Where Are The Filters? By Moshe Zak, Ma'ariv November 23, 1998 There are those who create baseless atrocity stories against Israel. The problem is that there are those who swallow them. The joke is old, but the publication by a British paper that Israel is developing a "genetic bomb" gives it new resonance. The story is told of a Jew playing poker at a prestigious London club. In the opening round, one of the players, a distinguished lord, declared a "full house". Before the lord could take the pot, the Jew asked to verify the cards. He was told: We do not check each other, but believe the winner's word. After I became aware of this custom, the Jew noted later, my card playing underwent a marked improvement. After the Israeli correspondent for the British paper was told that Israel does not bother to argue libelous stories created against it by the psychological warfare departments, he was in an analagous situation. He is certain that the Biological Institute at Nes Ziona, which is a secret facility, cannot be dragged into a confrontation over the accuracy of the baseless story, nor can they deny it. He can publish whatever he wants. He is certain that no-one can prove or disprove the things submitted to him by hostile psychological warfare apparatuses, and he mistakenly swallows their output. The Israeli correspondent cannot be charged with libel against the state in which he was born and raised, but he was an innocent victim of a well-oiled apparatus that wanted, precisely at the moment when Iraq is challenging the United States and the United Nations over the development of chemical and biological weapons, to divert the searchlights towards Israel's apparent dangerous biological weapons program. Every scientist has declared that experiments with bacteria or viruses that can affect only Arabs is absolute scientific rubbish. But psychological warfare is not directed at expert scientists. It is directed at public opinion, to encourage revulsion and anger among those who lack the scientific background to understand the libel. Like the MK who frequently visited Marcus Klingberg in his cell without checking to see whether any results could be achieved by these experiments, but was quick to express his opinion that they experiments are against the Jewish ethos and should not be carried out, thus unwittingly giving force to the libel. I am deliberately not naming the failed correspondent or the MK whom the correspondent used to strengthen the imaginary story's veracity, since the matter is not personal. The main problem is: What is the filter that we should use to prevent the readers being stuffed full of libelous stories prepared by foreign bodies interested in delegitimizing Israel, who, according to the important British paper, is carrying out hair-raising experiments on people, apparently continuing the work of Dr. Mengele. The publication in London was echoed in the Arab press and will intensify Arab enmity towards Israel. When it is repeated in the Israeli press, it makes the authorities of the State hated by its citizens. During the Cold War, the communist disinformation apparatus tended to plant stories of ethnic-based biological weapons in African newspapers. On the eve of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, the Soviets tried to scare African athletes with stories of a biological weapon developed by the United States in order to injure Africans coming to the games. The story was spread around the world, and there was no- one in the communist apparatus who would point to the absurdity of the charge. After all, the black population in the United States numbers in the millions, and they have the same genes as the African athletes. When this trick failed, the Soviets then tried to plant stories that claimed that AIDS was caused by bacteria with which the Americans infected Africans, and that it affects only blacks. Since then, millions of whites have been infected by this disease, and the Cold War between Washington and Moscow has disappeared from the world. Psychological warfare has moved to our region, and it once more bears the guise of a fake biological weapon, this time directed solely against Arabs. And all this in order to ease Saddam's situation when he is pressured by the United Nations over his amassing of biological weapons. |
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