If one had to choose a single word that characterizes the prism through which the world sees Israel and internalizes its feelings about us these days, that word would be “canard.” The prism is the vehicle that makes it possible for the viewer to see the truth bent to one’s own liking, while the canard provides the basis that attempts to propagate the lie.
The dictionary states that a canard primarily refers to an unfounded rumor, a false story, or a deliberate hoax. The word is derived from the French canard (meaning “duck”), tracing back to the old French expression “vendre un canard à moitié” (“to half-sell a duck”), meaning to trick or cheat someone.
Of course, some would say that given France’s frequent negativism about Israel, it should not be surprising that the word that describes the world’s preference for internalizing lies about Israel has its source in French.
Examples abound as to how this plays out in real life.
Last week, in a debate between US senatorial candidates in Michigan, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed was asked multiple times by a debate moderator which country he considers a bigger threat to the US: Iran or Israel? Each time, he parried.
“That’s a ridiculous hypothetical because here’s what’s happening right now: Our ostensible ally in Israel has lobbied us to go to war with Iran. I don’t consider an ally a country that takes us to wars we don’t need to fight, and I don’t want to be fighting wars we don’t need to fight,” he said, describing both as “kind of dangerous.”
The canard that Israel is responsible for America’s decision to attack Iran has surfaced so often since the start of the war on February 28 that it is regularly stated as fact. It reminds one of the words commonly attributed to Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister of Nazi Germany, though there is no evidence he ever actually said or wrote those exact words.
'Illusion of truth effect'
While the formulation is a paraphrase rather than a direct historical citation, psychologists study this concept as the “illusion of truth effect,” which shows that people are more likely to believe information is true simply because they have heard it before.
The fact is that Israel has urged every American president for the last 40-plus years to take the Iranian nuclear threat seriously and do something about it. No US president prior to the current one has ever chosen to authorize military action against Iran to neutralize their nuclear capability.
However, it was the current US president who chose to invite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House briefing room to hear his pitch, but it was US President Donald Trump who decided to launch military action against Iran.
Regardless of how it turns out, it is a canard to blame Israel for taking the US to war against Iran, even if the Netanyahu government was in favor of such action.
However, a canard can be manipulated for other purposes as well. Last week, a decision was made by the Nobel Prize Committee to award this year’s peace prize to South African Jurist Navanethem “Navi” Pillay. Among other anti-Israel positions in her history, she is famous for believing the canard that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.
While she has done worthwhile work in helping advance a more comprehensive international legal order and, as the Committee noted, “played a central role in ensuring that issues such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are brought to justice,” her activities regarding the supposed genocide by Israel in Gaza dramatically tarnish her reputation.
Elisha Wiesel, in an op-ed in The Free Press, wrote: “My father, Elie Wiesel, received the Nobel Peace Prize for ensuring the Holocaust wouldn’t be forgotten. By honoring Navi Pillay, who accused Israel of genocide, the committee has betrayed his legacy.”
Yet the canard is that Israel, which vaccinated over one million residents of Gaza against polio, enabled millions of kilograms of food to enter the strip during the war (most of which was stolen by Hamas and then resold at inflated prices), put its own troops at risk by having them enter buildings to ensure only combatants were attacked, not civilians, and notified the Gazan population of every significant military operation to come with instructions for moving to safer zones, is somehow guilty of genocide.
A truthful look at the facts will show that it is actually Hamas that was engaged in genocide against Israel given their attack on October 7, intent on killing as many Jews as possible. This, in keeping with their original 1988 founding charter explicitly calling for the killing of Jews, which draws on religious texts to justify violence against Jewish people globally.
While a revised document released in 2017 removed this specific language, Hamas did not formally revoke or repudiate the original charter. Organizations like Genocide Watch and various genocide scholars have stated that Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attacks against Israeli civilians and statements by its leadership reflected genocidal intent and acts.
Yet the canard that Israel is guilty of genocide continues, with large portions of the world’s diplomatic corps agreeing with or remaining silent about this blatant misstatement of facts.
Former US president John F Kennedy said: “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.”
When it comes to Israel, the world too easily accepts the myth rather than seek the truth. Our job, the job for all of us, is to shatter the prism that enables the myths to fester and do so at every opportunity. That is our obligation as a community.
The writer, a 42-year resident of Jerusalem, is a former national president of the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel, a past chairperson of the board of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, and a Board Member of the Israel-America Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM).