Three Things Every Jew Needs to Hear at the Seder This Year
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When celebrities and media outlets spread lies about Israel, the damage isn’t cosmetic—it’s lethal. Here’s how falsehoods fuel antisemitism worldwide.
Huda Kattan, founder of the billion-dollar cosmetics brand Huda Beauty, created a TikTok video in which she blamed Israel for World War I, World War II, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the October 7 Hamas massacre. Saying that she “just had a feeling”, Kattan saw no need to provide her 11 million followers with any evidence or rationale to support these outrageous and venomous claims.
Suggesting that Israel would unprovokedly attack anyone, let alone its closest ally, and that the Israeli army would barbarically massacre its own people, is utterly preposterous. Moreover, the fact that Israel did not even exist when World War I and World War II took place was a pesky fact that she conveniently overlooked.
One would be hard-pressed to find a country that has been accused of more false crimes than Israel, or a people that has consistently been the object of more horrendous lies than the Jewish people.
The through line of antisemitism for thousands of years has been the denial of truth and the promotion of lies.
Author Dara Horn said, “The through line of antisemitism for thousands of years has been the denial of truth and the promotion of lies.”
Antisemitism is a contagious disease spread by lies that defy logic. A sickness without a cure, antisemitism can be mitigated only by the vaccine of truth.
One of the most pernicious fabrications that spread hundreds of years ago was that Jews kill Christian children in order to use their blood to make matzah. Jewish law, of course, forbids us from consuming blood - hence, the use of coarse kosher salt to remove from meat all traces of blood.
When Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA) accused Jews of using space lasers to start wildfires, it was hard to imagine someone spreading such ludicrous lies about any other group of people.
Soon after conservative political activist Charlie Kirk was murdered, accusations that Israel was responsible began to circulate. Kirk, in fact, was a steadfast, vocal supporter of the Jewish state.
But the biggest proliferator of false information is the media.
Not long after the war began, many western news channels reported on an Israeli strike on a Gaza hospital that supposedly killed 500 civilians. However, it was later determined that the explosion was the result of a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket. By then, the story had faded from the headlines, and few people heard the truth.
On July 24, the headline of the front page of The New York Times contained a picture of an emaciated young boy named Mohammed al-Matawaq. The photo bolstered the false claim that Israel was purposely starving Gazan children.
The widely seen photo sparked outrage and anger towards Israel. However, the paper issued a correction five days later, admitting that Mohammed had pre-existing health conditions that led to his emaciation. The correction, however, generated only a fraction of the clicks of the original story.
The media use megaphones to shout their lies, and then in a whisper they speak the truth.
On August 17, The BBC ran a story with the headline, “Gazan woman flown to Italy dies of malnutrition.” After extensive criticism, it quietly published a correction saying that she had, in fact, died of an aggressive type of leukemia. As usual, the truthful story received a fraction of the clicks of the false story.
Indeed, the media use megaphones to shout their lies, and then in a whisper they speak the truth.
It seems that Hamas is always the party that benefits from the media’s mistakes, and it is worth questioning why outlets such as NYT, CNN, and BBC never seem to err in Israel’s favor.
Ironically, it is Israel’s due diligence that works to its disadvantage. Unlike Hamas, Israel does not provide information until they have verified the facts. By then, the media have already reported Hamas’ deceptions.
The tendency to promote negative content, especially falsehoods, is a known practice. A leaked Facebook memo disclosed that its algorithms were designed to promote negative posts because they garnered more attention. In addition, an MIT study revealed that false news stories were 70% more likely to be retweeted than true stories.
Although these behaviors apply to all subject matters, for Jews they are particularly problematic as they shape opinions that fan the flames of antisemitism.
Taking advantage of this tendency, Palestinians have created something that has been satirically called Pallywood. In a Pallywood movie, Palestinian children pretend to be dead while their parents, in an effort to malign Israel, ensure that it is filmed by the media.
The biggest lie that has arisen from the war involves a supposed genocide of the Gazan population. In fact, it is Hamas terrorists that target civilians, and it is Israel that targets terrorists. It is Hamas that seeks to increase the death total of its own people, and it is Israel that goes to great lengths to minimize the total.
French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy said, “A genocidal army doesn’t take two years to win a war in a territory the size of Las Vegas. A genocidal army doesn’t send SMS warnings before firing, or facilitate the passage of those trying to escape the strikes. A genocidal army wouldn’t evacuate, every month, hundreds of Palestinian children suffering from rare diseases or cancer, sending them to hospitals in Abu Dhabi as part of a medical airlift set up right after Oct. 7. To speak of genocide in Gaza is an offense to common sense, a maneuver to demonize Israel, and an insult to the victims of genocides past and present.”
Israel has been accused of intentionally starving the people of Gaza, but since the start of the war, Israel has facilitated the delivery of two million tons of humanitarian aid, including food, water, flour, baby formula, cooking gas, medical supplies, and shelter. Hamas has been doing everything in its power to prevent aid from getting to its people, including firing on UN staff and seizing their vehicles to block aid routes.
“There is no historical precedent for a military providing the level of direct aid to an enemy population that Israel has provided to Gaza,” said John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at West Point’s Modern War Institute. “The United States did not feed Germany and Japan while the war was going on; we forced their armies to surrender and then fed their populations.”
In August, a 311-page report provided by the Begin-Sadat Center debunked every major allegation against Israel, including starvation and civilian targeting. Every disproven claim was cited with detailed information. In one major finding, the researchers documented that more food entered Gaza during the war than before Oct. 7, 2023, but “extensive looting by Hamas resulted in food shortages”.
Recently, an artificial cornea developed by an Israeli company was successfully implanted in the eye of a man who was totally blind. The 78-year-old patient is now able to see. How ironic it is that a country able to achieve such groundbreaking success in curing blindness is a country that forever struggles to get people who are blind to the truth to see clearly.
As for Huda Kattan, some consequences have resulted from her contemptible TikTok video. The beauty products chain Sephora decided to remove Huda Beauty from its upcoming Fall Experts campaign. However, many people are asking Sephora to go further by completely cutting ties with Huda’s brand.
Until the multinational retailer complies and fully disassociates with Kattan and her ugly lies, some have vowed to boycott Sephora.
Because while beauty is subjective and in the eye of the beholder, truth most certainly is not.
Thank you so much for this article.
I lived this:
French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy said, “A genocidal army doesn’t take two years to win a war in a territory the size of Las Vegas. A genocidal army doesn’t send SMS warnings before firing, or facilitate the passage of those trying to escape the strikes. A genocidal army wouldn’t evacuate, every month, hundreds of Palestinian children suffering from rare diseases or cancer, sending them to hospitals in Abu Dhabi as part of a medical airlift set up right after Oct. 7. To speak of genocide in Gaza is an offense to common sense, a maneuver to demonize Israel, and an insult to the victims of genocides past and present.”
The ones that want to make genocide against Jews is the Muslim Arab terrorists that made the mini Holocaust on October 7, 2023 in war you don't have to worry about a enemy that wants all Jews dead and take over our land G _ d forbid, you can't coexist with a enemy like that, their goal is just like the Nazis ( Y"S) make the world and Israel " Judenrein " ( free of Jews) unfortunately and sadly that is the truth
The characters that are saying ugly lies and falsehoods against Jews, are the some type that made the fake book " The Elders of Zion" and these characters are no better than Joseph Gobbels( Y " S) the Nazi( Y"S) propaganda minister of Germany, how do these very anti Jewish and anti Israel characters come up with these claims, which playbook are they using, through history everyone blamed the Jews for everything that went wrong, for some reason the Jews and/ or Israel is the world's scape goat
Another excellent and enlightening article from Aish. And thx for the update on Huda. I thought Sephora had dropped her line. I will go back to boycotting Sephora til that happens.
Great last sentence!