Mark Twain supposedly said, "A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots." Whether he did actually make that remark or not, its underlying truth has been made crystal clear in recent days.

On Oct. 17, the Gaza Health Ministry accused Israel of bombing Al-Ahli al-Arabi Hospital in Gaza City and killing 500 people. Based on intelligence reports and intercepts, President Joe Biden said the next day that Israel was not responsible but rather "the other team." The U.S. intelligence community determined with "high confidence" that the missile was not shot by Israel. Britain, Canada and France agree. A video analysis by The Wall Street Journal showed how a failed rocket shot from inside Gaza caused the explosion. Hamas, the organization which controls Gaza, has put forward no evidence to the contrary.

And yet, Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the European Union, turned a tragedy into a victory. By getting its story of Israeli responsibility out first, it triggered protests in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt, Tunisia and the West Bank. Hamas was able to stop moves toward peace between its enemy Israel and nearby countries. Jordan's King Abdullah canceled the summit meeting with President Biden and Egyptian president El-Sisi. Saudi Arabia, which had been moving closer to recognizing Israel's right to exist, now condemned the country.

In the United States, Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan refused to accept evidence that Israel did not bomb the hospital. A longstanding opponent of Israel, she accused Israel of "oppressive & racist policies" in 2019. On Oct. 17 of this year, she posted on social media, "Israel just bombed the ... Hospital killing 500 Palestinians (doctors, children, patients) just like that." She threatened Biden, "We will remember where you stood." She refused to apologize even after the evidence emerged that the deaths at the hospital were not caused by Israel, saying, "Both the Israeli and United States governments have long, documented histories of misleading the public about wars and war crimes." The idea the bomb originated within the Gaza Strip simply did not fit her worldview.

We Americans can look closer to home than the Middle East to find another compelling example of how lies spread early can win a propaganda war.

Hours after the polls closed in the November 2020 presidential election, ballots were still being counted. The networks had not yet picked a winner. Nevertheless, then-President Donald Trump lied in claiming victory: "Frankly, we did win this election." A week later he tweeted, "RIGGED ELECTION. WE WILL WIN." He continued to support the lie on Jan. 6, 2021: "We had an election that was stolen from us." It didn't matter that his legal efforts to have the supreme courts in the swing states Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Michigan support this belief all failed. It didn't even matter when the official count of electoral votes showed Biden had won.

The lie that Trump triumphed was made early and lives on. In fact, it is gaining strength. According to a July poll by CNN, 69% of Republicans and Republican-leaners believe President Biden did not legitimately win the presidency despite the evidence. That's up from 63% earlier this year. The more evidence showing that Trump is lying, the more his believers cling to the lie.

This is what psychologists call the "backfire effect," when evidence to the contrary leads to people embracing their belief even more strongly. Academics have shown that backfire effects tend to occur when the issue is an integral part of an individual's political identity. Thus, the more evidence put forward that Israel did not bomb the hospital and that President Biden won the election, the more some people will believe the opposite.

Two thousand years ago, the Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger wrote, "Truth hates delay." Delay was necessary to come up with the truth about the hospital bombing as the United States, France, Canada and the U.K. evaluated intelligence reports. Moreover, Seneca did not live in the age of the internet. Even respected sources of news such as The New York Times raced to put up Hamas' lies. It was only six days after the explosion that the Times acknowledged its "early versions of the coverage — and the prominence it received in a headline, news alert and social media channels — relied too heavily on claims by Hamas, and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified."

As for the 2020 presidential election, states required days to count all the ballots. To falsely declare he won took Trump only hours after the polls closed.

How easy it is to make some people believe a lie that fits their beliefs, and how hard it is to undo that work.

In Keith Raffel's checkered past, he has served as the senior counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, started an award-winning internet software company and written five novels, which you can check out at keithraffel.com. He currently spends the academic year as a resident scholar at Harvard. To find out more about Keith and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at creators.com.

DIST. BY CREATORS

Photo credit: Jametlene Reskp at Unsplash