Deceptions and 'self-righteousness' didn't start with Israel, Palestine war

This screenshot taken from a video released by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) shows Israeli forces conducting a raid in the northern Gaza Strip on Oct. 26, 2023. [Xinhua]

War is a serious enterprise for warmongers. They play tricks that make likely victims appear like the aggressors. The tricks are part of elaborate public relations schemes aimed at convincing domestic and foreign audiences that aggression is self-defence. It is a problem that Aurelia Augustine identified more than 1,600 years ago as he expanded the just war concept which warmongers exploit with relish. The fighting in Palestine, that has disrupted geopolitical thinking, is one of such instances. It is full of deceptions and self-righteousness and neatly reinforces the views that 'truth' and 'media' are immediate casualties in times of war.

It is not the first time that leaders deceive to provoke war. All wars, China man Sun Tzu reportedly asserted, are based on deception. Indian strategist, Kautilya, recommended deception as a way of creating disruptions in rival camps. He also warned kings to avoid wrong policies for they undermine sovereignty. Leaders who are obsessed with power end up ignoring basic precautions of governance. They fail to see dangers arising from their war-provoking decisions. Among the precautions is what Carl Von Clausewitz distinguished as between 'real' and 'true' war in which, he argued, that war tends to be extension of politics by other means. War, therefore, is power politics whether at the village or global level and it involves a lot of deception and pretensions of self-righteousness.