Changing minds is a fight against human nature

If you’ve found yourself frustrated by the recalcitrance of those who are persistently anti-Israel no matter what you say to them or no matter what happens in the world, you are among good company.

The commentators who spill much ink defending Israel against an unending barrage of scurrilous claims express constant incredulity at the hypocrisy, one-sidedness and dishonesty of so many of the critics — the critics who use boss-level hyperbole in the bandying about of terms like “war crimes”, “genocide” and “apartheid” while ignoring every other tragedy in the region. 

Let me paint a picture: a starving Gazan baby is discovered to have cerebral palsy and journalists admit to having neglected their due diligence by omitting this fact. Israel is blamed for failing to deliver aid, but it turned out to be sitting in Gaza where the UN refused to deliver it. A photo of Gazans holding out empty containers desperate for food turned out to be staged. UN aid chief Tom Fletcher tells Piers Morgan “the vast, vast majority of aid that we get in gets to civilians”, but the UN’s own data notes that 87 per cent of aid trucks have been intercepted by armed groups or crowds. The BBC claimed a Palestinian woman with leukemia had died from malnutrition, then stated they were “not initially aware” of her condition after they were corrected. Finally, the IPC (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification) declare a famine in Gaza, yet the threshold to declare famine in Gaza should be around 400 adults or 800 children starving to death per day, and even Hamas’s Gaza Health Ministry claim the total number of deaths by starvation is only 212 in total from Jan to early August 2025. 

Six lies on a single topic all told within a couple of months, yet this is mostly brushed off with “Sure, but the suffering is still real” and the finger remains fully pointed at Israel. A thousand lies exposed seems to get nothing better than a thousand “Yeah but”s. So why, in the face of an undeniable propaganda war, are the haters so unmovable, so immune to persuasion? 

The answer, if we take away bad faith (e.g. racism or intentional propaganda), lies not so much in the details on the ground in Gaza but the way in which belief works. Belief is resistant to change at the best of times, but when coupled with strong emotion and group identity, it becomes an immoveable force.