MELANIE PHILLIPS: THE DECENCY BENEATH THE DIN…A LETTER FROM ICELAND
http://melaniephillips.com/beneath-the-din-decency-is-still-listening
Beneath the din, decency is still listening
I have received the following comment from an Icelandic reader:
‘I just wanted to tell you that, thanks to your articles and writings in defence of Israel that I was finally able to see what Israel has to live with every day of its existence and to make matters worse is hounded by the western left press every time it so much as raises a finger in its own defence. I just wanted you to know that it is possible to make people in the west see what the situation in Israel and Palestine is. Thank you.’
I reproduce this here not in order to blow my own trumpet, but because it is very important that all those battling the current western insanity over Israel should know that it is indeed possible for them to influence public opinion — even given the terrifying brainwashing that has occurred in western public debate which has turned truth and lies, victim and victimiser, justice and injustice in the Middle East upside down.
Clearly, there are some people who are truly bigoted against Jews or whose brains have been turned to mush by anti-Israel group-think, and who are therefore impervious to evidence or reason. But there are many others who are simply unaware of the true facts – and because of the exclusion from public debate of these facts, the most frightening thing is that they don’t know what it is that they don’t know.
That’s why those defending Israel against demonisation, delegitimisation and dehumanisation should take heart. However impossible it may seem to make yourself heard above the din of hateful propaganda, there are people who are listening carefully, and taking note. As was so notable during the Stalinist period, even when public debate is censored in order to control thought itself people manage somehow to intuit the truth. And today, the internet provides the means to challenge and undermine that thought-control by deploying facts and evidence in the blogosphere to wage war against the lies.
From time to time, readers wonder why I devote so much of my blog to Israel and the Middle East. I happen to believe it is the defining issue of our time; that where people stand on Israel defines which side they are on in the titanic battle under way to defend civilisation. I also believe that this is a battle that will be lost unless the dominance of lies and propaganda in the public debate is challenged, and unless people are made aware at the very least that there is a very different story from the One Received Truth imposed upon the west by the Cultural Inquisition, aka the mainstream media and intelligentsia.
That is why I write so much on this issue. And that’s why I am grateful to this Icelandic reader along with so many others who write to me in similar vein—and who thus demonstrate that decency and rationality in the all-too troubled west are still alive and kicking in these desperate times.
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