Speaking the Big Lie

Again this week, I planned a column dealing with one of the other hot topics that challenge our world, but events in the Middle East remain on the front burner, pushing everything else back.

There are many other issues – China continues to offer aid and military assistance to places like Pakistan, North Korea and Syria. A report released this week says that the three largest global arms merchants are the same ones who lament the peace meltdown and are competing to see who can fix the problem: the United States, Russia and France.

Isn’t it interesting that those three talk loudest of peace but make the most profit from the prospect of war. And, most interesting of all, have all had a kick at the can in the efforts to bring peace to the region. In each case, they left the negotiating table with the prospect of war more prevalent than it was when they sat down. With each failure comes a new sales opportunity.

Every time Arafat balks at a solution, Washington gets a new order for weapons from Egypt. Moscow finds a market in Lebanon, through a complicated Tehran-Damascus route, during which, the best and most effective weapons ‘fall off the trucks’ before they leave Syrian territory.

And any of the potential combatants in the region that can’t get what they want from Moscow or Washington need only put in a call to Paris for the latest machinery of death. And so it goes.

But of all the machinations, sleight of hand and backroom deals taking place in the Middle East, none were more interesting than those uncovered in documents seized from the Palestinian unofficial Jerusalem headquarters at Orient House.

Orient House is actually the personal property of the late Faisal Husseini, an old Jerusalem Arab family with an impeccable pedigree. Husseini’s grandfather was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.

The elder Husseini was appointed Mufti of Jerusalem by the British in 1921. He fought against the British on the side of the Ottoman Turks during the First World War. He was the first to designate Jerusalem the “third holiest site in Islam” following the capture of Jerusalem from the Ottoman Turks in 1917. During Hussieni’s tenure, the Dome of the Rock underwent a massive face-lift, including plating the Dome with pure gold.

It was during this period that the myth took shape. The Jewish Old Testament mentions Jerusalem 767 times in the context of its being a Jewish city. The Koran doesn’t mention the city even a single time. But the Arab propagandists and their Western allies in the media never seem to let facts get in the way of a good story.

History tells us why, and how it works. Husseini fled the city in 1936 after instigating the last of many anti-Jewish riots in Jerusalem and allied himself with Adolf Hitler’s Germany, helping to convince Muslims they should fight alongside the Nazis.

It was there he learned the principal rule of propaganda from the master himself, Josef Goebbels. Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda called it the “technique of the Big Lie.”

Hitler outlined the technique in “Mein Kampf,” writing, “in the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think there is some other explanation.”

History proves the accuracy of Hitler’s contention over and over. The fact the whole world believes Jerusalem is the third holiest site in Islam is a consequence of Hitler’s philosophy. The city had never, ever been an Arab capital. There had never been a Palestinian government over the city. In fact, there had never been a Palestinian government. The city was never even designated a provincial capital, in all the years since the Jews were banished by the Romans in AD 70. The Koran never mentions it. Islam didn’t even come into being until the 8th century.

But ask anybody who gets their Big Lie from CNN or the Big Three U.S. networks, or any of the European press, and they’ll tell you that Israel is the usurper, the aggressor who stole Palestinian land from Palestinians and who captured Islam’s third holiest city. All courtesy of Grandpa Husseini.

When the Israelis captured Orient House, they discovered documents that show the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree. Faisal Husseini, the great Palestinian martyr who died of a “heart attack” in May, had a secret. In fact he had about a billion secrets, all stashed away in offshore bank accounts.

Using funds diverted from international donations to the PA treasury, he systematically stole land belonging to expatriate Palestinian landowners for his private empire. Part of that money was nearly $2 million donated by several Gulf oil states. It was during a visit to Kuwait that Hussieni suffered his fatal “heart attack” on May 30 at the age of 61.

The Arabs promptly proclaimed him a martyr, hinting darkly that the Israeli Mossad aided him in his journey to Paradise. The records seized at Orient House would logically suggest he had help “crossing over” but not from the Israeli Mossad.

But the technique of the Big Lie is powerful. It has worked well for Arafat since he adopted it for his official policy in the Rose Garden during the 1993 Oslo ceremony. It has convinced the world that it is Israel that is to blame for Palestinian suicide attacks. It is Israel that is intransigent because of its peace-defeating policy of “retaliation” rather than the obvious fact that one can only retaliate when one has first been attacked.

The technique of the Big Lie demands that it defy logic. In order to work, all the evidence and logic has to point the other way. One can see the technique in all its glory being practiced by the United Nations and the leaders of the Arab world. It is standard operating procedure for Middle East foreign policy in Europe, Russia and much of the West. It is the guiding force behind the mainstream media, especially CNN.

How many places, apart from WorldNetDaily, are talking about the Orient House records, let alone actively developing information about the theft of as much as a billion dollars in international aid by the Palestinian leadership?

Consider what a billion dollars would do to alleviate the suffering of the average Palestinian. A billion dollars is an enormous sum of money. Consider that a million seconds is 12 days, while a billion seconds is 32 years! That should put it in perspective.

Consider the Palestinians who have been murdered for selling land in Jerusalem to the Jews. Were they killed to protect Jerusalem from Jewish incursion? Or to protect a private rip-off motivated, not by patriotic zeal, but by plain old garden-variety greed?

That’s a question every Palestinian should be asking himself. But most will never hear of it. CNN isn’t going to tell them. Or you, either.

They backed the wrong horse from the beginning. Their credibility is on the line. No news organization is suddenly going to admit to being taken in by the technique of the Big Lie for more than a decade.

Especially given the fact they themselves have raised it to levels Hitler had never dreamed possible.

The entire Palestinian case is a tissue of lies held together by the perception of victimhood and an ingrained, almost instinctive anti-Israel bias that dates back thousands of years.

It enjoys overwhelming support among the political and media elite. And among many average Americans who believe, as Hitler said they would, that they are too smart to be taken in by propaganda.

It’s an old, old, technique. C. S. Lewis gave credit where credit was due when he said, “Satan’s greatest triumph was convincing the world he did not exist.” The Big Lie.

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