Propaganda

In the summer of 1932, as the country was enmeshed in the third full year of the Great Depression, A "Bonus Expeditionary Force" of 20,000 veterans descended upon Washington DC to demand a war bonus from Congress. Their plan was to squat in a "Hooverville" until their demands were met. Neither Congress, nor President Hoover (nor later, President Roosevelt) was in favor of paying the bonus, and the President called out the Army to disperse the camp. General Douglas MacArthur, with then Majors George S. Patton and Dwight D. Eisenhower, oversaw the removal.

It was an ugly scene, to be sure. Photographs and film recordings captured the rather rough treatment the vets received. But film and photos of course can be used to give a less than full or distorted account of events. and the images of the forced removal combined with carefully crafted and blatantly false propaganda by left leaning writers and newspapermen, made the Army look like brutes and put the final nail in the coffin of any hope Hoover had of reelection.

As Paul Johnson points out, "Communists...organized the subsequent propaganda with great skill. There were tales of cavalry charges, of the use of tanks and poison gas, of a little boy being bayoneted while trying to save his pet rabbit, and of tents and shelters being set on fire with...women and children still inside." When I read that, I cannot help but feel a great sense of relief that MacArthur, Patton and Eisenhower's careers survived this bundle of lies so that they could go on to be the heroes of WWII that they undoubtedly were.

But I am also struck by how similar this is to the shameless lies that the enemies of Israel spout incessantly about that nation's supposed brutality. For years, we've heard stories of how Israeli soldiers bulldoze Palestinian homes while women and children are trapped inside, gun innocents down in the street, and the like. Osama bin Laden used one of the most famous pieces of anti-Israel propaganda in his training videos: the image of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura being "gunned down" as his father tries to protect him. This, like all anti-Israel propaganda that I have personally seen, is absolutely untrue. But images are very convincing to a general public too lazy to do a little investigating.

Israel notifies Palestinian civilians who would otherwise be in harms way before engaging in military actions--even though this gives terrorists advanced warning. Israeli soldiers use rubber bullets, even though they don't have to. Israel extends the option of full citizenship to any Palestinian, including rights and benefits such as education and health care. Just this week, in a classic example of Israeli forbearance, they temporarily halted air strikes in Gaza so that relief workers could get in and out. They do not target civilians, they do not use bombs, suicide or otherwise, on non military targets. Absolutely none of the above can be said of their enemies.

And yet the world is ready to believe just about anything that Osama Bin Laden or anyone else has to say about Israeli brutality. Why?

Is it because anti-semitism never goes out of fashion?

It is a very good thing for the world that the lies told about men like MacArthur, Eisenhower and Patton were not sufficiently damaging to stop them from saving western civilization. It's a pity that so many throughout the free world are willing to believe the lies told about a great nation and a wonderful friend of freedom like Israel. It was Israel, not the United States or any other nation, that stopped Saddam Hussein from getting a nuclear weapon. Most likely, it will be Israel, and not the US or anyone else, from stopping Iran when they are on the verge of developing their own nuclear arsenal. And it is Israel, more than we will ever know, that has hunted down and killed the terrorists who would just as happily murder your children or mine as target Israelis.

I'm not so much a romantic to expect that the leaders of the free world are going to ever publicly acknowledge the debt they owe to Israel, or ever apologize for swallowing the lies told by its enemies. However, it would be nice if once in a while, they just considered the source when they read of some alleged Israeli atrocity.