During World War I Germany was the victim of cruel propaganda painting their soldiers as literally impaling babies on their bayonets. Pro-war cartoons also depicted German atrocities in Belgium, where they supposedly killed women and children for sport, a fact that was actually a lie. Irish Catholic rebellion forces in 1641 were accused of the same, and even cutting babies out of their mothers. Ottoman Turk troops were accused of the same in 1876 Bulgaria, of putting babies on bayonets. Such atrocious lies were carried into World War II, as well, when Germany was accused of making lampshades out of human skin and soap out of human fat. All of this was an unequivocal lie, but justified murder propaganda of everyone deemed an enemy. Toward the end of World War II, Ilya Ehrenburg, the Jewish propaganda minister for Stalin, produced leaflets dropped on Soviet troops encouraging them to: “Kill the Germans, wherever you find them! Every German is our mortal enemy. Have no mercy on women, children, or the aged! Kill every German — wipe them out.” Another leaflet said: “The Germans are not human beings. Henceforth the word German means to us the most terrible curse. From now on the word German will trigger your rifle. We shall not get excited. We shall kill. If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day.”

Fast forward to October of the 1990s when a young Kuwaiti girl gave congressional testimony of how Iraqi soldiers had removed babies from incubators to die, a story even confirmed by evacuees of Kuwait, but later shown to be an orchestrated lie. October 2023 then gave us not only a revival of the 1973 Yom Kippur war, to the date of the 6th, but reports that Hamas had beheaded babies. As one i24 reporter said: “about 40 babies were taken out on gurney’s… cribs overturned, strollers left behind, doors left wide open.” She added, “Babies, their heads cut off, that’s what they said.” Of course, none of this could be confirmed, it was and is propaganda.

When propaganda of this nature begins spreading, along with the vile sentiments on both sides - “gas the Jews” and kill all Palestinians and Arabs, they are "animals" - world wars tend to ignite. With so much propaganda about history, its losers and winners, most of which is based on superficial rhetoric, the average person is unable to engage in debate and thus chooses sides by holding up symbols that convey much deeper meaning. Those waiving Israeli flags in particular, saying “I stand with Israel,” are unwilling to acknowledge, or simply don’t care, how that state was formed with agreements from the British empire and deals between Zionists, Palestinian leaders, and Nazis, not to mention terrorist bombing campaigns in the late 1940s. Most are unaware of what a semite even is, let alone what Judea or Jewish means, or what Israel actually translates into. Religious, political, and ignorant rhetoric creates rabid echo chambers of hatred on both sides. Anyone trying to find balance and peace is caught in the crossfire.