Surprisingly, Joseph Goebbels did not make up the concept of "the Big Lie." Adolf Hitler did, in Mein Kampf, claiming that this was a propaganda method of the Jews:
All this was inspired by the principle--which is quite true in itself--that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.
Hitler, of course, used this method against the Jews. In the very next paragraph, he wrote:
From time immemorial. however, the Jews have known better than any others how falsehood and calumny can be exploited. Is not their very existence founded on one great lie, namely, that they are a religious community, whereas in reality they are a race?
The Holocaust was based on this Big Lie, that Jews are an inferior race.
Israel haters have used The Big Lie method liberally. we are seeing it today with their applying the terms "genocide" and "apartheid" to Israel. They don't even pretend to defend these absurd accusations anymore - they believe that by just repeating them, and "thinking past the sale," they can plant the association between Israel and these crimes against humanity in people's minds, so the lies become accepted as self-evidently true. No one can believe that they are being lied to so brazenly.
But before these libels, there was another lie I have documented previously - the lie that Israel is on "occupied" or ("stolen") "Palestinian Territory." That lie is so entrenched that the very title of the of the current International Court of Justice case against Israel is "Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem."
Many have discussed Israel's official (and correct) position that the territories aren't "occupied" but "disputed." But not as many have discussed whether the territories are "Palestinian."
Practically no one called them "Palestinian territories" in 1967. Even though Jordan's annexation of the West Bank in 1949 was almost universally not recognized, suddenly in 1967 the West Bank became "Israeli-occupied Jordan."
The UN didn't start using the term "occupied Palestinian territories" in its own reports until 1983. Before then they were "occupied Arab territories."
We know that the land was Ottoman before 1917. We know that the British controlled it but didn't annex it before 1948. We know Jordan controlled it and illegally annexed the west bank before 1967, and maintained it had a legal claim on the territory until 1988.
So when did it become "Palestinian" in the juridical sense?
Under international law, territory can be legally acquired in a limited number of ways, and Palestinians never acquired any land using any of those methods except by agreement with Israel for Area A in the Oslo Accords and Gaza when Israel withdrew from the sector. Outside of those areas, the Palestinians never had any legal title to any land. They certainly never had title over Area C or "east" Jerusalem, indeed not over any areas that Israel has controlled since 1967.
When Jordan gave up its claim to the West Bank in 1988, it had no right to do so since it never had legal sovereignty over the territory. If you look at their actions in July 1988 closely, you can see that Jordan severed all ties with the West Bank but I do not see any formal, legal transfer of the territory to the PLO. King Hussein's speech on July 31 is not a legal treaty. If anything, the official decision by Jordan to stop its fiction of control over the West Bank made Israel the only legal entity that had any claim on the West Bank before Oslo.
Which means that the very basis of the ICJ discussion is based on a Big Lie - the lie that these territories are Palestinian to begin with. There was never any title or transfer of the title of the land to the Palestinians.
I am afraid that the same method that was used to normalize the Big Lie that there exists "Occupied Palestinian Territory" is fast being used to normalize the "apartheid" and "genocide" lies.
