For the past six months, there has been an elephant in the room that I have had to face. It is a knowledge of the horrible war that is happening in Israel and that every single person I come in contact with, probably has an opinion about it as a result of the non-stop media attention on it. Reality is that I know with 90% certainty that the opinion of others does not match my own. Because I am Jewish and an Israeli citizen, I know that they probably feel the same as I do, that probably don’t agree with them. In favor of cordiality we all shy away from acknowledging that fact and we simply go one with business as usual. However, given the trajectory of the conflict, I know that is not sustainable, so I want to put things out there, in plain sight.
Warning, this will be a long read. However, if you are an intellectual and are interested in truth and complex ideas, you will give me the benefit of the doubt and read. If you don’t then this article was never for you.
First I’m going to agree, that this war is horrible. Death in Israel and in Gaza and Lebanon and perhaps Iran soon to be is horrible. People dying even soldiers are still lives. At the same time, we have to come to face the reality that as long as humans will live, there will be war. Every country will face a moment at some point to fight or not fight a war of its existence. So let’s analyze this war not through slogans and emotions but facts.
Fact one is I agree, this war started through a failure of Netanyahu. Since 1996 Netanyahu has cultivated politics of “Peace through Security” which has utterly failed. He failed to cease the moment and completely fell into the trap set by Hamas and Iran. This has lead to lack of a two state solution and non stop wars, conflict and death.
Fact two is that vast majority of Israelis, Jews and Arabs agree. I voted in three elections against Netanyahu, in one we succeeded getting rid of him but the fact that he came back shows that some people are smart and talented and even corruption charges can’t keep them away from an office. Blaming Israel for “electing him” doesn’t work as most did not vote for him. Blaming the relic of British political multi-party system, where one with the biggest coalition rules, not one with most votes, is to blame for why he is in power. Let that be a lesson to those who want a multi-party system.
Now I’m going to first call out some words that are being thrown at Israel and I’d like to make sure that we use the correct word with correct definition to make sure that some words are not being purposely misused to cooped people into thinking something that isn’t true.
First word is Colonialism. Israel is an independent state. Colonialism left Israel with the British empire. Currently Israeli economy functions no different from any other state. Even in the Palestinian territories the profits stay with Palestinians. Israel does not use their land for production and exportation of resources for personal benefit.
Occupation- Occupation is the word used when a country occupies sovereign territory of another country. West Bank was under Jordanian control in 1967. It became part of Israel in 1967 as part of a treaty. Same with Gaza. Given that there has never been a Palestinian state, only a territory called Palestine, one that Arabs in the area never called that as it was a word used by the Roman empire, not Arabs, we cannot say that Israel is occupying a Palestinian country or land. Reality however is that Arabs in West Bank and Gaza do not want to live in a country called Israel. Most want a country within Israeli borders, not a two state solution, a country within both borders that they call Palestine and in which they are a majority. Something that Europeans don’t want and sadly it is the European Colonial mentality that refuses to understand what Palestinians actually want and why this is so hard.
Ethnic Cleansing- Ethnic Cleansing is when the land is cleared of all of its native inhabitants. In Israel two million Palestinians reside. While many fled during 1948 war, it is clear that many remained and Israel has no intention of making them leave. Thus that concept applied to Israel doesn’t work. However, 100% of Jews who resided in Judea/Samaria for thousands of years, what is now called West Bank, were forced to leave by Arabs. As such there was clearly an Ethnic Cleansing of Jews, whose return is the contested “settlement” idea, when in effect this is nothing more than Jewish people returning to lands where they are from in a land that was won in a war started by Jordan and on land that Jordan accepts as Jewish sovereign land. Israel did ethnically cleanse in one area, and that is Gaza during the withdrawal of Gaza when it took out not only all Jews who lived there, but exhumed the graves as well.
Inigenous — In America we do not call the daughters of Mayflour indigenous even if they have been in America since 1600’s. We acknowledge that the true indigenous people are the Native America. This standard most of the world chooses not to apply to Israel, where Jewish people are the only people with a clear archeological and hsitorical connection to the land. Arabs came from Arabia in 670 AD through ruthless expantion that involved mass murder and forced conversion. In 670AD Israel or what was called by Rome Palestine, which is simply translation of the word Israel into Greek, was Jewish. Since then through mass murder and ethnic cleansing and immigration, Israel became mostly Arab by mid 20th century. But just as America is majority white today, that does not make white people indigenous people of America. Israel is no different from Ireland or Spain which found a way to bring back their indigenous people to their land as well as their religion and language.
Immigrants- Jews did not immigrate to Israel. They were always non-native inhabitants in Poland, Russia and US. We all know that Jews are not native to America. They are native to one country in terms of history and even DNA: that is Israel. Idea that Europeans converted to Judaism doesn’t work because of the harsh antisemitism of Europe, where converting someone to Judaism was illegal as was intermarriage. This Jew hatred resulted in 2000 years of very little intermixing between Jews and non-Jews, leaving Jews as still being a Middle Eastern people who live outside of Israel.
Apartheid: Apartheid is a system where things are divided by race, where one race is privileged and the other is not. Currently nearly half of doctors and pharmacists in Israel are Arab. Over 20% of students in Universities are Arab, when Arab population is 20%. Meanwhile in US black population is 10% but there is less than 2% black people in US colleges. Arabs have their own party, they can buy land, they are in the military, they are professors and have every kind of job they want. In fact they are in some ways more equal as they don’t have to go into IDF if they don’t want to. Simply by definition, it is clear that the word apartheid does not apply to Israel.
Now let’s get into the war:
Genocide. Genocide is the act of trying to kill a specific people, on purpose. At this moment, Hamas (a terrorist organization) medical office says 20,000 people died. This is an imporant number that gets thrown around. It is important to note that they don’t differentiate between civilian and combatant, but Israel does. According tto Israel, 13,000 combatants died. This means that 7,000 civilians died. Now in a densely populated place like Gaza, 7000 is nothing when compared to all other Urban wars. More people died in Mariupol and Bachmut, Raqa and Faluja. This means that Israel killed far fewer than it could have and therefore it is clear that they tried their hardest not to kill Palestinians. This is evident in the time Israel gave Palestinians to leave areas of combat and the warnings it always gave before landing a bomb. The scenes on TV are bad, but what they don’t show is how people often left those buildings and that they were often empty. What the scenes on news do not show is how hard Hamas tried to have as many die as possible by forcing people to stay in the buildings and refusing to let people go through the safety corridors. According to definition of genocide, in this case genocide applies to how Hamas murdered Israelis AND how it caused murder of Palestinians for its own cynical interests.
Ceasefire:
Ceasfire was violated on October 7th, and again on November 17th. Both times by Hamas. Current negotiations are stalling not because Israel refuses a ceasefire, but Hamas. Hamas which took hostages, which is a war crime, killed hostages (warcrime), tortured hostages (warcrime) and refuses to allow Red Cross near hostages (war crime). Hamas continues to shoot at Israel indiscriminately (war crime) and uses civilian areas often with Civilians near them as military bases and firing points (war crime). Here we se that demanding a ceasefire from Israel and not from Hamas which dictates the war as they started it and continue it, is something to be considered.
Famine:
For four months people spoke of famine, which has yet to materalize. Some people are not eating in Gaza, but for same reason why ssome don’t eat in America, not because there is no food but because the food iss with thte rich. In Gaza rich are Hamas who stay in hunddreds of miles of tunnels funded by the West and Iran, with food thtat will last tthem years as more food came into Gaza since 2007 than before. They use that food for bargaining and making money by selling it on secondary market. This is why no famine ocured even though news keeps talking about the impending famine. The famine that is ocuring is the one affeting 25 million people in South Sudan where Arab armies have been clearing land of the indigenous tribes through mass murdder and rape. In that casse there is genocide and famine, but not one UN resolution has been raised on that account.
Over the Top. Everyone who says that the current war is over the top, I simply ask how would they deal with this if this happened to US? We all know US would have been far worse in terms of civilians killed. We all know America would not stand for 1400 Americans killed, raped and abducted. IT is a double standard and an easy phrase to say for those who don’t have to live in Israel and have the Hamas plan to murder all Jews hanging over them.
Every person I spoke with who was against Israel and who listened to these points has said one thing “ I don’t know enough about this”. To me, if you don’t know enough, learn and don’t make up your mind. Be logical, don’t jump on the thousand year old anttisemitic band wagon no mattter how obvious it looks. Look at the situation and asked tthe three Socratic questins: is it positive, is it true, and is it useful. Most of these claims are neither positive, not useful and certainly not true.
