The Palestinian war against Israel has been supported by the worldwide press and universities, even though their job is to inform the public. There’s so much disinformation and so many facts are suppressed that I decided to outline several of the most important accusations below. I expect that many people will be unaware of these facts, which can have critical effects on the future of Israel and the worldwide growth of anti-Semitism.
Background
The Palestinian territories are divided into two entities. The West Bank is governed by the Palestinian Authority, where “Fatah” is the main political party, and Gaza is governed by Hamas. They are intense adversaries, although both are committed to destroying Israel and are willing to cooperate with each other to that end. Both territories are dictatorships without religious freedom and civil liberties; in particular, their treatment of women, gay people, and religious minorities is appalling. Much of the intended humanitarian aid from the United States and Europe is diverted to violent ends.The charter of Hamas calls for the obliteration of Israel and demonizes Jews as a whole, not just Israelis. The leader of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Mahmoud Abbas, has overstayed his election by more than a decade. Speaking in English, he attempts to present himself as a moderate, but watchdog groups translate what he says in Arabic, which reveals hostility identical to that of Hamas.
“Palestine” is a geographical area, like the Great Lakes. The word Palestine is derived from the word “Philistine.” When the Romans destroyed the Jewish nation of Judea (from which the term “Jews” is derived), as a special insult they named it for the Philistines, a hated enemy of ancient Israel. For most of the past 2,000 years, “Palestinians” meant Jews—for example, the major scientific exhibition at the 1939 World’s Fair was called the Jewish Palestine Pavilion and the Jerusalem Post was originally known as the Palestinian Post. There has never been a nation of Palestine—the only nations in that region have been three Jewish ones: the ancient nations of Israel and Judah, and modern Israel.
Assertions
To support my assertion, I offer the following points. In the interest of brevity, I focus on just a few issues.1. After surrounding themselves with women and children, and placing armaments in schools and hospitals, Hamas fired 4,300 rockets into Israel.
2. The pretexts for the attacks were that (a) Israel restricted the populations on the Temple Mount, which they had to do, consistent with COVID-19 precautions, and (b) a few individuals, based on a court decision, were evicted for not paying rent for many years. The real reasons were that Mahmoud Abbas, the PA president, fearing a likely loss to Hamas, had canceled his own overdue election and Hamas, therefore, wanted to undermine him by attacking Israel in order to emphasize that it’s the true representative of Palestinian interests. Hamas also resented the Abraham Accords, by which moderate Arab states were making peace with Israel.
3. Israel forcefully withdrew all 8,000 Israeli citizens from Gaza in 2005. Residents of Gaza now never see any civilian Jewish men, women, and children, let alone Israeli soldiers. As part of the arrangement, the Israeli government was required to empty gravesites, as even dead Jews were too offensive. Wealthy Jews donated some profitable businesses, which were destroyed, and thousands of rockets were fired.
4. Col. Richard Kemp, a distinguished British commanding military officer who isn’t Jewish, has extensively studied the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and has testified that it has the lowest ratio of civilian to military casualties in history, better than that of the UK and the United States. The IDF uses thousands of leaflets, texts, and phone calls to protect innocents before its counterattacks. While the press reported that the IDF gave a one-hour advanced warning that it would bomb the Associated Press building, which was also a military installation, the actual notice was effectively five hours, as Kemp indicated in an email: “The reality is that 5 hours elapsed between the initial warning to evacuate and the building being hit. I understand that this was because it took that length of time for the IDF to be certain (or as certain as they could be) that all occupants had left the building.” None of the other targets were wrong either. If any Western critics know anyone with 20 years of military experience in urban warfare who can do better, Israel would love to hear about it.
5. Some areas of Gaza (but not all) are poor, but that’s because the Western aid is stolen. Financial aid that was supposed to be used for housing, schools, and other infrastructure was instead used to build a vast network of elaborate tunnels to support extensive terrorist activities. Shipments into Gaza are sometimes stopped to remove armaments designed to kill Jews, after which they are allowed to proceed.
6. Israel has no obligation to Palestinians (as opposed to Arab Israelis) to provide vaccines any more than the United States must provide them to Iceland or Peru—they are separate from us, though more deserving since these nations aren’t trying to murder U.S. citizens. Palestinians have their own health authority, as agreed upon in the Oslo Accords. Israeli Arabs are the healthiest, wealthiest, and best-educated Arabs in the world—so much for the idea that Israel has it in for Arabs. Israeli hospitals provide care for non-Israeli Arabs who are trying to kill Israelis.
7. COVID-19 vaccines are up to 95 percent effective in fighting this severe virus. However, merely refraining from firing rockets into Israel would be 100 percent effective in stopping all the casualties in this area of the world.
9. People are, of course, free to criticize Israel, whether based on valid concerns or not. But Jews aren’t stopping dissent—instead, on U.S. college campuses, Jewish students are subject to intimidation and the disruption of pro-Israel speakers. Anti-Israel propaganda is undoubtedly behind the increase in violence against Jews in urban centers in America and Europe.
10. Iran, the No. 1 sponsor of terrorism in the world, is behind these attacks, as well as attacks on U.S. soldiers. Iran used to be known as Persia. However, because of its support of the Nazis, it decided to rename itself “Iran,” which is the Persian name for the country, used before the rise of Nazism. The reason was that the name sounds like “Aryan,” Hitler’s name for his insane concept of the “master race.”
11. There is no prospect of peace as long as the population is indoctrinated to hate Israel and Jews. Schools and government-controlled television ensure that this process saturates youngsters with hatred. Schools, streets, and many other public facilities are regularly named for terrorists. Families of suicide bombers receive pensions. Recently, an official publication praised a man who named his son “Eichmann,” in honor of one of the most important implementors of the Holocaust.
I will close with a general observation. Ethnic and religious groups tend to have similar behaviors in different nations. Yet criticisms of Israel imply that Jews are brutal and vicious, even though they’re known to have low levels of violence worldwide. Consider the following: Suppose a local politician, in explaining why violent crime had spiked in a Chicago neighborhood, had offered the explanation that it was because a new Hebrew school had just opened in the area. How credible would that be?
This attitude has fueled a worldwide increase in anti-Semitism, with Jews being subject to increasing violence in Western countries. The U.S. State Department is engaged in intensive efforts to restore the completely unenforceable Iran nuclear agreement (the JCPOA). Recently, 100 percent of congressional House Democrats voted against a resolution to provide emergency funding for the Israeli defense programs, including the Iron Dome system, which simply intercepts incoming missiles. Anti-Semitism is being mainstreamed in Congress and universities.
The only plausible explanation is the slander of Israel. This false narrative is undermining the support of Israel and endangering its existence, as noted above, with the proposed Iran agreement that is favored by the American and European left. Yet, one atomic bomb from Iran—as hot as the sun—would kill as many Jews and others as Adolf Hitler murdered in 12 years with the Holocaust.
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