I want to talk about Terry Pratchett.

Sir Terry was one of the most gifted science fiction and fantasy writers of his generation, selling over 85 million books, translated into 37 languages. But before he achieved worldwide fame, he began his career as a journalist, working in the field for some 15 years.

And in one of his books, he set out perfectly what news, so often, can be.

“People like to be told what they already know,” he has one of his characters say. 

“Remember that.  They get uncomfortable when you tell them new things.  New things…well, new things aren’t what they expect…what people think they want is news, but what they really crave is olds.”

It’s true. And it’s one of the reasons that in this era of internet access, fake news can spread like wildfire. It’s simple confirmation bias – people like stories which support what they firmly believe to be true. And naturally, the Israel-Palestine conflict provides particularly egregious examples.

Take the case of Aisha Lulu, a five-year-old from Gaza who recently passed away from a brain tumour.

The original information appears to have come from the “Quds News Network”. The picture it painted was grim. Aisha, we were told, died in a hospital in “occupied Jerusalem…crying, unable to speak and alone”. Why was she alone? Because “Israel refused to grant permission for any of Aisha’s family members to accompany her.”

For any child to die is tragic. For a child to die in pain, alone, without his or her loved ones present, is something unspeakably horrifying. Who would be unmoved by such a story? And who would not be angry at the heartless monsters who prevented family members from being with that child in its final moments?

The tale, along with photographs of the poor child, followed a familiar path. First it was amplified by Palestinian activists in Gaza and the West Bank. Then it was repeated by key voices in the Palestinian diaspora. From there it was promoted by anti-Zionist Jews in the diaspora, before circulating back to Israel, where it was picked up by the country’s far-left fringe.

The one thing all these groups have in common is that they believe Israel to be an unparalleled evil. The story was true for them because they wanted it to be true. They believed it was true because for them, the idea that Israel would do something like this is set in stone.

There was one problem, however. The story was not true. Or rather, like all the best lies, it contained a grain of truth, but nothing more.

Aisha was indeed a five-year-old from Gaza. She did have a brain tumour and was allowed into Israel to access medical treatment. That, however, is where the fact ends and fiction begins.

Cogat (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories), the unit of the Israeli Defence Ministry that deals with civilian matters in the territories, revealed that it had been perfectly willing to allow Aisha’s family members to accompany her. They decided not to – they were the ones who asked a family friend to accompany Aisha during her treatment. And Aisha did not die in Jerusalem – she received treatment there before being taken back to Gaza, where she sadly passed away.

But by the time that information was released, the original story had been read and shared around the world. Some of those most involved in spreading it quietly deleted their Facebook posts and tweets. Others, however, did no such thing.

You can see their thought process. Their belief that “Cogat was probably lying”. And that “even if it wasn’t, Israel has been guilty of far far worse”. In which case, “so what if this time it wasn’t entirely true? The main thing is that Israel does this sort of thing regularly.”

When truth is deemed less important than an overall narrative, lies will inevitably end up being told; lies on a devastating scale.

All we can do is the following: when we see anti-Israel campaigners employing lies, unmask them. But similarly, if we see pro-Israel campaigners describing or sharing things we know to be untrue, we should not hesitate to call them out, however uncomfrotable it might be to do so.

Because we can see, from the behaviour of those on the other side of the argument, where the failure to call out such lies leads.