Aeschylus said “In war, truth is the first casualty”. And this is abundantly true in Israel and Gaza. Both sides tell a lot of lies, but, as in the military campaign, there is asymmetry,  the Israeli government have a huge, well organised operation to create and propagate lies, the Palestinian don’t. Therefore much of what you see in newspapers and on television is at best often horribly biased and can very frequently be downright lies. Zionist ownership or control of much of the world’s media doesn’t help. The IDF said that Hamas were using human shields and the world reported it, when in fact it was the IDF using human shields. The IDF reported that Hamas had broken a ceasefire when in fact it was the IDF who broke the ceasefire.

One huge problem in this is Zionism. They are a political movement that believes in the racial superiority of Jews, that land should be stolen from non Jews at every opportunity and that non Jews should be ethnically cleansed. They seek a “Greater Israel” stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates rivers. And they have been running Israel for over 60 years.

However many Jews have morals, principles and education. They hate Zionism. So it is possible to get a more balanced view from the Israeli side. The most obvious is the newspaper Haaretz and especially their journalist Gideon Levy. This is available online and is highly recommended.

The most easily digested information is in videos and here are three made by Jews that should be compulsory viewing for everyone in Israel and every political leader involved. Please watch them, you will be amazed.

On the social media there are thousands of people plugging the Israeli cause very hard. Always with a whole pack of lies. Often there are bigoted American Jews who have never been to Israel and who get their education from Fox News. They really don’t know what they are talking about. Another big group is the Hasbara. This is a propaganda organisation that organises very large numbers of people to spread lies online. They work to a script, so you get the same lies repeated at you time after time. That the Palestinians never had a leader before Yasser Arafat, that Palestine never had its own money. All untrue messages to reduce the credibility of Palestine as a state. These lies are easily disproven, the problem is the sheer volume of people making them. One big disadvantage for Hasbara is that Israeli school textbooks are also a pack of propaganda, so Israeli educated Hasbara trolls have no defence against the truth.

Here is a typical Hasbara script:

Just now the world has a problem with ISIS, a brutal gangster organisation carving out a state in the Middle East with violence and ideology (much as Israel has done). We all abhor ISIS so the Israeli propaganda machine has latched on to this and uses ISIS in the same sentence as Hamas at every opportunity. Hoping that our hatred of ISIS will rub off onto Hamas. But ISIS has absolutely nothing to do with Israel. And Hamas are a democratically elected political party who are seeking human rights for the 1.8 million inmates trapped in the Gaza concentration camp. This is just one example of how Israeli propaganda methods are always trying to manipulate your brain.

So how do you get to see things from a Palestinian perspective? This is a lot more difficult because in apartheid Israel the Palestinians are deprived of education, so far fewer speak English. However there are a number of Tweeters inside Gaza who can and do. They are not organised by the state, mainly they are medical staff, journalists and students who just record what is going on. It really is an excellent idea to follow some of these, you get facts in real time, uncorrupted by the Israeli government, except for when they turn the internet off. Here are some suggestions: @Farah_Gazan @Belalmd12 @Mogaza @DrBaselAbuwarda @MaxBlumenthal  You can also look at the following hashtags for a huge amount of information: #GazaUnderAttack #BreakGazaSiege #ICC4Israel  #freegaza From these resources you will find many other good Twitter sources. Then you will really know what is happening.