We live in a hall of mirrors in which truth is twisted into falsehood and falsehood is presented as truth. In this hall of mirrors, those in power appear to be benefactors and their aggressive shock troops appear to be rebels, while the real rebels are silenced. Patiently pointing to the facts is our only weapon, but at times it is hard to stay polite.

In his highly readable ‘On Liberty’, John Stuart Mill explained that the lackeys of power can launch personal attacks and hurl abuse with impunity, but that no such licence is extended to critics. “In general, opinions contrary to those commonly received can only obtain a hearing by studied moderation of language, and the most cautious avoidance of unnecessary offence.”

Polite rebellion isn’t welcome either

That is an important reason why I try my utmost to stay polite and factual. This week, however, my self-restraint was tested rather severely. Within a short space of time I received two emails. The first was from Save the Children’s press officer, the second from the Nieuwsuur editorial team (a Dutch leading current affairs programme).

In both cases I probably received these ‘replies’ only because I had pressed so hard; they were brush-offs. While I was still mulling them over, it emerged that the UN had restricted access to its reports on the food situation in Gaza, after researchers had concluded — from the source material itself — that there is no hunger in Gaza, and that there never was a famine.

Walls built by the powerful

This was precisely what my most recent piece was about, and so I watched three articles in a row run up against walls of deceit, manipulation and the outright refusal ever to be held accountable. Yet another appeal from the legacy media to sabotage X (formerly Twitter) was the proverbial last straw.

In a bitter tweet I wrote: “The main reason the establishment loathes social media (and X @ in particular!) is that this caste does NOT wish to be contradicted. The excuses are forever ‘hate speech and child pornography’; the real reason: they want total control.” After all, could I ever have written those pieces without access to the fact-checkers who post on X?

At that moment I did not yet know that Facebook’s ‘fact-checkers’ had flagged my latest article as ‘partly false’. Their reasoning: ‘We have to rely on the authorities!’ Those were, of course, precisely the authorities that had just been shown to manipulate the facts in order to arrive at the desired conclusion: Israel must be guilty.

Tweet text: Ever since Facebook set up a ‘fact-check’ unit🚮 in 2020 to thwart Trump’s re-election, I have never taken their fact-checkers seriously again. It is therefore with PRIDE that I can inform you that my article has been flagged as ‘partially incorrect’. Link below.

Erwin van Veen

The email from Nieuwsuur concerned my piece about Middle East expert Erwin van Veen. That article appeared six weeks ago. It was a bold piece, since it could be read as a personal attack. But this man is one of Nieuwsuur’s regular commentators, and for a leading current affairs programme to present his rabid anti-Israel activism as neutral analysis is seriously misleading.

So I emailed the Nieuwsuur editors about my article, writing: “According to your journalistic code, independence and impartiality are paramount at Nieuwsuur. How do you safeguard the programme’s neutrality? And if you know that someone is biased, do you consider it acceptable for such a person to appear regularly and unchallenged as an analyst on your programme?”

For weeks I kept emailing, and each time received nothing but the automatic reply. Until the editors finally sent this:

“Nieuwsuur makes every effort to cover the war that has been raging since 7 October 2023 as completely and clearly as possible. Many specialists, participants and experts have shared their insights with us on developments in Israel, Gaza and the wider Middle East. In this way we try to give the most complete picture possible of what is happening there, both on a human and a geopolitical level. Erwin van Veen is one of the many (academic) specialists who offers his analysis.”

No criticism of the authorities

Anyone who wants to know more about the quality of Nieuwsuur’s coverage of this subject I refer to the formal complaint I lodged back in late 2024. Anti-Zionists can rest easy: the NPO Ombudsman (the ombudsman for Dutch public broadcasting) and the Dutch Media Authority skilfully consigned it to the memory hole. For a more extensive analysis of NOS reporting on Israel, I refer you to our report on the matter, which was likewise buried.

Tweet text: New column by Maaike van Charante @Repelsteeltje21: ‘Oversight of NPO’s reporting on Israel is a farce’. Constant breaches of the journalistic code. https://opiniez.com/2025/05/15/toezicht-op-npo-verslaggeving-israel-is-een-aanfluiting/maaikevancharante/ “It is bad enough to systematically conceal the fact that Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis openly seek the destruction of Israel, but it is far worse to then portray Hezbollah as a resistance group, and Iran as a ‘patient’ country that is being provoked by Israel.”

The coverage of this issue by Nieuwsuur and the NOS is so substandard that virtually every broadcast provides enough material for a scathing article. Yet Nieuwsuur has the nerve to write such a brush-off email, complete with a parting dig at the end: Van Veen is, after all, an ‘academic’ expert. How dare I criticise him?

That is the only argument such media outlets have: an appeal to authority. They are incapable of a substantive answer, because on substance they fall hopelessly short. And unfortunately this applies not only to Nieuwsuur and NOS, but to all the so-called quality media our country is ‘blessed’ with. If you feel I link to my own work too often in this piece: the evidence is contained in all those articles.

Save the Children

And then there was that piece about Save the Children. Do you think it makes sense for an NGO to run a large-scale fundraising campaign for Gaza after that NGO, through its own actions, is no longer able to operate in the area? I didn’t think so. So I set out the facts and put a few questions to these benefactors. Here they are.

  • You have been running a major fundraising campaign for children in Gaza for weeks now. But you no longer hold Israeli registration to work in Gaza. How, then, can you ask for donations for it?
  • Can you confirm whether the donations will indeed be spent entirely on aid in Gaza? And if not, can you indicate how the money will be divided between Gaza and other purposes?
  • Can you explain how you guarantee that donations raised for Gaza actually benefit aid in Gaza?
  • And will an annual report or other public statement subsequently disclose how much this campaign raised and how the money was spent?
  • If Save the Children is indeed still operating in Gaza, what does that work consist of? And to what extent can it continue without Israeli registration?

The answer – after some persistence on my part — could have been funny, had it not been so dismal.

“In your earlier correspondence you did not indicate that you were doing journalistic work, nor that you were requesting a response with a view to publication, nor that there was a deadline. A question submitted via our donor services does not reach us as a press enquiry and is not treated as one. We therefore only became aware of your article after it had already been published. Had you made this known in good time and through the usual press department, we would have been able to respond. You are now asking us for a reaction to an opinion piece only after publication, and as a rule we do not enter into the substance of such pieces.”

The anti-Israel network

By all means, give generously to Save the Children… if you don’t mind where the money ends up. This organisation is accountable neither to donors nor to writers. And that despite the fact that, in my piece, I demonstrated that Save the Children plays fast and loose with the truth and would rather tolerate Hamas interference than meet entirely reasonable Israeli demands.

Save the Children’s press officer turns out to be the journalist Leonie Coppes, also known for anti-Israel pieces in de Volkskrant (a leading Dutch newspaper), Follow the Money and Vrij Nederland (two Dutch current-affairs outlets). As such, she is a textbook example of the merging of activist NGOs and the media: the same hollow activism, and the same aversion to substantive debate.

Like our ‘quality media’, NGOs such as Save the Children campaign against Israel. They can sustain their deceptions easily enough because they all cover for one another. Do you now understand why they so detest X? There, people can simply check facts and inform one another. Freedom of expression has always been the greatest threat to authorities who abuse their power.

Concealing the truth

And so I naturally arrive at my most recent piece, in which the network of NGOs, the UN and the media also played a leading role. In that article I used official sources to explain that all the hysteria about famine in Gaza was, above all, a weapon in the propaganda war.

Tweet text: Has there ever been a famine in Gaza?🧐 Right from the start, the NGOs were all too keen to claim that there was a famine, and that Israel was solely to blame. The media played a major part in this. Now the facts are coming to light, but who is reporting on them?

NGOs turn out to pad their reports with poorly substantiated figures, and their conclusions repeatedly boil down to the same accusation: ‘Israel uses hunger as a weapon’. The legacy media do not check these reports and even go a step further, publishing articles and photographs that reinforce the allegations.

When independent researchers then do expose the errors in the reports, these same media outlets do not report on it. And this week the UN even decided to make the reports inaccessible to those inconvenient critics. These people have perfected the concealment of the truth to such a degree that resisting it can feel hopeless. Fortunately, there was a crack in the fortress after all: the next day the UN restored access to the data.

The limits of patience

Sometimes it is very hard to stay polite towards these people in power. We are expected to keep up the pretence that they are trustworthy and decent and have our best interests at heart. The moment we dare to expose their lies, they brand us far-right populists who really ought not to be admitted to public debate at all. Ban X!!

Whether the subject is immigration, climate policy, farmers or – above all – Israel, going against the dominant narrative is very nearly a mortal sin. And mind you, if we dare to name a representative of this caste – in this piece Erwin van Veen and Leonie Coppes – that counts as a personal attack. Because their deceptions must not be named.

Perhaps the day after tomorrow I will manage to be patient again. But this week I have simply had enough, and I am not mincing my words. We are governed by liars, and most of those in power were not even democratically elected. They operate through the networks described above, including the civil service, and put pressure on democratically elected politicians.

Against this kind of power, rebellion is sorely needed.

 

This article was originally published in Dutch.

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