The 24 soldiers interviewed for the film are being prosecuted not because they told lies about Israel, but because they told the truth.
Israel is so evil that it’s actually illegal for Israelis to tell the truth about it.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has just ordered Israel’s military, its attorney general, and its security agency Shin Bet to investigate and prosecute the soldiers who anonymously shared their experiences in the Gaza Strip with the award-winning investigative documentary “NAZA.”
According to Haaretz, Netanyahu accused the soldiers of “serious information security offenses, criminal defamation and harm to Israel’s diplomatic and security interests,” adding that “there is concern that those involved in the defamatory film committed serious criminal offenses by exposing highly classified information and creating a breach in the information security of a highly sensitive intelligence unit.”
Netanyahu’s accusations of “defamation” are contradicted by his other accusation of “exposing highly classified information.” The 24 soldiers interviewed for the film are being prosecuted not because they told lies about Israel, but because they told the truth. The prime minister is claiming the truth causes “harm to Israel’s diplomatic and security interests” because Israel is a state that can only exist on a foundation of endless lies.
If Israel considers the truth a national security threat, then Israel should not exist.
“That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.” This quote by the American writer PC Hodgell certainly applies to an apartheid state which assassinates Palestinian journalists, bans the foreign press from witnessing its atrocities in Gaza, constantly attacks press outlets that report on its abuses, spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on foreign propaganda and prosecutes soldiers who tell the truth about its war crimes.
It also applies to the U.S. empire, which prosecutes whistleblowers, imprisons journalists for exposing U.S. war crimes, shrouds its actions in a veil of government secrecy, exerts extensive control over the flow of information via Silicon Valley and manipulates the minds of the public using the most sophisticated propaganda system ever devised.
It also applies to abusive relationships that would collapse if the community could see what was happening, or if the victim fully understood what was being done to them.
It also applies to marriages where one spouse isn’t being truthful about who they are and what they do in secret.
It also applies to worldviews that would crumble if contradicting facts were heard and deeply listened to with courage and intellectual honesty.
It also applies to the psychological constructs we hold within ourselves that were built when we were too young to understand the traumas we were experiencing and the maladaptive coping habits we were subconsciously forming to deal with them.
It also applies to the ego itself, which dissolves when sufficient attention and clarity has been brought to its mechanisms through rigorous self-inquiry.
At all levels, human dysfunction is held in place by untruth and dispelled by truth. The lies we hold onto as individuals, as communities, and as a society are what allows suffering and abuse to continue at whatever scale you’re looking at.
Humanity’s collective quest is to become a truth-driven species with a truth-based relationship with reality, because if you’re not dealing with reality as it actually is then you’re not able to respond to your challenges with wisdom and efficacy. We move in this direction by seeing through the mental narratives and perceiving reality as it is actually happening: as individuals, as a society and as a species.
Tell the truth uncompromisingly, come what may. Let all that would crumble under untruth do so as swiftly as possible. May all be revealed. Let us face the ever-expanding light of truth with heroic courage.
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