Israel Hates Truth
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
Israel has continued its war on journalism with another attack on Al Jazeera, this time with a raid on the outlet’s office in the West Bank and an order to shut down for 45 days. The shuttering occurred despite the office being legally under Palestinian control per the Oslo Accords.
This move comes as Israel and Hezbollah exchange heavy fire and step closer to the brink of full-scale war, and as Israel continues its daily massacres in Gaza and keeps ramping up its brutality toward Palestinians in the West Bank.
Israel keeps attacking Al Jazeera, assassinating journalists and bombing press offices for the same reason the mafia kills witnesses. They want to commit their crimes in the dark.
Journalist Jonathan Cook writes of the news:
Having destroyed Al Jazeera’s office in Gaza, and killed much of its staff there,
having outlawed Al Jazeera from broadcasting in Israel,
having admitted executing Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh (after lying that Palestinians did it),
Israeli troops have now invaded Al Jazeera’s office in the West Bank city of Ramallah, supposedly under the control of the Palestinian Authority, and shuttered the channel’s operations.
This is the latest attack on journalism by Israel: over the past year, it has killed more than 170 journalists, most of them Palestinians, and barred all foreign correspondents from reporting from Gaza.
When will the US and UK proscribe Israel as a terrorist state?
When will western media organisations and western journalists speak up in solidarity with their terrorised colleagues in occupied Palestine?
Israel hates truth.
Israel hates truth for the same reason anyone has ever hated truth: because the truth about them is ugly.
The more I live and learn the more convinced I am that everything ultimately comes down to seeing. Clear perception is what moves things toward health, and the lack of clear perception is what keeps things in dysfunction. The more clear perception there is, the more things move out of dysfunction and toward health. This is true whether you’re talking about your own personal psychology, or the largest power dynamics in the world.
This is why profoundly ugly governments like Israel and the United States constantly attack the press, churn out propaganda, manipulate narratives, participate in online information ops, use censorship, and obstruct visibility via government secrecy. The truth about them is ugly, so they work to prevent the truth from being clearly seen.
You will see this same dynamic happening in your personal life with the nastier individuals you interact with. They pour a tremendous amount of energy into pushing and pulling at the way you see them, the way you see others in your circle, and the way you see yourself. They speak maliciously about others in private conversations and present a different face out in the open. They manipulate perception to make themselves seem big and shiny and make others seem small and unworthy. They work to inflate your view of them and devalue your view of yourself.
Even within yourself you’ll see this same dynamic. All our psychological dysfunctionality is driven by subconscious wounds, trauma and coping mechanisms that we have not yet coaxed out into the light of consciousness, and if we are really honest with ourselves the reason we have not done so is because some ugly truths are hidden within our inner darkness that we’d prefer not to look at. It takes a lot of courage and a fierce dedication to truth to bring all those inner demons out into the light where they can be healed, but it’s the only way to become an authentic person.
Everything ugly in our species clings to the darkness and avoids being seen, whether it’s experiences in early childhood that we’d rather not examine, unhealthy interpersonal relationships, or the most murderous and depraved impulses of the most powerful empire in human history.
And in all cases the treatment is the same: do everything we can every day to expand seeing at every opportunity. On the level of the personal this looks like rigorously honest and courageous inner work. On the level of the interpersonal this looks like paying attention to the ways abuse and manipulation play out in yourself and the people you know, and cultivating truth-based relationships with truth-driven people. On the level of the collective this looks like using every means at your disposal to help spread awareness of the abuses of our rulers and the abusive nature of the systems we live under, using your own unique gifts and abilities.
Seeing is the first step toward health, which is why every unhealthy aspect of humanity does everything it can to avoid it. We will not have a healthy world until we become a conscious species, and we will not become a conscious species until we all have unrestricted perception, both inwardly and outwardly.
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Featured image via Al Jazeera screen grab (Fair Use).
