Right now, what many of my peers are seeing is an all-out propaganda campaign against Israel.
That’s not hard for me to say in the slightest because I’ve seen it before; many times over.
They’re seeing videos from AJ+, Vox, Middle East Eye, Jewish Voice for Peace, etc. And the videos are all basically saying one thing: Israel is indiscriminately massacring the people of Gaza with no regard to human life.
Jewish Voice for Peace and other Jewish anti-Israel groups will go so far as to psychoanalyze Israel and say that Israel is “weaponizing grief” and using the Arab Palestinians in Gaza as a punching bag.
A lie told a million different ways, by a million different sources is still a lie. And these sentiments are no different.
Memory loss seems to be a condition that affects more and more people, especially when talking about this issue, so I feel I need to go over some things again. On October 7th, Hamas broke into Israel and did the following:
Shot up a festival, murdering hundreds
Broke into homes, murdering entire families
Chopped off people’s heads while they were sleeping
Filmed themselves torturing and killing the elderly
Kidnapped 200 men, women, and children
Sodomized women, killed them, and dragged their dead bodies all over the streets
Took the phones of recently murdered children and called their parents just to mock and jeer at them while they mourn their dead children
Burned toddlers and mothers alive while they hugged each other and pleaded for their lives
So much more…
Israel is now responding to these things; trying to recover the 200 kidnapped Israelis, and incapacitate Hamas. This is not some sort of revenge rampage. Again, as I type this, Hamas is raining down rockets on Israel. Over 5000 at this point, and counting. This is something their supporters around the world boast and cheer about.
This is my problem with the middle-of-the-road people when it comes to all this. By middle-of-the-road, I mean those who posit that somehow, Hamas and Israel are equally bad, and are rabidly killing innocent people for sport. I mean those who reduce this entire conflict down to religious differences, as if Israel doesn’t have diplomatic relations with other Muslim countries. I mean the ones who continue to send the message out there to otherwise ignorant people that the Israelis and Palestinians are simply fighting over whose deity is stronger, and this entire conflict is nothing more than a religious slap fight.
Not only is this sentiment wrong, it is extremely arrogant and dangerous.
Trying to seem like some sort of centrist in all of this implies that Israel and Hamas are the same. History says otherwise.
Before the 1967 war, Gaza was controlled by Egypt. After the 1967 war, Israel captured Gaza from Egypt. In 2005, Israel pulled out of Gaza completely. In 2007, Hamas was voted in as the new ruling party of Gaza. The former ruling party, Fatah, was executed by Hamas, and Hamas began to rule. Here are excerpts from Hamas’ charter:
'The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.'
The HAMAS regards itself the spearhead and the vanguard of the circle of struggle against World Zionism... Islamic groups all over the Arab world should also do the same, since they are best equipped for their future role in the fight against the warmongering Jews.'
'Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.'
'[Peace] initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement... Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the infidels as arbitrators in the lands of Islam... There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.'
This Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS), clarifies its picture, reveals its identity, outlines its stand, explains its aims, speaks about its hopes, and calls for its support, adoption and joining its ranks. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah's victory is realised.
You can find the full document here.
Though Hamas received the majority vote in 2007, and they still have support from a large percentage of Gazans today, there is a growing number of Gaza residents who oppose them. Unfortunately, we don’t hear very much from them because Hamas kills dissenters.
This is the same Hamas that is constantly firing rockets into Israel as we speak. This operation by Israel is not a rampage or religious fight over whose god is stronger, but an operation to bring back the kidnapped, and kill Hamas. While the international community calls for a ceasefire, Hamas has not stopped firing since they started their massacre of Israelis on October 7th.
Nobody in their right mind wants civilians on either side to perish. And even in all of this, Israel does everything it can to minimize civilian deaths on the other side. They send text messages, call offices, hack televisions, drop notes, and more, to let civilians know Hamas is firing rockets from their area, and to leave so the Israeli Defense Force can stop them. The giant propaganda machine may have made you believe that’s not a big deal, but it’s actually kind of the biggest deal. No other country does this. No other country would tolerate even a fraction of what Hamas has done to Israel. Yet, Israel, while wives and children are in bondage, being tortured, raped, and Lord knows whatever else, still use extreme caution in their war on Hamas.
Again, nobody in their right mind wants to see innocent Israelis or Arab Palestinians killed. In that same vein, those desiring true peace and security for both peoples should be lambasting Hamas for starting the war, keeping the hostages, and raising a call to their followers all over the world to join them, the fruits of which we’re already starting to see.
So I will say again, what we are seeing now is an all-out propaganda war against Israel. The tactics used are over 50 years old, but have proven to be very effective. Israel’s enemies have never been able to find complete success on the battlefield, and so particularly after the 1967 war, public relations became the main weapon of choice.
A few years ago, I penned an article using the research African-American professor of history at Stanford University, and director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Clayborne Carson, among other sources, to highlight exactly where and when this ideological war against Israel was birthed in the Black community. It is more relevant now than ever before. It’s called ‘the Palestinian Appropriation of Black Pain.’