Ramallah, October 14 — Are you… are you people serious?

Is there no charge leveled at the IDF or the Jewish State so outlandish that you won’t swallow it? Because so far, the answer seems to be a resounding No.

I’ll be honest, for the last year and a half of this conflict, I’ve been running an experiment: each day, come up with the craziest, least-credible, on-its-face-ridiculous accusation to hurl at Israel, just to see whether there’s a line of credulity you’re not prepared to cross.

Haven’t found that line yet. Like a sovereign Palestine, does it even exist? Did it ever?

I started small — my mistake. A bakery that was also a school that was also a dialysis ward. I added the bakery because someone else had already used the clinic, and I needed the item to look fresh. You printed it. One of you drew a map. Nobody asked how the machines fit in the back room, or why the photo only showed a stairwell and a pile of flour. I wasn’t probing the outer edge. I was filling the afternoon file. You treated it like a finding.

So I took things up a level: warnings of imminent mass-starvation. Never mind that no one could produce a single image of a malnourished Gazan not suffering from some preexisting condition. “14,000 WILL DIE SOON!” the activists shouted, just running with the narrative and then not questioning anything when mass starvation never came close to reality, because Israel let in thousands of tons of food and supplies constantly.

That intensification of absurdity obviously failed. Our next push of the envelope: manifestly contrived scenes of “suffering” and children being coached from off-camera to spin tales of woe and deprivation. On top of that, we layered AI-generated images, with six fingers on hands, with three arms per person… nothing gave you pause. Nothing seemed so off to you that you might consider verifying it before spreading it.

Look, I understand the impulse. We all need the Jews to occupy the position of evil oppressor, and it takes a firehose of material, necessitating some fabrication, to prevent the world from seeing Israel as a possible victim in all this. Thus the reversed accusations of rape, genocide, and abuse - the things our side not only does, but boasts about, and puts on social media. We’re fortunate that Western outlets such as the BBC, the Guardian, the New York Times, reflexively treat Israeli statements with skepticism, while presenting ours at face value.

But at least they, sometimes, have standards. I’m still wondering whether you have any.

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