Why are they lying?

Perhaps, deep down, Israel’s enemies know they are defending the indefensible.

I recently received yet another email from a group called DAWN, a Red-Green Alliance organization masquerading as a pro-democracy NGO. I have no idea how they got my contact information or why on earth they keep me on their mailing list, given that DAWN loathes Israel with every fiber of its fetid little being. Perhaps they simply aren’t all that bright.

Nonetheless, this email was quite a revealing little screed and prompted me to ask a fairly important question.

It dealt mainly with the assassination of Hezbollah fiend Fuad Shukr in Beirut, which rather pleasingly avenged the deaths of over 200 US Marines along with the murders of numerous Israelis. One would think that a pro-democracy NGO might have at least something nice to say about the execution of an avowed enemy of democracy, but DAWN was having none of it.

Instead, DAWN’s minions spun a rather remarkable conspiracy theory in which the execution of Shukr was part of a secret Israeli plot to launch a regional war.

DAWN’s “director of research for Israel-Palestine,” Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, who judging by his name is the organization’s Useful Jew, pronounced, “Having failed to stop Israel’s slow-motion genocide in Gaza, the US and the rest of the world cannot allow Israel to exploit the killing of a dozen children to launch another war against the entire country of Lebanon. The best way to ensure a regional war does not erupt is for the UN Security Council to pass a binding ceasefire directive in Gaza immediately.”

DAWN’s “advocacy director”—read: officer in charge of antisemitic incitement—Raed Jarrar, went even further, declaring from on high: “The Israeli attack on Beirut is exactly what we’ve warned for months: Israel’s strategy is to escape forward by expanding the war to the entire region. The US should end its shameful blank check policy in supporting Israel’s genocide and aggression around the region.”

I won’t go into copious detail as to why this missive is quite obviously insane. I will say only that there is no mention of Iran, which is the party that is actually trying to spark a regional war and commit genocide. Iran has also subverted governments, killed thousands of people, and sown terrorism across the Middle East and the world. By omitting these elementary facts, DAWN makes clear that its purpose is not to prevent war, but to foment one by protecting Iran and its axis of terror groups, thus enabling the Islamic republic’s genocidal war against basically everybody.

This, however, is somewhat incidental. When I describe DAWN’s conspiracy theory as “insane,” I am referring only to the claims themselves. In terms of those who make these claims, I do not think the term applies.

Like the rest of the Red-Green Alliance’s leaders, DAWN’s propagandists are certainly overeducated and under-gifted. Nonetheless, their strategic deployment of conspiracy theories indicates they are not entirely stupid. Moreover, DAWN’s simple existence proves that its leaders are well-versed in the court politics of the NGO industry and the “international community.” In other words, they are at least nominally sane. 

So, DAWN’s leaders are lying and they know they’re lying. Nor are they alone. In many ways, the Red-Green Alliance bases everything it says and does on lies.

However, I do not think these people are entirely aware of this. Lies are a paradoxical phenomenon. Quite often, someone can know on some level that they are lying but simultaneously believe the lie itself.

For example, I was once in a Tel Aviv bar in which smoking was prohibited. A drunk man lit a cigarette anyway and was quickly reprimanded by a waiter. The man immediately denied that he was smoking even though the cigarette was literally burning down in his own fingers. A long argument ensued, at the end of which the man extinguished the cigarette and walked away muttering that he hadn’t been smoking. I think that, by that point, he genuinely believed it.

Something similar can happen on a much larger scale. In much of the Muslim world, for example, Holocaust denial has essentially been normalized. Yet at the same time, Muslims think the Holocaust was a good thing and Hitler should have finished the job. In other words, they believe the Holocaust didn’t happen and it did happen. Those who make these claims appear to see no contradiction between them and will sometimes assert both of them in the same sentence.

One sees this in the Red-Green Alliance’s accusation that Israel is committing genocide. It very much reminds me of Noam Chomsky’s claim in the early 2000s that the US was committing a “silent genocide” in Afghanistan. Needless to say, this “silent genocide” never happened and Chomsky eventually abandoned the claim. Yet when he was explicitly criticized for it, he invariably doubled down and unleashed a blizzard of sources that supposedly proved his point, none of which were relevant to his critics’ arguments. In other words, Chomsky believed it and didn’t believe it simultaneously.

I think something like this is happening with the Red-Green Alliance. There is a strange logic to such things. First, the accusation was simply “genocide”; now it is a “slow-motion genocide.” I do not think it will be long until it is “partial genocide, then “virtual genocide,” then “attempted genocide,” then “intended genocide,” and finally, “We never accused Israel of genocide in the first place and how dare you accuse us of accusing Israel of genocide.” The accusers will believe every one of these claims with absolute sincerity and never in a million years admit that their previous claim was, by their own tacit admission, a lie.

It seems clear, then, that we are not only dealing with a conscious strategy. We are dealing with a psychological phenomenon. It is defined by a simple question: Why are they lying?

II.

The question of lies and why people tell lies is a much-studied topic among psychologists. A brief Google search turned up two interesting, albeit non-scholarly takes on the issue.

The articles posit numerous reasons why people lie, but they appear to fall into a few general categories:

Fear: A major reason people lie is simply practical. People do things that may have negative and even dire consequences. To escape such consequences, these people simply lie about what they did. This does not necessarily involve the desire to escape punishment. At times, the lie serves to avoid disappointment from parents, peers, or others.

In almost all cases, the ultimate motivation is fear. One wishes to avoid being punished or hurt as a result of one’s actions. One may also wish to protect one’s social standing and even feed one’s ego by appearing strong and formidable.

Narcissism: The ego issue is a particularly powerful motivation and all of us can sympathize with it to a degree. In some cases, however, it becomes pathological and transforms into a form of malignant narcissism.

Psychologists mostly agree that narcissism is caused by the lack of a sense of self. Because of this, the narcissist must constantly seek approval and adulation from others, which is termed “narcissistic supply.” To receive this “supply,” narcissists are often pathological liars. They lie relentlessly to appear as impressive and extraordinary as possible in hopes of gaining respect and even worship from other people.

Malice: Some lies are deliberately intended to wound other people. There are many reasons for this: revenge, jealousy, vindictiveness, control, even sadistic fun. This is essentially a form of bullying, though it can sometimes be motivated by the desire to obtain what someone else has.

Denial: This may be one of the most common forms of lying. In essence, it is lying to oneself, but not out of narcissistic motivations. One lies to avoid facing one’s own shortcomings and maintain one’s own perception of reality in the face of contrary evidence.

Often, this type of lying begins as a form of defensiveness, but the liar becomes so habituated to lying that it becomes a reflex and, ultimately, the liar comes to sincerely believe his lies. There is, for example, the addict’s well-known assertion: “I don’t have a problem.” 

Altruism: This is perhaps the least pathological form of lying. It is essentially the classic “white lie.” It seeks to protect another person from emotional or physical harm or to help them receive certain benefits. While altruistic lying can have detrimental effects, it is usually benign if not necessarily admirable. Indeed, it is likely that society could not function without some degree of altruistic lying, if only to preserve the general peace.

Pathology: Some people simply can’t control themselves. They are or become addicted to lying and simply do it for no apparent reason at all. This is the mysterious phenomenon of the “pathological liar” who receives no particular benefit from lying but does it anyway. This type of lying appears to be a genuine psychological disorder that can only be treated with therapy or similar means.

To this list, I must add one of my own: 

Cowardice: Many people do not want to face the obvious moral implications of their statements and actions. Like Chomsky and his “silent genocide,” these people say something monstrous and then refuse to accept the criticism or condemnation that comes their way. They either lie to justify their claim or simply refuse to admit they ever said it. This is the classic “argument in bad faith.” 

Perhaps the most prominent examples today are the “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” chant and the leftist catechism “by any means necessary.” The former is a more or less explicit call for genocide, while the latter is pure murderous nihilism. In neither case are those who profess these “principles” willing to acknowledge the implications of what they are saying, for reasons that are both obvious and debased.

III.

To understand how these various forms of lying are so essential to the Red-Green Alliance, it is important to remember what the Alliance actually believes:

1. Terrorism is a wonderful and admirable thing committed by heroic freedom fighters.

2. The Jews are a malignant plutocracy that rules the world in order to oppress, exploit, dispossess, and slaughter non-Jews.

3. The United States is either a hapless puppet of the Jews or an equally malignant imperialist power that rules the world in order to oppress, exploit, dispossess, and slaughter everybody except the Jews.

4. Israel is the personification and control center of this global conspiracy. Thus, its annihilation, along with the annihilation of all Jews, would be a boon to humanity. Global peace will prevail, the victims of oppression will be liberated, and everyone will be happy except the Jews because they will no longer exist.

5. In order to accomplish this glorious liberation, not just Israel must be broken, but all Jews, especially American Jews. The Jewish-American community is the “head of the snake,” which empowers Israel through conspiracy and manipulation. It must be disempowered and ghettoized or completely destroyed “by any means necessary.”

6. Perhaps most importantly, those who “resist” this evil conspiracy are a caste of saints, the finest and most moral people who have ever existed in the entire history of the universe. All who oppose the saints are agents of satan who must be struck down “by any means necessary.”

This is stridently stated, but I do not think it is a straw man. This is what these people really believe, and we know it because they say so. Indeed, the best thing about these people is that they cannot keep their mouths shut. If they adopted the rhetoric of squishy liberalism, they would be much harder to deal with. Instead, they vomit up genocidal slogans with glee and aplomb, convinced that, because they are saints, no one has the right to criticize them. On this point, thankfully, they are quite wrong.

Several observations can be made about this catechism:

First, it is self-evidently monstrous. It is a satanic ideology and there is nothing even slightly redeeming about it. It is an expression of pure evil. This is, in fact, the source of its appeal. 

Second, it is essentially indistinguishable from Nazism. This should not be surprising since, at least among the Muslim supremacists of the Red-Green Alliance, Nazism is one of its sources.

Third, it is not just antisemitic but unabashedly anti-American. That is, it could only be embraced by people who loathe their own society. Of course, these same people have received many benefits from American society, for which they have no gratitude whatsoever.

Finally, and perhaps most important, it is repulsive. That is, when decent people encounter it, they are horrified and disgusted. We saw this earlier this year when the majority of Americans reacted to the Red-Green Alliance’s rampage through America’s elite universities with contempt. Enablers of the Red-Green Alliance, such as the presidents of Harvard and MIT, were—no doubt to their great shock—publicly vilified and, in one case, forced to resign due to their refusal to admit to the US Congress that calling for the genocide of Jews is a bad thing. Few shed any tears.

It is not difficult to see the relevance of the motivations listed above. Fear is obviously a factor. These people, again, really believe in their catechism. They see themselves as oppressed and abused saints under constant attack from the Jewish conspiracy. One can see this in the campus protester-terrorists—both faculty and students—who were suspended or arrested due to their illegal activities. Rather than admit that they were being held accountable for their own actions, they flew into paroxysms of weeping rage about “witch hunts” and other forms of supposed oppression. They did so even in the case of simple criticism of their statements and actions. Many were undoubtedly motivated by the fear of becoming “victims” of the Jewish conspiracy that exists only in their fevered imaginations.

In terms of narcissism, it is not a coincidence that the foot-soldiers of the Red-Green Alliance are generally quite young. Young people are inherently narcissistic, not because of an underlying pathology but because they have yet to fully develop their own sense of self. This is a normal stage of development, but when it is seized upon by a pathological movement—such as a cult or a malignant ideology—it can become very ugly indeed. In such a context, lying to gain “narcissistic supply” is natural.

Regarding the adults in the room, however, there are fewer excuses. In my experience, intellectuals and activists, particularly as they grow older, become more and more embittered. Even when they reach relatively high positions, such as professorships or prominence in activist movements, they always feel they have failed in their ambitions. They may, like Chomsky, become gurus and prophets in the eyes of their acolytes, but it is not enough.  

The denizens of DAWN may be leading an NGO, but I think it is very likely that, in their heart of hearts, they all want to be revolutionary leaders or presidents of the world. As such, their selves remain partial. They can never be satisfied by their current accomplishments. Thus, despite having reached relative maturity, they continue to require sometimes formidable narcissistic supply.

The element of malice is, in many ways, both the nastiest and the most essential of the Red-Green Alliance’s motivations. It cannot be emphasized enough that its ideology is above all an ideology of hate. A hate that is literally genocidal in scope. 

Given that they see the Jews—and America—as a monstrous evil, these people naturally want some kind of revenge. Lashing out with vicious and profoundly offensive lies like claiming Jews are Nazis and demonizing Israel as a genocidal state is thus inevitable. So are the vicious acts of bullying, harassment, assault, and murder that the Red-Green Alliance has committed. The violence is the point. 

In this case, lying gives the liars satisfaction and sadistic pleasure. It is fun. They have wounded their enemies and nothing could be better. This sadism is, in many ways, the essence of evil itself. But without it, the Alliance would not have half the appeal that it does. Everyone wants to feel pleasure and, for some, the only way to do so is by causing maximum pain to others.

While malice may be the most powerful motivation for the Red-Green Alliance, denial is a major factor as well. The reason is that all the actual facts, the actual truths, are against the Alliance. Everyone who is not deliberately deceiving themselves knows that the Holocaust happened; that the Oct. 7 massacre took place; that the Jews are not Nazis; that no genocide is occurring in Gaza; that Iran is the imperialist, terrorist state that is trying to engulf the region in war; that less than 1% of the world cannot possibly control the world; and so on.

In the face of this devastating reality, the only way one could possibly justify rejecting it is to lie to oneself. One must deny reality because reality would destroy whatever sense of self one has managed to cobble together over the course of a lifetime. Very few people are willing to face such an existential crisis. This is particularly true if doing so means that one must admit that one is evil and has been serving evil for quite some time. 

This leads to a fascinating irony: projection. The Red-Green Alliance cannot stop seeing its own evil in those it hates. It is the Alliance that is genocidal, imperialist, supremacist, racist, conspiratorial, warmongering, and generally monstrous. Thus, two lies are required: First, that it is not all those things. Second, that the Jews are all those things. Without these lies, the Alliance would collapse overnight, along with its members’ pretensions to sainthood. This is unthinkable to them and will likely remain so.

Regarding altruism, there is nothing altruistic about the Red-Green Alliance whatsoever. It is, in fact, based on a kind of anti-altruism. However, it is important to remember that the Alliance believes itself to be altruistic—in fact, ultra-altruistic. It sees itself as a righteous force that is rising up on behalf of the wretched of the earth; not only the Palestinians but all the oppressed and downtrodden. They believe they are kind and compassionate people who want only good for the world. Without this belief, they could never live with themselves. 

In such a situation, lying is a small thing. If one must lie to save people from genocide, after all, who would not do it? That this self-justification requires a mountain of other lies—such as the lie that one is saving people from genocide—is both necessary and irrelevant to the liar. It is very unlikely that they even give it a second thought.

Pathology is a much more difficult question. Since it is a recognized psychological disorder, pathological lying requires a formal diagnosis. Professionals generally reject armchair diagnoses and it is doubtful—though not impossible—that any prominent members of the Red-Green Alliance have undergone a formal assessment. Nonetheless, certain indications are worth considering. 

DAWN’s executive director Sarah Leah Whitson, for example, successfully transformed the once-respected NGO Human Rights Watch into a hardline Palestinian nationalist organization. This admittedly impressive feat would have required lying on a massive scale. It is difficult to see how a person could justify this on any sane basis. Of course, this is pure speculation, but an element of pathology may be involved. 

The same could be true of Chomsky, who has been lying for the better part of 60 years about innumerable subjects—most famously, by denying the Cambodian genocide—even when it hasn’t been particularly to his advantage. Again, one can only speculate, but he may suffer from an underlying disorder.

This brings us to cowardice. It is important to emphasize that, generally speaking, the Red-Green Alliance is not composed of particularly brave people. One notices, for example, that they will never accept a fair fight. On campus or in the streets, they always attack—rhetorically or physically—as a mob. They target individuals or small groups who may try to defend themselves but are almost always so massively outnumbered that the outcome is a foregone conclusion. When the Alliance is forced to face longer odds, such as when the university presidents sat for congressional interrogation, it is remarkable how quickly it folds.

The same is true regarding ideology and rhetoric. For example, the Alliance simply refuses to acknowledge what the “river to the sea” chant actually means. They generally claim that the chant reflects an aspirational fantasy that has no practical application, which is so ludicrous that there is no possible way they really believe it. This extends to almost every other aspect of their ideology, which they constantly claim is not antisemitic, genocidal, racist, or violent. They sometimes do so while simultaneously saying and doing things that are antisemitic, genocidal, racist, and violent. There is, again, no possible way they really believe their denials.

The reasons for this are obvious: On some level, the Alliance is terrified that, if it admitted to what it actually believes, people would be repulsed by it. As noted above, since the Alliance cannot keep its mouth shut, many people are already repulsed by it. This threatens the movement not only in practical terms but in vaguely metaphysical terms. That is, people might decide that they don’t need to listen to the saints anymore. They might even decide that the saints are the devil. This simply cannot be allowed to happen. To the saint, especially the self-appointed saint, the loss of the halo is death. So, when faced with the demonic nature of their own ideology, the Alliance has no choice but to deny, dissemble, and obfuscate—in other words, lie.

This is decidedly ironic because it shows that, if only out of sheer cowardice, the Alliance does not even have the confidence of its own monstrous convictions. As the university presidents told Congress, “It depends on the context.” Of course, it doesn’t. The Alliance believes what it believes in all contexts, it simply lies about those beliefs whenever it fears it might be held accountable. 

IV.

Lies are generally depressing things and the degree to which the Red-Green Alliance’s lies are believed by members of the American academic and political elite is even more so. Nonetheless, we can regard these lies as something of a dark gift. 

We must remember that the Alliance’s lies constitute the basis of a very simple truth: We do not have to listen to these people. We do not have to accept a single one of their assertions. We do not have to entertain a single one of their admonitions. We do not have to grant them the sainthood they claim for themselves. We do not need to do any of this because there is no reason we should believe a single word they say.

Moreover, bad faith is a double-edged sword. It can be effective rhetorically and useful for moral and emotional blackmail. But at the center of any labyrinth of lies is total moral bankruptcy, the annihilation of the soul, a murderous and suicidal nihilism. The man who cannot and will never speak the truth must eventually destroy himself.

We should entertain the possibility that the Alliance’s lies indicate something else as well: That within them lies a tiny spark of conscience. Hence the deference they pay to virtue. The fact that they feel the need to lie indicates a kind of hideous self-awareness. On some level, these people know they are defending the indefensible. We should take comfort in the fact that even the devil is sometimes honest with himself.