Matisyahu's Blog

“The first casualty of war is the truth”

It is commonly said that the first victim of war is the truth and something that the neoconservatives (or what remains of them now) have learned from the collapse of support for the Vietnam War and the second war in Iraq is that if you don’t control the narrative then you lose popular support which then undermines the ability to keep the war going over long term (along with any other overseas regime change wars). We’re already seeing the Trump cult podcasters either taking one of two positions, the first position is that they’re defending Trump by claiming that this has been an ongoing war since the Islamic revolution in Iran and it is a continuation of what has already existed with the second position being the claim that Trump is being ‘blackmailed into it’ by some nebulous force (either the ‘deep state’ or antisemitic conspiracy theories). The second excuse also relies on the nonsense that when bad things happen it is never the ‘great leader’ that is at fault those who are around him (while ignoring it was the ‘great leader’ who choose those individuals to fill those positions) – apparently he is a big brained genius but simultaneously is either easily manipulated or so utterly clueless that he couldn’t locate his own backside using his own two hands.

Outside of the lunacy of the Trump cult you have the new owners of TikTok that are deprioritising not only the reporting of what is happening in Gaza but also videos being uploaded from Haifa and Tel Aviv regarding Iranian strikes within Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu is desperate to maintain control of the narrative of being a war time leader, that the iron dome is impenetrable and that any missiles that do get through are having minimal impact. The US news for example isn’t reporting on the Iranian strikes in Haifa and Tel Aviv so many Americans are having to rely on overseas news services such as DW English, France 24, Al Jazeera, Channel 4 from the UK, BBC World and other broadcasters to find out what is actually happening in the middle east.

If there is a silver lining I like to believe what my grandma used to say that the universe eventually balances out in the end – that eventually there is a day of reckoning. Benjamin Netanyahu has his own legal challenges and when Trump steps down the legal troubles he was experiencing before becoming president don’t magically disappear not to mention potential legal issues that may come about in a future Democratic administration doing an investigation into the Trump administration.