A Little Lying Brings A Lot of Success

Flaubert & Marcuse have pointed out that perception becomes reality. The Arabs' battlefield successes have largely occurred on the disinformation front, relying as they do on this principle. We Israel supporters suffer a serious handicap in being forced to rely on truth, which is so highly circumscribed and often unglamorous. The fabricated Arab narrative is extremely elastic, tailored to fit the emotions and viewpoints of the population being addressed. It gets shaped to pre-existing enthusiasms and unconscious preconceptions and thus woos and wins over the populations of the world. We badly need substantial improvement in our efforts to inject reality into the debate which we are losing just for this reason.