Rewriting history through sustained propaganda, the ‘Free Palestine’ movement takes a page from post-Holocaust Lithuanian revisionism and inverts the truth turning the persecuted into the persecutor.

By Grant Gochin

The Palestinian cause has become the world’s most effective moral spectacle – commanding headlines, swallowing aid money, captivating international conscience. But this is not advocacy. It is diversion. The obsession shields perpetrators of genuine genocides from scrutiny.

What the world fails to recognize is the source code. The propaganda machinery deployed by Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and their Western enablers did not emerge from the Middle East. It is a replica perfected in the killing fields of Eastern Europe, refined in post-Soviet bureaucracy, and exported as a blueprint for moral inversion. Lithuania pioneered these techniques in the 1990s and 2000s, systematically rewriting Holocaust history. Today, these same methods shield mass murderers from Darfur to Nigeria while Israel – like Lithuanian Jews before – stands falsely accused.

After almost four decades tracing the mutation of Jew-hatred – from Lithuanian revisionists to modern anti-Zionists – I recognize the pattern with forensic clarity. The assault on the Jews has never been about geography. It is an existential campaign to invert truth:

• turn the Persecuted into the Persecutor.

The “Free Palestine” movement borrows directly from Lithuania’s post-Soviet playbook. Under its cover, real genocides unfold—unfilmed, unfunded, unacknowledged.

THE LITHUANIAN LABORATORY: INVENTING MODERN HOLOCAUST INVERSION

In the 1940s, Lithuanians and their allies exterminated 96.4% of their Jewish population. The pits of Ponary, Kaunas, and the forests of Telšiai became mass death pits. Lithuania achieved the highest Jewish murder rate in all Nazi-occupied Europe. It was safer to be a Jew in Nazi Germany than in Lithuania. An estimated 20,000 Lithuanians actively participated; hundreds of thousands more profited from stolen Jewish property or stood by as unrepentant witnesses.

But here is where true innovation occurred: After regaining independence in 1990, Lithuania did not confront this history. Instead, it systematically inverted it.

THE 8 PILLARS OF LITHUANIAN PROPAGANDA TECHNIQUE

Through approximately 30 legal cases, hundreds of documented government actions, and relentless exposure campaigns, I have identified the exact mechanisms Lithuania deployed. These 8 techniques now form the core arsenal of anti-Israel propaganda:

1. Victim-Perpetrator Inversion Through “Double Genocide” Theory
Lithuania’s masterstroke was “double genocide” theory—the proposition that Communist crimes equal Nazi crimes, making Lithuanians victims of both. If everyone suffered equally, Lithuanian Holocaust perpetration becomes merely one episode in mutual suffering. Jewish victims are displaced by Lithuanian victimhood.

The logic is circular and intentional: Lithuanians who massacred Jews were “anti-Soviet resisters”. Jews who survived by joining Soviet partisan units became “Judeo-Bolsheviks” – perpetrators of genocide against Lithuanians. The murdered become the murderers.

Hamas deploys this identically. Israel’s self-defense becomes “genocide”. Hamas’s October 7 massacre – 1,200 Israelis slaughtered, hundreds raped, families burned alive – is recast as “resistance”. The aggressor becomes the victim. The Lithuanian precedent provided the template.

2. Heroification of Perpetrators as “Freedom Fighters”
Lithuania systematically elevated Holocaust perpetrators to national hero status. Jonas Noreika, who personally orchestrated the murder of up to 14,500 Jews in northern Lithuania, was declared a national hero. Kazys Škirpa, who in 1941 called for the “elimination” of Jews, remains honored. The Lithuanian Activist Front – responsible for initiating pogroms before German forces arrived – is celebrated as an independence movement.

The state’s Genocide Center – created ostensibly to research Nazi and Soviet crimes – became an engine of perpetrator glorification. Government “historians” like Dr. Alfredas Rukšėnas and Dr. Arūnas Bubnys produced pseudo-academic reports whitewashing Noreika’s crimes, claiming he “rescued Jews” even as archival evidence documented his orders establishing ghettos, confiscating Jewish property, and facilitating mass murder.

Hamas uses this same mechanism. Terrorists who murder Jewish children become “martyrs”. The October 7 pogrom becomes “liberation”. Suicide bombers are heroes. Murder is resistance. Both systems require the perpetrator to become heroic for the inversion to succeed.

3. State-Funded “Research Centers” That Manufacture Counter-History
Lithuania’s Genocide and Resistance Research Centre represents perhaps the most insidious innovation: state-funded institutions with academic veneer whose sole purpose is historical fraud. The Centre’s own historian, Dr. Alfredas Rukšėnas, admitted in 2023 that it is not a “scientific” center but serves “nationalist, pro-Nazi, political interest groups.”

The Centre produced “findings of history” declaring Jonas Noreika innocent. When challenged with archival evidence -documents bearing Noreika’s signature ordering Jewish ghettoization, testimony from survivors, German records confirming his role – the Centre ignored it. When I filed legal challenges, every case was dismissed on technicalities without examining evidence. Multiple separate legal actions; not once did a Lithuanian court adjudicate the facts.

The modern anti-Israel apparatus copied this wholesale. Organizations with authoritative-sounding names – the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), various UN “fact-finding” missions, academic departments -produce predetermined conclusions wrapped in scholarly language. When just 100 IAGS members (from 500 total, recruited for $30 each) voted to accuse Israel of genocide, they created propaganda at minimal cost with maximum impact. The method is Lithuanian: create the appearance of authority, ignore contradicting evidence, dismiss challenges procedurally rather than substantively.

4. Criminalization of Truth-Tellers Through Lawfare
Lithuania weaponized its legal system against those exposing Holocaust fraud. I was threatened with criminal charges for “slandering” national heroes by documenting their genocide. Holocaust survivor Yitzhak Arad, who escaped the Vilna Ghetto and fought in Soviet partisan units, was investigated for “war crimes” by the same government that honors actual Holocaust perpetrators.

The message was clear: speak truth about Lithuanian Holocaust collaboration, face prosecution. The government declared in 2019 that opposition to their Holocaust narratives constituted a “national security threat.” They literally defined truth as treason.

This is now standard anti-Israel practice. Those who document Hamas’s use of human shields face “lawfare” accusations. Israelis who fought in defensive operations are pursued with arrest warrants while Hamas leaders operate freely. The International Criminal Court issues warrants for Israeli leaders while ignoring perpetrators of actual genocides in Sudan and Nigeria.

5. Semantic Manipulation: Redefining Key Terms
Lithuania mastered semantic fraud. The term “Nazis and their collaborators” became mandatory – always “Nazis” first, “collaborators” reduced to footnotes. This obscures the fact:

• that Lithuanians often initiated massacres without German orders,
• that Lithuanian units volunteered for concentration camp duty across Europe,
• that Lithuanian enthusiasm for murder shocked even German observers.

At Ponary, 70,000 Jews were murdered. Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė, when vandalism occurred at the site, referred to victims killed by “Nazis and others” – unable to say “Lithuanians”. The formulation was deliberate: spread responsibility, dilute Lithuanian culpability, make perpetrators anonymous.

Modern anti-Israel propaganda has perfected this. “Israeli occupation” replaces historical context. “Apartheid” is weaponized despite Israel being the region’s only democracy. “Settlers” dehumanizes Jews in their ancestral homeland. “Genocide” is deployed so promiscuously it loses meaning -applied to the only conflict where the Palestinian population has consistently grown. When words mean whatever propagandists need them to mean, truth becomes impossible.

6. The 2-State Strategy: Different Messages for Different Audiences
Lithuania deployed sophisticated audience segmentation. For international consumption: glossy “We Remember” campaigns, Holocaust museums with minimal content, expressions of sadness about how Jews were “lost” (as if they wandered into the forest and will soon be located). For domestic consumption: honored perpetrators, glorified collaborators, textbooks minimizing Lithuanian responsibility.

Lithuanian diplomats became experts at performing contrition abroad while defending genocide at home. When pressed by foreign governments, they offered symbolic concessions – an admission here, a removed plaque there – while the underlying revisionist infrastructure remained intact. The Genocide Centre keeps producing fraud; Noreika remains a hero; children learn the sanitized version.

Hamas and the Palestinian Authority run the identical playbook. In English: “We want peace, two states, coexistence.” In Arabic: “From the river to the sea,” celebrations of martyrs, textbooks teaching Israel has no right to exist, summer camps training children for jihad. Western journalists interview the English speakers; the Arabic content remains unexamined. The Lithuanian model demonstrated you can maintain contradictory narratives for different audiences – and largely get away with it.

7. Bureaucratic  Exhaustion: Delay, Obstruct, Outlast
Lithuania’s response to every challenge followed a pattern: delay, obstruct, redirect to another bureaucratic dead end, wait for attention to fade. My thirty legal cases against Lithuanian Holocaust revisionism all ended in dismissal on technicalities. Not once did a court examine substantive evidence. Each dismissal redirected to another venue, which redirected to another, which declared lack of jurisdiction, which sent it back to the start.

The strategy is brilliant in its cynicism: create the appearance of legal process while ensuring truth never receives adjudication. Exhaust the challengers through endless procedural loops. Wait for witnesses to die, activists to tire, international attention to move elsewhere.

This is now standard response to documentation of Hamas war crimes. UN investigations are delayed pending “security.” Evidence is disputed through procedural challenges. Requests are redirected between agencies. Hamas refuses to cooperate; the UN waits. Media cycles move on. By the time any conclusion is reached, the conflict is old news. The Lithuanian innovation was understanding that modern attention spans are short – you don’t need to refute evidence, just delay adjudication until no one cares.

8. Appropriation of Victim Status: Jewish Memory as State Property
Perhaps Lithuania’s most audacious technique: appropriating Jewish suffering as state property while erasing actual Jewish voices. The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, under Ministry of Culture control, minimized the Holocaust in its exhibitions. A memorial culture centered Lithuanian suffering. Commemorations excluded uncomfortable truths.

The government marketed Lithuanian Jewish heritage to tourists while silencing living Jews who contradicted the narrative. When Silvia Foti, Jonas Noreika’s granddaughter, exposed her grandfather’s crimes in ‘The Nazi’s Granddaughter’, she faced vilification. Ruta Vanagaite, a Lithuanian author who documented Lithuanian Holocaust collaboration, was so viciously attacked she had to leave the country.

The state claimed authority to determine what the Holocaust meant, who its heroes were, which stories could be told. Jewish memory became Lithuanian state property, sanitized for national consumption.

The Palestinian movement has copied this wholesale. Palestinians claim the mantle of Holocaust victims (“the new Jews“) while denying the actual Holocaust. They appropriate the language of Jewish suffering while celebrating those who inflict it. “Never Again” becomes “Never Again to anyone (except Jews)”. The genocide of Jews is erased while a demonstrably false genocide accusation against Jews is amplified.

THE EXPORT: FROM VILNA TO GAZA
These techniques did not remain in Lithuania. The post-Soviet world became a laboratory for propaganda innovation, and authoritarian regimes took notice. Iran, Russia, and their proxies studied these methods. The Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority adopted them. Western NGOs became transmission mechanisms.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance identified Lithuania as a Holocaust distortion state. The U.S. State Department and German government issued joint statements condemning Lithuanian revisionism. Yet the methods spread. Why? Because they worked.

Lithuania demonstrated that a small nation could rewrite history through sustained propaganda, neutralize international criticism through symbolic gestures, maintain domestic mythologies while projecting international respectability, and ultimately escape accountability for genocide. If Lithuania could transform Holocaust perpetrators into heroes, others could do the same.

GAZA: THE LITHUANIAN METHOD IN REAL TIME
Since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre of over 1,200 Israelis, the narrative machine has operated at full tilt using the Lithuanian playbook:

Victim-Perpetrator Inversion: The story was inverted overnight. Hamas became “resistance“; Israel became “the aggressor”. The October 7 pogrom – families burned alive, children murdered, women raped – was erased or justified as “context”. Israel’s defensive response became “genocide”.

SEMATIC WARFARE:
The word “genocide” was deployed so aggressively it lost meaning. Experts who screamed “genocide” at Israel were exposed when the ceasefire deal proved Israel’s stated aims: dismantle Hamas, rescue hostages, defend civilians. Yet the semantic damage was done. The term “genocide” will forever be associated with Gaza in millions of minds, despite Gaza’s population growing throughout the conflict.

STATE-FUNDED COUNTER-NARRATIVE INSTITUTIONS:
Qatar’s Al Jazeera functions as Hamas’s Genocide Centre—an ostensibly journalistic entity manufacturing alternative reality. The BBC’s leaked internal report confirmed systematic suppression of Israeli suffering, unchecked airing of Hamas fabrications, and recasting terror as resistance. These aren’t news organizations; they’re propaganda arms following the Lithuanian model of pseudo-authoritative institutional fraud.

APPROPRIATION OF VICTIM:
Palestinians claim Holocaust victim status while Hamas’s charter calls for Jewish annihilation. The same activists who chant “Never Again” ignore the October 7 pogrom’s explicitly genocidal intent. Jewish suffering becomes universalized while specific Jewish suffering is denied or justified.

CRIMINALIZATION THROUGH LAWFARE:
Israeli leaders face ICC arrest warrants while Hamas operates freely. Jewish students are investigated for “hate speech” for displaying Israeli flags while open calls for Jewish genocide go unpunished. The legal system becomes weaponized against victims defending themselves.

BUREAUCRATIC OBSTRUCTION:
Every attempt to document Hamas’s war crimes meets delay. UN “investigations” remain incomplete. Evidence is disputed procedurally. By the time any adjudication occurs, the news cycle has moved on. Lithuania taught the world you don’t need to win the argument; you just need to delay it.

THE PRICE – REAL GENOCIDES ECLIPSED:
The consequences extend far beyond Israel. By monopolizing moral bandwidth, by diluting “genocide” into political insult, Lithuania’s exported propaganda methods shield actual genocide.

Since April 2023, Sudan‘s Rapid Support Forces have slaughtered tens of thousands in Darfur, displaced millions, and weaponized famine. The UN calls it one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Yet it is rendered invisible beneath Gaza hashtags. Where are:

– the emergency UN sessions?

– the campus protests?

– the ICC investigations?

In Nigeria, Islamist militias murdered over 4,000 Christians in 2024 alone. Entire villages burned, churches razed, children incinerated. Yet not one Western march, not one celebrity Instagram post. The same media outlets that turned Gaza into a daily dirge barely acknowledged Nigeria’s extermination campaign.

The machinery of pro-Palestinian activism – NGOs, influencers, “human rights” experts – has perfected Lithuania’s art of monopolizing moral attention. They scream “Israeli genocide” until the word loses meaning, erasing real genocides by sheer volume. The result: impunity for Africa’s butchers and applause for Palestine’s propagandists.

THE PATTERN EXPOSED – ANTISEMETISM AS TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER:
What Lithuania did to its Jews, the pro-Palestine movement now does to Israel. Old blood libels have gone digital: Jews as child-killers, settlers, colonizers. Ancient myths are rebranded as “decolonial theory.” Hasbara – the defense of truth – is dismissed as propaganda, while Hamas’s explicitly genocidal charter is excused as “context”.

The technology of antisemitism has evolved, but its source code is visible. Lithuania proved that:

– Perpetrators can become heroes through sustained propaganda

– Victims can be made into villains through narrative inversion

– State institutions can manufacture authoritative-sounding lies

– Legal systems can criminalize truth while protecting fraud

– International opinion can be managed through audience segmentation

– Accountability can be avoided through bureaucratic exhaustion

– Actual genocide becomes invisible if attention is directed elsewhere

Hamas, Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, and their Western enablers didn’t invent these techniques. They imported them from Lithuania, refined them for modern media, and deployed them globally. The Lithuanian model of Holocaust inversion became the template for Israeli demonization.

The connection is not merely philosophical – it is methodological, systematic, and intentional. When South African officials meet with Hamas before filing ICJ charges, they follow Lithuania’s pattern of using international legal institutions for propaganda. When the IAGS passes an anti-Israel resolution with minimal participation, they replicate Lithuania’s Genocide Centre model. When BBC editors suppress Israeli suffering while amplifying Hamas claims, they follow Lithuania’s two-narrative strategy.

CONCLUTION – THE LIE THAT KEEPS KILLING
Both Lithuania and Hamas provide the lies, and the world gobbles them up with fervor. It is always Jews being murdered while our murderers sanitize themselves in real time. My decades of work exposing Lithuanian fraud – thirty court cases, thousands of documents, endless campaigns – appear to have fallen flat. Hamas simply repeated Lithuania’s strategy, and the world consumed it with even greater appetite. The cycle endures because the world wants the lie. Until that hunger is confronted, the weakest will keep paying the price in blood.

About the writer:

Grant Arthur Gochin currently serves as the Honorary Consul for the Republic of Togo. He is the Emeritus Special Envoy for Diaspora Affairs for the African Union, which represents the fifty-five African nations, and Emeritus Vice Dean of the Los Angeles Consular Corps, the second largest Consular Corps in the world. Gochin is actively involved in Jewish affairs, focusing on historical justice. He has spent the past twenty five years documenting and restoring signs of Jewish life in Lithuania. He has served as the Chair of the Maceva Project in Lithuania, which mapped / inventoried / documented / restored over fifty abandoned and neglected Jewish cemeteries. Gochin is the author of “Malice, Murder and Manipulation”, published in 2013. His book documents his family history of oppression in Lithuania. He is presently working on a project to expose the current Holocaust revisionism within the Lithuanian government. Professionally, Gochin is a Certified Financial Planner and practices as a Wealth Advisor in California, where he lives with his family. Personal site: https://www.grantgochin.com/

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