Among many problems in society is the concept of “my truth” versus “the truth.” In court, no one swears to tell their truth. They swear to tell the truth. But outside of court, one’s opinion of the truth, an oxymoronic concept indeed, has become the gold standard for judging what should be fact.

Any evidence to the contrary, as seen recently with the Gaza hospital explosion , is discounted. When Hamas claimed the Israel Defense Forces bombed a hospital, killing 500 civilians, the media and Israel’s detractors (sometimes one and the same) quickly gave credence to the claim despite Hamas being, well, Hamas.

How can we possibly describe this State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization? Perhaps we let its self-documented deeds, the truth, describe it: butchered babies, Israeli morgues filled with slaughtered innocents, and forever changed hostages who may come back alive but as different people. And that’s saying nothing of Hamas’s treatment of the people in Gaza.

That Hamas’s egregious bombing lie was believed by supposedly intelligent media almost immediately based on nothing but Hamas’s word shows the power of “my truth” in blame-shifting and side-taking based on no concrete evidence of the actual truth. While objectively, no one, much less so-called respected news organizations, should have endorsed Hamas’s claim, they did so because the story fit their narrative, their truth, of Hamas and the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Faulty, unvetted reliance on the word of a murderous group, another bullet for the truth.

The current darling of “my truth” is Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). Her truth is anything that supports her opinion. Days after Israel, the White House, and the objective evidence debunked Hamas’s lie about the hospital explosion, she still refuses to “uncritically accept Israel’s denials of responsibility as fact.” What really happened is tragically simple: A missile fired by Gaza toward Israel landed in the wrong place, causing a parking lot explosion that killed a fraction of what was originally reported. But Tlaib can’t handle the truth, and many of us can’t handle hers.

Tlaib is entitled to her opinion on any topic, as we all are. But denying the truth in favor of her narrative, even after fictional events have clearly been debunked, contorts the truth to convince others who are easily swayed and like-minded. And as we saw in the immediate aftermath of the inaccurate reporting, someone else’s “truth” being reported as the truth can have consequences.

But, to my truthers, facts don’t matter. Tlaib is far from alone in this self-absorbed view of reality. How about the New York University college student who took it upon herself to rid the campus of the truth, turning the pictures of hostages into crumpled-up paper balls and blaming it on her own perception of her “place in society.” My opinion is that regardless of your feelings about your place in society, hostage photos put up by desperate family members do not deserve to be put in the trash can, and there is simply no excuse for this action that the actual truth will allow.

In a world where people can believe anything they want about who they and others are, and evidence is never good enough if it doesn’t further support “my truth,” then the truth is another hostage to be taken and abused unless we fight for its return.

Lexie Rigden is an attorney who practices criminal defense and family law. She frequently provides legal analysis on a variety of TV networks. Follow her at Lexiethelawyer on X, formerly known as Twitter , and Instagram .