Lying to our faces

It'll backfire -- on those who think they’re defended by them

I attended the big Palestinian march in D.C. in November 2023, and wrote about it afterwards:

I look at the present struggle as an opportunity to change the terms of our alliance so that we’re not just automatically blessing the immiseration of Israel’s subject class every time we drop off some foreign aid.

And I think by calling every ambulance, refugee camp, and journalist they bomb “Hamas” and calling anyone who doubts it an antisemite, the Netanyahoos may be hastening that transformation.

That Brookings link, “Is the Israel-Gaza war changing US public attitudes?” came just a month after the Hamas attacks on Israel that set this whole thing off. In the year and a half since, Americans have seen plenty of stories about Israel bombing Gaza schools, hospitals, and other public places, willfully slaughtering and starving non-combatants and gleefully celebrating the carnage — not so much because the war correspondents’ coverage has been great (though it often has been, which is why Israel goes out of its way to slaughter the reporters) as because Israel hasn’t taken pains to hide it.

Oh, they lie about it. Netanyahu makes a habit of telling the press the IDF is playing by the book when the evidence that he’s full of shit is incontrovertible. But neither Netanyahu nor his flunkies expect you to believe those lies.

They lie as a sort of sick inside joke, daring the world to call them out — as indeed it has — and because the United States government requires their lies as a condition of support for their genocide. It’s little enough to ask and to give, and so obviously little that I wouldn’t be surprised if, sometime under the reign of Tubby, they one day dispose of the fiction altogether. (For the time being, Trump still does occasional shows of disapproval with Netanyahu, employing the kayfabe skills he learned in the world of professional wrestling.)

Anyway, the bullshit has taken its toll on Americans’ faith in our “only ally in the Middle East” — from a new Quinnipiac poll:

Six in 10 voters (60 percent) oppose the United States sending more military aid to Israel for their efforts in the war with Hamas, while 32 percent support it…

Voters were asked whether their sympathies lie more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians based on what they know about the situation in the Middle East. Thirty-seven percent of voters say the Palestinians, while 36 percent say the Israelis, and 27 percent did not offer an opinion.

This is an all-time high for the Palestinians and an all-time low for the Israelis since the Quinnipiac University Poll began asking this question of registered voters in December 2001.

It’s only going to get worse.

I note Ken Pope’s comment on BlueSky: “Wow this is going to be a whole lot of people to be sued or jailed or expelled.” Because the wild thing about support for Israel’s genocidal rampage is, it’s not just the U.S. government — it’s also a lot of other American elites, like the colleges that were expelling students for having a morally defensible objection to U.S.-Israel policy even before Tubby decided hey, let’s say these schools are “antisemitic” because someone wore a keffiyeh and shake ‘em down for millions. (That some of his victims are the very schools that expelled protesters is cold comfort, but comfort nonetheless.)

And, as with most atrocities these days, the New York Times is lending a hand. Adam Johnson has a terrific story at In These Times, the headline for which (unlike many headlines at THE Times), is unequivocal: “Why Does the New York Times Keep Ignoring Polls Showing Mamdani Leading with Jewish Voters?” Sample:

The Times’ response to these polls? To simply ignore them. Indeed, when the outlet finally got around to reporting on Mamdani’s relationship with Jewish New Yorkers earlier this month (“Many Jewish Voters Back Mamdani. And Many Agree With Him on Gaza”, by Liam Stack 8/4/25), they not only failed to mention the Zenith Research and GQR polls, but made the rather strange claim that finding out who Jewish New Yorkers prefer for mayor was apparently somehow ontologically unknowable.

“It is difficult to determine how many Jewish voters supported Mr. Mamdani because even in New York, the Jewish population is too small to be measured with precision by most polls,” the article states.

The estimated Jewish population of New York City is almost one million people — making it greater than the populations of five U.S. states…

Plenty more where that came from.

Like Netanyahu’s bullshit, that of Columbia, the Times, and other such like is not meant to convince anybody who has been paying attention. It is power’s bold show of indifference and invulnerability to the truth.

We see it a lot in Tubby’s kakistocracy, which also has a lot of enablers outside the inner circle. They lie about defending democracy, boosting the economy, supporting free speech — about everything Americans take seriously, they say, oh, yeah, we’re doing that, the best it’s ever been done, many people are saying, 1500%.

Israel is a slightly different story, though. We object to lies about democracy because it’s our birthright, and to lies about the economy because, alas, we also consider middle-class comfort our birthright, with which paying eight bucks a pound for hamburger is incompatible.

But our attachment to Israel, such as it is, is based on deeper historical memory than most Americans currently possess, and a vision of toleration in the face of ancient prejudice that the current regime not only doesn’t share but is actively trying to destroy. Tubby’s white racist followers love it when he shits on other minorities, but Jewish Americans are a bridge too far at present; besides, yelling “antisemitism” gets him presents, why should he louse that up?

It’s all instrumental to him; when he says Chuck Schumer is “not Jewish anymore” because he opposes his administration, and is in fact “Palestinian,” he’s making it obvious. The thing is, though, when you treat racism as a tool rather than as anathema, you can swing it both ways. One day, when those poll numbers get even worse for Israel, Trump may decide that the Holocaust is as overblown as his flunkies now say slavery was. Then he may start dropping comments and innuendo about Jews like what he’s dropped about blacks, Latinos and others. The same people who were outraged about his former bigotries will be outraged about this — and it will mean just as little.

Right now the lies seems to be working for him, and them, as intended. But unlike truth-tellers, liars have no place of principle on which to plant a foot, and you’d be a fool to rely on them holding a position for you.