When there is no connecting thread that ties information together the way is opened for someone to overlay a story (a way of viewing the information) onto events and in this way to color and shape perceptions. Rather than looking for patterns which naturally emerge from events and which best explains all the information, a desired interpretation is instead imposed upon the data. This is a function of propaganda – a storyline is strongly, emotionally, and persistently repeated – its outcome and objectives are linked to a national/societal ego, to strategic hegemonic goals, to pride, and to fear of imminent dangers and threats. The information that doesn’t fit the story is re-interpreted or deemed irrelevant or insignificant while that which bolsters and supports the ideological viewpoint is emphasized and harped upon as evidence of the truth of the story and the viewpoint. First comes the policy, then the story to legitimize the policy – this becomes the frame through which all information is viewed, the template which blocks out undesired interpretations – if it doesn’t fit the frame it’s not relevant. So we are asked to dwell within the limits of this story, to only look outward through that particular frame. Their main task is not to search out the truth but to propagate particular narratives, particular fictions.
Israel uses these techniques to frame the stories fed to the media, the U.S. amplifies the stories, and the media duly propagates and endlessly repeats them ensuring that no other views can challenge those narratives. The aim is to clear a path for actions and violence and to legitimize Israel’s continued brutal colonial occupation of Palestine, something that would normally never be acceptable. It is the attempt to make, in the minds of people, the unacceptable acceptable or even to make the unacceptable desirable.
In this is a tragedy that overtakes all involved. Some swallow and then carry out the plot of the story in the hope and belief that the fiction they are enacting is a true one. They believe the imagined story, they act on that story, and they hope to bring it to their wished for imagined ending. They have overlaid the template of their fiction on the world and through every means at their disposal they seek to press that template upon it, rending, tearing apart, editing out, or re-interpreting whatever does not fit the convolutions of the plot they spin. And in the process real living people, real children and women and men are edited out of existence by the very real bombs used to fulfill the cruel stories visited so brutally upon their helpless flesh.