For the duration of its existence, Israel has busied itself with creating “facts on the ground”—for the ultimate purpose of masking its violent usurpation of Palestinian land and supplanting reality with a cheerier narrative of justice, democracy, and other good stuff.
In one crucial preliminary stage of the disappearing act, the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 entailed the eradication of some 500 Palestinian villages—in addition to 10,000 or so Palestinian lives—and the expulsion from Palestine of approximately three-quarters of a million people.
And ethnic cleansing is hardly a thing of the past: now, nearly seven decades later, Palestinians continue to be slaughtered at regular intervals, as their remaining bits of territory compete with the proliferation of Israeli facts on the ground.
Meanwhile, Israel’s perverse interpretation of the “right of return” boils down to a situation in which Palestinians from Palestine can’t go back but any Jew in the world can settle in Israel (granted, Jews with black skin have a fantastically tougher time).
With the advent of the internet era a whole new terrain opened up for conquest and exploitation—and Israel’s valiant propagandists have wasted no time in disseminating what we might call “facts on the net.”
Google “capital of Israel,” for example, and you’re presented with the answer “Jerusalem” along with a mini-photo collage, map, and the invitation to “plan a trip and points of interest.”
This despite the fact that not a single country in the world—Israel notwithstanding—recognizes Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. READ MORE AT THE REGION.