 and 193ff and Richard Pipes, Russia under the Bolshevik Regime (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 228.

[61] William Stevenson, The Bormann Brotherhood (London: Arthur Barker, 1973), 127.

[62] Yuri Ivanov, Ostorozno: sionizm! As cited by William Korey, Russian Antisemitism, Pamyat, and the Demonology of Zionism (Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995), 20, n. 20.

[63] Pravda, 9 March 1969, as cited by Korey, Russian Antisemitism, 21 and n. 21.

[64] Stefan T. Possony pointed out that variants of the conspiracy allegation represent an "overlap" of "rightist" with communist antisemitism. See: "Antisemitism in the Russian Area," Plural Societies, 5:4 (Winter 1974), 59.

[65] For the use of slogans in Soviet propaganda, see Joel Fishman, "The Cold-War Origins of Contemporary Antisemitic Terminology," Jerusalem Viewpoints, No. 517, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2-16 May 2004.

[66] Bernard Lewis, "The Anti-Zionist Resolution," Foreign Affairs, October 1976, 54.

[67] Bat Ye'or, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (Madison/Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005), 44, Of related interest is Ruth R. Wisse, "Israel and the Intellectuals: A Failure of Nerve?" Commentary, May 1988, 19. In this fine essay, Wisse raised the issue of President Charles de Gaulle's "moral inversion of terms" in his accusations against Israel.

[68] Bertrand Russell, "Open Letter to Wladyslaw Gomulka," World Jewry, Vol. 11, No. 6 (November-December 1968), 8, first quoted in Possony, Waking Up the Giant, 473.

[69] Richard Pipes, "Some Operational Principles of Soviet Foreign Policy," in M. Confino and S. Shamir, eds., The U.S.S.R. and the Middle East (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1973), 19, 20. Israeli researchers Gidon Remez and Isabella Ginur, using Russian sources, have found that the Soviet Union in 1967 actually planned a massive invasion of Israel but was caught by surprise. Their results will soon be published.

[70] "From Russia with Terror," interview of Ion Mihai Pacepa by Jamie Glazov, 1 March 2004, www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=12387.

[71] Y. Harkabi, The Palestine Covenant and its Meaning (London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1979), 12, 13.

[72] See Khaled Abu Toameh, "Kaddoumi: PLO Charter Was Never Changed," Jerusalem Post, 23 April 2004.

[73] www.palestinecenter.org/cpap/documents/charter.html.

[74] Ibid., as quoted by Matthias Küntzel, "Islamic Antisemitism and Its Nazi Roots," Antisemitism International ([SICSA] 2004): 47.

[75] Alex Grobman, Nations United (Green Forest, AR: Balfour Books, 2006), 37-48. See also Yohanan Manor, To Right a Wrong: The Revocation of the UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 Defaming Zionism (New York: Shengold, 1996).

[76] Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman, "Through a Glass, Darkly: Durban and September 11th," Midstream, November 2001, 2.

[77] For Mary Robinson's consistently partisan role, see particularly Tom Lantos, "The Durban Debacle: An Insider's View of the UN World Conference against Racism" Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2002) and reprinted by the Institute of the World Jewish Congress (Jerusalem, 2002).

[78] Anne Bayefsky, "The UN World Conference against Racism: A Racist Anti-Racism Conference," ASIL Proceedings (2002): 67.

[79] Lewis, "Anti-Zionist Resolution," 54.

[80] "Convergence: The Classic Case, Nazi Germany, Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism during World War II."

[81] Bayefsky, "UN World Conference," 65, 74; Cooper and Brackman, "Through a Glass," 2.

[82] Hannah Arendt, "Truth and Politics," in Between Past and Future (New York: Viking Press, 1954), 239.

[83] See: Isabella Ginor/Gideon Remez, Foxbats over Dimona. The Sovjets' Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day-War (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2007). Their important study greatly improves our understanding of the strategic goals of the Soviet Union and its responsibility in causing the outbreak of the Six-Day War, which they thought would result in a decisive victory for them.

[84] More recently related the accusation has become current that Muslims are the victims of prejudice and "Islamophobia."

[85] Carl von Clausewitz wrote that war is an instrument of policy and that the statesman and commander must determine the kind of war on which they are embarking. On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), Book I, Chapter 1, item 27, 88-89.

[86] "Goebbels on Propaganda."

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