Lies about Israel help no one.

They do not foster peace, do not promote justice, and do not advance the causes of human rights and liberation. Instead, they hinder constructive dialogue and resolution, harming all parties involved.

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Last week, the latest lie to hit the ever-growing Israeli target came from French President Emmanuel Macron who claimed that Israel “was created by a decision of the United Nations.”

The UN rightly recognized the Jewish People’s right to a state, but it certainly did not create it. We Jews have been connected to the Land of Israel for 3,500 years, whereas the UN was founded in 1945, making it less than 80 years old.

And yet, this was but one of the countless lies propagated about Israel, Israelis, and even Jews. You know the many others by now, and these are just a few:

• Israel is committing genocide, war crimes, and a “Holocaust” in Gaza.

• Israel collectively punishes and ethnically cleanses the Palestinians.

• Israel has a blockade on Gaza.

• Israel is an apartheid state.

• Israel deliberately targets civilians.

• Israel is built on stolen land.

• Israel is a White colonial imperialist entity.

• Zionism is racism.

• Antisemitism started because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

• The Zionist lobby controls Western governments.

• Jews are not indigenous to the Land of Israel (later renamed “Palestine” by the Romans).

• Zionism — an oppressive, violent ideology similar to Nazism or the KKK — uses Jewish people as a shield against opponents.

• Israel was created by purposefully displacing Palestinians, who have a “right of return” as a result.

• Israel violates international law by building settlements in the West Bank.

• Israel controls the Palestinian Authority.

• Israel invented Hamas.

• Israel is one of the main causes of regional instability in the Middle East.

At best, some of these accusations are completely uncontextualized, cherry-picked half-truths. At worst, they are blatant lies designed to delegitimize the Jewish state as part of a larger, flagrantly antisemitic strategy.

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Lies about Israel manifest in many forms, from distorted historical narratives to exaggerated or fabricated accounts of contemporary events. These falsehoods can be subtle, like misrepresenting the timeline of events, and blatant, such as the denial of historical facts.

Within this Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran conflict, the lies have been more rampant than dance routines on TikTok. We can start with the Gaza casualty toll, which Hamas dubiously claims is 41,000-plus after a year of war — a number widely reported by mainstream media outlets, often without attribution to the terror group. According to a report two weeks ago by highly respected Israeli journalist Ohad Hemo, who cited Hamas sources, some 80 percent of casualties in Gaza are believed to be Hamas terrorists and their families, used as human shields.

Then there are those who revel in twisting the truth to fit their nefarious agendas. For example, a delegation of quasi-“progressive” rabbis from the U.S. and Israel who tried to march with flour into the northern Gaza Strip and then claimed that “Israel blocked and arrested us.”¹ Uh, no sh*t Sherlock — you cannot just stroll into a warzone unpermitted and expect the authorities to allow you in. Had these folks entered Gaza unrestrained, they would have been kidnapped or killed by Palestinian terrorists, and Israel would have yet another mess to clean up.

This is also why the IDF has not permitted foreign journalists into Gaza; Israel is ultimately responsible for them, and those of us who have been paying attention know all too well that Palestinian terrorist groups would have no qualms about killing and kidnapping them to undermine Israel’s international image (a key component of the Palestinians’ “war on information”).

Then there are the mainstream media outlets — The New York Times, BBC, and CNN just to name a few — which regularly lie about Israel (and other topics) to boost their revenues. These outlets adopted this trick long ago, with no relation to Israel, but lies about the Jewish state nevertheless make them an absurd amount of money.

First, you should know that the hardest lies to detect from a media outlet are omissions. Second, let’s make one thing perfectly clear: There is no such thing as “unbiased” journalism. Just because a piece of content is not openly favoring the Left or Right, or one political party or another, does not make it a direct conduit to truth.

A news story is always a radical oversimplification of whatever event is being reported on. They are not giving us anywhere near everything that was said and done. We are receiving a handful of snippets, of which this information is wrapped up in the biases of the journalist, the biases of the editor, and the biases of the publication in how they select what to feature — as well as where and how to feature it — and what to omit.

For example, CNN did a ridiculous exposé to mark one year since October 7th, titled “Flattened in a year: How Israeli bombardment reduced most of Gaza to rubble.” First of all, Israeli bombardment has not reduced most of Gaza to rubble. An IDF report found destruction caused to Gazan infrastructure by the ongoing war points to 16 percent being damaged beyond repair in the war, according to a report released in June by the reputable Israeli news site Ynet.

Secondly, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad repeatedly destroy Gazan infrastructure by misfiring rockets, hiding explosives, and attacking both civilian Palestinians and IDF soldiers.

What’s more, the entire CNN piece both-sides Israel (a longtime democracy) and Hamas (a jihadist terrorist organization) by making claims like, “Israel has for years said Hamas fighters use mosques, hospitals and other civilian buildings to hide from Israeli attacks and launch their own. Hamas has repeatedly denied the claims.” And: “A UN independent human rights probe in June accused both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Israel has not just “said for years” that Hamas uses civilian infrastructure to hide its assets and operatives; Israelis have provided an overwhelming amount of audio-visual evidence to support these claims. And the UN is so obviously not “independent.” My goodness, the lies are pungent.

Screenshot of a CNN exposé published on October 8th, 2024

Then there are the politicians who use anti-Israel libels to superficially benefit themselves within their jurisdiction’s local politics. Like Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega announcing plans last week to break off relations with Israel over the war in Gaza, calling the Israeli government “fascist and genocidal.” Mind you, Israel has no ambassador in Nicaragua, and the Nicaraguan and Israeli governments never had any relations to begin with.

There are even local businesses — far, far away from the Middle East — getting in on the Israel lies action. One café put a sign outside of their establishment that said: “We only serve those who believe in peace for all. Free Palestine. Hands off Lebanon. Real food. Real values.”

Of course, the entire histories of both the Palestinians and Hezbollah overwhelmingly contradict “peace for all” and “real values.”

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In the complex and deeply rooted Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and on the imperfect path toward self-determination that modernity’s Jews began taking beginning in the 1800s, facts frequently become casualties and misinformation perpetuates a cycle of mistrust, hatred, and violence.

Lies about Israel — whether they stem from political agendas, ignorance, incompetence, or deliberate deceit — ultimately help no one. They do not foster peace, do not promote justice, and do not advance the causes of human rights and liberation. Instead, they hinder constructive dialogue and resolution, harming all parties involved.

The consequences of spreading lies about Israel are far-reaching and detrimental. On an international level, misinformation fuels antisemitism and delegitimizes Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign state. It incites hostility and violence, contributing to the radicalization of individuals and groups who may resort to terroristic actions.

In the Middle East, countries like Iran and Qatar leverage anti-Israel sentiments to rally their bigoted bases and distract from these regimes’ totalitarian, oppressive reign (which ultimately destabilizes the Middle East).

Within Israel and the Palestinian Territories, lies exacerbate the conflict and deepen divisions. They undermine trust and make it more difficult for moderate voices on both sides to advocate for any type of path toward reconciliation. When false narratives are internalized by young generations, they grow up with a skewed understanding of the conflict, reducing the chances for future cooperation and coexistence.

And truthfully, lies about Israel hurt the Palestinians far more than they hurt Israel. For example, SodaStream was an enterprise beloved by Palestinians and Israelis alike. One of its manufacturing plants was located in the West Bank, owned by an Israeli but employing hundreds of Palestinians who were paid very well — precisely the same as their Jewish coworkers, and around three times as much as their family members who were working for the Palestinian Authority.

The anti-Israel (really, antisemitic) BDS movement managed to shut down these relations. Hundreds of Palestinians lost an excellent salary and very high job satisfaction as a result. On the other hand, the BDS movement did not hurt SodaStream in the least. The company was acquired by PepsiCo for $3 billion, remains headquartered in Israel, and still has 13 production plants — just not in the West Bank anymore.

On a very literal level, the only people hurt by this BDS “victory” were Palestinians. This is what emanates from relentlessly screaming and whining about lies regarding Israel.

For any genuine progress towards peace, the foundation must be built on shared truths. Both Zionists and Palestinians have their own narratives, which is fine — but only to the extent that it serves a positive outcome. Much of the Palestinian narrative is not only based on lies which were massaged by nefarious actors such as the Soviets and more recently the Islamist Iranian regime; their narrative is centered around the destruction of another country (Israel) rather than the creation of their own.

This is why, even if Palestinians succeeded in destroying the Jewish state and achieving their so-called “right of return,” civil war between rival Palestinian factions wanting to rule a Palestinian state is probable, if not inevitable. This is how Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of one of Hamas’ founders, put it:

“There is no ‘Palestinians.’ There are tribes — the tribe of Hamas, the tribe of Islamic Jihad, the tribe of Khalil, the tribe of Nablus — and each one has different interests. And all of them are conflicted. If they did not have Israel as the common enemy, they would kill each other. This is the reality of what is so-called ‘Palestine.’”²

At the same time, we can all acknowledge the legitimate historical and emotional connections of both Israelis and Palestinians to the land. But in doing so, we must be intellectually honest: The roughly 5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are not refugees. Of the 700,000 or so Palestinians who were made refugees following Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, only about 30,000 of them remain alive. These 30,000 are undoubtedly refugees and should be compensated as such.

The other 4.97 million are just like the rest of us: mostly descendants of people who were refugees once upon a time. According to the Palestinians’ most outspoken cheerleaders, the United Nations, at least 100 million people around the world have fled war, persecution, and instability in their home countries for uncertain futures in others, yet none of these non-Palestinian refugees have an “inalienable right” to return to wherever their parents and grandparents came from just because they said so.

In other words, the Palestinians’ claims of forever-refugee status for all of their descendants is something no other refugee group in the world is afforded. This gross manipulation of reality must end if the Palestinians are to ever have any semblance of a bright future.

Hence, the path toward peace, calm, and coexistence requires a commitment to honest dialogue, where each side’s experiences are heard and respected. International actors — including the media, academics, humanitarian organizations, and policymakers — have a responsibility to promote accurate and balanced information.

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1. “We Tried to Bring Food Into Gaza—but Israel Blocked and Arrested Us.” The Nation.

2. “Dr. Phil Primetime.” Merit Street Media.