OPINION:
The perfect metaphor to characterize the United Nations General Assembly delegates who walked out as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the podium last week is this: There are none so blind as those who will not see.
You cannot make people understand the truth if they choose to ignore it.
The problem with the Middle East is that both sides have their own “truth,” which is contradictory because the only alternative to truth is falsehood.
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Mr. Netanyahu, as he has in previous U.N. appearances, laid out the truth that dozens of delegates did not want to hear. “Moral cowards,” Mr. Netanyahu called them as he invited others who fit this description to follow them out the door.
Mr. Netanyahu then detailed what he sees as objectively true.
About denying Iran the ability to create a nuclear weapon, he said it was “one of the easiest decisions” he has ever made. If he and the U.S. had not done so, he said, “we’d all be dead.” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian ludicrously told Bret Baier of Fox News that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon and never intended to.
Mr. Netanyahu continued: “In defending itself, Israel is also defending many of the countries whose delegates just left this hall! In fact, I want you to know that many of their leaders even thank us privately for taking out Iran’s nukes. It’s hard to imagine more mind-blowing hypocrisy, but that’s exactly what it is.”
Hypocrisy appears to be the main diet for many at the United Nations.
It is good to repeat the history of Israel, which, the prime minister noted, extends back to the days of Moses and contradicts the lies about the country practicing colonialism.
In denying that Israel is practicing colonialism, Mr. Netanyahu singled out Britain and France, which were once colonial empires and are now among Israel’s critics.
Mr. Netanyahu then got to the heart of the lies perpetrated against the only democracy in the region. Speaking of what Israel looked like before the 1967 war, he said, “Yet at the time, on this tiny patch of earth, with no West Bank, no Gaza, no Golan Heights, it was the very survival of this one and only Jewish state that was at stake. Because this is what this conflict is about. It’s not about territories. It’s about the existence of a Jewish state at any boundaries. … We were threatened with annihilation by three Arab armies that were about to invade us.”
Those Arab armies may no longer be attacking or planning to attack Israel, but some of their religious and political twins are. They have gone by different names: the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hamas, Hezbollah. All have the same goal: the elimination of Israel and death to the Jews and America.
They have been open about it and have never revoked their charters, which openly speak of that goal.
Those anti-Israel, “free Palestine” demonstrators with their nicely printed T-shirts and signs outside the United Nations were as deliberately blind as the delegates who walked out. No “journalist” I saw asked who those people were, whether they were being paid or who gave them the shirts and signs.
Nor did anyone ask whether these people had jobs — other than demonstrating — or any other relevant questions.
There was much more in Mr. Netanyahu’s speech that deserves to be read or watched if you missed it. Countering propaganda is sometimes difficult, but the prime minister does it better than almost anyone else. It is among the many reasons he deserves another term in next month’s Israeli elections.
To add to the metaphor that began this column, there is this about people who plug their ears and cover their eyes to ignore information that counters the lies they choose to believe. It is “the blind leading the blind.”
Should anyone need clarification, it describes a scenario in which an unqualified, ignorant or clueless person tries to guide others who are equally ill-informed.
• Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book, “A Watchman in the Night: What I’ve Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America” (Humanix Books).
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