The Subtle Art of Gaza-Lighting

The only "famine" in Gaza has been suffered by Israeli hostages held captive for 15 months in unimaginable conditions.

The primary injustice in Palestine is the concept of “Palestine” itself. (photo: Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona/Unsplash)

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A week into the current Israel-Hamas war, as Israel was starting to respond to Hamas’ October 7th terror attacks, someone replied to one of my Instagram posts about Hamas killing and kidnapping dozens of Israeli children.

“I mean, no one wants dead Palestinian children either,” he said.

At first I didn’t know how to reply — how does one morally defend the killing of children of any group? — but then I realized that there was something much deeper here. Something bizarrely deceptive. It wasn’t just a conversation about innocent children, to whoever they were born and wherever they may be living.

It was an attempt at psychological manipulation whereby a perpetrator commits atrocities and then uses the victim’s response to distort or reimagine the perpetrator’s actions. In other words: gaslighting. Or, as we’ve been facetiously saying since the start of this war: “Gaza-lighting.”

Over the weekend, three Israeli hostages were released in a scene that seemed like a sudden flashback to the Holocaust. The three hostages, in captivity for 15 months appeared exhausted and dangerously underweight, with protruding bones, sunken faces, and sharply defined clavicles and Adam’s apples — clear signs of severe malnutrition and muscle wasting.

And yet, all we’ve been hearing from Gaza during the last 15 months is about “catastrophic famine.” According to Hamas and its Western enablers, Gaza has been teetering on the brink of starvation, with images of suffering children plastered across social media.

But, somehow, every released hostage looks like a skeleton while their captors appear well-fed. If Gaza is truly experiencing mass starvation, how is it that Hamas fighters still have the strength to carry RPGs, fire rockets, and terrorize civilians?

The supposed “starvation” of Gaza follows this same well-worn script: A claim is made, the media amplifies it without question, and when the truth inevitably emerges, the world has already moved on to the next manufactured outrage.

Hence, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a masterclass in narrative warfare. While all sides in any conflict engage in propaganda, there is something particularly brazen about the sheer volume and audacity of Palestinian falsehoods. From historical fabrications to outright conspiracy theories, their approach to reality is less about facts and more about fiction with conviction.

But why? Why does Palestinian leadership — and, by extension, a large portion of its activist base — engage in such a relentless campaign of deception?

The answer lies in a combination of political necessity, cultural reinforcement, and a world eager to believe their fairy tales.

Let’s start with the simplest explanation: Palestinian leaders lie because the truth is inconvenient. A people that has rejected every peace offer, cheered terror attacks, and consistently voted for genocidal theocrats doesn’t make for the most sympathetic underdog story.

So history gets rewritten. The Palestinians become the indigenous “Canaanites” (despite arriving over a millennium after the Jews); their forced displacement in 1948 becomes a “Nakba” (ignoring their leadership’s rejection of partition and insistence on war); and their continual rejections of peace deals are, somehow, Israel’s fault.

Mahmoud Abbas, the supposed “moderate” leader of the Palestinian Authority, has built an entire career on this kind of historical revisionism. In his doctoral thesis (which is essentially Holocaust denial dressed up as academia), he argued that Zionist leaders conspired with the Nazis to create Israel.

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 is falsely portrayed as an oppressive, violent ideology similar to Nazism or the KKK, using 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 cherry-picked half-truths taken out of context. At worst, they are blatant lies designed to delegitimize the Jewish state as part of a larger, flagrantly antisemitic strategy.

Of course, when you live in a political structure where elections are a myth and accountability is nonexistent, why wouldn’t you rewrite history to suit your needs?

Lying is not just a political necessity; it has become a cultural norm in Palestinian discourse. This isn’t to say every individual Palestinian is dishonest, but in Palestinian media, education, and political rhetoric, truth is secondary to “resistance.” The Palestinian press — whether controlled by the Palestinian Authority or Hamas — doesn’t function as a fact-finding institution, but as a propaganda machine designed to inflame and mislead.

Take, for instance, the infamous “Pallywood” phenomenon. Over the years, Palestinian media has been caught staging funerals (where the “dead” miraculously get up and walk away when the cameras stop rolling), exaggerating casualty figures, and even using footage from entirely different conflicts to depict supposed Israeli atrocities.

The aim is always the same: evoke maximum Western sympathy while minimizing inconvenient realities — such as Hamas using hospitals as command centers or launching rockets from schoolyards.

And let’s not forget the towering absurdities: the claim that Israel uses “Zionist sharks” to attack Egyptian tourists, or that Jewish people poison wells — a classic blood libel repackaged for modern audiences.

Of course, lies only work if people believe them. And for that, we can thank the Western intelligentsia, which has been more than willing to suspend critical thinking when it comes to Palestinian narratives.

Academia, the media, and international organizations treat Palestinian claims with a credulity they would never afford anyone else. UNRWA, the UN agency that exists solely to perpetuate Palestinian statelessness, actively inflates refugee numbers while helping to radicalize generations of Palestinian children.

Journalists who would normally fact-check political claims instead take Palestinian accusations at face value — whether it’s the supposed “genocide” in Gaza (despite a population boom over the decades) or the claim that the IDF deliberately targets civilians (ignoring that Hamas literally hides behind them).

Even “progressive” Jews, eager to be on the “right side of history,” have contributed to the problem. Desperate for acceptance among the elite, some have adopted a masochistic worldview where Israel is always the aggressor, and Palestinian grievances are always justified.

The result?

An endless loop of bad-faith activism that rewards dishonesty.

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.

Unfortunately, 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.

Part of the Palestinians’ persistent habit of lying lies in their so-called honor (“sharaf” in Islam) and dignity (“karama”), central ingredients in Arab society and particularly in Islamic ones. And yet the Palestinians continue to deny themselves a self-sovereign state because they will not surrender to their honor and dignity.

The other part of their perpetual lying has to do with the hatred that Palestinians feel toward Israel and Jews, shaped and driven by three basic sentiments — fear, jealousy, and anger — all of which simultaneously fly in several contradictory directions.

The Palestinians fear all that is Jewish steadfastness, Israeli optimism, democracy, and Israeli national symbols, including a language (Hebrew) which was restored after centuries of being dormant. In sum, fear generates hatred, and a people that is always afraid cannot be free.

The Palestinians are also angry, always angry at Israel for refusing to give up or give in, for not going away, far away. They have the world on their side, with the United Nations in their pocket, Europe behind it, and Arab regimes propping up Palestinian leaders. But the Palestinians still refuse to cede their exponentially expiring grievances with Israel.

The Palestinians are also envious of Israeli power and pride, marked by their strong beliefs and readiness to sacrifice, which presumably reminds today’s Palestinians of early Zionists who seized the opportunity to restore a Jewish country in our indigenous homeland.

Our attachment to the land is an attachment that Palestinians have had to manufacture, long resorting to theology and mythology to justify their lofty demands here, whereas the Jews need no such justification. We belong so effortlessly, so conveniently, so naturally — and they hate Jews for being so integral to the history, geography, and nature of the landscape that the Palestinians try to claim as their own.

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