Many Americans, mostly Democrats, especially young ones, Muslims, members of LBGTQ groups, and Left-wing organizations, have spent the past few weeks since the barbaric torture and slaughter of innocent babies, children, women, and the elderly by Hamas in Israel on October 7, decrying Israel’s righteous war against Hamas. They complain that the poor Palestinians, who voted to allow Hamas to control the government of Gaza and who are the enthusiastic neighbors, fathers and mothers of those killers, are being unjustly punished by the Israeli troops. They wave Palestinian flags, and often Nazi flags, shout “From the river to the sea” which is a cry to obliterate Israel totally, and attack synagogues, Jewish schools, Jewish businesses, and those Jews unfortunate enough to wander into their path.
The Israelis are colonists, they argue, and are committing genocide against the innocent Palestinians who only want to live peacefully in their historic homeland which the Jews drove them out of. Thus, some contend, the beheading of babies and the mass rape and torture of women was justified “resistance” against the oppressors. Others scoff that nothing at all happened on October 7: no beheadings, no rapes, no murders! It was all made up by Israel so they could attack Gaza and wipe out the Palestinians.
So, are they right? Hardly! In fact, they are so ignorant of history, of the true origin and nature of the Palestinians, of the nature of the Israelis, and the events of October 7, that one wonders how they have enough brains to find their way home at night!
For the past 3,000 years there have been only two independent countries in what is now Israel, Israel and Judah, and both were Jewish. In fact, Jews have lived in what is now Israel for nearly 4,000 years, with Jerusalem becoming its capital city during the reign of King David in the 10th century BC. No independent Muslim or Arab country ever existed there. Israel and Judah were overrun by a series of more powerful nations, eventually dispersing much of the population of the state of Israel and leaving only Judah. It was also eventually made a vassal state by a number of empires, starting with the Romans, who destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in the year 70 AD. When the emperor Hadrian began planning to replace the Temple with a shrine to the Roman god, Jupiter in 135 AD, the Jews in the area rose up in a revolt known as the Bar Kochba. Nearly 580,000 Jewish soldiers were killed. Following the revolt, Hadrian gave the area the name “Syrian Palestinia” or “Palestine” instead of Judea in punishment.
Eventually the Holy Land came under the power of the Ottoman Empire who controlled it until following their defeat in 1917, it was awarded to the British as a mandate. During this time, most Arabs recognized no rigid country borders: this was a European concept, and to some extent even now, Arabs consider themselves members of the “Arab Nation” made up of 22 Arab “countries.” There were, of course, some identifiable Arab countries for as long as there were Jews. Egypt, where Joseph once served as second in command to the pharaoh, and Syria existed and figured often in Old Testament history. Maps were printed of the area from the time that Bibles began to be printed, and they generally called the area “Palestine,” however, the names of towns on the maps are all names of the Jewish towns, not those of towns existing in the 1800s.
By the 1800s there were really few inhabited areas. Travelers like Mark Twain recorded that there were few people living in the Holy Land (or Palestine) except for passing Bedouins who traveled through the region. Baedeker’s 1876 travel guide to Palestine and Syria records that the Muslim population in Jerusalem was minimal. He estimated the population to be 60,000, including 7,000 Muslims, 13,000 Christians, and 40,000 Jews. Never was Jerusalem the capital city of any Muslim country, only of Israel and later, after the country split in two, of Judah.
Thus, Jews have lived in Jerusalem for centuries, only vanishing briefly during the Crusades and again after the Roman destruction of the city. Even under the Muslim occupation that began in the early 630s AD, Jews remained in Jerusalem and in other parts of what is now Israel. The so-called Palestinians, were simply Arabs who colonized the region for about 200 years before being displaced by the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, but they never had a unified state of their own. Most loosely owed allegiance to Syria and considered themselves southern Syrians. There never was a country of Palestine inhabited by Palestinians, only a region that had been occupied by Jews for nearly 4,000 years until Muslim Arabs defeated them and moved in on their land. In fact, when the Ottoman Empire mapped the area and labeled it as “Palestine,” the Arabs were furious because it reminded them of the Crusaders. No prominent Muslims wanted the area renamed “Palestine.” They only changed their minds when it became politically expedient to give a name to the varied colonizing Arab tribes who, at the end of WWII, were forced to leave the ancestral Jewish land they had colonized.
So, what the Muslims claim as “Palestine” is actually the ancient land possessed by Jews for nearly 4,000 years and only lately colonized by some assorted Arabs.
So, in fact, the Jews are not the “colonizers,” the Palestinians are! They are the “Johnny come lately” group who moved into the land that was once Israel and Judah, but which had become weakened and many of its inhabitants forced to flee by succeeding invading forces, generally Arab forces. So, the Palestinians actually stole the land from the Jews, and then were enraged when they were forced to move off of land that did not belong to them.
As for the Israelis committing genocide against the Palestinians, if that were really true, they need someone like Hitler to come in and tell them how it is done. Following 1920, when Jews began to return to the Holy Land, life there suddenly became prosperous. Thus, more Arabs migrated into the region to enjoy the greater prosperity. According to Al Jazeera, the population of Gaza after the creation of Israel in 1948 was between 260,000 and 280,000. That same population had risen to 2.2 million (NPR.org). Some genocide!
The genocide has, in fact, been carried out by the Arabs against Israel in an attempt to wipe their nation and people from the face of the earth. Arab nations have attacked Israel and been defeated in 1948-1949, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006, and on October 7, 2023. The Palestinians were given their name and suddenly awarded an imaginary country that had never existed, by Yasser Arafat, the terrorist and leader of FATAH, the first of the terrorist organizations created by Arabs and Palestinians. FATAH, the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization,) and Hamas have continually committed deadly acts of terror against Jews both inside and outside of Israel through the years, even during times of agreed upon “truce.” Recently, during a cease fire arranged so that terrorists imprisoned in Israel could be exchanged for some of the innocent civilians, both citizens of Israel and of other countries, that Hamas had captured on Oct. 7, a terrorist carried out another attack inside of Israel. Hamas has also been firing rockets into Israel on a regular basis for years, using the pipes that were given to Gaza to provide better water and sewage systems to create their rockets.
So how can it be “resistance” against an “oppressor nation,” when that nation leaves you to live your lives however you will so long as you do not impinge upon their freedom to exist in peace beside you, when in fact, you are the oppressors? Those Palestinians living in Israel are Israeli citizens, vote, and even hold office. They live exceedingly well. In fact, when polled to see if they would prefer to live outside of Israel, the vast majority of them declined to consider moving. Life in Israel is too good.
Certainly Gaza Strip is heavily populated and poorly run, but the Palestinians who live there elected the government who “runs” it. It is, in fact, a strip of land on the Mediterranean Sea, with white sandy beaches that could have a shipping port and be a mecca for tourists if only those tourists could trust they wouldn’t be killed while visiting there! Nor can the population reduce its numbers by having some people emigrate to other Arab nations. No one wants them! In every country in which this group of whiny Arabs have lived, they have caused problems and been kicked out. Even now, in the midst of a war, Egypt has its border with Gaza firmly closed and heavily protected, not for fear of Israel, but for fear of Palestinians! They have made it known that they will accept no Palestinian refugees!
It is unfortunate that so many Americans, instead of reacting with horror at the massacre committed by Hamas, wrongly believe the mainstream media’s Leftist screed of “Oh, those poor Palestinians, being murdered right and left by those evil, colonizing Israelis!” They never read or look at any other news sites and thus are unaware that, contrary to every rule of war, Israel informs those living in Gaza exactly where and when they will attack and where the civilians can go to be safe. If there is a death toll as high as the Hamas controlled Ministry of Health Claims (and I think we are wise to doubt their numbers), those deaths are because Hamas refuses to let the civilians retreat to safety. They have even shot and killed their own citizens who tried to escape.
I hope this gives you a better understanding of the Israeli/Palestinian situation. The Palestinians are unhappy because they can’t have what doesn’t belong to them. The fact that Yasser Arafat made up the idea that they had had a country called Palestine in what is now Israel, that the Jews stole from them does not make it true. It is a hoax perpetuated upon a credulous world. Jews have lived on that land for almost 4,000 years, even when the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians lived there. The Palestinians only came lately and never had an established country there.
There was never a country named Palestine inhabited by Palestinians. But there has been an Israel and a Judah inhabited for millennia by Jews.