But for some reason this solution did not prevail. Instead, a different narrative is being pushed. The jihadists are supposedly frustrated because the Israelis are hurting them. It doesn’t sound entirely plausible – I wouldn’t burn Jewish children alive even if I were very frustrated. Nor any other children. And I don’t know anyone who feels otherwise. That’s why it’s so important to turn off rational thought and go to the plane of pure emotion with this interpretation. Exactly as the war propaganda promoting the war in Ukraine did. The procedure is to choose words that will create a strong emotional wave. The reader’s or listener’s brain is flooded with the relevant chemicals, so that they don’t really care about the “technical details”. After a while it becomes addicted, so it needs to hear more and more information about Israel’s alleged oppression of jihadists (the word “jihadist” is, of course, forbidden). If he didn’t get that information, he would feel bad. If that version turned out to be false, he would feel bad.
The reader’s or listener’s brain is flooded with the relevant chemicals, so that they don’t really care about the “technical details”.
It’s actually a situation very similar to the one where you have a brutal murder of a child, you have a suspect, minds flooded with emotion demanding the harshest punishment… and then some unscrupulous cynic argues that maybe it’s not the real perpetrator. What? He’s standing up for the killer! He’s the same beast himself! Emotions run high, but nothing else will do.
So, for example, we read about “occupied territory”. In fact, Israel or anyone else does not administer Gaza, has no occupation troops there or anything like that. But who cares. The word “occupation” is uttered, the brain experiences the same emotions that the massacre of the Czech people during the German occupation evokes. That’s all we need to know.
Or we read that ‘Gaza is a concentration camp’, which triggers emotions in our minds associated with the gas chambers and the photos of Auschwitz. In fact, there are no gas chambers in Gaza and people are not even being held there by force. What is happening is that Israel is carefully considering who it allows into its territory. If the people of Gaza want to go elsewhere, Israel does not prevent them from doing so. After all, even the security restrictions on entering Israel are rather weak, given how often Gazan Arabs commit crimes there.
Or we read about ‘these people defending their land’. Again, a wave of emotion and the idea of Indians being driven from their land. But no one is driving the Arabs out of Gaza. Their land is not being taken from them. That might be true in the West Bank, where Jewish settlements have sprung up, but certainly not in Gaza.
Again, a wave of emotion and the idea of Indians being driven from their land. But no one is driving the Arabs out of Gaza. Their land is not being taken from them…
Or talk about how “Jewish terrorist squads drove out the ancestors of today’s Palestinians”. Again, strong emotions. Except that in fact those “terror squads” were formed after a wave of pogroms in which tens of thousands of Jews were killed. And why the pogroms? This is something that cannot be understood without knowing Muhammad’s teachings.
For those who want to understand the truth, I recommend looking at, for example, Spencer’s History of Jihad from Muhammad to ISIS. But it won’t bring such nice emotions as watching conspiracy videos about the “Gaza concentration camp”.