Watch the media!

A Christian author whom I met recently, Victor Schlatter,
wrote in his second book  'Showdown of the Gods',  "if
you don't read the newspapers you are uninformed and if you do read the
newspapers you are misinformed."  Another friend, NZ evangelist Barry
Smith who recently went to be with the Lord, used to say you should only read
the headlines because the rest of the story is just someone else's
opinion.  Both are very true and pertinent statements.

Pre World-War-2 Movietone newsreels reveal an interesting
dynamic concerning the Nazi Holocaust.  The German news media played a
major part in the preparation of the nation's participation in the genocide of
6 million Jews and millions of others.  A well known Jewish organisation
works around the world, teaching people in many countries on the Holocaust and
anti-Semitism, in the hope that if we educate people, there will never be
another Holocaust.  What this organisation seems to overlook is the fact
that Germany was the most educated nation in the world at the time, when the
majority of the German population either participated in, or stood idly by,
as six million men, women and children were incinerated, purely because of their
ethnic background.

What right does any journalist, who is paid to simply report
the news, have to inject his or her opinion into any story. Their
unsolicited efforts to persuade us around to their world view verges on
brainwashing. Hilter's propaganda officer, Goebels, understood and worked on
the fact that if you tell the people the same lie enough times, they will begin
to believe it.  And amazingly, the bigger the lie, the more they are prone
to believe it.  To punctuate my point, there are people in the world today
who believe that God is dead and that Elvis Presley is alive.

Of even greater proof that the general public are very easy
to deceive is the Palestinian issue.  Through the incessant propaganda of
the media, the majority of people in the world today have heard the term "Palestinian
people" so many times that they accept it as fact without questioning or
investigating that there is, or ever was such a people, and if there is, who
they really are.

The following points will offer a completely different
perspective than the one that the whole world receives from the secular media on
an almost daily basis.

There is no such thing as a "Palestinian people"

Until 1948 there was never a nation or people called "Palestine"
and "Palestinians".   Between 70AD and 1948 it was a simply a
geographical term referring to the land described in the Bible as "Israel".  
The name "Palestine" comes from the Biblical term "Peleshet", which then
translates to Philistine in English.  The first "Philistines" were not
Arabs, but came from islands in the Aegean Sea and from the Greek
Islands.   They established five cities, including Gaza on a narrow
strip of the Mediterranean coast of Canaan known as Philistia. The Greeks and
Romans called it "Palastina".   Even the name in Arabic, "Falestin"
is not an Arabic word, but is the Arabic pronunciation of  "Palastina"
which came from "Peleshet".

In 70 AD the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and conquered
Israel.   In the first century AD, the Roman Emperor Hadrian, in an
attempt to blot out the name of God from the Land, imposed the name
Palastina on all the Land of Israel. He also changed the name of Jerusalem to
Aelia Capitolina.

The nation of Israel has been the only independent, sovereign
nation-state that has ever existed west of the Jordan River.  
Interestingly, during the British Mandate, it was the Jewish population
that was known as "Palestinians".

Even the Arab organization, the Palestine Liberation
Organisation, whose ambition is to liberate the land from the Jewish
people, know that this is the truth.  In a March 1971 issue of the Dutch
newspaper Trouw, PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsien delclared, "The 
Palestinian people do not exist.  The creation of a Palestinian state is
only a means of continuing our struggle against the state of Israel and for
Arab unity.   In reality, today there is no difference between
Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical
reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people."

The media accusation of the illegal Jewish occupation of the
West Bank is a fallacy.  When the British partitioned  "Palestine:"
in 1917, all of the land west of the Jordan river was allocated to the Jews
and the Arabs were allocated the land east of the Jordan. To see the map, please
go to http://www.out-of-zion.com/whoselandmap.htm

Of more relevance and carrying far greater authority is the
Word of God.  What does the Creator of the Universe say in regard to
the disputed territories?

If you look at an older Bible map and then at a newer map,
you will see that the land once called Canaan, is exactly the same land now
known as Israel.  The truth is that it is not the Jewish settlers who are
illegally occupying the territory known as the West Bank, it is the people
claiming to be Palestinians.   According to God and the British
partition, the West Bank belongs to the Jewish people, not the Arabs.

As I stated at the outset of this article, the Nazis used the
media to fan the flames of anti-Semitism and thus turn the German people against
the Jews.  In our day we are witnessing the same thing taking place
again.  The media is once again fanning the flames of anti-Semitism in the
Devil's build-up to the final attempt at eradicating the Jewish people.

As if the fabrication of a fictitious Palestinian people is
not enough, the media bends over backwards to make Israel look like the
ogre.  Here are three examples from the current Intifada:

1. The killing of 12 year old Mohammed Durah

Twelve year old Arab boy Mohammed Durah became one of the
Intifada's first martyrs. His death, reportedly at the hands of Israeli
soldiers was shown on TV and in the print media for weeks.   It was
powerful ammunition against those terrible land stealing oppressors, the
Israelis.  What normal person could fail to be horrified by the images of
an innocent young boy, one moment alive and cowering beside his father, the next
moment shot dead by an Israeli soldier. And the world screamed "FOUL".

At the time the Israelis claimed they didn't do it, but the
media continued on their anti-Israel way.  In mid 2002 a German TV team
came to document the evidence that Mohammed was killed by an Israeli gun. 
However the deeper they investigated the angles, the photos and video, the more
it became evident that it was impossible for the shot to have come from the
Israeli side.  Mohammed Durah was shot by a Palestinian sniper right beside
the video cameraman.  It was a set up, wickedly orchestrated to turn world
opinion against Israel - and it worked.   The one hour documentary was
aired on German and Israeli TV, but has never been shown anywhere else in the
world.

2.  Beating of a Palestinian youth by an Israeli
Policeman on the Temple Mount   

As the Intifada intensified; the PA fed the world media a
photograph of an Israeli soldier with a large baton in his hand, standing over a
bloodied youth.  The photo was titled  "An Israeli Policeman and
a Palestinian Youth on the Temple Mount".  

TV news, newspapers and magazines ran the photograph without
researching the story.  Once again Israel looked bad.  However if the
editors had bother to take a good look at the photo, they would have seen that
there was a petrol station sign in the background.  So the photo was not
taken on the Temple Mount.    When the photo was run in a New
York newspaper, a local Jewish man took one look and recognised the bleeding
youth as his son.  The true story was that a young American Jew had
come to the Holy Land, was attacked by Arab stone-throwers and the Israeli
policeman was caught in the act of trying to defend him. 

3. The Jenin Massacre (that never was)

Jenin refugee camp

In May 2002, worldwide anti-Israel sentiment rose to its
highest point since pre WW2 Germany.   It began with the UN
Anti-Racism Conference in Durban at the end of 2001 and climaxed with the
reaction to 4 days of the media reporting Arafat's cry of  "500
Palestinians dead in an Israeli massacre in Jenin".  The Israeli
government denied it, but the media ran the story for 4 days, until it became
obvious that Arafat's claim was false.  A few months later the U.N.
investigative team came to the same conclusion - there had been no massacre in
Jenin.  They had discovered 54 bodies, mainly terrorists and activists and
less than ten percent of Jenin, which is a nest of terrorists, had been
damaged. 

The real damage had been done in people's minds as they
were bombarded for day after day with the reports of an Israeli Massacre.

The facts of this article should not come as any surprise to
Christians.  Not only does the Bible describe Satan as the "Prince
of the power of the air" (Ephesians 2:2), and the "god of this age"
(2 Corinthians 4:4);  And that "the whole world lies
under the influence of the evil one" (1 John 5:19). As the people of
God, we must be in the world, but not of the world. We must guard
our hearts not to come under the influence of the evil one.