Israel Hates the Truth – Caitlin Johnstone

Journalist Jonathan Cook writes about the news:

After Al Jazeera’s Gaza office was destroyed and much of its staff killed,

after Al Jazeera was banned from broadcasting in Israel,

after admitting to executing Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh (after lying that Palestinians did it),

Israeli forces have now raided Al Jazeera’s offices in the West Bank city of Ramallah, which it claims is controlled by the Palestinian Authority, and have shut down the channel’s operations.

This is the latest attack on journalism by Israel: more than 170 journalists have been killed in the past year, most of them Palestinians, and all foreign correspondents have been banned from reporting from Gaza.

When will the US and UK designate Israel a terrorist state?

When will Western media organizations and Western journalists declare solidarity with their terrorized colleagues in occupied Palestine?

Israel hates the truth.

Israel hates the truth for the same reason everyone hates the truth at some point: because the truth about them is ugly.

The more I live and learn, the more I am convinced that it all comes down to seeing. Clear perception is what moves things toward health, and the lack of clear perception is what keeps things dysfunctional. The clearer the perception, the more things move out of dysfunction and toward health. This is true whether you are talking about your own personal psychology or the largest power dynamic in the world.

This is why deeply ugly governments like Israel and the United States constantly attack the press, produce propaganda, manipulate stories, engage in online information operations, censorship, and obstruct visibility through government secrecy. The truth about them is ugly, so they work to prevent the truth from becoming clearly visible.

You will also see this dynamic play out in your personal life with the nasty individuals you interact with. They put a tremendous amount of energy into pushing and pulling the way you see them, the way you see others around you, and the way you see yourself. They speak maliciously about others in private conversations and present themselves with a different face in public. They manipulate perception to make themselves seem big and shiny and others seem small and unworthy. They work to inflate your view of them and devalue your view of yourself.

Even within yourself you will see the same dynamic. All of our psychological dysfunction is driven by subconscious wounds, traumas and coping mechanisms that we have not yet lured into the light of consciousness, and if we are truly honest with ourselves, the reason we have not is because there are ugly truths hidden in our inner darkness that we would rather not look at. It takes great courage and a fierce commitment to truth to bring all of those inner demons into the light where they can be healed, but it is the only way to become an authentic person.

Everything ugly in our species clings to the darkness and avoids being seen. This may be early childhood experiences we would rather not explore, unhealthy interpersonal relationships, or the most murderous and perverse impulses of the most powerful empire in human history.

And in all cases, the treatment is the same: do everything we can every day to expand our seeing at every opportunity. On the personal level, this looks like rigorously honest and courageous inner work. On the interpersonal level, this looks like paying attention to the ways in which abuse and manipulation play out within yourself and the people you know, and cultivating truth-based relationships with truth-oriented people. On the collective level, this looks like using every means at your disposal to spread awareness about the abuse of our rulers and the abusive nature of the systems under which we live, using your own unique gifts and skills.

Seeing is the first step to health, and that is why every unhealthy aspect of humanity does everything it can to avoid it. We will not have a healthy world until we become a conscious species, and we will not become a conscious species until we all have unlimited perception, both internally and externally.

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Main image via Al Jazeera screenshot (Fair Use).