People who believe absurdities will soon commit atrocities.
—commonly attributed to Voltaire
This monograph examines—and refutes—many of the major lies regularly disseminated about Israel by its many detractors, on campus and elsewhere. It also shows that in many cases the reverse of the lie is true: not only does Israel do the opposite of what is alleged, but it is Israel’s enemies who are guilty of the charges leveled against it. That the lies are so many, and so “big,” and so widespread, shows that the phenomenon is neither about misinformation nor ignorance, nor a matter of ordinary critique of Israeli policies or practices. To the contrary, it constitutes a deliberate bad faith campaign to dehumanize, delegitimize, and demonize, to portray Israel and Jews as the epitome of evil, as genuine monsters—which then justifies the many actions taken against them on campus and elsewhere, including boycotting, persecuting, physically attacking, and even killing them, as the widespread celebratory response to October 7 demonstrates. Individually and collectively these lies exemplify the strategy of “The Big Lie,” a strategy endorsed by Hitler and the Nazis, under which the propagandist deliberately tells and repeats lies so enormous that people are not only inclined to believe them—falsely thinking that no one could lie so baldly, so that the lie must therefore be true—but even to continue believing them in the face of counterevidence demonstrating their falsehood. The contemporary propaganda campaign against Israel, in other words, distinctly echoes the Nazi propaganda campaign against the Jews.
Lies addressed include allegations of genocide, ethnic cleansing, settler colonialism, occupation, apartheid, and more.