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Answer 1The issue is that we need to establish that there was a dispute for the case to be heard at the ICJ under the Genocide Convention. South Africa both in its written opinion (Paragraph 15 and 16) explains that there is clearly a dispute. Moreover jurist John Dugard explained in great detail during the oral hearing that there is a dispute, and therefore that the court has jurisdiction.Answer 2The Genocide Convention allows allows any states party to the ICJ to bring a case against each other to the ICJ on issues including responsibility for genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, or attempt to commit genocide. The ICJ recently confirmed this in a case brought by The Gambia, which accused Myanmar of committing genocide against the Rohingya population. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 South Africa did not follow proper legal procedures in filing its case against Israel at the ICJ.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 South Africa did not follow proper legal procedures in filing its case against Israel at the ICJ. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:15.957Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-south-africa-did-not-follow-proper-legal-procedures-in-filing-its-case-against-israel-at-the-icj",
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Answer 1An oppressed population fighting back its oppressor is not tantamount to calling for the oppressors demise.Answer 2The only thing that will destroy Israel is Zionism. The Palestinian leadership, in all its factions including Hamas and those elected by the Palestinian people, have repeatedly recognized Israel’s right to exist in the past three decades. Israel cannot continue to exist in its current Zionist form, which requires the exclusion of an entire racial, ethnic and religious group from participating equally in life.Answer 3Palestinians do not want to destroy Israel. They want to dismantle the Zionist system that occupies and oppresses them and violates their most fundamental rights. It is Israel – through collective punishment, apartheid policies and ethnic cleansing – that has not only the intention but also the economic, political, and military might to destroy the native Palestinian population. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Most Palestinians have called for Israel’s destruction for generations.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Most Palestinians have called for Israel’s destruction for generations. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:16.247Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5most-palestinians-have-called-for-israels-destruction-for-generations",
"description": null
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Answer 1Article 16 of Hamas’ 2017 charter states that “Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.” Answer 2The Hamas charter of 2017 emphasizes that Islam “provides an umbrella for the followers of other creeds and religions who can practice their beliefs in security and safety. Hamas also believes that Palestine has always been and will always be a model of coexistence, tolerance and civilizational innovation.” Hamas calls for the resistance of military occupation, a right sanctioned under UN General Assembly resolution 37/43 of 1982. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Hamas’ charter calls for killing all Jews.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Hamas’ charter calls for killing all Jews. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:18.929Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-hamas-charter-calls-for-killing-all-jews",
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Answer 1Criticism of the Israeli government is not anti-Semtic; it is anti-Zionist. Anti-Semitism is not to be confused with anti-Zionism. Judaism is a religion and anti-Semitism is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. Zionism is a colonial ideology founded in the expansionist concept of a Greater Israel to be built from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.Answer 2This overlooks the fact that declaring support for Israel has become a convenient way for true anti-Semites to whitewash their reputation. In fact, the phrase “They can’t be anti-Semitic, they support Israel” has been used to absolve many racists and to legitimize the chummy relationship the Israeli government has with the global far-right, including outright neo-Nazi groups. Answer 3Conflating the state of Israel, as well as Zionism, with Judaism is a tactic employed by successive Israeli governments to shield themselves from legitimate criticism. Not only does this tactic prey on Western guilt for allowing the horrors of WWII against Jews to take place, but also purports to absolve Israel’s allies from placing pressure on Israel to act in accordance with international law, and allows the allies themselves to justify their own complicity in Israel’s crimes. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:19.085Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-criticism-of-israel-is-anti-semitic",
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Answer 1Israel has killed 130 UNRWA staff employees in Gaza since Oct. 7. But Western states have taken no action to suspend arms sales to Israel despite the UN suffering the highest number of deaths in history. Make it make sense.Answer 2UNRWA is a refugee agency set up to provide humanitarian services like primary medical care, education and food assistance for Palestinians who were ousted from their homes when Israel was created in 1948. The agency is the only lifeline for 2 million Palestinians currently in Gaza who depend on it to survive. Countries cutting off aid while Palestinians are fighting for their lives against an Israeli bombing campaign, siege and forced starvation, could be in violation of the Genocide Convention.Answer 3The announcement by the U.S. and its allies to cut funding comes at the request of Israel which claims 12 UNRWA staff are tied to Hamas. With a history of Israel making up such allegations throughout its military aggression on Gaza, it’s ironic that this comes mere hours after the International Court of Justice declared that Israel is on trial for genocide, ordering protection for Palestinians.Answer 4The announcement by the U.S. and its allies to cut funding comes at the request of Israel which claims 12 UNRWA staff are tied to Hamas. With a history of Israel making up such allegations throughout its military aggression on Gaza, it’s ironic that this comes mere hours after the International Court of Justice declared that Israel is on trial for genocide, ordering protection for Palestinians.Answer 5For decades Israeli government officials and think tanks have pushed to destroy UNRWA. The current attack is a calculated political decision with severe humanitarian consequences. Destroying UNRWA will not only prevent the agency from providing relief efforts to 5 million Palestine refugees. It will completely undermine the UN-mandated “right of return” principle which ensures that Palestinian refugees have a right to return to their homeland.Answer 6The alleged actions of 12 employees (nine of whom were summarily fired) of an organization that employs 13,000 people in Gaza and does necessary and important life saving work does not mean that the organization in its entirety sanctioned nor approved of their actions. This is further evidence of collective punishment being utilized against Palestinians as their practice or their internationally recognized right to resistance.Answer 7What is ironic though is even as international bodies and humanitarian organizations conclusively agree on Israel’s war crimes in its ongoing onslaught against Palestinians, none of the countries who withdrew funding from UNRWA withdrew their support (financial or otherwise) for Israel.Answer 8Cutting off funding, even if “temporary” is a brutal act of collective punishment that only enables and expedites the Israeli government’s genocidal actions in Gaza.Answer 9The UN has opened an investigation into and severed ties with the employees who allegedly took part in the October 7 attacks. Rash decisions and reactionary measures, such as cutting off funding at a time when Palestinians in Gaza are being completely deprived of aid, should not take place until the investigation is complete.Answer 10Funding cuts to UNRWA, along with the Israeli government and civilians blocking aid from entering Gaza, mean that famine is now inevitable. While other agencies might be able to bring in aid into the Strip, they all rely on UNRWA infrastructure to disseminate it. The number of international laws and conventions being violated (all because of the alleged actions of 12 individuals) are astounding.Answer 11If the alleged actions of 12 individuals is enough to defund the entity that does necessary and important life saving work, then we also need to shut down the Israeli Knesset, UK Parliament and US Congress.Answer 12Shutting down an entire support structure that aids innocent civilians, primarily children, is an extension of the genocidal intent already exhibited in Israel’s decimation of all necessities of life such as homes, power, water, food, communication, hospitals and medicine.Answer 13People don’t know that UNRWA was founded because the United Nation’s condition for Israel’s recognition after 1948 was to allow for the return of Palestinian refugees. Israel didn’t agree, and so the world paid the expenses of the “relief and work for refugees.” So the money for UNRWA is not a favor. It’s the rights of the people whose tragedy was caused by this unfair world. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 UNRWA employees took part in attacks on October 7 and therefore the whole organization should be defunded.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 UNRWA employees took part in attacks on October 7 and therefore the whole organization should be defunded. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:19.488Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-unrwa-employees-took-part-in-attacks-on-october-7-and-therefore-the-whole-organization-should-be-defunded",
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Answer 1The Zionist colonization of Palestine included orchestrating the expulsion and migration of Arab Jews from their homelands to Israel. Zionist propaganda and terror attacks by Zionist militias on civilian infrastructure, including Arab Jewish communities, fueled fear and contributed significantly to the tragic exodus of Arab Jews from countries such as Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. These communities had lived peacefully for over 2000 years before Israel’s establishment.Answer 2The exodus of Arab Jews from the Middle East and North Africa to Israel between 1920 and 1967 cannot be attributed to “expulsion” by Arab regimes. Some Arab countries made it illegal for Arab Jews to emigrate to Israel, and a few even expelled Jewish citizens suspected of Zionist loyalties and subversive activities. But Zionist propaganda and covert operations carried out against Arab Jews by Zionist agents played the most significant role in inducing Arab Jewish “migration” to Israel.Answer 3Renowned historian Avi Shlaim and New York University Professor of Cultural Studies Ella Shohat have extensively documented early Zionist propaganda and tactics, which included terrorizing Arab-Jewish communities to coerce Jews to relocate to Israel. For example, in Iraq, Yemen, and Morocco (where the largest community of Arab Jews existed before Israel’s creation), Jewish communities lived in peace and with uninterrupted presence for at least 2000 years. Answer 4Zionist activism convinced some Egyptian Jews to migrate to Palestine before 1948. However, it was only after Israel’s establishment that affluent Egyptian Jews opted to leave Egypt, primarily relocating to France rather than Israel. The majority of Egypt’s Jewish population remained in the country until 1954, when a small group of Egyptian Jews was recruited by Israel to carry out terror attacks in Cairo’s cinemas, train stations, and educational institutions. Following these attacks, many Egyptian Jews were either expelled by the Egyptian government or fled out of fear of reprisals. Once again, those with the means chose to emigrate to Europe or the U.S., not Israel.Supporting LinksMiddle East Eye - Interview with Avi Shlaim: The forgotten history of Arab Jews (Aug. 2023) Mondoweiss - ‘Zionism is an Ashkenazi thing’: how Zionism engineered the expulsion of Iraq’s Arab Jews (July 2023)Middle East Eye - The truth behind Israeli propaganda on the 'expulsion' of Arab Jews (Dec. 2020)Ella Shohat - On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements: Selected Writings of Ella Shohat (Apr. 2017)Avi Shlaim - Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew (July 2023) | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Arabs expelled Arab Jews from their countries after 1948.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Arabs expelled Arab Jews from their countries after 1948. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:19.554Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-arabs-expelled-native-jews-from-their-countries-in-the-20th-century",
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Answer 1Since October 7, Israeli authorities launched a widespread arrest operation, specifically targeting Palestinian citizens of Israel who demonstrate solidarity with Palestinians in the occupied territories and voice criticism of Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank. Israeli Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai characterized these expressions as “incitement against the state and its symbols,” asserting a policy of “zero tolerance.” Shabtai issued a stern warning, stating, “Whoever wants to identify with Gaza… I will put them on a bus headed there.” Answer 2In addition to a crackdown by the authorities, Palestinian citizens are facing growing demonization, violence and intimidation by Jewish Israelis. On October 30th, a belligerent mob attempted to break into the dormitories of approximately 50 Arab students at Netanya Academic College, chanting “Death to Arabs” and “Go back to Gaza.” Remarkably, it took the police hours to intervene, only eventually rescuing the students with help from volunteers. Answer 3Palestinian citizens of Israel have been facing a wave of crackdowns and persecution by Israeli authorities for any criticism of ongoing events. In October, Reuters reported that “civil rights lawyers say Israeli authorities are interpreting any expressions of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza as incitement.” As of November 13th, Palestinian-Israeli human rights organization Adalah reported that they had tracked 251 cases of “arrests, interrogations and warning talks,” adding that this was only a subset of cases as they “cannot monitor all cases due to the scores of arrests, and individuals’ reluctance to report cases due to fear of negative repercussions.” On January 8th, 2024, +972 Magazine reported that “Hundreds have been arrested or interrogated, usually on the basis of social media activity; dozens more have been suspended or dismissed from Israeli academic institutions; and a recent amendment to Israel’s Counterterrorism Law is enabling unprecedented levels of surveillance.”Answer 4+ 972 Magazine reports that there has been an alarming rise in the use of “administrative detention” – normally a tool reserved for arbitrarily arresting Palestinians in the Occupied Territories without charge or legal proceedings under military rule – against Palestinian citizens of Israel. Before October 7, there had only been 4 known cases of administrative detention being used against Palestinian citizens of Israel; since October 7 there have been seven cases. Supporting LinksReuters - Israeli police arrest Arab citizens expressing solidarity with Gaza (Oct. 2023)Adalah - Interrogations, Arrests and Indictments of Palestinian citizens of Israel over the last month (Nov. 2023)+ 972 Magazine - Israel is using a notorious military tool to arrest its own Palestinian citizens (Jan. 2024) | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Palestinian citizens of Israel are not protesting ongoing events.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Palestinian citizens of Israel are not protesting ongoing events. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:19.590Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-palestinian-citizens-of-israel-are-not-protesting-ongoing-events",
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Answer 1Some of the Israeli officials who made genocidal claims, many in public statements, include: the President of Israel, Prime Minister, Minister of Defense, Minister of National Security, Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, senior army officials, Knesset Members and IOF soldiers.Answer 2A January 2024 poll revealed that just 15% of Israelis favored Netanyahu remaining in office once the military assault in Gaza ends. And yet a significant 56% of respondents still endorsed the continuation of the genocidal offensive. That same poll indicated that only 24% of Israelis viewed a prisoner swap and political agreement as the preferred method for securing the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 The Israelis making the genocidal statements are fringe right wing figures, and therefore you can’t claim genocide against Palestinians.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 The Israelis making the genocidal statements are fringe right wing figures, and therefore you can’t claim genocide against Palestinians. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:22.545Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-the-israelis-making-the-genocidal-statements-are-fringe-right-wing-figures-and-therefore-you-cant-claim-genocide-against-palestinians",
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Answer 1Netanyahu’s use of Amalek was widely seen as an open call for Israeli soldiers to kill Palestinians in response to Hamas’ attack on October 7. Specifically, Netanyahu urged Israelis, comparing Palestinians to the historic Amalek tribes, to “remember” the prophet Samuel’s instructions to “not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys”. That is EXACTLY the context under which it should be viewed.Answer 2Of the more than 23,000 verses in the Old Testament, the ones referenced by Netanyahu about the Amaleks was deliberate and inciting, and has a long history of being used by Zionist Jews on the far right to justify killing Palestinians (who they see as modern day Amaleks). There’s not much to decontextualize here.Answer 3The implication of Malcolm Shaw’s argument that Netanyahu’s platitudes about the “morality” of the IOF somehow nullifies the significance of invoking a biblical verse that asked the Israelites to indiscriminately annihilate their enemy is ridiculous, particularly given the many genocidal statements from Israeli leaders and the indiscriminate violence and destruction on the ground. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Netanyahu’s reference to Amalek was taken out of context.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Netanyahu’s reference to Amalek was taken out of context. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:22.581Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-netanyahus-reference-to-amalek-was-taken-out-of-context",
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Answer 1Israel has been internationally recognized as an occupying power since 1967. As such, it DOES not have the right to self-defense as established by international law in its dealings with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. International law dictates that Israel cannot use more than police powers to maintain its security. There are very exceptional cases where military force is permitted. Even then, military force cannot take the form of warfare nor be used under the guise of self-defense under international law.Answer 2An occupied and oppressed people have the right to resist their occupier. Under the UN charter the occupier has no right to “self-defense” as they are the occupying aggressor.Answer 3Purposefully starving 2.2 million people and causing famine is not self-defense. Displacement and ethnic cleansing of 2 million people is not self-defense. Bombing hospitals, schools and mosques is not self-defense. Massacring 33,000 civilians, 70% of whom are women and children is not self-defense. Collective punishment is not self-defense. Actually, all the above is textbook genocide under international law. Answer 4Israel was occupying and killing Palestinians long before Hamas existed. The Nakba, when Israeli forces destroyed more than 531 Palestinian towns and villages and killed over 15,000 people, was in 1948. Israel’s illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began in 1967. Hamas was created in 1987 as a resistance group to Israeli oppression. If the occupation ends, Hamas would have no reason to attack.Answer 5Palestinians tried peaceful protests during the “Great March of Return” in 2018. As a result, 214 Palestinians, including 46 children, were killed by Israel, and over 36,100, including nearly 8,800 children were injured. One in five of those injured were hit by live ammunition. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 The ICJ case against Israel is ridiculous because Hamas attacked on October 7 and Israel is just defending itself.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 The ICJ case against Israel is ridiculous because Hamas attacked on October 7 and Israel is just defending itself. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:22.617Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-the-icj-case-against-israel-is-ridiculous-because-hamas-attacked-on-october-7-and-israel-is-just-defending-itself",
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Answer 7In 1936, Palestinians staged the longest anticolonial general strike in history to protest the British Mandate of Palestine and Britain’s transfer of its Mandate of Palestine to the Zionist movement.
In 1976, thousands of Palestinians peacefully demonstrated against Israeli seizure of Palestinian property in Israel’s north, only to be met with deadly violence.
In 1987-1993, the Palestinian’s First Intifada enraged Israel in its boycott of Israeli goods and Israeli taxes. This Intifada was met by Israel’s iron fist policy of killing unarmed Palestinian activists, house demolitions, and mass detentions.
In 2005, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement was launched to challenge international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism through nonviolent boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. Israel and its allies have responded to the BDS with very harsh and punitive measures.
In 2018, Israeli soldiers shot and killed tens of unarmed protesters and journalists engaging in the peaceful Great March of Return in Gaza.
Other examples abound. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Palestinians are incapable of resisting in ethical ways. The only language they understand is violence.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Palestinians are incapable of resisting in ethical ways. The only language they understand is violence. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:23.004Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-palestinians-are-incapable-of-resisting-in-ethical-ways-the-only-language-they-understand-is-violence",
"description": null
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Answer 1This is a moot point, because all countries should be held to account if they do not uphold equal rights. Israel has a legal obligation to uphold the equal rights of all its citizens, residents, and the people subject to its military occupation. How others are treated outside Israel’s realm of control is irrelevant. Answer 2Most Arab countries don’t go around boasting that they are ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’. It’s only Israel that claims to be a democracy while discriminating against citizens, residents and people subject to its military occupation who are not Jewish. It is also the only country in the Middle East that human right’s organizations have charged with the crime of apartheid. Answer 3There are over 60 laws in Israel that discriminate and differentiate between Jews and non-Jews, most notably the right to self determination which is exclusively reserved for Jewish citizens of Israel. We are not asking you to compare the living standards of Palestinians in Israel to those in Muslim countries. We ask that you compare living standards amongst ISRAELI citizens. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Muslim countries don’t uphold equal rights, yet they want equal rights for Palestinians in Israel.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Muslim countries don’t uphold equal rights, yet they want equal rights for Palestinians in Israel. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:23.036Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-muslim-countries-dont-have-equal-rights-yet-they-want-it-for-palestinians-in-israel",
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Answer 1South Africa, from page 59 of the written submission to page 63, illustrates in detail the statements of genocidal intent from all levels of the government and military apparatus in Israel. They also amplify this point in their oral proceedings. It is clear that there is a culture across the state that has normalized expressions of genocidal intent. There is even an official letter signed by prominent Israelis calling on the government to alter its language when it comes to expressing genocidal intent. These statements coupled with the very clear cut actions that amount to genocide make this point irrefutable.Answer 2The crime of genocide has two elements: intention and execution. Leveling an accusation of genocide requires proof of one or the other, or both. Statements can be submitted as proof of intent, they do not need to be made in a war room to be implicating. In Israel’s case, to prove intent, Law for Palestine has meticulously documented 500 statements that prove Israel’s intention to commit and incitement of genocide since October 7, 2023. These statements were made by Israeli officials in their prominent roles and capacities, and many are publicly documented on account of them being made in public and quoted by media outlets. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Genocidal statements made by Israeli officials do not count because they were not made in the war room.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Genocidal statements made by Israeli officials do not count because they were not made in the war room. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:26.173Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-genocidal-statements-made-by-israeli-officials-do-not-count-because-they-were-not-made-in-the-war-room",
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Answer 1According to Israeli human rights organization B’tselem and Amnesty International, Palestinians must contend with over 175 permanent military checkpoints and roadblocks, scores of temporary irregular barriers, and a draconian permit regime supported by a repressive biometric surveillance system. Such restrictions of movement fragment Palestinian communities, disrupt everyday life and amount to unlawful collective punishment. With such measures, no one is safe. Answer 2Israel’s full control over Palestinian’s freedom of movement is a tool for occupation, collective punishment and dominance. Palestinian movement is restricted by Israel’s 708 km separation wall (fragmenting Palestinian villages from each other), its discriminatory permit system that determines who can go where, and its policy of checkpoints and closures to make life as humiliating and unproductive as possible. In reality, this translates into tens of thousands of Palestinians regularly being prevented from reaching their workplace and their schools, visiting family members, seeking medical treatment or practicing their right of worship.Answer 3The Israeli military regime implemented a policy that restricts foreign passport holders from living with their Palestinian spouses in the West Bank by limiting their visas to a maximum of six months. Couples must apply for permanent residency status in the West Bank, which is subject to Israeli approval. Israel’s restriction on movement isn’t about safety. This is about demographic control by an occupying power seeking to maintain an ethno-state by hook or by crook. Answer 4Israel’s apartheid policies, ongoing Palestinian statelessness, and widespread anti-Palestinian/Arab/Muslim sentiments severely curtail Palestinian mobility. These factors hinder Palestinian movement within their own homeland (between Gaza and the West Bank and within the West Bank) and internationally. These limitations on Palestinian human rights and freedom of movement are precisely what fuel resistance and conflict, which are then used to justify further restrictions on Palestinian mobility.Answer 5Upon ascending to power in the 1930s, the Nazis passed The Nuremberg Laws and a host of “Aryanization” policies that deliberately sought to exclude Jews and their descendants from public life due to their perceived “threat”. Never again should mean never again for anyone. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Movement of Palestinians must be restricted everywhere for security purposes.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Movement of Palestinians must be restricted everywhere for security purposes. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:26.211Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-movement-of-palestinians-must-be-restricted-everywhere-for-security-purposes",
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Answer 1The land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, historically known as Palestine during the Islamic Golden Age (7th-13th centuries) and throughout the Ottoman period (14th-20th centuries), was acknowledged by Zionists as Palestine prior to 1948. In the formative years of Zionism, dating back to as early as 1840, Zionist proponents advocated for a Jewish return to ‘the land of Palestine’.Answer 2In the 18th century, Palestinians enjoyed significant autonomy and self-governance in historic Palestine. This era was catalyzed by the weakening of the Ottoman Empire and the region’s burgeoning commercial activity, particularly in cotton and grain trade. Between the early 1700s and 1776, Palestinians flourished under the autonomous rule of Zahir al-Umar, an Arab leader who governed northern Ottoman Palestine during that time.Answer 3The nation-state is a modern construct. Even if one were to argue that Palestine did not exist as a nation-state in the modern sense, it has been consistently inhabited by a native population identifying as Palestinian Arab, inclusive of Christians, Muslims, and Jews, throughout recorded history. Before the establishment of Israel in 1948, the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea was recognized as Palestine, or Historic Palestine as it is known today, by historians spanning countless centuries.Answer 4The vast majority of natives inhabiting the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea can trace their ancestry, land, properties, villages, towns, and cities in Historic Palestine for centuries prior to the Nakba and the mass displacement of Palestinians from their land during and after the 1948 war, which led to the establishment of Israel. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Before the British swept in, there was no Palestinian nation.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Before the British swept in, there was no Palestinian nation. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:26.402Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-before-the-british-swept-in-there-was-no-palestinian-nation",
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Answer 1International humanitarian law mandates the protection of journalists operating in conflict zones. However, there is an abundance of evidence indicating that Israel consistently targets and kills Palestinian journalists. As of April 16, 2024, preliminary investigations by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) revealed that at least 95 journalists and media workers were among the tens of thousands of civilians killed since the war began on October 7. Gaza’s Government Media Office reports at least 126 Palestinian media workers killed. Answer 2In the first three months of Israel’s 2023-2024 War on Gaza, more journalists were killed than in all of World War II or the Vietnam War. Data from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) indicates that the number of journalists killed in the initial ten weeks of the conflict also exceeded the highest annual journalist death toll in any recorded armed conflict in any country.Answer 3Palestinian citizen and professional journalists prominently wear press jackets and helmets, clearly identifying their status. Despite these clear designations and protected status, the Israeli army has assassinated journalists with sniper fire (Al Najah’s Asem Al-Barsh and Al Jazeera’s Shireen Abu Akleh), precision shots carried out by drones (Al Jazeera’s Samer Abudaqa), missile strikes targeting journalists in residential areas (Quds News Network director, Hassouneh Salim and freelance photographer Hassouneh Salim), missile strikes targeting homes (Anadolu Agency’s Montaser Al-Sawaf and Roshdi Sarrajj) and missile strikes targeting press marked cars carrying journalists (Palestinian Press House’s Bilal Jadallah and Al Jazeera’s Hamza Al Dahdouh and AFP’s Mustafa Thuraya). These are only a few examples of the many documented incidents in which Israel has deliberately targeted journalists.Israel’s conduct confirms these accounts. Answer 4The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has consistently urged independent investigations into deliberate attacks on and targeted assassinations of Palestinian journalists during the 2023-2024 War, including the missile strikes that killed Al Jazeera’s Hamza Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya. Regarding Dahdouh and Thuraya, the CPJ reported, “Israel initially claimed it targeted a car carrying journalists in Gaza because there was a terrorist inside. Now it suggests that the use of a drone by a journalist made them ‘appear’ as terrorists.”Answer 5On October 13, 2023, the Israeli military conducted strikes targeting a group of seven journalists in Southern Lebanon, all clearly identified in press gear. These strikes resulted in the death of Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah and injuries to six others. This deliberate attack on journalists by Israel follows a documented pattern preceding October 7, 2023. Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International classified these strikes as “apparently deliberate attacks on civilians and thus war crimes.” Reporters Without Borders has lodged multiple complaints with the International Criminal Court to investigate the killing of these seven Palestinian journalists, suggesting they may have been intentionally targeted due to their profession. Consequently, RSF describes these deaths as deliberate homicides of civilians.Answer 6Israel openly admitted to Reuters and Agence France Presse that it cannot and will not guarantee the safety of journalists working in Gaza during the 2023-2024 war when these agencies sought assurances that their journalists would not be targeted by the Israeli army.Answer 7Before the 2023-2024 War, UNESCO has documented the targeted killing of 21 professional or citizen journalists in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 2002. CPJ has documented the targeted killing of 25 journalists in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 1992.Answer 8On May 11, 2022, an Israeli army sniper fatally shot Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the head while she was reporting on clashes between the Israeli Army and Palestinians in Jenin refugee camp in the Occupied West Bank. Abu Akleh was wearing a clearly marked press vest and helmet. Israeli snipers then targeted Abu Akleh’s colleagues who were trying to rescue her. Israel attempted to deflect blame for the assassination of Abu Akleh on Palestinian militants until multiple investigations conclusively demonstrated the Israeli Army’s responsibility for her killing. No Israeli soldier/s have been held accountable by Israel for the assassination of Abu Akleh to date. Answer 9The Israeli Army also deliberately and repeatedly targets and threatens the families of journalists such as Wael Al Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Gaza (whose wife, daughter, two sons, and grandson were killed at home, and another son–Hamza, a journalist–was targeted and killed while reporting). Palestinian journalists repeatedly report receiving death threats from Israel targeting them and their families. Israel’s conduct confirms these accounts. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Israel does not deliberately target journalists.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Israel does not deliberately target journalists. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:26.520Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-israel-does-not-deliberately-target-journalists",
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Answer 1First, Allah is the Arabic word for ‘God’. He is the same God revered by three Abrahamic religions and followers alike. Second, ‘Palestinian’ is not a religion. Palestinians are a people of shared ethnic and national background that includes people of all faiths, including Jews. Third, it is against the Muslim religion to harm ‘People of the Book’, which includes all Muslims, Christians and Jews. Answer 2This is Islamophobia at its finest. Nothing about Islam, or Palestinian resistance, calls for “murdering” Jews. Even the Hamas charter explicitly differentiates between Zionism and Judaism, where Zionism is considered a racist, ethno-supremacist, settler-colonial ideology that has hijacked Judaism for its nefarious purposes. The Hamas charter is clear in its call for resistance against Zionist, not Jewish, colonization of Palestine. Answer 3Every Zionist accusation is merely a confession. It was Netanyahu and his government in November 2023 that invoked religious scripture to justify the genocide of Palestinians. Answer 4Islamophobes propagate the falsehood that Islam fosters anti-Semitism. In Islam, Jews are recognized as “People of the Book,” and Moses is revered as a prophet. Palestinian resistance targets not the Jewish people, but rather the Zionists who exploit Judaism to establish and maintain a racist settler colony. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Many Palestinians consider it an Allah-given right (commandment even) to murder Jews.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Many Palestinians consider it an Allah-given right (commandment even) to murder Jews. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:26.548Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-many-palestinians-consider-it-an-allah-given-right-commandment-even-to-murder-jews",
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Answer 2Not according to Israeli and international human rights organizations, including B’Tselem, Yesh Din, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. Israel’s judiciary–its laws, policies, and practices– serves to uphold and enforce Israeli impunity and its system of apartheid against Palestinians. Its Supreme Court has regularly ruled in favor of demolishing entire villages for illegal settlements, upholding administrative detention of Palestinians without trial for years, and allowing the Israeli military to take punitive measures against child detainees, such as demolition of their homes. When complaints have been made against IOF soldiers for torture, killing or other crimes against Palestinians, under one percent of complaints have led to indictments and even when they do, they tend to be acquitted. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Israel has its own judicial system that will hold its military accountable if mistakes were made.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Israel has its own judicial system that will hold its military accountable if mistakes were made. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:29.494Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-israel-has-its-own-judicial-system-that-will-hold-its-military-accountable-if-mistakes-were-made",
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Answer 1There have always been Jews in Palestine, and historically they spoke Arabic and were part of the tapestry of the Levant. The explicitly European colonial nature of political Zionism, however, is antithetical to any notions of Jewish indigeneity. This is because Zionism has from the outset sought to implant European Jews as settlers at the expense of the indigenous multi-faith inhabitants and stewards of the land.Answer 2Zionism was and is – in the words of its own founders – a colonial movement. It has been implemented with the methodologies and ideologies of European colonialism. The fact that Jews have spiritual ties to the land does not make them indigenous per se, nor does it erase the colonial nature of Zionism, which in any case, is not synonymous with Judaism.Answer 3Judaism is not Zionism. Judaism is a religion with legitimate spiritual ties to the ancient land of Israel/historic Palestine. Some Jews have indeed lived uninterrupted in Palestine for centuries and could therefore be considered indigenous. Indigeneity, however, cannot be manufactured through a process of colonization, as was/is the case with Zionism.Answer 4Indigeneity is based on a connection to the land. Palestinians without a doubt have that connection.This includes Palestinian Jews, Muslims and Christians. Jews of European descent are not indigenous to Palestine. They have a religious connection and emigrated as settlers, mostly within the past 100 years or less. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Jews are indigenous to the land and therefore cannot be colonizers.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Jews are indigenous to the land and therefore cannot be colonizers. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:29.528Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-jews-are-indigenous-to-the-land-and-therefore-cannot-be-colonizers",
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Answer 1According to the World Health Organizations, hospitals and other vital medical infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank have been attacked nearly 600 times since October 7 as of January 2024. 613 people have died within health facilities, 606 in Gaza and seven in the Occupied West Bank, and more than 770 have been injured.Answer 2Not only did a Washington Post investigation (in addition to all the ground reporting from Palestinian journalists in Gaza) unequivocally demonstrate that since October 7, claims by Israel that hospitals in Gaza were being used for military purposes are false, but several human rights groups have stated that Israeli attacks and besiegement of hospitals should be investigated as war crimes. Answer 3A CNN investigation, published the day Israel presented its case to the ICJ, states that several of the hospitals directly hit in Gaza, including Al Shifa and Al Quds, appeared to have been attacked by Israel. Answer 4ICC prosecutor Karim Khan, in an editorial in The Guardian in November 2023, issued a warning to both sides that the burden of proof is on them if they claim hospitals, schools or houses of worship have lost their protected status because they are being used for military purposes, and that the bar for that evidence is very high. Israel has yet to provide such a level of irrefutable evidence. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Israel did not bomb any hospitals, but it has evidence of Hamas using every single hospital in Gaza for military purposes.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Israel did not bomb any hospitals, but it has evidence of Hamas using every single hospital in Gaza for military purposes. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:29.636Z",
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Answer 8In her memoir, Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World, published mere weeks before the events of October 7, Jewish author and activist Naomi Klein states:
“Where European powers colonized from a position of strength and a claim to God-given superiority, the post-Holocaust Zionist claim to Palestine was based on the reverse: on Jewish victimization and vulnerability. The tacit argument many Zionists were making at the time was that Jews had earned the right to an exception from the decolonial consensus—an exception born of their very recent near extermination. The Zionist version of justice said to Western powers: If you could establish your empires and your settler colonial nations through ethnic cleansing, massacres, and land theft, then it is discrimination to say that we cannot. If you cleared your land of its Indigenous inhabitants, or did so in your colonies, then it is anti-Semitic to say that we cannot. It was as if the quest for equality were being reframed not as the right to be free from discrimination, but as the right to discriminate. Colonialism framed as reparations for genocide.” | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Israel is singled out and held up to a higher standard than other countries.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Israel is singled out and held up to a higher standard than other countries. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:29.823Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-israel-is-singled-out-and-held-up-to-a-higher-standard-than-other-countries",
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Answer 1This unsubstantiated claim by Israel, that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, has never been verified by any independent investigation. This claim consistently serves as cover, a deflection tactic, and an unbridled excuse used by Israel to indiscriminately and disproportionately target and kill Palestinian civilians.Answer 2Amnesty International (AI) has conducted several investigations into Israeli claims that Hamas uses civilians “to shield military objectives from attacks.” In investigations following Israeli military attacks on Gaza in 2009 and 2014, AI found no evidence to back this claim, which Israel uses to indiscriminately and disproportionately target Palestinian civilians and civilian infrastructure. Answer 3There are hundreds of documented cases of Palestinians being used as human shields by the Israeli army. In fact, using Palestinians as human shields was so common that when the Israeli high court outlawed the practice in 2005, the Israeli army appealed to the court to have its decision reversed. Answer 4Israeli human rights group B’Tselem continues to document the Israeli army’s use of Palestinian civilians as human shields despite Israel’s high court’s ruling making this practice illegal in 2005. These incidents include Israeli armed forces using Palestinian civilians to check houses for booby traps or handle suspicious objects, in addition to tying Palestinians to Israeli military vehicles to deter Palestinians from throwing stones at these vehicles. Answer 5Rule 1 of the Principle of Distinction between Civilians and Combatants states: “The parties to the conflict must always distinguish between civilians and combatants. Attacks are only permissible against combatants and must not target civilians.”Answer 6“Civilians must be protected. They cannot legally be targets of violence, or disproportionately harmed by it. And those obligations apply to all parties involved in the fighting, even if the other side has violated them. ‘Human shields’ are still protected civilians.” New York Times, Oct 19, 2023) | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Hamas uses civilians as human shields.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Hamas uses civilians as human shields. – Pali Answers",
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"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-hamas-uses-civilians-as-human-shields",
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Answer 1This is in full breach of the third Geneva convention that requires POWs be treated humanely and with respect for their dignity IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. Recording and disseminating such degrading treatment of Palestinian men is a clear violation of the convention. Answer 2Not a single video of such actions by the US exists; in fact the only incident in recent history was Abu Ghraib and perpetrators were prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and most, if not all, were dishonorably discharged from the military amongst other harsher punishments befitting of the crime.Answer 3Even the IOF itself has clarified that at most 15% of those captured are Hamas militants, and many have identified UN and other aid workers amongst those rounded up and stripped naked under false claims of self defense. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 There is nothing wrong with recording and disseminating videos of military aged men in Gaza being rounded up; the US did the same in Iraq and Syria against ISIS.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 There is nothing wrong with recording and disseminating videos of military aged men in Gaza being rounded up; the US did the same in Iraq and Syria against ISIS. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:32.961Z",
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Answer 5Similar to their overarching coverage of Israel-Palestine affairs, Western media’s portrayal of student protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza, notably the April 2024 encampments in the U.S., relied almost exclusively on second-hand, biased, pro-Zionist sources. Nevertheless, journalists dedicated to the profession and truth directly covered the protests on campuses, where diverse groups, including Jewish, Muslim, Arab, American, South Asian, and Black individuals, peacefully demonstrated. The most egregious anti-Semitism was unsurprisingly directed at anti-Zionist Jews by pro-Zionists. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Pro-Palestinian slogans in campus protests are anti-Semitic and call for Jewish genocide.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Pro-Palestinian slogans in campus protests are anti-Semitic and call for Jewish genocide. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:33.237Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-pro-palestinian-slogans-in-campus-protests-are-anti-semitic-and-call-for-jewish-genocide",
"description": null
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Answer 1The claim made by an Israeli journalist in the aftermath of the October 7 attack by Hamas was later refuted both by U.S. officials and leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Israeli officials said there was no evidence to support the claim and the IOF has not confirmed the claim. According to Israeli hospital and coroner reports, there were no bodies of beheaded babies.Answer 2South African lawyers accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians at the International Court of Justice said evidence shows the Israeli allegation of beheaded babies was fake. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Hamas beheaded 40 babies on October 7.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Hamas beheaded 40 babies on October 7. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:33.309Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-hamas-beheaded-40-babies-on-october-7th",
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Answer 4Not only has Israel made its intent clear through statements by government officials, but its actions on the ground more than back up its intent. As of Jan. 2024, Israel has dropped 65,000 tonnes of bombs on Gaza (for context, this is the equivalent of more than four atomic bombs). They have also deliberately targeted homes, universities, schools, hospitals and places of worship to ensure that Gaza becomes uninhabitable. That is not say of the 30,000+ killed, 60,000+ injured and millions constantly forced to flee in search of safety. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 How can it be a genocide when the population is steadily growing over the years?",
"pageTitle": "🤥 How can it be a genocide when the population is steadily growing over the years? – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:33.541Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-how-can-it-be-a-genocide-when-the-population-is-steadily-growing-over-the-years",
"description": null
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Answer 1Abiding by international law and safeguarding innocent civilians is a duty under international law regardless of West’s sentiment and alignment to the groups involved in a conflict. If the right to resist an occupier is selectively endorsed by the U.S. and it allies depending on their own interests and allegiances (i.e. Ukraine vs. Palestine), their endorsements do not change the fact that under international law, Israel’s carpet bombing and practices of collateral damage are illegal.Answer 2UNRWA continuously provides the IOF with GPS coordinates of its buildings and shelters, and yet as of January 2024, 150 of its buildings were STILL hit. Is Hamas responsible for that too?Answer 3A December 2023 U.S. intelligence assessment showed that nearly half of the bombs used by the IOF in the Gaza Strip have been unguided dumb bombs (i.e. tools for indiscriminate attacks and destruction). Israel’s use of disproportionately large weapons to strike “targets,” even if legitimate, are very likely to cause large scale destruction and civilian deaths in such a densely populated area. Basic rules of discretion require Israel to be using far less lethal and more accurate tactics, the latter of which Israel has a long history of deploying when it so chooses. Answer 4In January 2024, a very targeted Israeli drone strike assassinated a Hamas deputy commander residing in Dahiyeh, one of Beirut’s most densely populated suburbs. The strike killed five others, three of whom were also Hamas members. Israel clearly has the capability of conducting targeted strikes. But it deliberately chooses to employ tactics that result in wide-scale destruction under the guise of eliminating Hamas, but with the singular purpose of making Gaza uninhabitable for Palestinians.Answer 5Israel is single-handedly responsible for destroying Palestinian neighborhoods and systematically carpet bombing and targeting civilians unnecessarily. There is video footage and Israel admission to prove its culpability. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Your neighborhood is destroyed? You have Hamas to thank for that.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Your neighborhood is destroyed? You have Hamas to thank for that. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:37.590Z",
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Answer 1International Law, including the Geneva Convention, demands it! Withholding life-sustaining essentials such as water, food, medicine, and fuel from an occupied population is a war crime. It is also a war crime to withhold the basics of life from a population in order to force it to accept its transfer to another land.Answer 2The UN has repeatedly stated that Israeli tactics in Gaza, particularly its withholding of life-sustaining materials from the civilian population, amount to a form of collective punishment. Collective punishment is a war crime and prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention. Answer 3The 1948 Genocide Convention says that intentionally causing a group of people to suffer conditions that could kill them, like starvation, can be considered genocide. Palestinians in Gaza are being deliberately starved by Israel’s prohibition of all life-sustaining resources, including food and water, from entering the Gaza Strip. The UN, Oxfam, Médecins Sans Frontières, and the EU’s foreign policy chief have accused Israel of creating a man-made famine and using it as a weapon of war.Supporting LinksHRW – Israel: Immediately Restore Electricity, Water, Aid to Gaza (Oct. 2023) | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Why should Israel supply an enemy population with water, food and medicine?",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Why should Israel supply an enemy population with water, food and medicine? – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:37.676Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-why-should-israel-supply-an-enemy-population-with-water-food-and-medicine",
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Answer 1Israel is a nuclear-armed state with one of the most technologically advanced militaries in the world, and is backed by the U.S. There is no symmetry with most global armies, let alone any Palestinian armed groups. Israel’s reaction shows no proportionality which further highlights this asymmetry.Answer 2If Israel is concerned only for its safety, why does it continue to add more illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank, the Palestinian area it promised to hand back for a Palestinian state? Presented with the options of a peaceful Palestine neighbor (like Egypt and Jordan proved to be) it chose instead the path of Apartheid and military subjugation.Turns out Israel prefers real estate over its own security.Answer 3The idea that Israel is a fragile state fighting for its existence while simultaneously being a nuclear power whose illegal military occupation and violent crimes toward Palestinians are systemic and precede this latest attack on Gaza, let alone this latest genocide, demonstrates the level of impunity that Israel enjoys.Answer 4Israel is an occupying power that controls all borders and aspects of Palestinian life. Israel has, for decades, systematically trespassed and committed violent crimes against Palestinians with zero accountability. These are not the actions of a fledgling state fighting for its existence, but rather a nuclear state with no concerns over the legitimacy of its own actions. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Israel is fighting a war for its very own existence.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Israel is fighting a war for its very own existence. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:37.722Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-israel-is-fighting-a-war-for-its-very-own-existence",
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Answer 1The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) was borne of Zionist militias like the Irgun, which was considered a terrorist organization by the international community, and the Haganah and Stern Gang, which were considered terrorist organizations by the Palestinians. These forebearers of the Israeli Army established Israel by massacring Palestinians and forcibly displacing over 750,000 Palestinians in 1948. Since then, the IOF has persisted in ethnic cleansing and systematic violations of international law, engaging in crimes ranging from assassination and kidnapping to invasion, massacre, and enforcing an illegal occupation and apartheid system.Answer 2The IOF is mandated by the state of Israel to uphold an apartheid system of displacement, illegal settlement and military occupation with total impunity. There is no shortage of examples of the Israeli army’s immoral behavior over the past 75 years, including the 2023/2024 genocide in Gaza, which killed over 32,000 Palestinian civilians in a six month span. The IOF has become the textbook definition of immoral conduct. Answer 3The number of crimes committed by the IOF are too numerous to list. The “most moral army” is notorious for using Palestinian as human shields. Many investigations into alleged Palestinian use of this “tactic” conclude that it was Israel in fact guilty of the practice. Answer 4Each year, around 500-700 Palestinian children, some as young as 12, are detained by the IOF and prosecuted in Israeli military courts, often facing indefinite administrative detention. Not only are these practices themselves illegal, but testimonies collected from 739 Palestinian children detained in the West Bank between 2013 and 2018 by Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP) found that 73% experienced physical violence following arrest, 95% were hand tied, 86% were blindfolded, and 64% faced verbal abuse, humiliation or intimidation.Answer 5The “Dahiya doctrine,” characterized by the destruction of non-military infrastructure and resulting in significant civilian casualties, is a deliberate policy and strategy employed by the IOF. This approach implicitly acknowledges Israel’s view of civilian areas as legitimate military targets, often justified preemptively by alleging Palestinians’ use of civilians as human shields, of which there is no evidence.Answer 6Since Israel’s invasion of Gaza in October 2023, IOF soldiers have been sharing videos on social media showing them vandalizing local shops and classrooms, stealing from Palestinians, and engaging in dehumanizing acts like searching through women’s intimate clothing and making derogatory comments. The steady stream of footage from Israeli soldiers’ TikTok accounts underscores the troubling absence of accountability and ethical boundaries within the Israeli army.Answer 7In February 2024, a United Nations panel urged an independent investigation into reports of sexual abuse by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian women and girls. The statement, endorsed by key UN officials, highlighted concerning behavior by the IOF, including arbitrary detention and inhumane treatment, including sexual assault.Supporting LinksAl Jazeera – The myth of Israel’s ‘most moral army’ (Oct. 2023)DecolonizePalestine – Myth: the IDF is the most moral army in the worldDefense for Children International - Palestine - Military Detention Washington Post - The punishing military doctrine that Israel may be following in Gaza (Nov. 2023)New York Times - What Israeli Soldiers’ Videos Reveal: Cheering Destruction and Mocking Gazans (Feb. 2024)UN News - Rights experts call for probe into alleged violations against Palestinian women and girls (Feb. 2024) | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 The Israeli Army is known around the world as a moral army.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 The Israeli Army is known around the world as a moral army. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:38.039Z",
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Answer 1Israel should absolutely be held accountable for the massive casualties and destruction it has inflicted upon the civilian population of Gaza. Israel has broken the laws of war set out in international law by committing a plethora of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Answer 2Israel has engaged in the illegal collective punishment of an entire civilian population. If Israel is a nation like any other, and if the international order is to have any meaning at all, then Israel must be held to account for its systematic violations of international and humanitarian law including collective punishment, targeting hospitals, churches, schools and other areas in which civilians sought shelter. Answer 3If we accept this argument, then international law is meaningless and we cannot condemn Russian actions in Ukraine or transgressions of international laws by Hamas. Selective application of international and human rights laws that are meant to protect civilians anywhere is a recipe for violence, chaos and lawlessness everywhere.Answer 4There are clear international laws of war. Israel should at minimum adhere to those laws and be held accountable to them. In the event that the ongoing atrocities in Gaza do not even fall under the definition of war, then Israel would still be held accountable. As an occupying force, under international law, Israel has a responsibility toward the civilians and land it occupies. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Israel should not be held accountable for the dead civilians or property destruction, because this is a war, and those are merely casualties of war.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Israel should not be held accountable for the dead civilians or property destruction, because this is a war, and those are merely casualties of war. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:38.084Z",
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Answer 1Any honest observer can tell you that resistance against occupation cannot be destroyed. Even if Hamas was destroyed, another resistance organization would replace it. Hamas exists because of the occupation. Ending the occupation is the only way to a peaceful resolution. Answer 2Productive dialogue will only be possible when Israel decides to treat Palestinians as equals. Israel failed to negotiate in good faith long before Hamas even existed. Hamas is a bogeyman used to justify Israeli intransigence and impunity and its lack of desire to dismantle apartheid. Answer 3Hamas has offered multi-year truces and accepted the two-state solution. Israel rejected these overtures. It is not dialogue that Israel wants, or even a lasting peace between equals, but rather to be allowed to “peacefully” maintain Jewish superiority with impunity. Answer 4Hamas was founded in 1987 against the Israeli occupation. It exists today because the Israeli occupation never ended. Ending the occupation is the only way to lessen the influence of militant groups like Hamas. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Once Israel wipes out Hamas, maybe then there can be dialogue.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Once Israel wipes out Hamas, maybe then there can be dialogue. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:41.575Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-once-israel-wipes-out-hamas-maybe-then-there-can-be-dialogue",
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Answer 1This claim emphasizes a long, flawed history of expecting Palestinians to accept the illegal military occupation of their homes and lands and substantially less than what is rightfully and originally their own in full. Not to mention that what little of historic Palestine designated for a Palestinian state continues to be usurped for illegal settlement expansion, demonstrating a clear lack of intent for the allowance of any Palestinian state.Answer 2Palestinians could be celebrating 75 years of an independent Palestine alongside Jewish Palestinian compatriots if Zionists had decided against enacting ethnic cleansing and the creation of a settler colonial state at the expense of Palestinians and instead accepted Palestinian calls for a secular democratic state of Palestine for all, regardless of religion.Answer 3Palestinians rightly rejected a partition plan hoisted upon them by colonial powers which gave a majority of the land to a minority population of European settlers. Indigenous Palestinians were the overwhelming majority (66 %) in 1947-48 but were “offered” only around 43% of the country. Rejecting such a ludicrous deal was/is a no-brainer.Answer 4Palestinians could be celebrating 75 years of independence had a settler colonial project backed by the great imperial powers of the time not ethnically cleansed them in order to make room for a “Jewish state” populated by predominantly European Jewish settlers and underwritten by Western military superiority to this day. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Palestinians could be celebrating their own 75th anniversary had they been willing to accept Israel as their neighbor in 1948.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Palestinians could be celebrating their own 75th anniversary had they been willing to accept Israel as their neighbor in 1948. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:41.677Z",
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Answer 1This is a ludicrous and laughable claim. While Husseini’s opposition to British occupation of Palestine unfortunately led him to seek an alliance with Germany (then Britain’s enemy), the idea that he was responsible for Hitler’s attempt to exterminate European Jewry is a transparent attempt to project European anti-Semitism onto Palestinians.Answer 2Anti-Semitism is a profoundly and predominantly European and Christian phenomenon. To imply that a Palestinian convinced Hitler to despise and then target Jews is an irresponsible and dangerous negation of history and a blatant lie meant to discredit legitimate Palestinian grievances. Answer 3While it is an unfortunate fact that one Palestinian leader sought to ally himself with Hitler’s Germany (albeit at a time when both the Palestinians and Germans were fighting the British), this does not in any way “prove” that Palestinian aspirations were/are aligned with Nazi ideology. Husseini was a nationalist leader opposed to British rule and Zionist colonization in Palestine. He was not the first nor the last historical figure to ally with his enemies’ enemy. To condemn the entire Palestinian cause for this is absurd, cynical and/or willfully naive. Answer 4Various Zionist leaders and groups also sought similar alliances with Hitler and Mussolini. These groups, much like Husseini, believed that Britain was the obstacle for the realization of their nationalist aspirations. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Amin al-Husseini, representing Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, talked Hitler into going after the Jews.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Amin al-Husseini, representing Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, talked Hitler into going after the Jews. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:41.705Z",
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Answer 1Palestinians that hold Israeli citizenship were also ethnically cleansed off their indigenous lands and villages in 1948. Most are now confined to smaller areas and in predominantly “Arab” areas such as Nazareth.Answer 2During the Nakba in 1948, over 531 Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed and more than 70 massacres were carried out by Zionist militias against Palestinians. These militias expropriated territory and subjugated Palestinians who became Israeli citizens to the most dire living conditions.These same Palestinians live as second class citizens in Israel today. Answer 3Before the mass expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians in 1948, Palestinians comprised over 60% of the population of what became the state of Israel.This is a seismic decline from the 20% it is today. The intentional reduction of a population from being a clear majority of a country to a minority is, by definition, ethnic cleansing. Answer 4Zionists left ample documentation of their intentions, planning and ultimately their execution of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Israeli historians for decades have unearthed substantial and irrefutable proof of the premeditated nature of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Answer 5The number of Jews in Germany today is 20-30% of pre-Holocaust Germany. The number of French Jews today is more than double that of the French Jewish population in 1933. Italy’s Jewish population is almost 60% of what it was before WWII. But no one in their right mind would use these numbers to question the atrocities that befell the Jewish populations in these countries during WWII, or question claims that they were not ethnically cleansed or mass murdered.Answer 6The presence of over two million Native Americans in the U.S. today does not negate the occurrence of genocide in North America. Likewise, the survival of some Palestinians does not disprove the possibility of ethnic cleansing having occurred. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 20% of Israelis are Arab, what ethnic cleansing are you talking about?",
"pageTitle": "🤥 20% of Israelis are Arab, what ethnic cleansing are you talking about? – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:41.751Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-20-of-israelis-are-arab-what-ethnic-cleansing-are-you-talking-about",
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Answer 1The Israeli onslaught on Gaza has not only resulted in the murder of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians but of at least 60 Israelis held in Gaza. If the Israeli military cared about the wellbeing of the hostages they would have accepted the many offers by Hamas to negotiate an exchange. Answer 2A ceasefire is crucial to halt the illegal and disproportionate collective punishment inflicted on Gaza’s civilians and to facilitate the return of Israelis held captive there. Ceasefires and negotiations for prisoner swaps are the sole viable way forward.Answer 3There is ample proof that the safe release of hostages can only occur through a ceasefire, as happened with the exchanges during the six day pause in hostilities in late November. Israel’s military campaign itself has only managed to free one hostage over the course of nearly three months of bombardment and a ground invasion. In this same time it has slaughtered tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians as well as killing dozens of Israeli hostages. It is clear that without a ceasefire, there will be no hostages left to save. Answer 4This illustrates the recurring double standard of victimhood promoted by Zionists. Palestinians, who have been collectively held hostage by the Zionist state for decades, are constantly expected to overlook this reality when negotiating, voicing their grievances globally, and even in their acts of resistance, as seen in reactions to events like October 7.Answer 5On October 7, there were 1,310 Palestinians held by Israel in illegal administrative detention, without charge or trial.This practice, denounced by both international and Israeli human rights organizations, bears no effective distinction from hostage-taking. Therefore, why are Palestinians expected to await the release of Israeli hostages for their suffering to cease, when Israeli hostage-taking persists unchecked, even during so-called times of “peace”? | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Israel is left with no choice but to use military force to free its hostages held by terrorists like Hamas.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Israel is left with no choice but to use military force to free its hostages held by terrorists like Hamas. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:41.786Z",
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Answer 1Criticism of Zionism is directed not against Jews but against occupation and colonization carried out by the state of Israel. Conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism is a tactic employed to shield Israeli policies from legitimate condemnation. Sadly, this dilutes the necessary struggle against real anti-Semitism.Answer 2Many (and increasingly) anti-Zionists are Jewish and in fact consider Zionism to be dangerous for Jews in that it conflates Judaism with a political ideology (Zionism) that weaponizes their religion, promotes and depends on discrimination, ethnic cleansing and even genocide. Answer 3Some anti-Zionist Jews even consider Zionism to be a project which makes Jews less safe. They also decry Zionism’s problematic history of allying itself with anti-Semites to further Zionist aims and Israel’s agenda. Answer 4Zionism is not Judaism. This conflation is incredibly dangerous and opens the door to anti-Semitism by falsely equating the policies of a rogue apartheid state (Israel) with the Jewish faith. To oppose Zionism is to oppose a political ideology and its state, not a religion or its practitioners. Answer 5Zionism is sometimes supported for explicitly anti-Semitic motives, as seen in various groups and movements. Christian Zionists, for instance, may hold anti-Semitic beliefs about Jews while supporting Zionism for biblical reasons. Additionally, right-wing nationalists in Europe and the United States may back Zionism because they desire Jewish expulsion or emigration to Israel, or because they view Israel as a model of a supremacist ethno-state. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Anti-Zionism is inherently anti-Semitic.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Anti-Zionism is inherently anti-Semitic. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:44.622Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-anti-zionism-is-inherently-anti-semitic",
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Answer 1Apartheid is an Afrikaans word that refers to a system based on discrimination and segregation. In the case of Israel today, there are different sets of laws and rights for Israeli Jews on the one hand and for Palestinians on the other. This system is enforced by Israeli bureaucracy and by force. Answer 2Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem (Israel) disagree. Amnesty concludes that “Israel enforces a system of oppression and domination against Palestinians…in order to benefit Jewish Israelis. This amounts to apartheid as prohibited under international law.”Answer 3Many South Africans who were subjected to and resisted apartheid have for decades insisted that Israel’s system of “oppression and domination” is identical to South African apartheid if not worse. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter offers a similar conclusion in his book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. Answer 4In a 2007 interview, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter said the use of the word apartheid to describe Israeli policies towards Palestinians is accurate on two levels, in that there are two sets of laws that govern two sets of people, and one side (the Israeli) has complete domination over the life of the other. For example, he shared how Palestinians cannot use the same roads built for Israelis in Palestinian territory. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 There is no apartheid in Israel.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 There is no apartheid in Israel. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:44.653Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-there-is-no-apartheid-in-israel",
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Answer 1On December 16, 2023, Al-Jazeera Journalist Anas Al Sharif reported from Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, witnessing displaced Palestinians being buried alive as Israeli bulldozers crushed their tents. Despite this, Israel claims not to target civilians. Ironically, Anas, whose family home was bombed, had received threats from the Israeli military, with his father killed in an airstrike just five days prior.Answer 2On December 15, 2023, Israel shot dead its own hostages in Gaza. They were unarmed, shirtless young men who waved a makeshift white flag and pleaded for their lives in Hebrew. If this incident does not prove what Palestinians have decried for decades – that the IOF habitually engages in indiscriminate slaughter – then we’re not sure what more proof you require.Answer 3All evidence from over six months of Israeli aggression in Gaza suggests that Israel deliberately targets civilian areas and specific civilians (i.e. journalists, doctors, writers etc). This is backed up by a decades-long track record of disproportionate casualties among civilians at the hands of the Israeli military. Answer 4When the current war broke out in October of 2023, the IOF Spokesperson was quick to make clear that “the emphasis is on damage, not precision.” These statements clearly align with Israel’s actions since then: hundreds of tons of bombs have been dropped on the Gaza Strip so far, leading to a horrifying death amongst Palestinians (the majority of whom are women and children) in the Gaza Strip.Answer 5Despite its propaganda to the contrary, indiscriminate targeting has always been the “Israeli way of war”. This time, however, Israel has a particular objective to make the Gaza Strip unfit for human habitation in the hope that it will facilitate Israeli plans for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza’s Palestinians. Even though they employ euphemisms such as “humanitarian migration” to obfuscate their intentions, Israeli officials have repeatedly made clear their goal to destroy Gaza to such a degree as to leave its inhabitants with no choice but to leave. Answer 6If Israel is not purposefully targeting civilians and the vast civilian casualties are all accidents then the Israeli military – the biggest beneficiary of U.S. support – is surely one of the most hopelessly inadequate and unprofessional armies in the world and should not be receiving aid from the U.S. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Israel does not target civilians.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Israel does not target civilians. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:45.227Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-israel-does-not-target-civilians",
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Answer 6Here’s a non-comprehensive list of Israeli massacres committed against the Palestinians before October 7:
Deir Yassin Massacre – April 1948, over 110 Palestinians massacred.
Abu Shusha Massacre – May 1948, over 70 Palestinians massacred.
Tantura Massacre – May 15 1948 (Israel’s “independence” day), 200-300 Palestinians massacred.
Lydda Massacre – July 1948, up to 200 Palestinians massacred.
Saliha Massacre – October, 1948, 60-94 Palestinians sheltering in a mosque massacred.
Al Dawayima Massacre – October 1948, estimates place the number of Palestinians massacred at up to 1,000.
Qibya Massacre – October 1953, 69 Palestinians massacred.
Kafr Qasim Massacre – October 1956, 48 Palestinians massacred.
Khan Younis Massacre – November 1956, over 275 Palestinians massacred.
Al Aqsa Mosque Massacre – October 1990, 23 Palestinians massacred.
Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre – February 1994, 29 Palestinians massacred (current Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, had a picture of Baruch Goldstein, the perpetrator of the massacre, hanging in his home until 2020).
Jenin Refugee Camp Massacre – April 2002, 54 Palestinians massacred.
Gaza Massacre – December 2008/ December 2009, over 1,400 Palestinians massacred.
Gaza Massacre – November 2012, up to 1,500 Palestinains massacred.
Gaza Massacre – 2014, upwards of 2,200 Palestinians massacred.
Gaza Massacre – Great March of Return killings 2018/2019, upwards of 189 Palestinians massacred carrying out peaceful protests.
Gaza Massacre – May 2021, at least 130 Palestinians killed. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 It all started on October 7.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 It all started on October 7. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1More than 250,000 Palestinians had already been ethnically cleansed out of Palestine before any Arab army had set foot in Palestine. Israel’s ethnic cleansing plan was laid out from the 1930s and carried out starting in 1947. Arab armies at no point aimed to destroy Israel, they tried to maintain as much of the territory as possible and prevent an even larger genocide.Answer 2This is a myth. Arab armies did not enter Palestine until after the ethnic cleansing of Paestine was well underway. By the time Arab armies entered Palestine in May 1948, many tens of thousands of Palestinians had over the preceding months been driven from their homes.Answer 3Zionist militias had begun carrying out ethnic cleansing operations as part of the premeditated “Plan Dalet” months before Arab armies entered Palestine. Massacres and the emptying of cities such as Haifa and Jaffa all took place in the months leading up to the May 1948 war.Answer 4This talking point negates the enormous efforts behind the scenes aimed at avoiding war, not to mention ending it early when it did break out. The U.S. urged Jewish leaders in Palestine to defer any declaration of statehood and engage in negotiations. While most Arab states agreed to this proposal, David Ben Gurion rejected it, recognizing that peaceful adoption of the partition plan would entail the return of displaced refugees. He preferred war, as it offered the opportunity to seize territories beyond the 1947 partition borders that he desired.Answer 5When Arab states finally, and reluctantly, intervened, they for the most part arrived in the areas designated for a Palestinian state per the 1947 UN partition plan. They were not interested in war, and despite their propaganda and rhetoric, pursued many behind-the-scenes opportunities to end the war with Israel. Israel rejected all such overtures with the goal of maximizing its land-grabs. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 There was no Nakba, it was the Arab armies that attacked Israel in 1948.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 There was no Nakba, it was the Arab armies that attacked Israel in 1948. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:47.594Z",
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Answer 1Palestinians are indigenous to historic Palestine. Many families can trace their presence in a city, town or village back at least several centuries. The legitimacy of Palestinian national/cultural identity has been authoritatively established by Palestinian and Israeli historians. To repeat outdated myths to the contrary is not only inaccurate but offensive and ignorant.Answer 2Why don’t Chileans live in Mexico or Guatemalans in Argentina? There are 21 Spanish speaking countries to choose from after all. While Palestinian Arabs have shared linguistic, cultural and religious ties with other Arab countries, each Arab country/territory, including Palestine, has its own specific indigeneity and deep historicity and ties to place and land. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Why don’t Palestinians just move to the other 21 Arab countries?",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Why don’t Palestinians just move to the other 21 Arab countries? – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:48.230Z",
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Answer 1Had Jordan or Egypt declared a Palestinian state in either territory, the West Bank or Gaza, under their respective stewardships, without Israel’s agreement, Israel would have considered these declarations as an act of war against it.Answer 2Jordan was given de facto control over that territory before the 1967 War as part of a ceasefire agreement. This Jordanian stewardship of the West Bank was intended to be temporary until “final” peace negotiations with Israel would lead to a Palestinian state. Israel would have had to agree to these terms or Jordan would have risked war with Israel (again). Answer 3Jordan never annexed, nor did it want to annex the West Bank. It didn’t colonize or occupy that land, to have the power to “liberate” it. The only state that wants to annex the West Bank is Israel. But this Israeli goal has been put on hold by the international community and the ceasefire agreement that drew temporary demarcation lines after the 1967 War. Answer 4The borders of Israel, for that matter and till this day, are still not internationally recognized because these demarcation lines are considered just that. They are lines/borders drawn by a ceasefire. Until this day, Israel does not have internationally recognized borders because, legally, the borders between Israel and the “West Bank” have never been agreed on.
The Jordanian government, as do all other Arab governments, recognize the West Bank and Gaza as Palestinian territory. They are all in agreement that this territory should be part of a Palestinian state. The state that refused and still refuses to negotiate a final border agreement after the 1967 War and its ceasefire, is Israel.Supporting LinksBBC - Israel’s borders explained in maps (Oct. 2023) | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 If Palestinians deserve a state, why didn’t Jordan turn the West Bank into a Palestinian state before 1967?",
"pageTitle": "🤥 If Palestinians deserve a state, why didn’t Jordan turn the West Bank into a Palestinian state before 1967? – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1Israel has been internationally recognized as an occupying power since 1967. As such, it DOES not have the right to self-defense as established by international law in its dealings with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. International law dictates that Israel cannot use more than police powers to maintain its security. There are very exceptional cases where military force is permitted. Even then, military force cannot take the form of warfare nor be used under the guise of self-defense under international law.Answer 2Israel cannot have its cake and eat it too. It does not get to displace, control AND oppress Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza then claim it is NOT an occupier. It is internationally recognized that Israel has and continues to occupy the West Bank AND Gaza. Therefore, under international law, Israel absolutely does not have the right to defend itself against a population which it occupies. Answer 3Israel cannot both exercise control over a territory it occupies and militarily attack that territory on the claim that it is “foreign” and poses an “external” threat. By doing so, Israel may be asserting rights that are consistent with colonial domination but are completely incompatible with international law.Answer 4Israel cannot treat the West Bank and Gaza as enemy territory under international law. It does have the right to protect its citizens, but it absolutely does not have the right to use overwhelming military force against people under its occupation.Answer 5What does it even mean for a settler colony to defend itself against the natives it is colonizing? It boggles the mind that we have people demanding that the colonized and militarily occupied population must guarantee the safety of their oppressors and tormentors. It is akin to a mugger claiming self-defense when their victim fights back against their mugging.Answer 6If we were to agree with the premise that Israel does have the right to defend itself (which it does not), it would have to do so lawfully, within the parameters outlined by the Geneva Conventions. It certainly would not be allowed to target the civilian population, carry out collective punishment, and it definitely would not be justified in committing genocide. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Israel has the right to defend itself.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Israel has the right to defend itself. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians isn’t religious. Palestinians constitute an ethnic, semitic Arab group, that identify in a nationalist context, much like the French identify as French. The core of the conflict lies in Israel’s aim to establish itself as a Jewish state without the demographic presence of Palestinians, who encompass diverse religious and other identities including Christian, Muslim, Jewish, atheist, and others.Answer 2The majority, if not all, of the original Palestinian armed resistance movements were secular, with some having strong socialist affiliations. However, Israel actively targeted and undermined these secular groups, covertly supporting the rise of Islamist movements like Hamas within the Palestinian resistance. Israel’s strategy behind bolstering Islamist movements aimed to fracture national unity among Palestinian resistance factions, diminish global sympathy for their cause, and falsely frame the conflict in a religious context.Answer 3Even Hamas, which is an Islamist group, is struggling for the national liberation of the Palestinians, inclusive of their religious identities and diversity. Its manifesto explicitly states that it stands against the “racist, aggressive, colonial and expansionist” Zionist project, Israel, but not against Judaism or Jews. Answer 4Framing it as a religious conflict is a tactic to make the conflict appear long-standing, historic and intractable rather than a relatively “modern” one that is reminiscent of any other Western-style colonialist settler project. Answer 5The founding figures of Zionism, such as David Ben-Gurion, did not perceive their vision for Palestine through a religious lens. In fact, the majority of Zionist founders and their militias were secular. From the beginning, Zionist aspirations garnered minimal support from prominent Jewish religious leaders. Many critics of Zionism, spanning various religious affiliations, consistently highlight the problematic conflation of Zionism with Judaism. They argue that this conflation hampers constructive criticism of Israel and contributes to the resurgence of genuine anti-Semitism.Answer 6Zionism has leveraged and exploited Christian Evangelical movements to perpetuate, promote, and manipulate the religious narrative, garnering blind support of biblical proportions for the Zionist project. This manipulation frames even the most egregious crimes, including genocide, committed by Zionists as serving a higher, messianic, and biblical purpose.Answer 7Perpetuating the myth that the conflict is religious, or a clash between Islam and Judaism, fuels Islamophobic narratives depicting Arabs and Muslims as violent and uncivilized savages in need of taming. Similarly, this narrative portrays Zionist Jews, primarily of European descent, as requiring protection from such perceived barbarity. Not only does this narrative entail an overtly racist framing of the conflict, but it also obscures the settler-colonial nature of the conflict and denies the indigeneity of Palestinians to the land.Answer 8Not all Palestinians are Muslim, many are Christians, and some are even Jews. Yet all work to resist Israel’s colonialism, and all suffer from it equally. It is absurd to suggest that they would want to take part in a so-called “Muslim holy war against the Jews.” Answer 9Framing the conflict as Muslim vs. Jewish negates the complex historical dynamics at play, including the fact that anti-Semitism is a deadly byproduct of European Christian racism towards Jews. It neglects historical cases of Muslims offering sanctuary to persecuted Jews during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Muslim Ottoman Empire notably provided refuge amid European pogroms, as Western nations restricted the entry of Jews seeking refuge and fleeing persecution. Additionally, it conveniently neglects to mention that the Jewish Golden Age in Spain flourished under Muslim rule.Answer 10Claiming that the conflict has been going on for thousands of years implies that it had no beginning, it has no end, it has no discernable cause and it’s just two ethnic and religious groups that will never get along. This is simply not true. The conflict is the direct product of the continued Zionist oppression, dispossession and settler-colonization of Palestine and its people.Answer 11Framing the conflict solely in religious terms, such as Islam versus Judaism, overlooks Palestine’s rich Christian heritage and community. Prior to the violent displacements of 1948 and 1967, a vibrant Christian population coexisted alongside Muslims and Jews in historic Palestine. Despite once constituting about 10% of the pre-1948 population, Christians now represent only 1.6% of the population in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel. They face similar existential challenges as Palestinian Muslims, both in historic Palestine and in the diaspora.Supporting LinksAustralia Broadcasting Company - The moral case against ZionismDecolonizePalestine – Myth: The Palestinian questions is about religionMegaphone for Justice – Palestinians are anti-SemiticMartyr Made – Fear & Loathing in the New Jerusalem Part 1 | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 This is a war between Islam and Judaism and is as old as time.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 This is a war between Islam and Judaism and is as old as time. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1Despite this claim being promoted by Israel and parroted by the mainstream media, there is no proof of its veracity. In fact, every piece of evidence for this claim provided by Israel has been debunked or looked upon skeptically by serious journalists as well as international organizations.Answer 2In the absence of evidence for the use of hospitals as Hamas command centers, Israel’s systematic targeting of healthcare facilities in Gaza constitute war crimes.Answer 3On October 27, IOF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari, citing “concrete evidence”, claimed that Hamas was using five hospitals in the Gaza Strip as command centers and were adjacent to tunnels. Two months after encircling, besieging and raiding these hospitals and causing large scale death and destruction, a Washington Post investigation of Israel’s assault on the hospitals confirmed what Palestinians stated all along: no such evidence existed. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Hamas uses civilian infrastructure such as hospitals and schools as command centers, and has tunnels under them as well.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Hamas uses civilian infrastructure such as hospitals and schools as command centers, and has tunnels under them as well. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:51.483Z",
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Answer 1Palestinians, like all people, have the right under international law (as affirmed by the Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949) to resist their military occupation. While rockets are an indiscriminate and largely ineffective way to do this, the fact that they are fired by a besieged population should surprise no one. Answer 2Israel’s policies have effectively pushed Palestinians towards violence as a means of exercising their internationally recognized right to resist Israel’s military occupation and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Peaceful avenues for resistance, such as the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, have been stifled, while attempts at nonviolent protest, like the 2018-2019 Great March of Return, have been met with violence.Answer 3Hamas rockets, though largely ineffectual, have proven to be the only way for Palestinian resistance groups to get Israel’s attention and to interrupt the comfortable routine of Israeli life which comes at the expense of Palestinians in Gaza residing in a massive ghetto only kilometers away. Answer 4This argument highlights the glaring double standard when it comes to Palestine and Israel. Israel, the illegal occupier, repeatedly and far more effectively bombs civilian areas in the Gaza Strip, and sometimes the West Bank. Despite lacking the right to self-defense under international law against a people it occupies, Israel is given carte blanche to act. Conversely, Palestinians, whose right to resist occupation is recognized by international law, face criticism and heavy repercussions for exercising this right.Answer 5Israel’s illegal military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip constitutes an unlawful use of force. As long as Israel’s occupation persists, it constitutes, according to international rules of responsibility, a continuous wrongful act. Therefore, Israel forfeits its right to self-defense, but that same right is preserved for the occupied state/people, i.e. the Palestinians. Supporting LinksJacobin Radio | Acast – Dig: Hamas with Tareq Baconi (Oct. 2023)Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 Middle East Policy Council - Knesset Approves BDS “Travel Ban” Law | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Hamas has fired thousands of rockets into Israeli civilian areas.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Hamas has fired thousands of rockets into Israeli civilian areas. – Pali Answers",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:38:51.697Z",
"url": "https://palianswers.com/rebuttal/%f0%9f%a4%a5-hamas-has-fired-thousands-of-rockets-into-israeli-civilian-areas",
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Answer 1By far the biggest violator of Palestinian human rights is Israel. This has been well documented by major international human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Israel’s own B’Tselem, for decades. Palestinian civil society has consistently called for universal respect for human rights by Israeli authorities and Palestinian-run institutions. Answer 2Palestinians endure a system deliberately crafted to deprive them of their human rights, sustained by the relentless violence of a U.S.-supported Israeli military regime. While it’s acknowledged that Palestinian leaders have committed human rights abuses, these actions are primarily aimed at quelling Palestinian dissent against Israel’s ongoing military occupation and the complicity of certain Palestinian officials in upholding the status quo.Answer 3While Palestinian human rights violations by armed groups or institutions such as the Palestinian Authority do occur, they pale in comparison to the scope and severity of Israeli violations. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Palestinians don’t respect human rights.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Palestinians don’t respect human rights. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1Only a few countries and entities, including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., the EU, and New Zealand, have labeled Hamas as a terrorist organization, while Japan has designated only its military wing as such. Notably, many of these same countries are implicated in breaching the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures outlined in January by cutting off aid to and collectively punishing Palestinians.Answer 2This is against international law and the principle of proportionality. There is no justification for the killing (to date) of over 33,000 civilians, 13,000 of whom are children. In fact, this form of collective punishment in order to pressure or “destroy” Hamas is a form of state terror. Answer 3We know from the U.S. “War on Terror” that it is almost impossible to eradicate terrorist groups. In the case of Hamas, which is a national resistance movement, this is even more so the case. But even if it were possible, engaging in genocide to obtain these goals is in fact criminal.Answer 4By that logic, it’s okay to bomb an entire school to target an active shooter even if none of the children or teachers have been evacuated yet. Supporting LinksCrimes by IsraelNo Justice, No Peace: A List of Israeli War Crimes Since Oct. 7 | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Civilian casualties are a small price to pay for eliminating a terrorist organization.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Civilian casualties are a small price to pay for eliminating a terrorist organization. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1Hamas and other Palestinian resistance fighters rely on weapons that don’t require fuel: rocket launchers, machine guns, rifles, knives, parachutes, gliders, and balloons. Hamas and other Palestinian resistance fighters also do not possess any tanks or planes, and do not rely on fuel-based weapons of war.Answer 2You don’t need fuel when you don’t have humvees, tanks, or planes. Hamas and other Palestinian resistance fighters use guerrilla warfare tactics and fairly rudimentary weapons against the world’s 17th strongest army and a state with a nuclear arsenal. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Somehow Hamas never ceases to run out of fuel for their rockets.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Somehow Hamas never ceases to run out of fuel for their rockets. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1This slogan is a call for freedom for Palestinians and an end of apartheid in historic Palestine. It is neither a call for genocide nor anti-Semitism. On the contrary, it represents the hope of creating a single secular, democratic state where all people are equal and free from discrimination.Answer 2Anti-Semitism is not to be confused with anti-Zionism. Judaism is a religion and anti-Semitism is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. Zionism is an ideology founded in the expansionist concept of a Greater Israel to be built from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. In fact, Zionism was the movement that first coined the phrase “from the river to the sea.” Anti-Zionism is a movement responding to the plan to create a Greater Israel on the ashes of historic Palestine from the river to the sea, without Palestinians in it.Answer 3The only genocide that has been committed on the territories between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea has been carried out by the State of Israel. There are also ample examples of ethnic cleansing committed by Zionists since 1948 in the same territory (i.e. from the river to the sea).Answer 4To suggest that freedom for Palestinians can only come at the expense of Israelis is to suggest that the existence of Israel can only come at the expense of Palestinians’ freedom. This is an absurd contention, as there is room for coexistence of all people in the land of historic Palestine, in freedom and equality.Answer 5Misrepresenting and weaponizing the slogan as a call for a genocide has led to a McCarthyist response to the call to end a ruthless occupation and for the freedom of the Palestinians living under this occupation. The right to protest, the freedom to have an opinion and livelihoods have been curtailed, threatened, or destroyed because this slogan has been hijacked by a political agenda to continue supporting Israel and its war in Gaza.Answer 6It’s wild that we’re being sucked into massive, deflective arguments over the “nuances” of protest slogans while Israeli officials are straight up, without metaphor or obscurity, stating that the intention of the 2023-2024 onslaught in Gaza is to erase all signs of Palestinian existence, including the Palestinians.Answer 7Is this a better slogan? From parts of area A to parts of area B Palestine will be a non-contiguous, non sovereign unviable non-state with no control of borders or access to the sea, all pending final status negotiations which will never take place and Gaza remains an isolated ghetto.Answer 8“From the river to the sea” is also interpreted as a death knell to the unviable two-state solution, and a call for one state for all peoples between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Zionists fear this not because it will result in the displacement of Jews, but rather it would mark the demise of the Jewish ethno-state and would require the equal treatment of Palestinians. That’s what they are truly afraid of. Answer 9We must differentiate Judaism from Zionism. Judaism is a religion, while Zionism is a nationalist, supremacist movement with racist ideologies. Until the 1990s, the UN classified Zionism as a racist movement, a designation that shifted primarily due to political pressure from the U.S. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is proof of anti-Semitism and a call for genocide.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is proof of anti-Semitism and a call for genocide. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1Palestinian citizens of Israel are subject to Israeli civil laws, granting them the right to vote in national elections and, in general, afford them greater human rights protections than Palestinians living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. These same laws perpetuate inequality, denying Palestinians equal rights with Jewish Israelis (including to political participation) and institutionalize discrimination against them. In the illegally occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinians are also governed by Israeli civil laws, but they can only vote in municipal elections, which they often boycott in objection to the prolonged occupation. Their fragile permanent residency status is vulnerable to revocation based on discriminatory grounds, leading to severe human rights consequences.Answer 2Palestinians in Israel can vote but are burdened with a host of restrictions (on expression, who they can marry and on land purchases to name a few) that Israeli Jews do not face. This means they do not have total equality and therefore simply occupy one rung on the apartheid ladder.Answer 3Palestinians are second or third class citizens within Israel. They are deprived of many rights that Jewish Israelis have. The fact that of the more than six million or so Palestinians under Israeli rule, a mere two million have the right to vote is yet more proof of the apartheid nature of Israel. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Palestinians in Israel can vote.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Palestinians in Israel can vote. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1Yes, Israel has all the trappings of a democracy – elections, separation of powers and political parties – but Israeli democracy completely ignores the spirit of the term. A fundamental tenet of democracy is equality. But Israeli law distinguishes between Israeli nationals – a term applicable to Jews only – and Israeli citizens, the latter encompassing Arabs and Druze. There are many rights, including those of self-determination and return, that are exclusively reserved for nationals, but not citizens. That is not democracy. That is apartheid.Answer 2Israel is the only sovereign power between “the river and the sea”, ruling over 14 million or so people – half of whom are Palestinian. Yet over 5 million Palestinians live under a separate legal regime from Jewish Israelis. These Palestinians are systematically denied their basic rights such as the right to vote, to education, to fair trial and due process, and freedom of movement. In other words, Palestinians have no say in a system explicitly designed to deny or curtail their freedom and self-determination, if not their existence.In what universe is that a democracy?Answer 3Israel has been cracking down on its citizens, both Palestinian and Jewish, for speaking out against the recent genocide in the Gaza Strip, the occupation and apartheid. The “only” democracy in the Middle East is accusing many of its own citizens of treason for voicing criticism against the genocide. Being anti-occupation is now deemed synonymous with being anti-Israel and anti-Jewish, considered the treasonous stance of an enemy of the state.Answer 4As Israeli historian Ilan Pappe argues, “the litmus test of any democracy is the level of tolerance it is willing to extend towards the minorities living in it.” Nothing exemplifies Israel’s failure to pass this test better than the Nation State Law passed in 2018, which reserves the right to self-determination in Israel exclusively to its Jewish population, downgrades Arabic to a “special status” from an official language and establishes Jewish settlement – an act illegal under international law – as a “national value.”Answer 5The Law of Return, an Israeli law passed in 1950 and repeatedly amended since, guarantees Jews, their children, grandchildren and their respective spouses’ citizenship. Not only does this law not extend to non-Jewish Israeli citizens, but it stands in stark contrast to the internationally recognized Right of Return, which states that Palestinian refugees should be allowed to return to their homeland and compensated for losses incurred during their forced displacement. But tell me again about Israel’s “democratic” values.Answer 6Israeli democracy is akin to the one that existed among whites in apartheid South Africa and the U.S. before women and black people were afforded the right to vote than what we have come to accept as a true democracy today. There are millions of Palestinians under Israel’s effective control shut out of the political process. Palestinians residing in the illegally annexed East Jerusalem are “residents”, not citizens, and can only vote in local and municipal elections but not national ones.Supporting LinksAl Jazeera – The problem with Israel’s so called ‘crisis of democracy’ (Feb. 2023)+972 Magazine – Knesset raises threshold to four seats, putting Arab parties at risk of not entering parliament (Mar. 2014)Vox – Israel’s hugely controversial “nation-state” law, explained (July 2018)Jacobin – No, Israel Is Not a Democracy (May 2017)Amnesty International – Israel’s refusal to grant Palestinian refugees right to return has fuelled seven decades of suffering (May 2019)The Guardian – Netanyahu has taken Israel’s crackdown on Jewish dissent to a new low (Jan. 2016)+972 Magazine – Israeli academia joins the crackdown on dissent (Dec. 2023)Haaretz – Arresting Arabs and Left-wingers: How Israel Intends to Crack Down on Domestic Dissent Over Gaza War (Nov. 2023)AP – Wartime Israel shows little tolerance for Palestinian dissent (Nov. 2023) | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1Palestinians do not want to live in “any other Arab country”, they want to live in their own country, where their ancestors lived and are buried without being subject to discriminatory policies and institutionalized racism that renders them second or third class citizens.Answer 2Palestinians in Israel have higher indicators of poverty and mortality than Israeli Jews, and the institutional discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel is well documented. Nonetheless, if the standard we are using to measure quality of life is U.S. backed authoritarian regimes in the Arab world then we have a problem. Answer 3For the first 20 years of Israel’s existence Palestinians in Israel lived under military law. Today they are subject to a host of discriminatory laws and considered to be second or third class citizens. To suggest they should be content with this status is degrading and condescending.Answer 4There are over 60 laws in Israel that discriminate and differentiate between Jews and non-Jews, most notably the right to self determination which is exclusively reserved for Jewish citizens of Israel. We are not asking you to compare the living standards of Palestinians in Israel to those in Muslim countries. We ask that you compare living standards amongst ISRAELI citizens.Answer 5The number of Palestinians who remained in what became Israel in May 1948 was about 150,000. They became entitled to Israeli citizenship under Israel’s Nationality Law of 1952. However, from 1948 to 1966, Palestinian citizens of Israel were arbitrarily placed under military administration in Israel, with their fate subordinated to the needs and interests of Jewish immigrants and Israeli security considerations. Even though they regained their freedom of movement and other rights after the military rule over them ended in 1966, they continue to be subjected to a system of oppression and domination through discriminatory policies that affect their legal status, access to land, resources and services and ultimately their human development. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Palestinians in Israel live better than those in any Arab country.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Palestinians in Israel live better than those in any Arab country. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1Palestinians have for decades found common cause with anti-Zionist Jews – whether in the occupied territories, in Israel or in the diaspora – critical of Israeli apartheid. They have worked together towards the dismantling of oppressive systems in pursuit of either two states or one with equal rights for all regardless of race or ethnicity. This is yet more proof that Palestinian grievances are with the Zionist project as opposed to Judaism itself.Answer 2Palestinians do not resist Israeli occupation and apartheid because of some inveterate hatred of Jewish people. If their occupiers today were French or Chinese or even from a Muslim country, Palestinians would surely resist just the same. The aim of Palestinian resistance is freedom.Answer 3The Palestinian struggle is not and has never been based on anti-Semitism, but rather liberation from a settler colonial apartheid regime, and the call for the rightful (and legally mandated) return of Palestinian refugees originally displaced by force and en masse in 1948.Answer 4It’s interesting how much Israel likes to project its own sentiments and actions and ascribe them to the Palestinians. The only entity that has been explicitly calling for a single-religion ethno-state and actively displacing a population is Israel. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Palestinians and Arabs want to throw all Jews into the sea.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Palestinians and Arabs want to throw all Jews into the sea. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 3As of February 14, 2024, the “Hamas-run” Ministry of Health in Gaza reported the number killed is 28,576 with at least 64,400 wounded. This number does not include the over 7,000 Palestinians reported missing and assumed dead, under the rubble. UN sources estimate 17,000 children have been orphaned. Let’s say these numbers are inaccurate. Let’s cut all the numbers by half. Let’s cut them by two-thirds. The number of civilians killed, injured, missing and orphaned remain outrageous, heinous, and frankly, evidence of genocidal intent. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 How can we trust information from Gaza?",
"pageTitle": "🤥 How can we trust information from Gaza? – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1A nation built on oppressing others to achieve prosperity is the definition of a racist and apartheid regime.Answer 2This question illustrates the brutal reality of Zionism as an apartheid system, if Palestinians simply existing and having the same rights as Jews undermines the state of Israel.Answer 3We apologize that the indigenous Palestinian demography gets in the way of the Jewish “democracy”. Maybe the solution is to imprison, murder, displace, isolate, suffocate and starve the undesired portion of the population en masse… Oh wait.Answer 4If Israel continues to refuse becoming a state with equality for all and universal suffrage regardless of race, religion or ethnicity (i.e. a democracy) then it should at least end its occupation of Palestinian territories and commit to a fair and equitable two state solution.Answer 5This is the argument of an apartheid state bent on maintaining undemocratic rule over another population. If Israel were actually a democracy, as is always argued, then the racist logic of demographic superiority would not be necessary.Answer 6If Israel insists on retaining its ethno-religious supremacy and its demographic advantage through force and control and at the expense of another people, then it must relinquish its much touted status as “the only democracy in the Middle East”.Answer 7Denying individuals citizenship and policies that discriminate between citizens based on ethnic origin are violations of international human rights law. Israel cannot both be a “democracy” and cherry-pick who it deems worthy of participating in it based on ethnicity or religion.Answer 8Currently, the demographic and territorial requirements of a Jewish state must exclude the right of Palestinians to exist. The Jewish state cannot exist in its Zionist form with the religious and ethnic diversity represented by the native Palestinian population. What this means in reality is that one group’s dominant existence requires the disappearing of the other. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 We can’t give Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem equal rights because it would demographically destroy the State of Israel.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 We can’t give Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem equal rights because it would demographically destroy the State of Israel. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1Hamas is a local, fully Palestinian, Islamic inspired national resistance movement. Hamas’ main concern is to end the occupation of historic Palestine. There is no link to nihilistic ultra-conservative Wahhabi ideology of ISIS. In fact, Hamas has historically been at odds with such ideologies. Answer 2The only militarized fundamentalist group that exists on the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea are the Jewish settlers terrorizing Palestinians and stealing their homes and lands at gunpoint. These violent settlers are backed by a racist, right-wing Israeli government and army that are unaccountable to international law. Hamas, on the other hand, uses armed resistance against a military occupation, sanctioned by UN General Assembly resolution 37/43 in 1982.Answer 3ISIS has been very critical of Hamas and considers them to be apostates. This is due to Hamas’ participation in democratic elections, its failure to govern solely in accordance with Shari’a, relations with Iran and other regional states and prioritization of Palestinian liberation. Hamas therefore sought to eradicate ISIS from Gaza, and succeeded.Answer 4The outrageous lie that compares Hamas to ISIS is running cover for genocide. The Hamas charter of 2017 emphasizes that Islam “provides an umbrella for the followers of other creeds and religions who can practice their beliefs in security and safety. Hamas also believes that Palestine has always been and will always be a model of coexistence, tolerance and civilizational innovation.”Hamas calls for the resistance of military occupation, a right sanctioned under UN General Assembly resolution 37/43 of 1982. Palestinians have fought for their civil rights and lands for 75 years, well before Hamas even existed.Answer 5Netanyahu will keep conflating Hamas with ISIS to position himself as a savior by preying on the West’s worst post 9/11 fears to fuel his racist agenda, and be given carte blanche to behave like the US and others did post 9/11 (read: atrociously, indiscriminately violent and Islamophobic).Answer 6The attempt to link Hamas to ISIS is a cynical ploy by Israel to divert attention from the fact that Hamas arose in response to Israel’s oppressive settler colonial apartheid regime, which violates international law and has subjected Gaza to a 16-year siege. It also obfuscates the fact that Israel played an active role in creating and funding Hamas to counter secular Palestinian resistance movements.Answer 7The conflation of Hamas with ISIS is ignorant and Islamophobic. It is meant to paint all grievances of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims more generally, as irrational. Anyone with an understanding of the Arab and Muslim world and of Palestinian politics knows this claim is absurd. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Hamas is ISIS.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Hamas is ISIS. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1Israel has total control over Gaza. It practices complete control over the borders, access to water, communications and internet, electricity, fuel, food and medical aid whenever and wherever it wants. Israel is the occupying power, by any definition, and therefore by all intents and purposes governs Gaza as well. Answer 2Despite the unilateral withdrawal in 2005, Israel maintains control over the population and resources of the Gaza Strip. There is a wall-to-wall consensus in the international community, including by the ICRC – which is normally quite restrained with such assessments – that Gaza is occupied with modern methods of warfare, even if there are no Israeli boots on the ground.Answer 3Israel withdrew its military forces, illegal settlements, and settle populations from Gaza in 2005. Since then, it has maintained a brutal, full blockade under Israeli military control of Gaza. Israel controls land and maritime borders as well as what goes in and out, meaning Palestinians in Gaza have no sovereignty or self determination and therefore effectively are not allowed to govern themselves.Answer 4To blame Palestinians under a military occupation is misinformed at best and willfully ignorant at worst. Israel withdrew militarily from the Gaza Strip, but maintained control of its land borders, sea access, and destroyed the only airport. Israel “left” Gaza in the same way a prison warden leaves the prison cell. Israel never ceded control over Gaza, maintaining an iron grip on the movement of all people and goods. With most aspects of their existence still firmly under Israeli control, Palestinians cannot reasonably be held responsible for Gaza’s current state.Answer 5Israel may have left the proverbial house, but they kept a lethal barbed wire and security fence around it. They kept killing its occupants. When they tried to protest peacefully (Great March of Return 2018-2019), they also killed them. Remind me, who handed over what?Answer 6Israel never “left” Gaza. Israel simply withdrew its illegal settlers and soldiers to outside the borders of Gaza. They subsequently ratcheted up the mechanisms of external control and pressure by putting in place a brutal siege and continuing the military occupation from without.Answer 7Since 1967, Israel has maintained complete control over the Palestinian civil registry. This registry essentially determines whether or not a Palestinian exists, where he/she can live, where they are permitted to work, travel, who they can marry, and whether or not they can register their spouses and children. This registry is extremely bureaucratic and complex, with different permits covering every aspect of the lives of every Palestinian in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It has become an onerous tool for administering the occupation and oppressing the Palestinian population. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Israel no longer occupies Gaza and handed it to the Palestinians to govern themselves.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Israel no longer occupies Gaza and handed it to the Palestinians to govern themselves. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1Palestinians were offered proposals but not peace proposals. None of Israel’s proposals to the Palestinians contemplated the right of return (which is an internationally recognized human right), nor control over borders, currency, or its own resources. Palestinians were offered proposals to accept the status quo (occupation, apartheid, dispossession), not sovereignty or self-determination over contiguous land.Answer 2Netanyahu continuously boasts that it was he who derailed the peace process. Israeli fundamentalists continue to build settlements in the West Bank, making Palestinian statehood impossible. All of Israel’s proposals to the Palestinians were for non-sovereign non-contiguous plots of land under effective Israeli sovereignty. Israel’s Foreign Minister in the Camp David talks in 2000, Shlomo Ben-Ami, admitted that PM Ehud Barak’s supposed generous offer was not something the Palestinians should accept. In 1948, Palestinians made up ⅔ of the population and owned around 90% of the land of Palestine, and the UN partition plan offered them a state over only 45% of Palestine, and would have left them a majority even in the Jewish state.Answer 3Palestinians have made historic compromises to achieve peace, but to no avail. Like all colonized and occupied people, Palestinians know that peace and reconciliation can only be achieved with freedom and equality for all. Peace without restorative justice is never sustainable.Answer 4Palestinians are the ones who do not have a partner in peace. Israel persistently denies Palestinians equal rights as well as sovereignty. Despite many concessions by Palestinians, Israel consistently acts in bad faith, prioritizing the expansion of its illegal settlement enterprise over coexistence at every turn and in contravention of peace agreements and the Geneva conventions.Answer 5The Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 offered normalization of relations between the Arab world with Israel in return for complete Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Palestinian Territories, a just settlement for Palestinian refugees and the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, all in accordance with multiple UN resolutions on the matter. In fact, it was re-endorsed by the Arab League in 2007 and 2017. But Israel rejected it as “non-starter” over the withdrawal requirements.Answer 6It’s not peace Palestinians reject, but apartheid. Palestinians agreed to peace with two sovereign states side by side. Israel hijacked the two-state solution, morphing it into a one-state reality where Israel controls everything and everyone, and only Jewish Israelis have full rights.Answer 7Palestinians recognized Israel and agreed to relinquish 78% of historic Palestine in exchange for sovereignty in the remaining 22%. Israel responded by tightening its military occupation, confiscating more land and implanting hundreds of thousands of illegal settlers in Palestinian territory.Answer 8Any serious analysis of the ‘Peace Process’ shows that Israel was never fully committed to the most important requirement for lasting peace, namely the creation of a viable Palestinian state with sovereignty and self-determination. Which begs the question: why doesn’t Israel want peace?Answer 9Palestinians desperately want a just peace. Like any other people, they demand to be free from what major human rights organizations (including Israeli organization B’Tselem) define as Israeli apartheid. As the South Africans know better than anyone, there can be no real peace without dismantling apartheid.Answer 10Palestinians accepted many peace proposals only to be undermined by Israel and the U.S. Furthermore, many Arab states have peace treaties with Israel. Even so, Israel has insisted on minimizing, ignoring or delaying any final resolution of the core issues.Answer 11Israeli PM Netanyahu and his associates have admitted on several occasions – most recently in December 2023 – that they purposefully blocked the creation of a Palestinian state during and after the Oslo accords. This, combined with Israeli actions, is proof of Israel’s lack of commitment to a lasting peace.Answer 12Israel has crushed any possibility of a genuine sovereign Palestinian state by seizing land in East Jerusalem and the West Bank to continue the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements (there are over 700,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem). Any peace talks that do not address Israel’s settlements and discriminatory laws provide cover for the advancement of Israeli colonialism. Justice and equal rights should be the cornerstone of any durable peace.Answer 13The PLO has been committed to peace since 1993. It signed the Oslo Agreement, and agreed to a two-state solution despite the fact that Israel would have received 78% of historical Palestine. Its goal is an independent sovereign free State of Palestine that can provide and protect the West Bank and Gaza comprehensively. The demands of Palestinians (including the PLO and Hamas) are clear: the right of refugees to their homes and for Palestinians to be allowed self-determination to have a state of their own. Until we begin engaging with Palestinians politically, not militarily, there will be no security for either side.Supporting LinksThe NY Times – ‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas (Dec. 2023)The Intercept – All the Times Israel Has Rejected Peace With Palestinians (Nov. 2023)Jacobin – Two Decades After the Second Intifada, Palestine Still Has No Partner for Peace (Sept. 2020)The NY Times – John Kerry and Israel: Too Little and Too Late (Dec. 2016)The Guardian – What we Palestinians think does not matter – all that matters is Israel (Feb. 2020)The Guardian – The ‘ultimate deal’? For Israel, maybe. We Palestinians will never accept it (July 2018)The Times of Israel – Pointing to Hamas’s ‘little state,’ Netanyahu touts his role blocking 2-state solution (Dec. 2023) | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Arabs and Palestinians have always rejected Israel’s peace proposals. Peace was never a priority.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Arabs and Palestinians have always rejected Israel’s peace proposals. Peace was never a priority. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1All evidence points to Palestinians in Gaza being more than capable of building an innovative and dynamic society when free of the suffocating constraints of siege and occupation. Until all Palestinians are allowed to live in total freedom, we cannot in good conscience criticize their lack of “accomplishments”.Answer 2Palestinians in Gaza have done much despite the injustice and restrictions of being made to live in a giant concentration camp/ghetto. Artists, entrepreneurs, intellectuals and scientists call Gaza home, as do educators, farmers and musicians. Without the brutal constraints of siege and occupation, Palestinians in Gaza would be allowed to shine even more brightly. Answer 3The slandering of Gaza and the attempt to erase and deny its long and rich cultural history is part and parcel of a propaganda campaign meant to dehumanize and decontextualize it to such a degree as to make its destruction insignificant and almost justified. Gaza, however, has been an important cultural crossroads since antiquity and is known today for producing artists and writers, dozens of whom have been killed in the most recent Israeli onslaught. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Gaza could have been Singapore had it not been for Hamas.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Gaza could have been Singapore had it not been for Hamas. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1The arrogance of Zionists in expecting Palestinians to simply accept forcible resettlement and relinquish their internationally recognized right of return to their ancestral homes and lands is astounding. Palestinians still have the keys and deeds to their homes and lands illegally confiscated by Israel.Answer 2The 1951 Refugee Convention legally recognizes Palestinians displaced by Zionist forces in 1948 as refugees, and extends this status to their descendants. This convention also upholds the right of all refugees, including Palestinians, to return to their countries of origin, their homes, and their lands under international law.Answer 3Countries hosting Palestinian refugees are not responsible for carrying the burden of hosting and/or resettling them. International law mandates the rectification of Palestinian refugee status through only two means: the right of return or the equitable compensation for homes, properties, and land confiscated by Israel – the party responsible for their displacement.Answer 4Germany has paid $86.8 billion in restitution and compensation to Holocaust victims and their descendants from 1945 to 2018, including $1.4 billion in 2023 alone. Additionally, Germany has returned 16,000 Nazi-looted objects to their rightful Jewish owners. Laws passed in Germany and Austria grant Jews stripped of rights and citizenship by the Nazi regime the right of return and immediate citizenship. Palestinians, facing ongoing persecution, loss, and displacement, deserve no less than similar recognition and restitution.Answer 5Arab states, including Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, which still host the vast majority of registered Palestinian refugees, show no intention of resettling or integrating Palestinian refugees into their domestic populations. Host countries actively exclude Palestinian refugees from civic life and restrict their employment opportunities and residency outside UNRWA camps. There is no indication that host countries will ever accept resettling Palestinian refugees, nor are they legally obligated to do so. They insist that Israel adhere and abide by international law and its obligations to resolve the refugee crisis it created.Supporting LinksMiddle East Institute - Palestinian Refugees: Myth vs Reality (Feb. 2021) | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Why don’t Palestinians just assimilate instead of continuing to be refugees for 75 years?",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Why don’t Palestinians just assimilate instead of continuing to be refugees for 75 years? – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1The 1948 Genocide Convention says that intentionally causing a group of people to suffer conditions that could kill them, like starvation, can be considered genocide. Palestinians in Gaza are being deliberately starved by Israel’s prohibition of all life-sustaining resources, including food and water, from entering the Gaza Strip. The UN, Oxfam, Médecins Sans Frontières, and the EU’s foreign policy chief have accused Israel of creating a man-made famine and using it as a weapon of war.Answer 2In Israel’s most recent war on Gaza, Israel has denied the entry of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza, depriving Palestinians of essential resources such as food, water, and medication. Before the 2023-2024 war, Israel was allowing 500 aid trucks to enter Gaza on a daily basis. According to the World Food Programme and UNRWA, during this war this number has dwindled to between 10-150 trucks a day.Answer 3Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reported a one-third decrease in aid trucks allowed into Gaza by Israeli authorities from January to February 2024. This decline occurred despite the International Court of Justice’s ruling on January 26, which mandated Israel to implement “immediate and effective measures” for aid provision to Gaza. Amnesty International stated that Israeli authorities have “failed to take even the bare minimum steps” to comply with the ICJ ruling.Answer 4Even the U.S., Israel’s staunchest and unwavering supporter, has been openly critical of Israel for restricting the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.Answer 5In March 2024, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the leading authority on global food insecurity, presented a five-level alarm regarding the risk of famine in Gaza. The report unequivocally asserted that this crisis was entirely avoidable, emphasizing that an immediate ceasefire and Israel removing all restrictions to the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip are essential solutions.Answer 6Israel’s allies have criticized Israel for blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. When aid is permitted, Israel has deliberately targeted and killed Palestinians trying to access aid. Israel has also deliberately targeted those tasked with distributing and protecting aid convoys. Answer 7Israel’s genocidal starvation is the culmination of a pattern of long-standing control over aid entering Gaza for decades. For instance, between 2007 and 2010, Israel determined truck numbers for food supplies based on the minimum caloric requirement (2,279 calories per person per day) to avoid malnutrition, using aid control as collective punishment against Palestinian civilians. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Israel is not restricting humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Israel is not restricting humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1Genocide is unjustifiable under any circumstance, including disagreements with electoral outcomes. This is a fundamental principle of international law. Despite Israel’s efforts to undermine it, the Palestinian election was deemed legitimate and democratic by the international community.Answer 2The debate over whether Palestinians voted for Hamas is a diversion from addressing the ongoing situation in Gaza. With over half of Gaza’s population being children, many weren’t even born during the elections where Hamas gained power. This underscores the urgency to focus on the indiscriminate bombardment by Israel rather than revisiting past electoral outcomes.Answer 3Israel admitted to supporting and funding Hamas in the 2006 elections as a counterbalance to the secular Palestinian Authority led by the PLO in the West Bank. This included efforts to suppress voting in Fatah-majority districts. Israel’s motive was to undermine the Palestinian Authority’s growing international recognition and status, which undermined Israel’s agenda.Answer 4In 2006, about a quarter of Gaza’s population was ineligible to vote due to age. Of those eligible, only three-quarters voted, and Hamas secured 44% of the votes. Hamas didn’t win a majority in any district, meaning that less than 10% of Gaza’s population voted for Hamas. Their election stemmed from opposition to the Palestinian Authority’s inefficiency, not approval of the October 7 attack. Many in Gaza today were either children or not even born during that time.Answer 5In 2006, Hamas didn’t run on a “kill the Jews” platform. It ran as “The party of change and reform”. Hamas. platform boiled down to: the other guys [the Palestinian Authority/Fatah] are ineffective and for 15 years have achieved nothing, it’s time to throw them out.Answer 6You expect millions of poor refugees enclosed in a concentration camp, besieged from all sides by a racist military for half a century, to somehow NOT elect a hardline government? Look up the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, it was not kumbaya and negotiations – those brave Jews used weapons and explosives to resist their doomed fate. Luckily the Nazis were defeated two years later, while the Israeli occupation is decades long and counting.Answer 7Netanyahu to the Likud party leadership in 2019: “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas”. I wonder why Israel wants to undermine the secular Palestinian leadership.Answer 8Palestinians in Gaza voted for Hamas in a democratic election nearly 20 years ago. This was in part a protest vote against the corruption of the Palestinian Authority’s Fatah Party and the moribund peace process. Having once voted for Hamas, however, does not justify punishing civilians for Hamas’ actions. In fact, doing so is a war crime. Answer 9Trump won the 2016 election.Does that make all U.S. citizens (regardless of whether they are of voting age or who they actually voted for) liable for all of his actions and/or should all Americans be called MAGAs? | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Palestinians in Gaza voted for Hamas, so they deserve what they get.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Palestinians in Gaza voted for Hamas, so they deserve what they get. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1UN and Western officials have rejected Israel’s repeated claims that Hamas is diverting aid entering Gaza. These types of false allegations come straight out of the Israeli playbook of shifting focus and deflecting attention from Israel’s long-standing policy of ethnic cleansing and genocidal acts against the Palestinians.Answer 2U.S. Special Envoy for Middle East Humanitarian Issues, David Satterfield, has repeatedly refuted Israel’s unfounded allegations that Hamas has stolen aid entering the Gaza Strip during the 2023-2024 War. Satterfield has asserted that Israel has yet to present him or the Biden Administration with any “specific evidence of diversion or theft of assistance.”Answer 3Israel’s continued targeting of security personnel protecting aid convoys has resulted in an increase in theft of the limited aid allowed into Gaza by criminal groups. Similar to what is observed in other war-torn and famine-affected areas, these gangs exploit the chaos and desperation, seizing opportunities for personal gain. However, Israel’s genocidal starvation tactics are solely responsible for creating the untenable living conditions that have given rise to these gangs. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Hamas is stealing the aid entering the Gaza Strip, and that’s why Palestinians are starving.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Hamas is stealing the aid entering the Gaza Strip, and that’s why Palestinians are starving. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1Amnesty International contends that the messages in Israel’s warning leaflets do not demonstrate an intent to protect civilians but rather to forcibly displace them, often to locations that are still active war zones. Moreover, the organization maintains that designating entire cities or regions, along with residential areas within them, as military targets violates international humanitarian law. Such actions contravene the requirement for warring parties to distinguish between civilian and military objectives, constituting a war crime.Answer 2These leaflets are no more than a PR stunt by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). They give the false impression that Israel is acting morally by providing ‘warnings’ to Palestinians in Gaza to evacuate. However, issuing warnings does not exempt parties from their obligation to safeguard civilians. Israel’s extensive bombing campaigns, the withholding of essential life sustaining supplies, and the deliberate targeting of civilians both on their way to safe zones and within those safe zones themselves, unmistakably reveal Israel’s true intentions behind these so-called ‘warnings.’Answer 3Israel’s purported ‘benevolence’ in distributing leaflets to alert Palestinians of impending attacks is deceptive. Given Israel’s full control over Gaza’s maritime, air, and land borders, Israel is well aware that Palestinians cannot heed evacuation orders unless Israel permits them to leave, which it does not.Answer 4Israel’s evacuation orders risk displacement, which is in of itself a war crime. The fact that nearly 75% of Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced by the most recent military onslaught nullifies any ‘good will’ intended by the forewarnings sent through leaflets/text messages/other means of communication.Answer 5The laws of war strictly prohibit “threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population.” Evacuation calls not genuinely intended for warning but to induce panic or coerce residents to leave their homes for reasons beyond safety are also prohibited. The sweeping nature of the IOF’s orders and the impossibility of safe compliance strongly imply that the warnings aim not to protect civilians but to instill fear and force them to abandon their homes. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Israel is not committing war crimes because they regularly drop leaflets warning Palestinians in Gaza to flee to safety.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Israel is not committing war crimes because they regularly drop leaflets warning Palestinians in Gaza to flee to safety. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1The three main pillars of humanitarian law are the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution. If any or all of these principles are violated, it could be found that war crime has been committed. So far. Israel has managed to violate all three during its recent military onslaught in Gaza. Answer 2It’s simply not enough to state that civilians are not the target of an attack. International humanitarian law requires that parties to a conflict must take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians and civilian objects. The killing of over 34,000 people and the destruction of close to 60% of Gaza’s buildings shows that Israel is taking the least sufficient measures to protect civilians. Answer 3If an attack fails to discriminate between combatants and civilians, or is expected to cause disproportionate harm to the civilian population compared to potential military gains, it is prohibited under international law. There is no military gain that can justify the unprecedented level of civilian harm befalling Palestinians in Gaza. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Israel is not committing war crimes because it is not deliberately targeting civilians.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Israel is not committing war crimes because it is not deliberately targeting civilians. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1The current situation in Gaza and the West Bank is not a spontaneous reaction to October 7. A government, an army and the society they emerge from do not become genocidal in one day. From its inception, Zionism has exhibited a troubling trend of dehumanizing Palestinians. Recent videos of Israeli soldiers raiding homes of Palestinians and of Israelis on TikTok using “Arab face” to mock Palestinians killed in Gaza highlight the longstanding issue. Netanyahu’s leadership represents a symptom of the broader problem, rather than its singular cause. Answer 2Pinning Israel’s human rights abuses on Netanyahu alone is a coping mechanism used by Israel’s liberal supporters to absolve themselves of their complicity in Israel’s genocidal policies and ethnic cleansing. This narrative conveniently upholds the illusion that Israel was founded on progressive ideals, rather than on the ethnic cleansing, oppression and military occupation of the land’s indigenous Palestinian people.Answer 3A January 2024 poll revealed that just 15% of Israelis favored Netanyahu remaining in office once the military assault in Gaza ends. And yet a significant 56% of respondents still endorsed the continuation of the genocidal offensive. That same poll indicated that only 24% of Israelis viewed a prisoner swap and political agreement as the preferred method for securing the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.Answer 4In a February 2024 poll, 68% of Israeli Jews opposed the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza by international bodies not linked to Hamas or UNRWA, while only 30% of Israeli Jews supported such transfers. Israeli Jews are also staging protests at entry points into Gaza to prevent aid from reaching the besieged strip. Let’s stop blaming Netanyahu for all of Zionism’s woes. All he did was lay them bare for the world to see. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Netanyahu is the problem. Once he’s voted out, things will improve.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Netanyahu is the problem. Once he’s voted out, things will improve. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1The UN defines a war crime as a serious breach of international law committed against civilians OR enemy combatants during an international or domestic armed conflict. Answer 2The three main pillars of humanitarian law are the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution. If any or all of these principles are violated, it could be found that a war crime has been committed. Israel has violated all three principles during its recent military onslaught in Gaza. Answer 3The UN has repeatedly stated that Israeli tactics in Gaza, particularly its withholding of life-sustaining materials from the civilian population, amount to a form of collective punishment. Collective punishment is a war crime and prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention. Answer 4The laws of war prohibit the punishment of any person for an offense other than one that they have personally committed. The imposition of collective punishment, such as demolishing the homes of fighters’ families or civilian structures like multi-story buildings, violates the laws of war and constitutes a war crime.Answer 5Intent matters. If the intention is primarily punitive due to actions by third parties, then attacks carried out in this vein are considered collective punishment. Israeli leaders, including politicians, military officials, and religious figures, have unequivocally stated that all Palestinians in Gaza, regardless of age or political affiliation, will bear the consequences of Hamas’ actions. Israeli leaders have left little room for doubt regarding their intent.Answer 6Willfully blocking humanitarian relief from reaching civilians in need is a war crime. As is Israel’s engagement in the collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza through cutting off food, water, electricity and fuel for crimes they did not commit. Answer 7Israel’s own estimates suggest that Hamas has approximately 30,000 fighters in the Gaza Strip, constituting roughly 1.3% of Gaza’s total population. Tom Dannenbaum, a professor of international law at Tufts University, highlights that the presence of combatants within a civilian population does not alter its civilian character. The ongoing siege and military assault in Gaza amount to collective punishment of civilians, whether Israel wants to classify it as such or not. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Israel is not committing war crimes because it’s not considered collective punishment when it’s against enemy combatants.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Israel is not committing war crimes because it’s not considered collective punishment when it’s against enemy combatants. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1The three main pillars of humanitarian law are the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution. If any or all of these principles are violated, it could be found that a war crime has been committed. So far. Israel has managed to violate all three pillars during its recent military onslaught in Gaza. Answer 2Human Rights Watch notes that acts committed as part of a retaliatory operation are not any more acceptable under international law. All parties involved in a conflict, regardless of who initiated it (which in of itself is debatable in this case), must adhere to international law and the laws of war. The war crimes of one side do not justify war crimes on the other. Answer 3The laws of war prohibit the punishment of any person for an offense other than one that they have personally committed. The imposition of collective punishment – such as, in violation of the laws of war, the demolition of homes of families of fighters, or other civilian objects such as multi-story buildings as a form of punishment – is a war crime. Answer 4Intent matters. If the intention is to punish, purely or primarily as a result of an act committed by third parties, then attacks carried out in this vein are considered to be collective punishment. Israeli politicians, military and religious leaders have made it abundantly clear that all Palestinians of Gaza – regardless of age or political affiliation, must pay the price for Hamas’ actions. They have left very little room for “intent” to be questioned. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Israel is not committing war crimes since Hamas started the most recent escalation and Israel is only acting in self-defense.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Israel is not committing war crimes since Hamas started the most recent escalation and Israel is only acting in self-defense. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1Palestinian resistance, including the rise of Hamas, has root causes and all actions must be viewed in context. Condemnation is not the right framework – do not equate the occupied with its occupier. There is no symmetry, and it does not serve justice. This point only detracts from the real issue: the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine.Answer 2We condemn the targeting and loss of ALL innocent lives on ALL sides. We demand that international law and human rights be applied consistently to all people. We condemn the illegal occupation of Palestine.Answer 3Most people cannot tolerate any situation where civilians are put in danger. But, unfortunately living in danger under brutal oppression for over half a century is the everyday reality of Palestinians. Yet it barely makes a blip in the West and their media’s radars. The real question is, why aren’t you condemning Israeli violence?Answer 4This is just another symptom of decades of reflexive Islamophobia snapping back into shape. Islamophobia and racism are the only logical explanations as to why Hamas’ attack is the source of endless demands to condemn it, while the mounting retaliatory atrocities of Israel require no such display.Answer 5There is an extreme obsession in demanding a neat line separating the “good guys” from the “bad guys”. Nothing in life is that simple. Context is far more important than opinion in this case. The actions of Hamas must be viewed in the context of the ongoing displacement, military occupation and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Do you condemn Hamas?",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Do you condemn Hamas? – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1Jewish safety should not come at the expense of Palestinian lives and freedom. The solution to resolve European anti-semitism with the creation of a separate state for the Jews was flawed, and did not tackle the root cause: racism towards Jews in Europe. The establishment of Israel did not bring peace for Jews, but locked them in a cycle of violence and repression. And it threatens the safety of Jews across the world, who are being targeted by those who wrongly conflate Judaism with Zionism and Israel.Answer 2Zionism has not brought peace. Instead, it has served as a lethal ideology, one that exists to justify the killing of thousands of Palestinians in the name of a Jewish state. Israel’s repeated wars against its Arab neighbors have not kept Jews safe. Its brutal oppression and displacement of Palestinians has not succeeded in stamping out the resistance of the indigenous Palestinian population to illegal military occupation and forced displacement. If anything, it has only solidified the drive to resist. Answer 3After Biden made a similar statement at a White House Hanukkah Party in December 2023, American Jews decried it as anti-Semitic due to its implication that Jews around the world are protected by Israel and not the countries they’re citizens of, perpetuating the notion that Jewish citizens ought to be more loyal to Israel than their own nation. This notion of dual loyalty still remains in all working definitions of anti-Semitism. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Israel keeps Jews safe.",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Israel keeps Jews safe. – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1The criminalization of LGBTQIA+ individuals and their rights does not provide grounds for apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Many U.S. states have criminalized abortions and transgender care; does that give other more progressive nations the right to occupy them? Answer 2As in every society (including Israel), there are conservative and repressive strains in Palestinian society. That said, there is a robust and active Palestinian LGBTQIA+ scene which focuses on dismantling the overarching oppression and discrimination of the occupation as a core part of their liberatory mission.Answer 3Let’s not pretend that all Western nations and societies are bastions for LGBTQIA+ rights. Does that give other states the right to occupy and ethnically cleanse their populations, too?Answer 4Palestinian activists from the LGBTQIA+ community have been clear and outspoken in their opposition to Israeli apartheid and the violence of occupation and siege in the West Bank and Gaza. Furthermore, they have denounced Israel’s practice of “pinkwashing” whereby Israel tries to leverage its image as a “liberal” “gay-friendly” society to cover up for its crimes and human rights abuses against Palestinians. Answer 5This is part of a Zionist propaganda strategy that negatively exploits LGBTQIA+ rights to project a progressive image to detract attention from Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies oppressing Palestinians.Answer 6Israel routinely uses the sexuality of Palestinians to try to blackmail them or turn them into informants by threatening to expose them to disapproving family members. These practices by Israel are antithetical to queer liberation and further proof of Israel’s disregard for Palestinian life, regardless of sexual/gender identities. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 Palestinians criminalize LGBTQ individuals and rights",
"pageTitle": "🤥 Palestinians criminalize LGBTQ individuals and rights – Pali Answers",
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Answer 1If we use universal principles, international law and morality as our yard sticks, what you will find is not complexity but clarity. Israel ranks amongst the highest violators of UN Security Council resolutions. International organizations and law have demonstrated time and again that international rules and regulations, if applied fairly, would side with the Palestinians. The only entities in the world still debating Israeli apartheid are Israel and its equally morally corrupt backers.Answer 2Portraying the conflict as complicated discourages any attempt at understanding, engagement or resolution. It is not that complicated. This essentially condones the oppression of indigenous populations by a settler-colony under the guise of complexity.Answer 3This is an age-old tactic employed by all settler colonial enterprises, not just Israel, in an attempt to defend the indefensible. White South Africans also claimed apartheid was ‘complicated’. Opponents of abolishing slavery in the U.S. argued that freeing slaves was morally right but feared it would disrupt the status quo and economy.Answer 4Labeling the Zionist settler project as “complex” aims to portray Israel and the Palestine issue as exceptional, implying that standard judgments and morals are not applicable. Consequently, Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestine and Palestinians are seen as exceptional due to this supposed complexity. Israel and its proponents use this exceptionalism to claim Israel is exempt from standard regulations like the Geneva Conventions, enabling continuous crimes against Palestinians with impunity and without global intervention.Answer 5The deliberate mystification of the question of Palestine is meant to isolate it from other anti-colonial struggles all over the world. If something is deemed an injustice elsewhere, then it cannot be deemed “complicated” in Palestine.Answer 6This myth that the issue is complex is a tactic used by Western world leaders and their cronies to avoid holding Israel to account. It also ‘indemnifies’ them from their own complicity and support of the longest illegal occupation in modern history. | {
"articleTitle": "🤥 The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a complicated issue.",
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Does the label Apartheid apply to the Palestinian context?
While South Africa was a prominent example of an Apartheid state, it is not the only form it can take. According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the crime of Apartheid is defined as “inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime;”
There are many inhumane acts listed under paragraph 1, but the most relevant to the Palestinian context are:
Murder, deportation or forcible transfer of population, imprisonment and severe deprivation of liberty, torture, Persecution based on ethnic, religious or national origins, other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.
It is indisputable that Israel practices these acts against Palestinians, inside and outside of the green line. It is also indisputable that as a state built on a colonial ideology that privileges one ethnic group over the rest, its actions are ultimately committed to maintain this system of supremacy. B’Tselem, Israel’s largest human rights organization, has officially designated Israel as an Apartheid state.
What is purplewashing?
Purplewashing refers to when organizations or states project a feminist or gender inclusive facade on their politics, in order to make them seem more palatable and promote the image of social responsibility. This is part of an ideological framework referred to by scholars as colonial feminism, whereby women’s rights are appropriated in the service of empire; in the context of Palestine, this rhetoric is also known as gendered Orientalism. The Palestinian Arab/Muslim is framed as an “other”, who is culturally or even genetically predisposed to misogyny. Naturally, this is juxtaposed with the framing of a liberal, enlightened, Israeli Westerner. Ultimately to Israel, this facade of feminism is a way to improve its image, and incorporate women into its violent, colonial, racist systems and institutions, as well as a way to paint Palestinians as unworthy of statehood or even humanity. The fact that these systems subjugate other -usually Palestinian- women is hardly mentioned.
Why did the Palestinians reject every peace offer from Israel?
Has it never once sounded suspicious to you how Israelis focus on the “peace offers” that were refused by the Palestinians, but never once discussed the actual parameters or substance in detail?
Because when these parameters are discussed, it becomes clear that these are terms nobody could accept. For example, even when Palestinians accepted the 1967 borders, a very limited return of refugees, and other compromises, this was still not good enough for Israel, which sought to shrink the Palestinian Bantustan even further and deny any real sovereignty to the supposed Palestinian state. These arrangements seek to formalize the status quo with cosmetic changes. Netanyahu promised that no Palestinian state will emerge, and in the case of any limited self-rule arrangement for the Palestinians, he spoke about a permanent IDF presence in the West Bank, as well as Israeli control of the borders and airspace. These are the amazing “opportunities” that Palestinians have been declining, and as a result are being painted as warmongering rejectionists for doing so. As it stands, Palestinian aspirations cannot exceed the ceiling of Israeli table scraps. Furthermore, this talking point purposefully ignores Palestinian counter-offers and proposals that Israel has rejected over the years, solely to paint Palestinians in a bad light.
Did Barak offer the Palestinians everything at Camp David?
Not at all. The idea that Barak offered Arafat “everything” which he rejected is a media spin to blame the Palestinians for the failure of the negotiations. Once actually inspected, you will come to see that Barak’s “generous offer” lacked many aspects that would enable the emergence of a sovereign Palestinian state:
The claim that Palestinians were offered 96% of land in the West Bank sounds “generous”, only then to find out that this 96% excluded areas already under Israeli control, such as the Dead Sea, the Jordan Valley, and East Jerusalem, effectively shrinking down the West Bank to around 80% at the most generous of estimates. In return, Israel was prepared to give an equivalent of 1% of land in the Naqab desert to the Palestinian state.
The West Bank would be crisscrossed by a network of settlements and Israeli areas, neatly dividing it into cantons with very little contiguity or connections. Even the noble sanctuary and the Aqsa mosque, as well as around a third of East Jerusalem would remain under permanent Israeli sovereignty in the supposed Palestinian capital. This is not even to mention that the Palestinian right of return was completely brushed under the carpet, with the Israelis not even allowing some refugees to return to the future Palestinian state.
None of this was conducive for the establishment of a real, sovereign and viable Palestinian state. Shlomo Ben Ami, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, and one of the main negotiators at Camp David, candidly admitted later that “Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well.”
Is the two-state solution the only viable solution?
Viable for whom and for what?
The two-state solution is inadequate to right historical wrongs, as it focuses on the pre-1967 borders as a starting point, which are in themselves a product of the colonization of Palestine, and not the root cause of it. It is thus preoccupied with finding solutions to symptoms, rather than dare address the root cause, which is Zionist settler colonialism and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
This automatically means that Palestinians must relinquish any rights or hopes for their millions of refugees, and it also means that Palestinians must relinquish their rights to live in over 80% of the land they were ethnically cleansed from. Consequently, resource distribution, from water to fertile land, will be heavily stacked in Israel’s favor.
Shortly put, the two-state solution is more interested in maintaining Israel’s colonial gains and artificial demographic aspirations, and lending them legitimacy, rather than seeking justice for the Palestinians in any form.
Is your website objective and neutral?
Objective, yes. Neutral, not at all.
There is a common misconception, that in order to be objective you need to be neutral. These concepts can be connected but they do not necessarily follow from each other. Having two points of view does not automatically mean that both points of view are equally legitimate or based in reality, or that the truth has to be located somewhere in the middle. For example, you can of course bring two opposing sides to discuss if climate change is real or not, but treating them both as equally valid and of equal worth when one is backed by scientific consensus and the other isn’t is not a fair and balanced representation of reality. It is a false equation of two sides simply for being two different sides. This actually gives legitimacy to reactionary and anti-scientific positions.
Similarly, Israeli colonialism and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is an objective fact. Maintaining a neutral position on this war crime is not only immoral, but enables Israel to commit further heinous acts in the future. Therefore, we take a very clear position: For the liberation of Palestine. However, all of our information and sources are objective and based on rigorous academic scholarship and testimonies. | {
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"description": "Welcome to the Decolonize Palestine FAQ. Here you will find answers to the most commonly asked questions regarding the Palestinian question."
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The population of these three at the time would amount to approximately 600,000, the vast majority of which were Sunni Muslim. Palestinian Christians made up around 10 percent of the population, while Jewish Palestinians numbered around 25,000, mainly situated in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safad and Tiberius.
The Ottoman Millet system and its various manifestations provided a certain degree of autonomy to minority religious and ethnic communities. While this system suffered from serious flaws, and its breadth and tolerance waxed and waned with different governors and social and economic circumstances, it was still superior to the outright persecution and pogroms which various religious groups on the European continent had to endure.
Relations between the numerous religious groups in Palestine were generally stable and peaceful, nurtured by more than a millennium of coexistence and shared adversity. For example, the inscription on the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem reads “There is no God but Allah, and Abraham is his friend” in a nod to Christian and Jewish Ottomans, who like Muslims, are considered to be part of an Abrahamic religious tradition. Palestinian Muslims, perhaps uniquely so, were also in the habit of celebrating religious festivals in honor of the prophets and holy men of Judaism such as Reuben, son of Jacob. This attitude was also extended towards Christian Palestinians, where the keys of the Holy Sepulcher remain traditionally entrusted with a Muslim family to this day.
However, as with any empire, there were times of peace and prosperity, as well as times of hardship and war. Towards the end of the life of the Ottoman empire, the latter was much more common than the former. With the advent of European-style nationalism and the weakening of the Ottoman state, the relations between the various ethnic groups and communities would fray. There were rebellions against Ottoman rule, and Palestine even managed to win autonomy for a good while under the leadership of Daher al-‘Umar, however, it would eventually be crushed by Constantinople. These tensions would later be exacerbated by the Young Turk Revolution and the increasing efforts to Turkify the various Ottoman provinces.
The empire would eventually collapse after its defeat in the first World War, and the various peoples who made up its population -some of whom had sided with the Allies against the Ottomans- looked towards independence and establishing their own nation states. This of course, would be thwarted, as the peoples fell from the domination of one empire to the domination of many others.
It was during the final few decades of this dramatic collapse that a certain Austro-Hungarian thinker, Theodor Herzl, was planting the seeds of a new political movement that would change Palestinian history forever.
Convened in the Swiss city of Basel in 1897, the first Zionist congress included over 200 delegates from all over Europe. The program of the congress called for establishing a Jewish state in Palestine, and to begin coordinating the settlement of Zionists there. This, according to Herzl, the founder of political Zionism and president of the Zionist congress, would constitute a “solution for the Jewish question” and emancipate the Jewish people from persecution.
While there were other Zionist and proto-Zionist movements preceding this which had settled in Palestine, such as Hibbat Zion, the Zionist congress was the first to organize and marshal the colonization efforts in a centralized and effective way.
Zionism, then, is a settler-colonial political movement that calls for establishing a Jewish nation-state in Palestine with a Jewish majority. The issue here, of course, is that Palestine was already inhabited. The question of what to do with the native Palestinian Arabs animated much of the early discussions of the Zionist movement, though the consensus was that they needed to be removed somehow, either by agreement or by force. Indeed, there was no way to establish a Jewish majority state in Palestine without seriously displacing most of the native population.
When we call Zionism settler-colonialism, we refer to a very specific phenomenon. Settler colonialism differs from classic colonialism, in that settler colonialism only initially and temporarily relies on an empire for their existence. In many situations, the colonists aren’t even from the empire supporting them, and end up fighting the very sponsor that ensured their survival in the first place. Another difference is that settlers are not merely interested in the resources of these new lands, but also in the lands themselves, and to carve out a new homeland for themselves in the area.
Modern day Zionists might recoil at Zionism being called a colonial ideology, yet in the early days, the Zionist movement was astonishingly honest about its existence as a form of colonialism. For example, Herzl wrote in 1902 to infamous colonizer Cecil Rhodes, arguing that Britain recognized the importance of “colonial expansion”:
“You are being invited to help make history,” he wrote, “It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor ; not Englishmen, but Jews . How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial.”
Vladimir Jabotinsky, in an essay titled The Iron Law (1925) stated that:
“A voluntary reconciliation with the Arabs is out of the question either now or in the future. If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find some rich man or benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf. Or else-or else, give up your colonization, for without an armed force which will render physically impossible any attempt to destroy or prevent this colonization, colonization is impossible, not difficult, not dangerous, but IMPOSSIBLE!… Zionism is a colonization adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important… to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot – or else I am through with playing at colonizing.”
These quotations are merely the tip of the iceberg, but lest you think we are cherry-picking and choosing out of context passages, we invite you to read their original writings. There are only so many mental gymnastics you can perform to try and find a different meaning to “Zionism is a colonization adventure.”
To drive this point even further, the first Zionist bank established was named the ‘Jewish Colonial Trust’ and the whole endeavor was supported by the ‘Palestine Jewish Colonization Association’ and the ‘Jewish Agency Colonization Department’.
It would only be a matter of time before the Zionist movement began sending settlers to Palestine and forming a foothold with the goal of taking over the entirety of Palestine. The Ottoman defeat in WW1 and Palestine becoming a British mandate was the golden opportunity that would allow them to fulfill these aims. This will be discussed in depth in the next introductory article.In the wake of its defeat in WW1, the Ottoman empire was dissolved and its regions carved up and divided among various European colonial powers. In the Levant, Palestine and Jordan fell under the mandate of the British, while Syria and Lebanon to that of the French. The British entered Jerusalem in 1917, and Palestine officially became a mandate in 1922.
Palestine was considered a ‘Class A’ mandate, meaning that it possessed sufficiently advanced infrastructure and administrative capabilities as to be considered provisionally independent, though it would still be under the control of the allied forces until it was deemed ready for full independence. This, of course, would never come to pass.
The mandate of Palestine provided a golden opportunity for the Zionist movement to achieve its aims. The British were far more responsive to Zionist goals than the Ottomans were, and had earlier produced the Balfour Declaration promising the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine:
“His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
Despite the lofty words of Lord Balfour, a colonial empire massacring people all over the globe is not animated by altruism. The British had no genuine sympathy for the plight of the historically oppressed Jewish people; Rather, they saw in the Zionist movement a mechanism through which British interests in the Levant and Suez could be realized.
Emboldened by the Balfour Declaration and supportive British governors, the Zionist movement ramped up its colonization efforts and established a provisional proto-state within a state in Palestine, called the Yishuv. While the Yishuv’s relationship with the British had its ups and downs, the British provided the Zionists with explicit as well as tacit sponsorship which would allow them to thrive. Meanwhile, they would harshly repress any Palestinian movement or organization while turning a blind eye to Zionist expansion, which by the end of the mandate enabled the conquest and mass destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages and neighborhoods.
These are the circumstances and events which would ultimately culminate in the establishment of Israel through the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the erasure of their society. The next article will focus on Zionist aspirations, partition, the final years of the mandate of Palestine, the war of 1948, and the Nakba, the original sin of Israel’s genesis. | {
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"description": "This is part 1 of our introductory articles. It offers a brief introduction to Palestinian history up until the British mandate of Palestine, as well as discusses the Zionist movement."
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When partition is brought up it is not surprising that most tend to think of the 1947 United Nations General Assembly resolution. This resolution recommended the partition of Palestine into an Arab-Palestinian state and a Zionist-Jewish state at the end of the British mandate. This was seen by some as a solution to the escalating tensions and violence during the mandate years.
However, this was not the first partition scheme to be presented. In 1919, for example, the World Zionist Organization put forward a ‘partition’ plan, which included all the territory which would become mandatory Palestine, as well as parts of Lebanon, Syria and Transjordan. At the time, the Jewish population of this proposed state would not have even reached 2-3% of the total population. Naturally, such a colonial proposal would be unjust regardless of the population disparity, but it is an indication of the entitlement of the Zionist movement in wanting to establish an ethnic state in an area they had no claim to, and where they were so utterly outnumbered.
The bulk of the Zionist population arrived in Palestine during the 4th and 5th Zionist immigration waves -Aliyot- (Between 1924-1939). That means that the majority of those demanding partition of the land had barely been living there for 20 years at the most. To make matters worse, the UN partition plan allotted approximately 56% of the land of mandatory Palestine to the Zionist state, including most of the fertile coastal region.
The Palestinians, of course, rejected this. They were being asked to give away most of their land to a minority of recently arrived settlers. The rejection of this ridiculous premise is still cited today as the Palestinians being intransigent and refusing peace. This is often negatively contrasted with the claim that the Yishuv agreed to the 1947 partition plan, which is portrayed as a showing of good will and a readiness to coexist with their Palestinian neighbors. While this may seem true on the surface, a cursory glance at internal Yishuv meetings paints an entirely different picture. Partition as a concept was entirely rejected by the Yishuv, and any acceptance in public was tactical in order for the newly created Jewish state to gather its strength before expanding.
While addressing the Zionist Executive, Ben Gurion, leader of the Yishuv and Israel’s first Prime Minister, reemphasized that any acceptance of partition would be temporary:
“After the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine.”
This was not a one-time occurrence, and neither was it only espoused by Ben Gurion. Internal debates and letters illustrate this time and time again. Even in letters to his family, Ben Gurion wrote that “A Jewish state is not the end but the beginning” detailing that settling the rest of Palestine depended on creating an “elite army”. As a matter of fact, he was quite explicit:
“I don’t regard a state in part of Palestine as the final aim of Zionism, but as a mean toward that aim.”
Chaim Weizmann, prominent Zionist leader and first President of Israel, expected that “partition might be only a temporary arrangement for the next twenty to twenty-five years”.
So even ignoring the moral question of requiring the natives to formally green-light their own colonization, had the Palestinians agreed to partition, they most likely still would not have had an independent state today. Despite what was announced in public, internal Zionist discussions make it abundantly clear that this would have never been allowed.
However, the problems with the United Nations partition plan go even deeper than this. To be clear, the resolution did not partition Palestine. It was in fact a partition plan, which was to be seen as a recommendation, and that the issue should be transferred to the Security Council. The resolution does not obligate the people of Palestine to accept it, especially considering the non-binding nature of UNGA resolutions.
For its part, the Security Council attempted to find a resolution based on the UNGA recommendation, but could not arrive at a consensus. Many concluded that the plan could not be enforced. Israel was unilaterally declared a state by Zionist leadership while the Security Council was still trying to arrive at a conclusion. The plan was never implemented.
However, there is an argument that although the plan never came to fruition, the UNGA recommendation to partition Palestine to establish a Jewish state conferred the legal authority to create such a state. As a matter of fact, this can be seen in the declaration of the establishment of the state of Israel.
This argument falls flat on its face when we take into account that the United Nations, both its General Assembly as well as its Security Council, do not have the jurisdiction to impose political solutions, especially without the consent of those it affects. There is nothing in the UN charter that confers such authority to the United Nations. Indeed, this was brought up during the discussions on the matter. Furthermore, not only would this be outside the scope of the United Nations’ power, it would as a matter of fact run counter to its mandate. This issue was raised by the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine itself:
“With regard to the principle of self-determination, although international recognition was extended to this principle at the end of the First World War and it was adhered to with regard to the other Arab territories, at the time of the creation of the ‘A’ Mandates, it was not applied to Palestine, obviously because of the intention to make possible the creation of the Jewish National Home there. Actually, it may well be said that the Jewish National Home and the sui generis Mandate for Palestine run counter to that principle.”
This is a direct admission that the creation of a Zionist national home in Palestine runs counter to the principle of self-determination for Palestinians already living there. The United Nations needed to twist itself into a knot and make an exception to their own charter to recommend the partition of Palestine. However, even if it had been within their power to do so, and had it not ran counter to their charter, the UN still had no right to force the Palestinians to tear their homeland in half.The demographic realities in Palestine had always troubled the Zionist movement. Despite their consistent sloganeering of “A land without a people for a people without a land”, they were acutely aware of the reality on the ground. Even from its earliest days, Zionist leaders spoke about removing the native population to make room for the colonists who would utilize the land in much more “civilized” and “advanced” ways . Towards the end of the mandate, it would become clear that there would be no voluntary exodus of the native Palestinians.
It is within this context that Plan D (Tochnit Dalet) was developed by the Haganah high command. Although it was adopted in May 1948, the origins of this plan go back a few years earlier. Yigael Yadin reportedly started working on it in 1944. This plan entailed the expansion of the borders of the Zionist state, well beyond partition, and any Palestinian village within these borders that resisted would be destroyed and have its inhabitants expelled. This included cities that were supposed to be part of the Arab Palestinian state after partition, such as Nazareth, Acre and Lydda.
Ben Zohar, the biographer of Ben Gurion wrote that:
“In internal discussions, in instructions to his men, the Old Man [Ben-Gurion] demonstrated a clear position: it would be better that as few a number as possible of Arabs would remain in the territory of the [Jewish] state.”.
Although it could be argued that Plan D did not outline the exact villages and cities to be ethnically cleansed in an explicit way, it was clear that the various Yishuv forces were operating with its instructions in mind.
It is important to stress that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine began before the 1948 war, and before even a single regular Arab soldier set foot in Palestine. This is important to understand because many still erroneously argue that the Nakba -Arabic for catastrophe- was a byproduct of the Arab war on the fledgling Israeli state. Approximately 300,000 Palestinians had been expelled through ethnic cleansing campaigns before the onset of war or the end of the mandate. These campaigns were accompanied by massacres and war crimes, even against villages that were neutral and had non-aggression pacts with the Zionist Yishuv. The ethnic cleansing of the village of Deir Yassin demonstrates this perfectly .
For many reasons, the Arab states, mainly Transjordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, were not interested in a war. However, after the monstrous ethnic cleansing campaigns against the Palestinians, they finally reluctantly intervened. However, an aspect that is often ignored is the inter-Arab rivalries and disunity that were among the chief causes for the intervention in 1948. Barely coming out from under colonialism themselves, their actions during the war showed that they never really joined the war with eliminationist intent, as the popular narrative goes. The Jordanians were more interested in acquiring the West Bank as a stepping stone to their real ambition, which was greater Syria. As a matter of fact, there is ample evidence of collusion between the Israelis and Jordanians during the 1948 war, with deals under the table pretty much gifting parts of the West Bank to Transjordan in return for not interfering in other areas.
The Egyptians joined in an attempt to counter the Hashemite power-play that could change the balance of power in the region. For these reasons, the Arab armies generally intervened in the territories of the mandate destined to be part of the Palestinian Arab state according to the 1947 partition plan, and with very few exceptions, stayed away from the area designated to be part of the Zionist-Jewish state. Yes, support for Palestine and Palestinians played a large role in the legitimization of such interventions, but they were never the real reason behind them. As per usual when it comes to international relations, interests are always at the center of any maneuver regardless of the espoused noble and altruistic motivations.
Despite their propaganda and rhetoric, the Arab states sought different secret opportunities to avoid and end the war with Israel. Some offers went as far as to agree to absorb all Palestinian refugees. These were all rejected by Israel with the goal of maximizing its land-grabs . For example, when it became clear that Israel would ignore all negotiations regarding partition and unilaterally declare its independence, there were enormous efforts behind the scenes aimed at avoiding war, not to mention ending it early when it did eventually break out. These efforts were heavily sponsored by the United States, who asked in March 1948 that all military activities be ceased, and asked the Yishuv to postpone any declaration of statehood and to give time for negotiations. Outside of Abdallah of Transjordan, the Arab states accepted this initiative by the United States. However, it was rejected by Ben Gurion, who knew that any peaceful implementation of the partition plan meant that the refugees he had expelled earlier would have a chance to return, not to mention that war would offer him a chance to conquer the lands he coveted outside the partition plan.
This followed a long series of Zionist rejection of overtures by the native Palestinians. In 1928, for example, the Palestinian leadership voted to allow Zionist settlers equal representation in the future bodies of the state, despite them being a minority who had barely just arrived. This was faced with Zionist rejection. Even after this, in 1947 the Palestinians suggested the formation of a unitary state for all those living between the river and the sea to replace the mandate to no avail. There were many attempts at co-existence, but this simply would not have benefited the Zionist leadership who never intended to come to Palestine to live as equals.
By the end of the war, 800,000 Palestinians would be ethnically cleansed from approximately 530 villages and communities. Israel would be established on the rubble of these villages, and their settlers would come to call the emptied abodes that once housed Palestinian families home. To this day, these 800,000 and their descendants are still scattered all over the world in refugee camps, and Israel refuses their right to return home. The ethnic cleansing operations continued well into the 1950s, years after the end of the war.
The post-war armistice line would come to be known as the green line, and it marked the de facto borders of the Israeli state, though official borders have never been declared. The areas that Israel did not conquer, i.e. the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would come to be ruled by Jordan and Egypt respectively. It is estimated that around 80% of the Palestinian population within the green line were expelled. The remaining 20% would live under martial law for decades to come, and have their communities turned into segregated, heavily controlled enclaves surrounded by barbed wire.
These early years would prove formative to the discriminatory regime of laws that govern Israel to this very day. This period will be discussed in the next part of our introduction series. | {
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"url": "https://decolonizepalestine.com/intro/the-mandate-years-and-the-nakba",
"description": "This is part 2 of our introductory articles. It covers the British mandate of Palestine, as well as plans to partition Palestine, and its ethnic cleansing."
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The Oslo accords were a result of the secret negotiations between the PLO and Israel. Negotiating directly, and sitting face to face for the first time, they agreed upon a declaration of principles that would lead to creating the Palestinian Authority as an interim government that would pave the way for a final settlement. Although these talks would kickstart what came to be known as the “peace” process and the two-state solution, they were mostly a declaration of principles which did not contain any concrete specificities for a resolution. As a matter of fact, the word “state” with regards to Palestinians was never mentioned once.
It was two years later, in what is referred to as Oslo II, taking place in the Egyptian city of Taba, that negotiations earnestly began. In these negotiations more concrete parameters were discussed, and the logistics as well as method for instating the Palestinian Authority on the ground were determined. It is also worth mentioning that during this period, Jordan would go on to sign the Wadi Araba peace treaty with Israel and officially normalize its ties, making it the second Arab country after Egypt to do so.
Originally, the interim Oslo agreement and the Palestinian Authority were meant to be of a transitional nature, only lasting 5 years leading up to the final settlement. Interestingly enough, the form of this final settlement was never concretely defined as resulting in a state for Palestinians. Oslo II resulted in dividing the West Bank into three areas, labeled A, B and C.
Areas A: These areas were to be under complete civil and security Palestinian (Palestinian Authority) control. This includes the major Palestinian cities and population centers. There should have been no Israeli presence in this area. This area makes up approximately 18% of the West Bank while containing 55% of the Palestinian population.
Areas B: These areas were to be under Palestinian civil control, but Israeli security control. Many Palestinian villages and smaller population centers fall within this area. Areas B constitute approximately 21% of the West Bank while containing 41% of the Palestinian population.
Areas C: These areas were to be under full Israeli civil and security control. Areas C constitute the majority of the West Bank making up approximately 61% of the land. It is in these areas where the majority of settlement activity takes place, as they are abundant in land and resources while containing a relatively small portion of the Palestinian population.
The labeling and designation of these areas continues to be an issue of importance to this day, as increasing numbers of Israeli officials call for the complete annexation of areas C to Israel. This means that Israel makes life as difficult as possible for Palestinians in areas C to encourage their exodus. Other issues of importance such as the use of water resources are heavily affected by which area you live in. Naturally if you are an illegal Israeli settler, such distinctions do not matter.
Today Israel barely distinguishes between these areas, as it is seen operating freely in Areas A, as well as retroactively recognizing new settlement outposts in Areas B. This will be discussed in depth in the next article.
In theory, then, the two-state solution calls for establishing two states, as the name implies. The Palestinian state would be erected in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital. On the question of refugees, this topic was always postponed for future negotiations. The Palestinian Authority insists that there will be a “just solution” to the refugee question, but internal documents reveal that they have basically given up on the matter. Not even a token amount of refugees would be permitted to return to their homes. Another issue is borders, where Israel has attempted to keep control of its illegal settlement blocs in the West Bank.
The Oslo accords came bundled with the Paris protocol, which dictated the economic policies the Palestinians were allowed to make, and directly tied the Palestinian economy to the Israeli one. In essence, what the Paris protocol achieved was a structured subordination of the Palestinian economy to the Israeli one, giving the Israeli market immense control and power over it. As a matter of fact, many aspects of the Oslo accord were just a reformulation of occupation policies with a civil face; domination and exploitation were simply rebranded as cooperation.
Setting aside the practical issues and stalemates in the negotiation, the two-state solution has many conceptual problems that make it unfitting as a mechanism through which a resolution can be found. To put it bluntly, Israel is not a normal state. It is a settler colony. We are not talking about two naturally occurring populations which have a land dispute. Israelis are descended from settlers that arrived from abroad with the goal of erecting an ethnocratic settler state in an area that was already home to the Palestinians.
Additionally, this approach is inadequate to right historical wrongs, as it focuses on the pre-1967 borders as a starting point, which are in themselves a product of this colonization, and not the root cause of it. It is thus preoccupied with finding solutions to symptoms, rather than dare address the root cause, which is Zionist settler colonialism and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
This automatically means that Palestinians must relinquish any rights or hopes for their millions of refugees, and it also means that Palestinians must relinquish their rights to live in over 80% of the land they were ethnically cleansed from. Naturally, this promises that resource distribution, from water to fertile land, will be heavily stacked in Israel’s favor.
All of these shortcomings are often countered with the assertion that Palestinians must compromise to reach peace. Israeli control is treated as a fait accompli and that Palestinians must deal with it, rather than demand justice. This is the whole premise of the two-state solution, that Palestinians must compromise on their rights to be granted a small, powerless sham of a state in part of their homeland. Israel, of course was not asked to compromise on anything substantial. The only “compromise” asked of Israelis is to stop its illegal occupation of foreign lands, as well as stop its illegal settlement enterprise, which it should cease regardless of any negotiation with the Palestinians. This attitude basically boils down to “What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is negotiable.”.
Yet despite all of this, Palestinians were willing to agree to these terms. The PLO was willing to give up on the Palestinian people’s historical rights in order to find peace and have a state. But none of this was sufficient for Israel. Even Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister who signed the Oslo accords, who is considered a holy martyr for peace among the Israeli peace camp was not prepared to give the Palestinians a real state. He spoke of a sham “state-minus” with no sovereignty, and the offers did not get better than that throughout the history of negotiations.
So even when Palestinians accepted the 1967 borders, an incredibly limited return of refugees, and other compromises, this was still not good enough for Israel that sought to shrink the Palestinian Bantustan even further. These arrangements seek to formalize the status quo with cosmetic changes. Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, promised that no sovereign Palestinian state will emerge, and in the case of any limited self-rule arrangement for the Palestinians, there will be a permanent IDF presence in the West Bank, as well as Israeli control of the borders and airspace. As it stands, Palestinian aspirations cannot exceed the ceiling of Israeli table scraps, and any rejection of this ridiculous premise is framed as irrational intransigence.
Needless to say, the Palestinian Authority, which was supposed to last only 5 years still exists to this day. No Palestinian state has materialized, and the Israeli matrix of control is more far-reaching than ever. Israeli intransigence and the stalemate in negotiations following the failed Camp David negotiations would erupt a second Intifada. This time, however, it would differ in character and organization from the first, and would become much more militarized over its course.The stalemate in the negotiations, and the escalating settlement activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip combined together to create a climate of heightened tension. This tension would erupt into a conflagration at the end of September 2000. Triggered by the visit of Ariel Sharon to the Aqsa mosque and the Noble Sanctuary, the second Intifada, also known as the Aqsa Intifada, would demolish much of what the Palestinian Authority had built over the last few years.
Ariel Sharon, known as the butcher of Sabra and Shatilla to Palestinians, visited al-Aqsa mosque escorted by hundreds of armed troops to make a statement that no matter what agreement would emerge, the Noble Sanctuary would forever remain under Israeli sovereignty and control. Being the third holiest site in Islam, and holding a very special importance for all Palestinians, this visit was deliberately designed to provoke a response from the Palestinians. It was thought that decisively crushing this response would give the Israelis a better position in the negotiations, and lower the political demands of the Palestinian Authority.
Similar to the first Intifada, Palestinians mobilized massive protests, civil disobedience actions, boycotts and other forms of resistance. However, unlike the first Intifada which took Israel by surprise, the repression was much more harsh and violent. Israel ruthlessly shot to kill, using live ammunition and savagely cracked down on Palestinians. What had initially erupted as a popular, mostly peaceful movement, was soon pushed by the harsh response to gradually become militarized. While popular resistance would continue, this time it would be accompanied by guerilla warfare, suicide bombings and other tactics.
Soon the same Ariel Sharon who provoked the Intifada would become Prime Minister, and with his extensive history of repressing Palestinians, he greatly escalated the violence. He would invade and reoccupy all Palestinian areas that were under the control of the Palestinian Authority, including the large population centers such as Nablus and Ramallah. This was also used as a pretext to begin constructing Israel’s infamous segregation wall, which has been widely condemned as illegal.
This would shake up the status quo considerably; the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be completely cut off from each other and the rest of Palestine. Much of the Palestinian Authority’s security forces were decimated, and Israel retrenched its position to have a tighter grip on the occupied areas. Naturally, during this period there were many attempts at resuscitating the peace process or shifting the status quo, but they all ended in failure.
One of the major events that took place during the second Intifada was the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. While it is true that Israeli forces and settlers withdrew from within Gaza in 2005 due to heavy Palestinian resistance, this does not mean that all manifestations of the occupation were ended, as Israel continued to exert effective control over Gaza. This is confirmed by the United Nations, Amnesty International, the International Red Cross and countless other international organizations specialized in human rights and international humanitarian law .
But this claim that Gaza is unoccupied has been very useful for Israel, as it plays into the propaganda that Israel has sacrificed immensely for peace, a talking point unsubstantiated by actual history. As noble as Israelis make it sound, there were less altruistic intentions behind the retreat from Gaza, articulated by Dov Weisglas, top aide to Ariel Sharon who was Prime Minister at the time:
“The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process, and when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.”
He continued:
“The disengagement is actually formaldehyde, It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.”
And he was right. For example, whenever the Palestinian Authority criticized Israel for its intransigence or its new settlement and colonization projects in the West bank, Israel would retort that they gave up Gaza and sacrificed immensely for peace. This was an effective way for Israel to circumvent criticism of its violations of international law and shift the onus of compromise onto Palestinians. In this context, “compromise” came to mean acquiescence to the brazen colonization of the vast majority of the West Bank. Weisglas bragged that:
“That is exactly what happened, you know, the term `peace process’ is a bundle of concepts and commitments. The peace process is the establishment of a Palestinian state with all the security risks that entails. The peace process is the evacuation of settlements, it’s the return of refugees, it’s the partition of Jerusalem. And all that has now been frozen…. what I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns. That is the significance of what we did.”
Furthermore, Israel knew it was not really relinquishing control of the Gaza strip, but rather reconfiguring how the occupation looked and functioned. They knew that the occupation, despite being in a new form, would still illicit resistance from those inside the strip. Israel could then use this resistance as proof that “relinquishing” land in return for peace with the Palestinians was an impossible task, because Palestinians would continue to attack it no matter what. This has served as a major argument for why Israel should not withdraw from any inch of the West Bank to this very day.
By the end of the second Intifada and due to its militarized nature, nearly 5000 Palestinians and 1000 Israelis would be killed. It shifted the status quo in Palestine, and undid much of the work accomplished by the Palestinian Authority in the years prior. This along with the death of Palestinian Authority and PLO leader Yasser Arafat would trigger changes in the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian leadership in general. The Palestinian Authority would be restructured into an even more docile and obedient entity, Israeli colonization efforts would accelerate, and a new phase in the Palestinian question would begin. This phase continues to this very day, and will be discussed in the next article. | {
"articleTitle": "Introduction to Palestine :4: Two Intifadas and two states | Decolonize Palestine",
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"description": "This is part 4 of our Palestine introduction articles. It covers The first and second Palestinian Intifadas, as well as the Madrid and Oslo talks."
} |
On the morning of June the 5th 1967, Israel launched a sneak attack on Egypt decimating its air force. Thus, began the 1967 war, which would last less than a week and enable Israel to finally conquer the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Egyptian Sinai desert and the Syrian Golan heights. Israel claims to this day that these strikes were preemptive self-defense, citing a number of concerns, such as Nasser’s forces in Sinai, the closing of the straits of Tiran and the situation in the Syrian Golan heights. As per usual, these claims should not be taken at face value, as even the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian villages which had signed non-aggression pacts with the Yishuv was framed as self-defense. If you are interested in a detailed debunking of these pretexts, you can [read more about this here].
The 1967 war did not materialize out of a vacuum, nor should it be understood as such. It constituted a continuation of Israel’s wars against the region to achieve maximum territorial expansion. Particularly, this war would finish what began in 1956. Following the political defeat in the previous war, much of Israel’s military actions were designed to goad Nasser and other Arab leaders into an attack, an example of this can be seen in the disproportionate Israeli assault on Samu in 1966, or the frequent unprovoked bombings of Syrian border positions. This is hardly our unique interpretation of events; at the time this was widely understood. For example the British ambassador in Israel explained that this tactic aimed to spawn a “deliberately contrived preventive war“.
There is ample evidence to show that Israel was intent on provoking a war. This war would finally give them an opportunity to expand into territories not conquered in 1948, as Ben Gurion lamented. This becomes exceedingly clear once we examine the diplomatic record, and the numerous times Israel sabotaged any attempt at mediation or diplomacy to avert the outbreak of war.
For example, throughout much of the crisis of 1967 Egypt expressed its willingness to resurrect and expand the Egyptian-Israeli Mixed Armistice Commission (EIMAC), which was officially rejected by Israel in May. In the same month, the UN secretary-General personally attempted to avert an escalation by traveling to Cairo to mediate between the Egyptians and Israelis. Once again, Egypt agreed to the proposal in an attempt to lower tensions. Israel rejected the proposal. Brian Urquhart, who was a senior UN official at the time, wrote in his memoir that “Israel, no doubt having decided on military action, turned down [UN General Secretary] U Thant’s ideas“.
There were many other attempts at averting an escalation, for instance, the United States also tried its hand at mediation. High ranking American diplomats and politicians met with Nasser in late May in a meeting that was deemed a “breakthrough in the crisis”. In this meeting Nasser showed flexibility and a willingness to include the World Court to arbitrate in some of the issues. However, what was most promising was that Nasser agreed to send his vice-president to Washington within a week in an attempt to reach a diplomatic settlement for the crisis.
You may be wondering why you’ve never heard of such a meeting, or what its results were. That is because two days before the meeting, Israel decided to launch its surprise attack, torpedoing all efforts to reach a non-violent diplomatic solution to the crisis.
This shocked even the Americans, Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State at the time wrote that:
“They attacked on a Monday, knowing that on Wednesday the Egyptian vice-president would arrive in Washington to talk about re-opening the Strait of Tiran. We might not have succeeded in getting Egypt to reopen the strait, but it was a real possibility.”
Following the diplomatic chain of events at the time leaves no shadow of a doubt that Israel was purposely seeking war. It rebuffed all attempts at mediation and even deceived and humiliated its ally, the United States, by allowing it to continue with the charade of diplomacy when Israel knew it was going to attack anyway. On the other hand, this shows Nasser to have been far more flexible, and amenable to diplomatic solutions than many suggest. Yet until this day, Israel is portrayed as being forced into a defensive war, while Nasser is portrayed as a warmonger.
In his memoir, U Thant, the UN Secretary General at the time wrote that “if only Israel had agreed to permit UNEF to be stationed on its side of the border, even for a short duration, the course of history could have been different. Diplomatic efforts to avert the pending catastrophe might have prevailed; war might have been averted.” This was further confirmed by Odd Bull, chief of staff of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) at the time, who stated that:
“it is quite possible that the 1967 war could have been avoided’ had Israel acceded to the Secretary-General’s request.“
The revisionism surrounding the 1967 war is one of Israel’s most significant propaganda achievements. Suddenly, reality is flipped on its head, and the powerful aggressor becomes an underdog fighting to stave off extermination, though no such threat really existed. Israeli Minister Mordecai Bentov frankly admitted a few years after the war that:
“This entire story about the danger of extermination was invented and exaggerated after the fact to justify the annexation of new Arab territories”.
Following this war, Israel would come to control the entirety of what was once mandatory Palestine. The Jordanians and Egyptians were pushed out of the West Bank and Gaza Strip respectively, and these areas were now subjected to Israeli military occupation. In addition to this, the Syrian Golan Heights as well as the Sinai Peninsula were seized by Israel. Similar to the 1948 war, the 1967 war provided cover for more ethnic cleansing campaigns. By the end of the war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would be ethnically cleansed from various areas of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Over 100,000 Syrians would also be ethnically cleansed from the Golan Heights, and their villages and communities demolished and erased.
This defeat would come to be known as the Naksa, Arabic for setback. It would also crush the spirits of the Palestinians and the wider Arab population in general.After decades of perfecting colonial control mechanisms for Palestinians inside the green line, Israel was more than equipped to impose an effective military governing system on the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In 1966, Israel would end its martial law regulations for Palestinian villages inside the green line only to impose them once again in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after its victory in 1967.
The military occupation of the West Bank -including East Jerusalem- and the Gaza Strip persist to this day. This new status quo allowed Israel to pursue its goals of colonizing the rest of the territory that made up mandatory Palestine. It is in this context that the Allon plan emerged. Named after its creator, Yigal Allon, this plan would see Israel permanently seizing control of vast territories of the West Bank through multiple methods, such as through military installations as well as settlements. The large Palestinian population centers would then either be given some form of nominal autonomy, or have their control transferred to the Jordanian monarchy.
It was according to this plan that the colonial settlement enterprise in the West Bank and Gaza Strip was birthed. Settlements are colonies built on land under Israeli occupation outside the green line, and are open only to Jewish Israelis. Initially, Israel constructed settlements in all the territories it seized in the 1967 war, including the Sinai and Golan heights. For reasons which we will discuss in the next articles, the settlements in the Gaza Strip and Sinai were dismantled over time. However, in the West Bank and Golan heights, this has only worsened. There are over 200 settlements and outposts dotting the entirety of these areas. These settlements are home to over 600,000 settlers, living on stolen and occupied territory. According to international law, these settlements are absolutely illegal, and their existence is a stark violation of the Geneva conventions and other international norms.
If you were to look at the distribution of these settlements all across the West Bank, you will notice that there is a striking resemblance between their positions and the territory outlined in the Allon plan to be permanently seized by Israel. This is by design, and Israeli policy since the 60s has been to change the facts on the ground as much as possible so as to enable the theft of these lands. This colonization drive persists to this very day through various annexations and land confiscations, and did not even stop during times of peace negotiations. As a matter of fact, it accelerated during times of negotiations because the Israelis knew that the Palestinians would not want to jeopardize the negotiations they so desperately needed to establish a state. In addition to the settlements, the West Bank is dissected by military firing ranges, nature reserves and many other legalistic schemes to deny Palestinians access. This dissection is so severe, that the West Bank has jokingly come to be known as the West Bank archipelago, where small pockets of Palestinians are surrounded by Israeli controlled zones. This will be further elaborated upon in the next introductory article.Despite the death of Nasser, Egypt remained determined to take back the territories it lost in the 1967 war. With the help of Syria, who had also lost its Golan Heights, they put together a plan to retake control of their occupied areas. This came in the form of the 1973 war, which was a gamechanger in the region.
In the first hours of the war, Egypt under the leadership of Anwar Sadat, was able to cross the Suez Canal and overwhelm the Bar Lev line, which was constructed by Israel to fend off any Egyptian attack. On the northern front, the Syrians were able to advance well into the occupied Golan heights. These early military victories were ultimately reversed as Israel strengthened its position with the aid of the United States. While the Arab forces would be repulsed, the war served as a warning sign to Israel that it cannot forever guarantee that it would always be a victor in war.
This laid the groundwork for the 1978 Camp David accords with Egypt, where the Sinai would be returned to Egypt (with certain stipulations), in exchange for peace, normalization and the Egyptian recognition of Israel. Furthermore, the fledgling Israeli colonies in the Sinai would be dismantled. Egypt would be the first Arab state to officially recognize Israel, and would begin to reorient itself towards the United States and the West Bloc.
Among the various clauses and provisions of the Camp David accords was the condition that the rights of the Palestinian people were to be recognized, and that some form of autonomy would be granted to the Palestinians. While vague and noncommittal, this would eventually pave the way for the secret negotiations between the PLO and Israel.
The Syrians, however, would not fare as well. The Syrian Golan heights remain occupied to this day, and the state of war between Syria and Israel has technically never ended. Israel has used this as a pretext to illegally annex the Golan heights, and colonize it in a manner similar to the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
This new status quo, and the perceived shift in the balance of power would ultimately culminate in the Palestinian Intifada and the Oslo accords, which would for the first time allow the PLO leadership to return to Palestine in an endeavor to establish a Palestinian state. This will be discussed in depth in the next article. | {
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Even before the second Intifada, Israel had worked hard to cut off the Gaza Strip from the rest of Palestine. Travel between the West Bank and Gaza since the 1990s was always difficult, today it is virtually impossible for the general public. This was further exasperated by the military siege enacted by Israel following the Hamas take-over of the Strip in 2007. For the first time since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank and Gaza Strip would now be politically separated once again.
For all intents and purposes, the Gaza Strip has been turned into a ghetto, with Israel besieging it from most sides. Egypt helps maintain this siege from its side. Gaza has undergone some brutal assaults and wars on its population due to various Israeli pretexts, such as the 2008 and 2014 wars which killed thousands of Palestinians, including hundreds of children. This has made Gaza a convenient testing ground for Israeli arms manufacturers, who tout their equipment as “battle tested”.
As mentioned in the previous articles, the Gaza Strip is a small coastal enclave compromised mostly of refugees ethnically cleansed from their villages by Israel during the Nakba. As such, it does not have the capacity to support such a large population, and according to multiple reports, including a United Nations one, it is teetering towards being unlivable. The water aquifers are gradually becoming poisoned, and its civilian infrastructure is frequently destroyed by Israeli shelling and bombing.
Recently, the refugees of Gaza organized themselves into the Great March of Return, which saw tens of thousands peacefully protesting at the edges of the besieged strip with the goal of ending the siege and for their right to return to their homes. This march was heavily demonized, with Israeli claiming they were “riots” manufactured by Hamas, and its participants were branded “terrorists” and mercilessly shot by Israeli snipers, despite them posing no threat to them. A prominent example of this was the murder of the Palestinian medic, Razan Al-Najjar, who was sniped while providing aid to the protestors. Israel even released doctored footage in an attempt to paint her as a threat, but it instantly backfired since it was apparent that it was tampered with . Almost 200 Palestinians lost their lives, and thousands were wounded and maimed for life.
The situation in the Gaza Strip continues to deteriorate, poverty, Covid-19 and other circumstances have pushed it to the edge of implosion with no end in sight.Following the destruction of much of its assets, and the Hamas take-over of the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Authority found itself in the midst of a serious legitimacy crisis. Oslo lay in ruins, and any attempt to resuscitate the process would remain unsuccessful. Meanwhile, the people grew restless and skeptical of the Palestinian leadership and their role in society. So the Palestinian Authority did what any other Arab regime would do in its place; crackdown on dissent, and restructure and strengthen its security forces.
To this end, it would receive ample support, especially from the United States. US. General Keith Dayton would oversee what was officially dubbed “the security sector reform”. This basically entailed training a new generation of Palestinian security and intelligence officers fiercely loyal to the Authority’s leadership. This “reform” saw the ballooning of the security sector and its budget. This would be accompanied by an unraveling of Yasser Arafat’s old patronage networks, and establishing new ones with allegiance to the post-Arafat leadership.
The new tactic of the Palestinian Authority shifted towards state-building, in the hope that if they could prove capable of building effective institutions, the world would deem them “worthy” of a state. Slowly, but surely, things such as resistance and the right of return would be phased out of the Palestinian leadership’s language, and the Palestinian revolution turned from a liberation movement to a quest for autonomy. Not only that, but the security sector “reforms” included a security coordination program with Israel, meaning that the Palestinian Authority would basically become a subcontractor to the occupation.
Despite all of this, the Palestinian Authority never had any real “authority” to begin with, and this was by design. It is a purely administrative entity created to manage the “dirty work” of education, health and other burdens the occupying power is usually responsible for, while having absolutely no sovereignty or decision over any political aspect. This, of course, remains in the hands of Israel. For example, the Palestinian Authority can’t even determine who a Palestinian citizen is. The citizen registry for Palestinians is under the control of Israel. Meaning that if a Palestinian marries a non-Palestinian, their spouse will never be able to gain Palestinian citizenship as Israel’s demographic obsession would not allow for any preventable increase in the Palestinian population. Even Abbas needs to coordinate with the Israeli military to be able to visit other Palestinian cities, cities of a “country” he is supposedly president of.
The world, especially through its foreign aid, has effectively subsidized the Palestinian occupation and relieved Israel of many of its responsibilities, while maintaining all of the benefits.
Even though these changes to the Palestinian Authority have received praise from the IMF, and other international organizations, many of which deemed them ready for statehood, this did not sway Israel who was never truly interested in a real Palestinian state. This prompted the Palestinian Authority to take symbolic gestures, such as stamping “State of Palestine” on its paperwork instead of the traditional “Palestinian Authority” insignia. This gesture, of course, fell flat on its face when Israel threatened to not recognize these documents, which forced them to backtrack from stamping any papers that needed Israeli approval. A symbolic move which was supposed to signal independence ended up proving the exact opposite.
Meanwhile, not only would the occupation and colonization of the West Bank go on, but it would become even more entrenched. Although both militarily occupied, the form of the occupation in the West Bank differs to that in the Gaza Strip. Whereas the occupation in the Gaza Strip is maintained at long range through siege as well as aerial and artillery bombardment, in the West Bank this occupation experience revolves around the daily presence of an occupying military and policing force. As a result, there are context specific effects to the occupation in one region which are not as prominent in the other; for example, arrest of Palestinians is much more common in the West Bank than in the Gaza Strip, but the destruction of homes due to war and bombing is much more prevalent in the Gaza Strip. This is not to say that there are no deaths or demolitions in the West Bank, but the contrast between the regions is significant.
All aspects of life in the West Bank today are run by Israel, either directly or indirectly through the Palestinian Authority. This control extends from your basic rights, down to the most mundane of things, such as your phone coverage. Settlements continue to expand, now holding over 600,000 settlers with no indication of stopping. Increased areas are being annexed, and support for annexing area C is gaining more and more traction inside Israel. The annexation of the Jordan Valley, for example, has recently featured prominently in Israeli election campaigns.Although the Eastern part of Jerusalem is technically part of the West Bank, Israel has never treated it as such since its capture in the 1967 war. Claiming that the “eternal capital” has finally been reunited with its western counterpart, which Israel occupied in 1948. East Jerusalem was officially annexed in 1980. This annexation, of course was illegal and not recognized by the world community barring a few exceptions, such as the United States under Donald Trump.
Although Israel claims that Jerusalem has been reunited, this is mostly in the realm of rhetoric and propaganda. East Jerusalem is subject to a slew of measures, laws and procedures that specifically target its majority Palestinian population. Palestinians are granted a special “residence” permit that is often revoked with the flimsiest pretexts. For example, if you were to study abroad or decide to move outside of Jerusalem, this could very easily get your residence revoked, forcing you to live in the West Bank instead.
As with every other area of Palestine, East Jerusalem has been undergoing serious colonization efforts, with the building of colonies and the transfer of settlers into it with the declared plan to have Jerusalem with a 74% Jewish population. Towards this end, discriminatory lawfare is waged against Palestinians to find justifications for their removal. Thousands of Palestinian families have lost their right to live in Jerusalem over the decades, in what can only be described as protracted and silent ethnic cleansing of the city. Accompanying this is the erasure of traditional Palestinian names and toponomy, and replacing them with Israeli and Jewish names.
Massive discrimination in services, resource allocation and funding are the norm. Palestinian neighborhoods are underserviced, poorer and dirtier. You can read about this in detail [here].
Settlers in Jerusalem, naturally, do not need to worry about any of this or the risk of losing their homes.A cornerstone of Israeli propaganda efforts is the claim that all Israeli citizens are equal, this claim aims to obfuscate the fact that Israel distinguishes between citizenship and nationality.
What does this mean?
You can be a citizen of Israel but be a Druze national, or a Jewish national. Your nationality is determined by your ethnicity and it cannot be changed or challenged. Many of the rights you are accorded in Israel stem from your nationality not your citizenship. Meaning an “Arab” Israeli citizen and a Jewish Israeli citizen, while both citizens, enjoy different rights and privileges determined by their “nationality”. Seeing how Israel is an ethnocracy it is not a mystery who this system privileges and who it discriminates against.
This is not merely discrimination in practice, but discrimination by law. Adalah have composed a database of discriminatory laws in Israel that disfavor non-Jewish Israelis. For example, the Law of Return and Absentees’ Property Law are but two examples of flagrant racism and discrimination in the Israeli legal system.
This is not some old, odd oversight, but a very deliberate part of the design of Israeli society. This is periodically reinforced whenever some Israelis petition the Supreme Court to recognize an Israeli nationality that does not discriminate based on ethnicity. A recent example of these petitions was in 2013, where the Supreme Court rejected such an idea on the grounds that it would “undermine Israel’s Jewishness“.
It says quite a lot about Israel that a unifying egalitarian identity not based around ethnicity would “pose a danger to Israel’s founding principle: to be a Jewish state for the Jewish people” as the court ruled. The fact that such discrimination is seen as a cornerstone of Israeli society only reinforces its colonial ethnocratic nature, and undermines any claims to equality among citizens.
But this kind of discrimination is only the tip of the iceberg, as it only covers some aspects of de jure inequality. Inspecting the de facto discrimination against non-Jewish Israelis shines an even brighter light on Israel’s ethnocratic hierarchy.
Almost half of all Palestinian citizens of Israel live under the poverty line, with a considerable percentage close to the poverty line. They also have a considerably lower life expectancy, a higher infant mortality rate, less access to education and resources as well as less municipality and government funding. Should you be interested in delving into some of the more detailed aspects of this discrimination, you can read Adalah’s The Inequality Report. It is an excellent overview of many issues.
Additionally, you could read this report from the Adva center which illustrates quite clearly how this discrimination touches almost every aspect of life.
Furthermore, most land inside the green line is off limits to Palestinian citizens of Israel. A large percentage of land in Israel is under the control of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which has:
“..a specific mandate to develop land for and lease land only to Jews. Thus the 13 percent of land in Israel owned by the JNF is by definition off-limits to Palestinian Arab citizens, and when the ILA tenders leases for land owned by the JNF, it does so only to Jews—either Israeli citizens or Jews from the Diaspora. This arrangement makes the state directly complicit in overt discrimination against Arab citizens in land allocation and use..”.
The JNF is not the only entity blocking Palestinian citizens of Israel from purchasing, leasing or renting land and property, but also the so-called regional and local councils, which account for the vast majority of land. These councils have the authority to block anyone from settling in these areas that do not seem like a “good fit”, for example a religious community would not want to allow secular residents from moving in on the grounds that it would be against the spirit of their communities. In practice, this has translated into a virtual ban on non-Jewish Israelis moving into Jewish areas. In a Statement submitted by Habitat International Coalition and Adalah to the United Nations, it was estimated that almost 80% of the entire country is off limits to lease for Palestinian citizens of Israel. You can click here to read their full statement.
No matter how you look at it, Israeli society is a heavily segregated and hierarchical one. Whether through the legal system or just the attitudes of average Jewish Israelis, the ethnocratic nature of Israel and its obsession with ethnic gerrymandering always rises to the surface. Some would deny it, citing standards of living or some random “Arab” judge as a refutation of this point, but as discussed in [This] article, none of these challenge the extreme inequality -by design- of Israeli society. This denial is not unique to Israelis, we saw similar sentiments among white Americans who denied the existence of white supremacy, even though they reaped its benefits either directly or indirectly.Today, the Palestinians expelled during the Nakba and the Naksa and their descendants form the majority of the Palestinian people worldwide. Situated mostly in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, they continue to be denied the right of return despite many still holding the original deeds and keys to their houses, now expropriated by the Israeli state. They live under harsh conditions and yearn for the day they are able to return.
Not only does Israel deny their right to return, but it has also been waging a war on the very concept of the Palestinian refugee, arguing for the redefinition of the term to exclude descendants. This would run counter to every refugee population in the world, which has its descendants recognized as refugees in the cases of protracted conflicts, such as in the occupied Western Sahara .
The return of Palestinian refugees is the core of the Palestinian question, and their expulsion formed the basis for the establishment of Israel. Therefore, any proposed solution that neglects this, as the Oslo framework did, is doomed to failure. These approaches are preoccupied with finding solutions to symptoms, rather than dare address the root cause, which is Zionist settler colonialism and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. This can be clearly seen when taking the 1967 borders as their starting point, although today not even that is good enough for Israel, which seeks to annex increasing territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Palestinians are then pressured to relinquish any rights or hopes for their millions of refugees, or their rights to live in over 80% of the land they were ethnically cleansed from.
As you can see from these articles, the democratic, progressive Israel we hear so much about in the mainstream media has never once existed. From its inception, it functioned as an ethnocracy with the intent of taking over as much land as possible with as few Palestinians as possible. Although a new tactic of Zionists is to try and claim that Zionism was a liberation movement with the aim of decolonization, this is belied by the very detailed writings left behind by movement founders. | {
"articleTitle": "Introduction to Palestine :5: Palestine and Palestinians today | Decolonize Palestine",
"pageTitle": "Introduction to Palestine :5: Palestine and Palestinians today | Decolonize Palestine",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:39:20.379Z",
"url": "https://decolonizepalestine.com/intro/palestine-and-palestinians-today",
"description": "This is part 5 of our Palestine introduction articles. It covers the plight of Palestinians today, both inside Palestine and beyond."
} |
As with anything Palestinian that rises to prominence, it becomes a magnet for anti-Palestinian sentiment. BDS is no exception, yet due to its non-violent nature it has been slightly harder to dismiss as outright terrorism. Therefore, elaborate interpretations and readings have been undertaken to frame the movement as the embodiment of evil, going as far as to ridiculously suggest that it is a prelude to genocide and a new Holocaust.
Naturally, much of the misconceptions about BDS stem either from bad faith attacks such as the above, or from a lack of research on the movement and its goals. Some are simply the result of unfamiliarity with the Palestinian question. The following section will inspect some of the most prominent criticisms and misconceptions regarding the BDS movement.
BDS calls for the destruction of Israel
This is perhaps the most common baseless smear directed against the BDS movement. As you saw from the goals of the movement, as well as its call for action, nowhere does it call for destruction. This is a bad faith reading of the movements third goal:
“Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.”
Since this calls for the return of Palestinian refugees, this would mean threatening Israel’s Jewish majority. Naturally, the fact that this majority is only artificially maintained through expelling the natives is never brought up. I suppose it is an inconvenient fact to face that Israelis only have their homes because millions of Palestinians don’t have theirs.
Regardless, if Israel were truly an egalitarian and democratic state, as its defenders so often insist, then it wouldn’t matter what the demographic make-up of the country is. A citizen is a citizen. However, Israel is not a democracy, but an ethnocracy built around privileging Jewish Israelis over everyone else . This pushes Israel to instate racist laws that discriminate against Palestinians, even those it begrudgingly calls citizens. This ethnocratic logic animates much of Israel’s demographic obsessions, and gives credence to the utterly dehumanizing view that Palestinian babies are demographic threats, because they endanger an absolute Jewish majority.
Could you imagine any other state saying “we need to maintain a majority of X ethnic group” and instating racist laws to make it happen, and still be considered a liberal first world democracy?
However, the return of refugees would effectively end the Israeli regime which has historically organized itself through discriminatory and colonial Zionist policies of ethnic supremacy. It is intellectually dishonest to claim that dismantling this racist system is tantamount for calling for the genocide of all Israelis, as it is often claimed. When the Apartheid regime in South Africa was defeated, this did not mean the physical destruction of South Africa as a state, or the genocide of the Afrikaner. However, critics of the ANC constantly falsely accused them of calling for the genocide of the white population, similar to how Israelis do today against Palestinians.
It should be noted, however, that the BDS movement takes no position on political solutions. It is purely a human rights movement, no matter what intentions are projected onto it. Naturally, its various members do have political positions, but these are not representative of the movement as a whole which has only the three objectives discussed above.
BDS singles out Israel for punishment, and applies a double standard towards it
This is also a prominent argument put forward by critics of BDS. The argument is as follows: There are human rights violators out there much worse than Israel, yet there are no campaigns aimed at isolating them and putting pressure on them. Therefore, the BDS campaign is practicing a double standard as it does not call for the boycott of other human rights violators and singles out Israel specifically.
A more extreme version of this argument posits that since Israel is the only Jewish state, and this movement singles out Israel specifically, then the movement itself is de facto antisemitic in nature and is fueled by hatred for the Jewish people.
This criticism -if we assume good faith- betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what BDS is. The BDS movement was started by Palestinians specifically regarding their very own issue. It is not a universal scale of justice that metes out punishments on a global scale, rather it is an issue specific movement that focuses on the Palestinian question. People all over the world choose to answer this call for solidarity.
Furthermore, this argument is an implicit admission of guilt. The objection does not even attempt to deny Israel’s wrongdoing, but rather seeks to distract from the fact by pointing fingers at others. This is a laughable attempt at shifting blame, could you imagine this argument in any other context?
Was the Black Civil Rights movement full of hypocrites for boycotting the Montgomery Bus Company while their fellow Africans were being slaughtered in Algeria under French colonial rule?
Of course not, and it is ridiculous to even suggest such a thing.
Notice, however, how these violations in other countries are instrumentalized and wielded as a cudgel with no real interest in their impact. The latest spate of normalization with absolutist Arab monarchies shows that this concern was nothing more than a distraction tactic, as the Gulf countries used to be a favorite example for this maneuver. I’m certain they’ll be shifting to less friendly cases soon enough.
However, if we wish to discuss Israel being singled out it should be noted that although Israel is one of the world’s leading countries when it comes to violating and ignoring UNSC resolutions, it is still afforded a special place among the nations and considered a democratic civilized first world country and is afforded special privileges, trade offers and partnerships not available to any other serial violator of human rights. If Israel is being singled out for anything, it is for its impunity to any real consequences for its violations.
The BDS movement harms academic freedom
This argument is as follows:
There are moderate voices within Israeli academia that sympathize with the Palestinians. By expanding the campaign to include academic targets for boycott, these voices are also damaged and silenced to where they cannot help create a just peace. Furthermore, it damages academic freedom which should be above politics.
Israeli academia, like virtually every sector of Israeli society, has a long history of not only complicity with Israeli colonialism, but active support for it. For example, part of Tel Aviv university lies on the ethnically cleansed ruins of the Palestinian village of Sheikh Muwannis. Israeli medical schools store Palestinian bodies which are then used as bargaining chips against their families. Israeli universities help develop the weapons which are then tested on Palestinians, and the tech which control Palestinian lives. But this is hardly the only ways in which Israeli universities aid in the dispossession of Palestinians; as institutions of ideological production and reproduction, they contribute to the maintenance of colonial thought in Israeli society, creating moral justifications for the colonization of Palestine and repression of Palestinians.
Anti-Apartheid South African activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu, asserts that:
“Israeli Universities are an intimate part of the Israeli regime, by active choice…. Israeli universities produce the research, technology, arguments and leaders for maintaining the occupation. BGU is no exception. By maintaining links to both the Israeli defence forces and the arms industry, BGU structurally supports and facilitates the Israeli occupation. For example, BGU offers a fast-tracked programme of training to Israeli Air Force pilots.”
Despite all of this, the BDS movement does not target individual Israeli persons, whether academic or otherwise, but targets mainly Israeli institutions and those representing them in an official capacity. An Israeli professor would not be boycotted purely for being Israeli.
However, there is good reason to suspect that these champions of academic freedom are not sincere in their assertions. For instance, never once during both Intifadas which saw the closure, bombing and raiding of Palestinian universities, did the:
“..senate of any Israeli university pass a resolution protesting the frequent closure of Palestinian universities [by Israel], let alone voice protest the devastation sowed there during the last uprising.”
This silence on the violation of Palestinian academic freedom was hardly a one-time occurrence. Israeli professor Menachem Fisch et al. designed a social experiment in the aftermath of the bombing of the Islamic University in Gaza during the war in 2008, where he circulated a petition among Israeli academics to denounce this attack against academic freedom and Palestinians right to education. Out of the 9000 academics contacted (5000 of which were senior faculty academics), a mere 4% of them agreed to sign the petition.
This sudden interest in academic freedom should only be understood as an insincere and cynical pretext to demonize the BDS movement, and nothing more.
The BDS movement harms sympathetic Israelis
As mentioned earlier, the BDS movement does not target random Israeli individuals. BDS targets the Israeli government, as well as institutions, organizations and their representatives which are complicit in the repression and dispossession of Palestinians.
The BDS movement is one sided and assigns all blame to Israel
Settler colonialism is by definition asymmetric and one sided.
It is disingenuous to appeal to a false equivalence or a “both sides” approach when it comes to the Palestinian question. It is the Israelis who are colonizing the Palestinians, and it is the Israelis who are building settlements and annexing Palestinian land. Israelis hold the power between the river and the sea. We are not speaking of a conflict between two countries, but an expansionist settler colony versus a native population.
The target of the BDS campaign should be restricted to the illegal Israeli settlements
Some argue that the scope of BDS is too indiscriminate, and that we should focus our attention instead on the illegal Israeli settlements themselves, rather than Israel. There are multiple issues with this line of thought; most glaring of which is that settlements and other illegal policies are not self-perpetrating, and neither are they occurring in a vacuum. Settlements need to be built, maintained, protected, developed, and all this is performed gleefully by Israel, which has always sought to maximize its land-grabs.
Israel actively incentivizes the transfer of its population into the settlements by declaring them “National Priority areas”, meaning that they are the recipients of generous state subsidies in multiple areas, such as housing and education. Furthermore, Israel’s violations of international law are not related only to the areas it occupied in the 1967 war, but to the entirety of the land it controls, including inside the green line.
However, even if you were to remain unconvinced by all of the above, this type of targeted boycott is unfeasible for practical reasons as well. From a distance, looking at static maps it might appear that the green line neatly dissects Palestine into 1948 and 1967 territories, on the ground the green line simply does not exist for Israelis. Hundreds of thousands of settlers commute to work every day over the green line, and it is not a factor in everyday Israeli life. For all intents and purposes the settlements are part of Israel, and not a neat separate entity that can be easily singled out for boycotts.
BDS should not include a boycott against Israeli culture
BDS does not target individual Israeli artists, but institutions or those complicit in the oppression of Palestinians and the whitewashing of Israeli crimes.
Israel has always been very public about using cultural means to improve its image abroad, and to divert attention away from its oppression of the Palestinians. A recent example is Israel hosting Eurovision in Tel Aviv in an attempt to put a pluralistic and “pretty face” on the state, and whitewash its human rights violations. It should be noted that Israel is not unique in this regard, as Apartheid South Africa also hosted music festivals and cultural events in an effort to change perceptions of the racist state.
In this context, cultural activities gain a new role, one that is complicit in oppression. Even things that seem inconsequential in the grand scheme of things all contribute to whitewashing Israel’s image. For example, Maxim magazine’s infamous “Women of Israel Defence Forces” article was deemed so benefecial to Israel’s international reputation that the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs threw a party celebrating its publication.
The BDS movement harms Palestinian workers
When all other pretexts for why Israel shouldn’t be held responsible for its violation of international law fail, critics of BDS become fierce advocates of the Palestinian worker. Suddenly, the welfare of the Palestinians is their chief concern, and we cannot boycott Israel because many Palestinians who work in settlements and inside the green line would lose their jobs. Similar to those who suddenly discover the sanctity of academic freedom when boycotting Israeli academia is mentioned, the sincerity of these claims is questionable at best.
However, should anyone actually care about the plight of Palestinian workers, supporting BDS to end the occupation is a much better way to accomplish that. While approximately 120,000 Palestinians work in settlements and inside the green line, it is estimated that these settlements and occupation policies cost Palestinians 110,000 jobs per year according to UNCTAD. Meaning that had there been no Israeli stranglehold on the Palestinian economy, and had there been no settlements stealing the most fertile and resource rich areas, Palestinians could have created nearly two million new jobs for themselves since the year 2000. This would have gone much further towards improving the lives of Palestinian workers than maintaining their status as exploited labor in an ethnocracy that sees them as inferior.
Furthermore, it is important to remember that the BDS call to action came from Palestinian civil society, which includes its labor and trade unions who remain proud signatories to this day. Support for BDS among Palestinians is virtually unanimous, and any qualms about it are due to concerns over effectiveness, rather than thinking it would cause harm.
Interestingly enough, this is a carbon copy of the argument used against boycotting Apartheid South Africa, where the people benefiting from exploiting cheap Black labor suddenly became concerned about worker wellbeing. It remains as transparently cynical today as it was back then.
“There are some pretty powerful elements in the world that are active in the matter – within countries, including friendly countries, in various organizations of workers, academics, consumers, green parties…and this drive boils down to a large movement called BDS, which is what they did with South Africa. It won’t happen at once. It will begin, like an iceberg, to advance on us from all corners.” – Ehud Barak, 2011.
When it comes to the effectiveness of BDS, you will find that arguments range from calling the movement “flimsy” and ineffective, all the way to calling it an “existential threat” to the very survival of Israel.
Concretely measuring the effectiveness of the BDS movement is difficult, because many of its effects are non-material in nature. For example, how does one quantify the cancellation of a concert or conference in Israel? Simply looking at the loss of potential income is inadequate to reflect the psychological or discursive effects of such an event. Even more complicated is measuring the reluctance to host Israelis or any other action involving Israel simply due to a desire to avoid controversy, rather than actually being part of the boycott movement.
On the economic front, there are more tools to measure losses. For instance, a study carried out by the RAND corporation, entitled “The costs of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” estimates that if the current trends continue, BDS would escalate in the next decade to cost Israel close to 2% of its GDP, around 9 billion dollars per year. It should be noted that this was calculated mainly in opportunity costs rather than in direct damage. However, it is once again important to stress that there are many aspects and potential loss of business that cannot be anticipated or accounted for.
We can argue at length about these points, however, there are signs that Israel’s fear of the BDS campaign is genuine. The responsibility for combating the campaign has been moved from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Ministry of Strategic Affairs. This is the same ministry responsible for tackling urgent matters relating to Israel’s “national security”. Pro-Israel mega donors have hosted secret conferences to come up with and fund strategies to combat BDS all over the globe. Israeli lobbying groups have worked hard to push for the criminalization of BDS in some American states.
Why go to all of these lengths if Israel perceives BDS as powerless and ineffective?
Because the real power of the BDS movement lies outside its material effects. Yes, some economic pressure on Israel is good, but nobody was arguing that the BDS movement was going to topple the Israeli economy, nor were they arguing that BDS alone would liberate Palestine. The effectiveness of BDS stems from its ability to raise awareness, speak truth to power, and bring to light parallels that Israel cannot combat. The discursive ability of BDS to shift the conversation, as well as its grassroots mass participatory nature, makes it a much bigger threat to Israel than the loss of a few billion dollars. This is where its strength lies, and as it becomes more mainstream among activists and campuses all over the world, this strength will only grow. | {
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"description": "This is part 6 of our Palestine introduction articles. It covers the BDS movement, its origins and goals, as well as some of the major arguments and misconceptions surrounding it."
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Today the Two State Solution refers to the diplomatic process finding its roots in the 1970s which called for establishing a sovereign Palestinian state next to Israel. The first bilateral breakthrough in this process materialized in the -at the time- secret Oslo Accords where Palestinians, represented by the PLO, and Israelis agreed upon a declaration of principles that would lead to creating the Palestinian Authority as an interim government that would supposedly pave the way for a final settlement. These accords were mostly a declaration of principles which did not contain any parameters for how such a state would even look. As a matter of fact, the word “state” with regards to Palestinians was never mentioned once. It was two years later, in what is referred to as Oslo II, taking place in the Egyptian city of Taba, that negotiations earnestly began. In these negotiations more concrete parameters were discussed, and the logistics as well as method for instating the Palestinian Authority on the ground.
Needless to say, that state has failed to materialize, and the so-called peace process has been used as a cover to accelerate Israeli colonization in the West Bank, as well as to subsidize the occupation of Palestinians through the international community under the guise of state-building.
What this approach to a solution neglects, is that Israel is not a normal state. It is a settler colony . We are not talking about two naturally occurring populations which have a land dispute. Israelis are descended from settlers that arrived from abroad with the goal of erecting an ethnocratic settler state in an area that was already home to the Palestinians.This approach is also inadequate to right historical wrongs, as it focuses on the pre-1967 borders as a starting point, which are in themselves a product of this colonization, and not the root cause of it. It is thus preoccupied with finding solutions to symptoms, rather than dare address the root cause, which is Zionist settler colonialism and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
This automatically means that Palestinians must relinquish any rights or hopes for their millions of refugees, and it also means that Palestinians must relinquish their rights to live in over 80% of the land they were ethnically cleansed from. It also means that resource distribution, from water to fertile land, will be heavily stacked in Israel’s favor.
All of these shortcomings are often countered with the assertion that Palestinians must compromise to reach peace. Israeli control is treated as a fait accompli and that Palestinians must deal with it, rather than ask for justice. This is the whole premise of the two-state solution, that Palestinians must compromise on their rights to be granted a small, powerless sham of a state in part of their homeland. Israel, of course was not asked to compromise on anything substantial. The only compromise asked of Israelis is to stop its violation of international law, which it should cease regardless of any negotiation with the Palestinians. This attitude basically boils down to “what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is negotiable.”.
Yet despite all of this, Palestinians were willing to agree to these terms. The PLO was willing to give up on the Palestinian people’s historical rights in order to find peace and have a state. But even that was not sufficient for Israelis. Even Rabin, who is considered a holy martyr for peace among the Israeli peace camp, was not prepared to give the Palestinians a state. He spoke of a sham “state-minus” with no sovereignty, and the offers did not get better than that throughout the history of negotiation.
Has it never once sounded suspicious to you how Israelis focus on the number of “peace offers” that were refused by the Palestinians, but never once discussed the actual parameters or substance in detail?
Because when these parameters are discussed, it becomes clear that these are terms nobody could accept. So even when Palestinians accepted the 1967 borders, a very limited return of refugees, and other compromises, this was still not good enough for Israel that sought to shrink the Palestinian Bantustan even further. These arrangements seek to formalize the status quo with cosmetic changes. Netanyahu promised that no Palestinian state will emerge, and in the case of any limited self-rule arrangement for the Palestinians, he spoke about a permanent IDF presence in the West Bank, as well as Israeli control of the borders and airspace. These are the amazing “opportunities” that Palestinians have been declining, and as a result are being painted as warmongering rejectionists for doing so.
As it stands, Palestinian aspirations cannot exceed the ceiling of Israeli table scraps.
It should be mentioned that such arrangements were also concocted for the various Bantustans in Apartheid South Africa. What all of these arrangements have in common, is that they are designed specifically to dance around settler colonialism, and to try and find a “solution” comfortable for the settlers which do not harm any expansionist ambitions. In this way Palestinians are pushed to compromise until there is nothing left to compromise on, they are now even being pushed to compromise on having actual borders.Naturally, there are other ways to answer the question of Palestine outside the dominant paradigm of the two state solution. Some scholars and activists are calling for a decolonized state for all of those between the river and the sea. However, this would necessitate that Zionists relinquish their ideology of ethnic supremacy.
This is hardly a new or radical position, such an entity was suggested by the Arab states as a counter-proposal to the 1947 partition plan. Naturally, this was rejected by the Zionists. That we barely ever hear about the offers that the Yishuv/Israel rejected should be an indicator of the nature of mainstream discussions on Palestine and the silencing of Palestinian voices. The Palestinian Liberation Organization also called for establishing a secular, democratic unitary state for all its citizens. Naturally, none of these proposals included genocide, ethnic cleansing or mass murder.
These anxieties are not unique to Jewish Israelis, settlers in many different colonies throughout history have echoed these same sentiments. If we were to take a look at the narrative surrounding anti-Apartheid South Africa activism and boycotts, we would find eerily similar projections and arguments.
For example, In an article for the Globe and Mail under the title “The good side of white South Africa” Kenneth Walker argued that ending the Apartheid system and giving everyone an equal vote would be a “a recipe for slaughter in South Africa”. Others, such as Shingler, echoed similar claims, saying that anti-racist activists were actually not interested in ending Apartheid as a policy, but in South Africa as a society. Others came out to claim these activists were actually motivated by “anti-white racism”, fueled by “Black imperialism”. Political comics displayed a giant soviet bear, bearing down on South Africa declaring “We shall drive South Africa into the Sea!”
Sound familiar?
Yet even when it is rarely acknowledged that Palestinian refugees were wronged, and deserve to return home, the refrain is that while it is tragic, it is the only way to keep the Jewish people safe. Once again, this pretense is hardly unique to Jewish Israelis, as a matter of fact, similar arguments were used against the abolition of slavery in the United States. For example, Thomas Jefferson likened slavery to a wolf:
“we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”
How utterly ridiculous this all sounds now.
While the first approach is crude and vile propaganda, designed to instigate fear and panic, it is par for the course for settler societies. Perhaps the second approach stands out a little bit more for its brazen attempt at manipulation. In a final endeavor to center their experiences and erase their victims, settlers frame themselves as the stars of their own tragedy, in the end they were the tragic victims of fate, forced to wield injustice for the sake of self-preservation.
Underlying the logic of both of these approaches are racist assumptions that the colonized are barbaric, bloodthirsty and ruthless. It is a deeply dehumanizing logic, steeped in every colonial and Orientalist trope. The idea that a decolonized, free Palestine would inevitably lead to genocide comes from this same logic. As a matter of fact, for all the claims of the Palestinians wanting to push Israelis into the sea, only the opposite has occurred in reality. | {
"articleTitle": "Myth: The two-state solution is the only way forward | Decolonize Palestine",
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"description": "The two-state solution is not the only way forward for the Palestinian question. The moment we stop putting Israel's demographic obsessions first, other options become much more reasonable and just."
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In general, the quest for two-states found its genesis in the diplomatic process in the 1970s which called for establishing a sovereign Palestinian state next to Israel. The first bilateral breakthrough in this process materialized in the -at the time- secret Oslo Accords where Palestinians, represented by the PLO, and Israelis agreed upon a declaration of principles that would lead to creating the Palestinian Authority. The Authority would act as an interim Palestinian government that would supposedly pave the way for a final settlement. These accords were mostly a declaration of principles which did not contain any parameters for how such a state would even look. As a matter of fact, the word “state” with regards to Palestinians was never mentioned once. It was two years later, in what is referred to as Oslo II, taking place in the Egyptian city of Taba, that negotiations earnestly began. In these negotiations more concrete parameters were discussed, as well as the logistics and method for instating the Palestinian Authority on the ground.
The Palestinian Authority was supposed to last no longer than 5 years, after which a sovereign Palestinian state would be established as a culmination of the negotiation process. Clearly, this did not materialize and the negotiation process stalled. In 2000, US. President Bill Clinton called for a summit at Camp David to try and nudge negotiations forward and put an end to the “conflict” once and for all.
The summit lasted for approximately two weeks, and needless to say, it failed in its objectives. Following this failure, there was a media frenzy blaming Arafat and the Palestinians for the negotiations breaking down.
The claim was that Barak offered the Palestinians everything they could ever want for peace, and that Arafat simply threw that all away. Articles started emerging saying that this was the perfect test for Arafat’s intentions and that he failed miserably, and asserted that the Palestinians refused to make any concessions or compromise on anything.
Thus, it became part of the “canon” that the Palestinians had -once again- rejected a peace offer by Israel, proving that Israelis really have no partner for peace, and that nothing could appease Palestinians.Let’s step away from the sensationalism and media spins of Camp David and take a bit of a deeper look into what Barak offered, and why it was rejected.
To begin with, the often-repeated line that Barak offered the Palestinians the Gaza Strip and 96% of the West Bank for a state is completely untrue. Barak offered the Palestinians 96% of Israel’s definition of the West Bank, meaning they did not include any of the areas already under Israeli control, such as settlements, the Dead Sea, and large parts of the Jordan Valley. This meant that Barak effectively annexed 10% of the West Bank to Israel, with an additional 8-12% remaining under “temporary” Israeli control for a period of time.
In return for this annexation, Palestinians would be offered 1% of desert land near the Gaza Strip. Thus, Palestinians would need to give up 10% of the most fertile land in the West Bank, in exchange for 1% of desert land. Not to mention that if the past record is any indicator, the additional 8-12% under “temporary” Israeli control would remain so forever.
In addition to all of this, Israel demanded permanent control of Palestinian airspace, three permanent military installations manned by Israeli troops in the West Bank, Israeli presence at Palestinian border crossings, and special “security arrangements” along the borders with Jordan which effectively annexed additional land.
The cherry on top of all of these stipulations, is that Israel would be allowed to invade at any point in cases of “emergency”. As you can imagine, what constituted an emergency was left incredibly vague and up to interpretation. The Palestinian state would be demilitarized, and the Palestinian government would not be able to enter into alliances without Israeli permission. None of these are ingredients for the creation of an actual sovereign state.
But the Israeli conditions did not end here. In the case of East Jerusalem, which was supposed to be the capital of the Palestinian state, Israel refused any form of Palestinian sovereignty over the majority of the city, including many Palestinian neighborhoods. It should be noted that the PA agreed to Israeli sovereignty over Jewish neighborhoods and the Buraq wall, and even proposed Israel annex settlements in East Jerusalem in return for land swaps elsewhere. This was met with Israeli intransigence, and an insistence that the Noble Sanctuary remain under Israeli sovereignty, and that a part of it should be reserved for Jewish worshippers.
Furthermore, when it came to the right of return, Israel refused to admit any responsibility for the millions of refugees it created . The only thing it offered was a very limited return of a very limited number of refugees over a very long period of time.
Ultimately, this “generous offer” amounted to turning the West Bank into non-contiguous cantons, crisscrossed by a network of settlements, roads and Israeli areas. Even the supposed “capital” of the Palestinian state would mostly be under Israeli control, with stipulations and conditions that stripped any real sovereignty from any area of the supposed Palestinian “state”. Not even the sky above Palestinian heads would be under their control, nor the water under their feet, as Israel still demanded access to water resources under the West Bank.
To add insult to injury, Israel was adamant that Arafat declare “the conflict over” with the signing of these accords, meaning that Palestinians could never ask for anything more after this.
As I’m sure you’ll agree, none of this was conducive for the establishment of a real, sovereign and viable Palestinian state. How could anyone accept a state where they don’t even have control over their own capital?
Even Shlomo Ben Ami, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, and one of the main negotiators at Camp David, later candidly admitted later that:
“Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well.”
As it stands, Palestinian aspirations cannot be allowed to exceed the ceiling of Israeli table scraps. What is acceptable to Palestinians never enters the discussion, which must always be tailored to what Israel is willing to concede. This becomes even more infuriating once you realize that Israel is not really conceding anything; ending its occupation and stopping its settlement activities is merely following international law. It is not a sacrifice -it should be the default position.
This is how all of the “generous” Israeli peace offers play out. The majority of people who hear about this on the news have no clue what the parameters of the offer are. All they hear is that the Palestinians have rejected yet another “peace” initiative by Israel . This is why Israel focuses on the number of offers, because it distracts from their content, similar to the above example regarding army numbers in 1948.
All of this feels completely irrelevant today. We’re talking about some failed negotiation summit from a couple of decades ago. Hell, many of its participants have actually passed away since. We bring attention to Camp David not specifically because we believe Camp David needs revisiting, but for it to serve as an archetypal example of how Israel has always approached negotiations with the Palestinians, and how any justified rejection of absurd stipulations leads to decades of accusations and smears. | {
"articleTitle": "Myth: Palestinians sabotaged the “peace process” | Decolonize Palestine",
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"description": "The idea that Palestinians sabotaged the \"peace process\" by rejecting Israeli offers is propaganda designed to stop you from asking about the content of said offers."
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Sustaining this argument requires some glaring lies of omission and manipulation of facts. I believe it is important to scrutinize this claim, and this can only be done by conveying a historically accurate depiction of the debates and context surrounding partition.
Before we can talk about partition, however, we need to talk about those demanding partition. Based on the Israeli narrative, this would be “the Jewish people”. This is a dishonest assertion and is often uncritically accepted by many.
This line of thought conflates the Jewish people with Zionism, an ideology finding its origins in Europe in the late 1800s. At the time, the Jewish people were largely uninterested in Zionism. As a matter of fact many groups were fiercely anti-Zionist. The attempt to conflate the two is an attempt to give legitimacy to self-professed settlers from Europe, and portray any criticism of the Zionist project as inherently antisemitic.
Yet in the early days, the Zionist movement was astonishingly honest about its existence as a form of colonialism. The founding fathers of Zionism, such as Herzl, Nordau, Ussishkin and Jabotinsky –among others- employed the same colonial tropes and tactics used by Europeans to legitimize their imperialism. Not only was Zionism colonialism in practice, but Zionists openly referred to it as such; for example, Herzl sought counsel from Cecil Rhodes on how best to proceed with the process of colonization, describing Zionism as ‘something colonial’. To drive this point even further, the first Zionist bank established was named the ‘Jewish Colonial Trust’ and the whole endeavor was supported by the ‘Palestine Jewish Colonization Association’ and the ‘Jewish Agency Colonization Department’.
At the end of the day it was a group of European settlers claiming an already inhabited land for an exclusivist ethnic state, while planning to ‘spirit the penniless population across the border’ through various means. Modern attempts to retroactively whitewash Zionism, and portray it merely as a movement for self-determination, cannot escape these facts .When partition is brought up in the historical sense, it is not surprising that most tend to think of the 1947 UNGA resolution. However, this was not the first partition scheme to be presented. In 1919, for example, the World Zionist Organization put forward a ‘partition’ plan, which included all of historical Palestine, parts of Lebanon, Syria and Transjordan. At the time, the Jewish population of this proposed state would not have even reached 2-3% of the total population.
Naturally, such a proposal did not see the light of day, but it is an indication of the entitlement of the Zionist movement in wanting to establish an ethnic state in an area where they were so utterly outnumbered. To put this into context, even after waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine, and a much smaller area allocated to the Jewish state in the 1947 partition plan, the proposed Jewish state would not have had a Jewish majority without additional immigration and settlement. As even on the eve of the Nakba, the Jewish population in mandatory Palestine was less than a third.
If we consider that most of this population arrived during the 4th and 5th Aliyot (Between 1924-1939), then the majority of those demanding partition of the land had barely been living there for 20 years at the most. To make matters worse, the UN partition plan allotted approximately 56% of the land of mandatory Palestine to the Jewish state.
Why, then, were Palestinians expected to agree to give away most of their land to a minority of recently arrived settlers? Why is the rejection of such a ridiculously unjust proposal framed as irrational or hateful?
Jabotinsky understood clearly what establishing Israel meant for the natives; he did not mince words, in his 1923 essay The Iron Wall he wrote that:
‘Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised’.
What was being asked of Palestinians was nothing short of rubber-stamping their own colonization with approval. Nobody should be expected to agree to that.Yet for some, this is not seen as convincing reasoning for the rejection of partition. They acknowledge the obscene injustice of what was being asked of Palestinians, yet they argue that due to the historical persecution of the Jewish people, and fresh off the heels of the Holocaust, creating a Jewish state at the expense of Palestinians was a historic necessity.
While such justifications serve mainly to assuage guilt, I argue that there is also a practical reason for why accepting or rejecting partition was irrelevant to the grand scheme of Zionist colonization of Palestine.
It is often brought up how the Yishuv agreed to the 1947 partition plan, showing good will and a readiness to coexist and live with their Palestinian neighbors. While this may seem true on the surface, a cursory glance at internal Yishuv meetings paints an entirely different picture. Partition as a concept was entirely rejected, and any acceptance in public was tactical in order for the newly created Jewish state to gather its strength before expanding .
While addressing the Zionist Executive, Ben Gurion reemphasized that any acceptance of partition would be tactical and temporary:
“After the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine.”
This was not a one-time occurrence, and neither was it only espoused by Ben Gurion. Internal debates and letters illustrate this time and time again. Even in letters to his family, Ben Gurion wrote that “A Jewish state is not the end but the beginning” detailing that settling the rest of Palestine depended on creating an “elite army”. As a matter of fact, he was quite explicit:
“I don’t regard a state in part of Palestine as the final aim of Zionism, but as a mean toward that aim.”
Chaim Weizmann expected that:
“partition might be only a temporary arrangement for the next twenty to twenty-five years”.
So even ignoring the moral question of requiring the natives to formally green-light their own colonization, had the Palestinians agreed to partition they most likely still would not have had an independent state today. Despite what was announced in public, internal Zionist discussions make it abundantly clear that this would have never been allowed.
Partition today remains as immoral as it was when first presented, a band-aid solution and a cure for a symptom which overlooks the root cause. Any settlement that is achieved without justice or accountability merely buries the issues in exchange for short-lived quiet; but no matter how long it takes, silenced and ignored grievances will resurface. This becomes exceedingly clear when observing the situation of our comrades in South Africa today.
The demise of the Oslo accords can serve as a catalyst to challenge the fixation on the pre-1967 war borders. Reducing the question of Palestine to partition and occupation overlooks crucial components of the struggle. Many may prefer to ignore said components; however, if true justice is our goal, then they must be discussed and confronted. We must start from the beginning and reject any urges to whitewash history. | {
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However, there is an argument that although the plan never came to fruition, the UNGA recommendation to partition Palestine to establish a Jewish state conferred the legal authority to create such a state. As a matter of fact, this can be seen in the declaration of the establishment of the state of Israel.
This argument falls flat on its face when we take into account that the United Nations, both its General Assembly as well as its Security Council do not have the jurisdiction to impose political solutions, especially without the consent of those it affects. There is nothing in the UN charter that confers such authority to the United Nations. Indeed, this was brought up during discussions on the matter.
Warren Austin, the US representative at the Security Council stated that:
“The Charter of the United Nations does not empower the Security Council to enforce a political settlement whether it is pursuant to a recommendation of the General Assembly or of the Security Council itself […] The Security Council’s action, in other words, is directed to keeping the peace and not to enforcing partition.”
Furthermore, not only would this be outside the scope of the United Nations’ power, it would as a matter of fact run counter to its mandate. This was even brought up by The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine itself:
“With regard to the principle of self-determination, although international recognition was extended to this principle at the end of the First World War and it was adhered to with regard to the other Arab territories, at the time of the creation of the ‘A’ Mandates, it was not applied to Palestine, obviously because of the intention to make possible the creation of the Jewish National Home there. Actually, it may well be said that the Jewish National Home and the sui generis Mandate for Palestine run counter to that principle.”
This is a direct admission that the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine runs counter to the principle of self-determination for Palestinians already living there. The United Nations needed to twist itself into a knot and make an exception to their own charter to recommend the partition of Palestine. Despite these efforts, the United Nations did not manage to partition Palestine, and even if it did it would be void due to it not being within its powers.
Furthermore, the selective nature of Israeli appeals to the UN are quite well-documented. In this instance, the UN is touted as the supreme arbiter of justice and international consensus, but the moment it decrees anything bearing on Israeli interests, or criticizing its violation of international law, it is suddenly a cowardly, corrupt organization intent on spreading antisemitism. An organization that is framed as a source of legitimacy is instantly discarded when it becomes inconvenient.
So no, Israel was not established through the United Nations. Israel was established through warfare and the creation of facts on the ground. Facts it created through the massacre of Palestinians and the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of villages . This is how the modern state of Israel came into the world, and no amount of sophistry or euphemization can lend that any legitimacy. | {
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"url": "https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/the-united-nations-created-israel",
"description": "The 1947 partition plan did not establish Israel, neither did it confer any such legitimacy because it was simply outside the UN's power to do so. Israel was established through changing facts on the ground, and sweeping ethnic cleansing campaigns."
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Even before the establishment of Israel, Palestinian leadership tried to come to an understanding with the Zionist settlers. For example, in 1928, the Palestinian leadership voted to allow them equal representation in the future bodies of the state, despite them being a minority who had barely arrived. The Zionist leadership rejected this, of course. Even after this, in 1947 the Palestinians suggested the formation of a unitary state for all those living between the river and the sea to replace the mandate to no avail. There were many attempts at co-existence, but this simply would not have benefited the Zionist leadership who never intended to come to Palestine to live as equals.
This point is further reinforced by the Yishuv’s position on partition. While accepting the partition in public, in private Ben Gurion reemphasized that any acceptance of partition would be tactical and temporary:
“After the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine.”
This was not a one-time occurrence, and neither was it only espoused by Ben Gurion. Internal debates and letters illustrate this time and time again. Even in letters to his family, Ben Gurion wrote that “A Jewish state is not the end but the beginning” detailing that settling the rest of Palestine depended on creating an “elite army”. As a matter of fact, he was quite explicit:
“I don’t regard a state in part of Palestine as the final aim of Zionism, but as a mean toward that aim.”
Chaim Weizmann expected that “partition might be only a temporary arrangement for the next twenty to twenty-five years”. From the offset, any claims that the Zionist settlers simply wanted to live in peace with the Palestinians are highly suspect. As chairman of the Jewish National Fund and Zionist leader Usishkin emphasized:
“..the [Palestinian] Arabs do not want us because we want to be the rulers. I will fight for this. I will make sure that we will be the landlords of this land . . . . because this country belongs to us not to them ..”
Even during the war of 1948, there were many opportunities to cease hostilities which Israel rejected. There were negotiations between Israel and Egypt in October 1948, where based on previous correspondences, Egypt was prepared to offer many concessions in exchange for peace, even offering to resettle the Palestinian refugees in the UN decreed “Arab” areas of Palestine. Four days after Israeli politician Eliyahu Sasson went to meet with Heikal, chairman of the Egyptian senate, Ben Gurion launched a new military operation. Naturally, this put an end to any attempt at avoiding bloodshed.
From their side, the Syrians also attempted to end the war at the beginning of 1949, where prime minister al-Azm informed the US ambassador of their desire to stop the fighting. The only conditions they put forward was that Palestinians be afforded the right to self-determination, and the recognition of traditional and historic Syrian fishing rights in certain areas of lake Tiberius. In the same month, a Syrian mediator attempted to meet with Eliyahu Sasson’s assistant in Paris to directly discuss a peace treaty. He was instantly turned down because the Israelis believed that any negotiation with Syria meant discussing the division of water sources, which Israel wanted to control in their entirety.
Following a coup in Damascus, Husni al-Zaim seized power and offered Israel even more concessions. As a matter of fact, he suggested meeting Ben Gurion face to face to negotiate a full-fledged peace. Not only that, he offered absorbing and resettling 300,000 Palestinian refugees in Syria. The US was enthusiastic about this development, the Israelis however, were indifferent and refused the offer. Ben Gurion wanted to force an agreement through military might only. Israeli historian Avi Shlaim wrote that:
“During his brief tenure of power [Zaim] gave Israel every opportunity to bury the hatchet and lay the foundations for peaceful coexistence in the long term. If his overtures were spurned, if his constructive proposals were not put to the test, and if a historic opportunity was frittered away . . . the fault must be sought not with Zaim but on the Israeli side.”
This refusal is only perplexing if you have internalized the idea that Israel actually sought peace, and not that it used it as a charade to justify its brazen expansionism. This would not be the only time Israelis could have avoided war but chose to pursue territorial gains instead.Hoping to repeat the success of 1948, Israel purposefully marched into the 1967 war despite all the claims of it being a defensive war of no-choice. This becomes exceedingly clear once we examine the diplomatic record, and the numerous times Israel sabotaged any attempt at mediation or diplomacy to avert the outbreak of war.
For example, throughout much of the crisis of 1967 Egypt expressed its willingness to resurrect and expand the Egyptian-Israeli Mixed Armistice Commission (EIMAC), which was officially rejected by Israel in May. In the same month, the UN secretary-General U Thant, personally attempted to avert an escalation by travelling to Cairo to mediate between the Egyptians and Israelis. He came with a proposal which called for a two week moratorium in the straits of Tiran . Egypt agreed to the proposal in an attempt to lower tensions. Israel rejected the proposal. Brian Urquhart, who was a senior UN official at the time, wrote in his memoir that “Israel, no doubt having decided on military action, turned down U Thant’s ideas“.
This is hardly the only attempt at averting an escalation, the United States also tried its hand at mediation. High ranking American diplomats and politicians met with Nasser in late May in a meeting that was deemed a “breakthrough in the crisis”. In this meeting Nasser showed flexibility and a willingness to include the World Court to arbitrate in some of the issues. However, what was most promising was that Nasser agreed to send his vice-president to Washington within a week in an attempt to reach a diplomatic settlement for the crisis.
You may be wondering why you’ve never heard of such a meeting, or what its results were. That is because two days before the meeting, Israel decided to launch its surprise attack, torpedoing all efforts to reach a non-violent diplomatic solution to the crisis.
This shocked even the Americans, Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State wrote that:
“They attacked on a Monday, knowing that on Wednesday the Egyptian vice-president would arrive in Washington to talk about re-opening the Strait of Tiran. We might not have succeeded in getting Egypt to reopen the strait, but it was a real possibility.”
Following the diplomatic developments of the time leaves no shadow of a doubt that Israel was purposely seeking war. It rebuffed all attempts at mediation and even deceived and humiliated its ally, the United States, by allowing it to continue with the charade of diplomacy when Israel knew it was going to attack anyway. On the other hand, this shows Nasser to have been far more flexible, and amenable to diplomatic solutions than many suggest. Yet until this day, Israel is portrayed as being forced into a defensive war, while Nasser is portrayed as a warmonger.
In his memoir, U Thant, the UN Secretary General at the time wrote that:
“if only Israel had agreed to permit UNEF to be stationed on its side of the border, even for a short duration, the course of history could have been different. Diplomatic efforts to avert the pending catastrophe might have prevailed; war might have been averted.“
This was further confirmed by Odd Bull, chief of staff of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) at the time, who stated that:
“it is quite possible that the 1967 war could have been avoided’ had Israel acceded to the Secretary-General’s request.“
There are many other examples where Israel chose war or the status-quo over peace to maintain its interests. During the Oslo Accords, the amount of Israeli settlement construction skyrocketed. This was embodied by Ariel Sharon’s quote over Israeli radio in 1998: “Everybody has to move, run and grab as many [Palestinian] hilltops as they can to enlarge the [Jewish] settlements because everything we take now will stay ours… Everything we don’t grab will go to them.”
Even the “dove” Rabin never agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state, but a “state-minus” with no real sovereignty [you can read more about this here]. Like virtually all Israeli talking points, reality and history paint an entirely different picture than the one offered. However, with the proliferation of the internet and easier access to information, they are coming under considerable attack. A sign that Israel is losing the battle for hearts and minds is that it has now resorted to lawfare to make its case, such as its attempts to outlaw BDS. This is not the behavior of somebody secure in their narrative or their history. | {
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"url": "https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/israel-has-always-sought-peace",
"description": "The narrative of an Israel constantly offering its hand out in peace is a revisionist fantasy. Time and time again, Israel chose to reject regional peace offers with the goal of maximizing its territorial expansion."
} |
I can already hear you protest, but Israel has elections! There is separation of powers! How could you say such nonsense?
When discussing democracy many often fall into the trap of focusing on the formal trappings of democracy while ignoring its actual spirit. For instance, you can have regular elections, but if your system is designed so that it purposefully de facto excludes certain people then it is functionally no different than legally excluding them for whatever reason, be that race, gender or class.
One of the core aspects of democracy is equality. We cannot speak of a democratic system unless all of those participating in it are on equal legal and moral footing. There can be no second-class citizens in a democracy. In the case of Israel, however, it clearly distinguishes between citizenship and nationality.
What does this mean?
For example, you can be a citizen of Israel but be a Druze national, or a Jewish national. Your nationality is determined by your ethnicity and it cannot be changed or challenged. Many of the rights you are accorded in Israel stem from your nationality not your citizenship. Meaning an “Arab” Israeli citizen and a Jewish Israeli citizen, while both citizens, enjoy different rights and privileges determined by their “nationality” .
This is not merely discrimination in practice, but discrimination by law. Adalah have composed a database of discriminatory laws in Israel that disfavor non-Jewish Israelis. For example, the Law of Return and Absentees’ Property Law are but two examples of flagrant racism and discrimination in the Israeli legal system.
This is not some old, odd oversight, but a very deliberate part of the design of Israeli society. This is periodically reinforced whenever some Israelis petition the Supreme Court to recognize an Israeli nationality that does not discriminate based on ethnicity. A recent example of these petitions was in 2013, where the Supreme Court rejected such an idea on the grounds that it would “undermine Israel’s Jewishness“.
It says quite a lot about Israel that a unifying egalitarian identity not based around ethnicity would “pose a danger to Israel’s founding principle: to be a Jewish state for the Jewish people” as the court ruled. The fact that such discrimination is seen as a cornerstone of Israeli society only reinforces its colonial ethnocratic nature, and undermines any claims to equality among citizens.
But this kind of discrimination is only the tip of the iceberg, as it only covers some aspects of de jure inequality among Israelis. Inspecting the de facto discrimination against non-Jewish Israelis shines an even brighter light on Israel’s ethnocratic hierarchy.
Almost half of all Palestinian citizens of Israel live under the poverty line, with a considerable percentage close to the poverty line. They also have a considerably lower life expectancy, a higher infant mortality rate, less access to education and resources as well as less municipality and government funding. Should you be interested in delving into some of the more detailed aspects of this discrimination, you can read Adalah’s The Inequality Report. It is an excellent overview of many issues. Another report shining the light on Israel’s discrimination is “Discrimination against Palestinian Citizens in the Budget of Jerusalem Municipality and Government Planning: Objectives, Forms, Consequences” by the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute, which you can find at this.
Additionally, you could read this report from the Adva center which illustrates quite clearly how this discrimination touches almost every aspect of life.
Furthermore, most land inside the green line is off limits to Palestinian citizens of Israel. A large percentage of land in Israel is under the control of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which has a:
“specific mandate to develop land for and lease land only to Jews. Thus the 13 percent of land in Israel owned by the JNF is by definition off-limits to Palestinian Arab citizens, and when the ILA tenders leases for land owned by the JNF, it does so only to Jews—either Israeli citizens or Jews from the Diaspora. This arrangement makes the state directly complicit in overt discrimination against Arab citizens in land allocation and use..”.
The JNF is not the only entity blocking Palestinian citizens of Israel from purchasing, leasing or renting land and property, but also by so-called regional and local councils, which account for the vast majority of land. These councils have the authority to block anyone from settling in these areas that do not seem like a “good fit”, for example a religious community would not want to allow secular residents from moving in on the grounds that it would be against the spirit of their communities. In practice, this has translated into a virtual ban on non-Jewish Israelis moving into Jewish areas. In a Statement submitted by Habitat International Coalition and Adalah to the United Nations, it was estimated that almost 80% of the entire country is off limits to lease for Palestinian citizens of Israel. You can click here to read their full statement.These features of Israeli “democracy” have not gone unnoticed. In its defense, Smooha suggests referring to Israel as an ethnic democracy, where he admits that the state institutions are built to privilege the majority group, but yet it maintains its democratic label.
Here we have entered the realm of qualified democracy: “Other than this one missing feature, the system would be a liberal democracy, therefore it’s just a different kind of democracy.” But what if this feature is a core aspect of democracy? How could one argue for the presence of democracy where the citizens are unequal in front of the law and the state?
This argument could also apply to other states, not just Israel, but while these states claim that the de facto inequality among citizens fostered by their systems are an unintended byproduct, doubtful as that is, Israel openly flaunts these features and doesn’t even attempt to hide them. It is an ethno-state, it will always privilege and support the dominance of one ethnicity.
Oren Yiftachel defines Israel as an ethnocracy rather than a democracy. According to Yiftachel ethnocratic regimes:
“…promote the expansion of the dominant group in contested territory and its domination of power structures while maintaining a democratic facade.”
Ethnocracies have several distinguishing characteristics:
Despite declaring the regime as democratic, ethnicity (and not territorial citizenship) is the main determinant of the allocation of rights, powers, and resources, and politics is characterized by constant democratic-ethnocratic tension.
State borders and political boundaries are fuzzy: there is no clear demos, mainly owing to the active role of ethnic diasporas and the bounded, unequal citizenship of ethnic minorities.
A dominant, “charter” ethnoclass appropriates the state apparatus and determines the outcome of most public policies.
Segregation and stratification occur on two main levels: ethnonations and ethnoclasses.
The socioeconomic sphere is marked by long-term ethnoclass stratification.
The logic of ethnic segregation is diffused into the social’ and political system, enhancing multidirectional processes of essentializing political ethnicization.
Significant (though partied) civil and political rights are extended, to members of the minority ethnonation, distinguishing -ethnocracies from Herrenvolk (apartheid) or authoritarian regimes.
Hrmm, sounds familiar.
But unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there. All of the above applies only to so called “Israel proper”, meaning we are completely neglecting the areas beyond the green line that Israel is expanding into and controlling. If we look at the entirety of the territory controlled by Israel, ethnocracy would be too toothless of a term to describe the complex system of IDs and tiered ethnicity-based rights employed by Israel. This system finally pushed B’Tselem, Israel’s largest human rights group to officially designate Israel as an Apartheid state .
Israel cannot be called a democracy without omitting major features that most think of when they hear the term. The hyper-focus on the formalistic aspects of democracy obfuscates the preconditions and modifications needed to sustain the appearance of this label while completely twisting its spirit. However, if you remain unconvinced and still believe Israel to be democratic, then by now you should know that it has no bearing on the behavior of any state. Indeed, throughout history democracies have been capable of monstrous cruelty, genocide and repression at home and abroad, something Israel is undoubtedly guilty of regardless of how democratic you think it is. | {
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"url": "https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/israel-is-a-democracy",
"description": "Despite its attempts to imply moral superiority by clinging to flimsy, nominally democratic window-dressing, Israel is actually an ethnocracy rather than a democracy."
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But this kind of discrimination is only the tip of the iceberg, as it only covers some aspects of de jure inequality among Israelis. Inspecting the de facto discrimination against non-Jewish Israelis shines an even brighter light on Israel’s ethnocratic hierarchy.
Almost half of all Palestinian citizens of Israel live under the poverty line, with a considerable percentage close to the poverty line. They also have a considerably lower life expectancy, a higher infant mortality rate, less access to education and resources as well as less municipality and government funding. Should you be interested in delving into some of the more detailed aspects of this discrimination, you can read Adalah’s The Inequality Report. It is an excellent overview of many issues facing Palestinians within the green line. Another report shining the light on Israel’s discrimination is “Discrimination against Palestinian Citizens in the Budget of Jerusalem Municipality and Government Planning: Objectives, Forms, Consequences” by the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute.
Additionally, you could read this report from the Adva center which illustrates quite clearly how this discrimination touches almost every aspect of life.
Furthermore, most land inside the green line is off limits to Palestinian citizens of Israel. A large percentage of land in Israel is under the control of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which has a:
“specific mandate to develop land for and lease land only to Jews. Thus the 13 percent of land in Israel owned by the JNF is by definition off-limits to Palestinian Arab citizens, and when the ILA tenders leases for land owned by the JNF, it does so only to Jews—either Israeli citizens or Jews from the Diaspora. This arrangement makes the state directly complicit in overt discrimination against Arab citizens in land allocation and use…”.
The JNF is not the only entity blocking Palestinian citizens of Israel from purchasing, leasing or renting land and property, but also the so-called regional and local councils, which account for the vast majority of land. These councils have the authority to block anyone from settling in these areas that do not seem like a “good fit” for the community there. For example, a religious community would not want to allow secular residents from moving in on the grounds that it would be against the spirit of their communities. In practice, this has translated into a virtual ban on non-Jewish Israelis moving into Jewish areas. In a Statement submitted by Habitat International Coalition and Adalah to the United Nations, it was estimated that almost 80% of the entire country is off limits to lease for Palestinian citizens of Israel. You can click here to read their full statement.
No matter how you look at it, Israeli society is a heavily segregated and hierarchical one. Whether through the legal system or just the attitudes of average Jewish Israelis, the ethnocratic nature of Israel and its obsession with ethnic gerrymandering always rises to the surface. Some would deny it, citing standards of living or some random “Arab” judge as a refutation of this point, but as discussed in [this article], none of these claims dispute the extreme inequality -by design- of Israeli society. This denial is not unique to Israelis, we saw similar sentiments among white Americans who denied the existence of white supremacy, even though they reaped its benefits either directly or indirectly.
Ultimately, the goal of this article is not to advocate for a “more just” or equal settler-colonial state. As Audre Lorde observed, the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. A just society is the complete antithesis to an ethnocracy, which elevates one group of people over the rest by virtue of their blood. It falls on us, however, to advocate for decolonization, where justice is its cornerstone rather than ethnic supremacy.
Sound utopian?
Perhaps, but to quote Pliny the elder, how many things, too, are looked upon as quite impossible, until they have been actually effected? | {
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"url": "https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/all-israelis-are-equal",
"description": "Israel's existence as a colonial ethnocracy precludes any possibility for creating an equal society. While useful as a propaganda claim, it falls apart under the most cursory of research."
} |
In 2014, and during the annual Nakba day protests marking the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, Nadim Nuwarra and Mohammad Abu Dhaher were both shot and killed by Israeli forces in front of the Ofer military prison in Beitunia.
They were unarmed and far away from anything that could possibly be constituted as a risk to the soldiers. They were killed with live ammunition, and one of them was even shot in the back while walking away from the soldiers. They were standing over 90 meters away from the soldiers, for reference, that’s close to the length of a professional football field.
What followed, was the typical song and dance that the IDF performed every time it is accused of war crimes and human rights violations against Palestinians.
First, they denied that there was any use of live ammunition. The soldiers were only supposed to be firing rubber bullets. This was “corroborated” by an internal “investigation” that concurred that no live ammunition was used. Second, they claimed that these two teenagers were shot by the soldiers in self-defense, as they were partaking in violent attacks against the soldiers who felt threatened. But before that, the idea was floated that they were actually killed by Palestinians who were firing at the IDF and killed them by mistake. The IDF changing its story multiple times is a staple of its damage control modus operandi, and can clearly be seen in other cases as well, such as the Mohammed Al Durra murder.
Then the videos began to surface. Taken from multiple CCTV cameras in the vicinity, they showed that the teens were standing far away and were shot while they indisputably could not have been posing any threat, debunking the entire defense the IDF had been running with prior. As a matter of fact, one of them was actually walking away, with his back turned to the soldiers.
Naturally, instead of investigating further, Israel ramped up its denial. The videos, they alleged, were faked and doctored. They were simply created to defame Israel and its army. As a matter of fact, Micahel Oren, former Israeli diplomat, resorted to the racist “Pallywood” trope, and accused the dead Palestinians of being crisis actors, and that nobody really died in the first place.
Shortly after, the spent bloody bullet was found in Nuwarra’s backpack, it had landed there after it exited his body. Of course, Israel claimed the bullet was planted there, and that it wasn’t even a real bullet used by the IDF. To challenge this, the family exhumed the body of their murdered child and had an autopsy confirm that indeed, the bullet wounds were consistent with this kind of live ammunition. However, the final nail in the coffin was when new footage from CNN surfaced, showing the soldier clearly shooting in the direction of Nuwarra at the same time of his death.
Finally, after all of this struggle lasting months, and in the face of indisputable proof and evidence, the case went to trial.
From the get go, the case of the murder of Abu Dhaher was thrown out for “lack of evidence”. Seeing the impossibly high standards of evidence needed to even get to court, it is not a surprise that 90% of investigations related to crimes against Palestinians never qualify for court. In typical Israeli fashion, these evidence standards are never consistently applied when it comes to prosecuting Palestinians in their 99% conviction rate military courts, where guilt is determined based on the flimsiest of excuses.
The soldier was initially charged with manslaughter, but later in a plea deal it was reduced to “causing death by negligence”. This joke of a sentence meant that he would only get a sentence of 9 months in prison, and since he had already been in custody for 2 months, only 7 months of his sentence remains. That is assuming he would even complete his sentence. This kind of sentencing is the norm.Another case, is the case of Razan al-Najjar, which is also emblematic of the IDF’s operational mode. She was a volunteer nurse who was shot tending to the wounded during the Gaza march of return protests of 2018, even though she posed no danger. The IDF began its usual mantra, blamed Hamas for her death, and even released an edited video to try and defame Al-Najjar and make it seem that she was being used as a human shield.
This backfired when the full video was released that made no such claim. What it actually showed was how deceptively the IDF had edited the video to try and put words in Razan’s mouth. It seems killing her was not enough, now they needed to assassinate her character and shift the blame onto her as well. The whole issue was buried under the IDF’s “internal investigation” routine and nobody expects anything will come of it.
But, as shown, even in the extremely rare cases where the investigations lead to a trial, and in the infinitesimally rarer cases it actually finds a soldier to be guilty, the “punishments” are rather laughable. If you think the case of Nadim Nuwarra is an infuriating mockery of justice, it gets much worse. For example, the commander found to be responsible for the Kufr Qassim massacre where 49 Palestinians were murdered in cold blood was fined 10 measly pennies for giving the order to open fire on civilians. His accomplices were sentenced to very light jail time, but were all pardoned and set free within a year. So even in the rare case where these insulting sentences are given, it’s rare for an Israeli soldier to actually serve their sentence in full.
But these are far from exceptions to the rule, in Israel it seems like normalized savagery towards Palestinians is a prerequisite for a successful political or military career. We say this without any kind of exaggeration, it is difficult to find an Israeli Prime Minister who has not been part of vicious war crimes against the Palestinians, from Rabin, Sharon, Shamir, to many others.
At the end of the day, the IDF is an army, and Israel is a settler colony. Violence and injustice are inherent parts of these entities. Nobody was expecting that Palestinians would receive a crumb of justice from these colonial institutions, however, it remains important to challenge the myth of the moral superiority of Israel, which is a central feature of its propaganda efforts. | {
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"pageTitle": "Myth: Israel holds itself responsible for its human rights violations | Decolonize Palestine",
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"url": "https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/israel-holds-itself-responsible-for-its-human-rights-violations",
"description": "A crucial cornerstone of Israel's international propaganda efforts is the projection of an image of morality for its army. Unfortunately for Israel, this is just as baseless as their other propaganda claims."
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Associating Israel with the label of Apartheid has become ubiquitous as of late; annual events all over the globe such as Israeli Apartheid Week have done much to normalize this coupling. Naturally, advocates for Israel insist that it is all nonsense, indeed how could Israel practice Apartheid when there are “Arab” judges, or members of Knesset? How could anyone accuse Israel of such practices when every citizen is allowed to vote?
Let us delve a little bit deeper into this question and try to come up with an answer.
Firstly, it is important to establish what we mean with Apartheid. There is a widespread misconception that Apartheid refers solely to the case of South Africa. While it’s understandable that people think of South Africa when Apartheid is mentioned, it is critical to recognize that it was merely one manifestation of it, and that there were different regimes with different configurations which upheld the same system.
According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the crime of Apartheid is defined as follows:
“The crime of apartheid” means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime;”
There are many inhumane acts listed under paragraph 1, but the most relevant to our case are:
It is indisputable that Israel practices these acts against Palestinians, inside and outside of the green line. It is also indisputable that as a state built on a colonial ideology that privileges one ethnic group over the rest, its actions are ultimately committed to maintain this system of supremacy.
You will notice that nowhere in this description does it say that if you have a judge from the oppressed minority then it ceases being an Apartheid system. As a matter of fact, Nelson Mandela was a successful lawyer. The counter-argument that there are “Arab” judges or policemen ceases to be convincing when you realize that the system doesn’t need to be a complete carbon copy of South Africa to be counted as Apartheid.
Mentioning that there are “Arab” members of Knesset is also not as powerful a gotcha moment as Israeli advocates believe it to be, simply because there is a precedent of an Apartheid state having parliament members of the oppressed indigenous group. That precedent is Southern Rhodesia. Despite allowing a certain number of black parliamentarians, it was still a racist entity ruled by a white minority, with the very honest declared goal of maintaining itself as a white state.
As you have surely noticed I have been referring to “Arabs” in parenthesis, this is because most Palestinians living within the green line prefer to call themselves Palestinians, not merely Arab. Naturally, this is a threat to the Israeli narrative of the non-existence of Palestinians as a people , so even as they tokenize them in an attempt to prove their egalitarianism, they seek to simultaneously erase their actual identity.
So now that we have established the meaning of Apartheid, and that having a few members of the oppressed group in high profile positions is irrelevant to the definition, we can move onto the next part of our answer.The argument that Israel does not practice apartheid hinges on one very crucial caveat: that we are distinguishing between Israel and the areas Israel rules. In practice, however, this distinction is functionally meaningless. (Even following this caveat, Israel itself is definitely not a democracy, at best it could be described as an ethnocracy ).
In practice, Israel rules everything from the river to the sea, it is the only sovereign power that runs the lives of all who inhabit this area. I know some of you will point to the Palestinian Authority, but in reality, the Palestinian Authority is relegated to the realm of administering occupied territories, without any real power, sovereignty or influence.
For example, the Palestinian Authority can’t even determine who a Palestinian citizen is. The citizen registry for Palestinians is under de facto Israeli control. Meaning that if a Palestinian marries a non-Palestinian, their spouse will never be able to gain Palestinian citizenship as Israel’s demographic obsessions would not allow for any preventable increase in the Palestinian population. Even Abbas needs to coordinate with the Israeli military to be able to visit other Palestinian cities, cities of a “country” he is supposedly president of.
In a watershed moment, B’Tselem, Israel’s largest human rights group recently released a report officially calling Israeli practices Apartheid, it argues that:
“Although there is demographic parity between the two peoples living here, life is managed so that only one half enjoy the vast majority of political power, land resources, rights, freedoms and protections. It is quite a feat to maintain such disfranchisement. Even more so, to successfully market it as a democracy (inside the “green line” – the 1949 armistice line), one to which a temporary occupation is attached. In fact, one government rules everyone and everything between the river and the sea, following the same organising principle everywhere under its control, working to advance and perpetuate the supremacy of one group of people – Jews – over another – Palestinians. This is apartheid.”
They continued:
“There is not a single square inch in the territory Israel controls where a Palestinian and a Jew are equal. The only first-class people here are Jewish citizens such as myself, and we enjoy this status both inside the 1967 lines and beyond them, in the West Bank. Separated by the different personal statuses allotted to them, and by the many variations of inferiority Israel subjects them to, Palestinians living under Israel’s rule are united by all being unequal.”
Indeed, the green line has long been invisible to Israelis, and Israel treats the settlements as parts of its own state. Why should we pretend otherwise? Why pretend that we’re talking about two governing bodies when the Palestinian Authority is a glorified bantustan administrator with no say about anything?
This is by design, not by chance. Israel has been very conscious with how it approached its colonization project in the West Bank, in 1972 Ariel Sharon proclaimed that:
“We’ll make a pastrami sandwich out of them. We’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in twenty five years’ time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.”
Even more recently, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also officially designated Israeli behavior as constituting Apartheid. We promise they won’t be the last human rights organization to do so.
It is about time we stopped pretending that there ever was a hope for two states, or that we aren’t already living under a de facto one state from the river to the sea, with varying tiers of rights and privileges bestowed upon you based on where you come from and your ethnicity.
When a Jewish settler attacks a Palestinian and is tried in a civil court, while those protesting the attack are tried in a military court, that practice is Apartheid, and no appeals to the contrary can change that. Pretending that this occupation is temporary has long been delusional, but has now crossed the line into intellectual dishonesty. If we are to have any hope for a way forward then we must call things as they are. We do not have the privilege of wasting another 25 years pretending to live in an alternate reality.
Finally, it should be stressed that calling Israeli policy Apartheid does not mean that the Palestinian question is not a settler-colonial context, nor does it imply that the solution lies in a civil rights movement for equality or the mere incorporation of the West Bank or Gaza Strip into the Israeli state. The Palestinian cause is a cause for decolonization and freedom, not for acquiring privileges in a colonial state. Consequently, we argue that the term Apartheid is not a sufficient descriptor for the status quo, but merely one of the many crimes committed by Israel. After all, even if Israel stopped practicing Apartheid, without true decolonization and the right of return, the Palestinian struggle for liberation would be incomplete. | {
"articleTitle": "Myth: Israel is not an Apartheid state | Decolonize Palestine",
"pageTitle": "Myth: Israel is not an Apartheid state | Decolonize Palestine",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:39:25.044Z",
"url": "https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/israel-not-an-apartheid-state",
"description": "The designation of \"Apartheid\" has become associated with Israel, and for good reason. Israel's policies fall neatly under the Rome statute definition of Apartheid."
} |
While Trump is perhaps one of the most well-known cases of an antisemite being embraced by defenders of Israel, he is far from the only one. Israel is a darling of the global far-right and white supremacists everywhere, despite the apparent contradiction of terms at first glance.
The love affair between Israel and far-right strongmen all across the globe has been widely documented. Viktor Orban, infamous Prime Minister of Hungary, is a prominent example of this. He promoted “anti-Semitic imagery of powerful Jewish financiers scheming to control the world” and spread conspiracy theories about George Soros wanting to “flood Europe with Muslims”. Orban also sought to honor Hungarian Nazi collaborator Miklos Horthy, who oversaw the killing of half a million Jews in Hungary. Yet he is a staunch supporter of Israel, which he invokes whenever anyone criticizes his bigotry.
Jair Bolsonaro also falls into this category; while he declares his love for Israel and waves its flag, his army honored a Nazi war criminal -decorated by Hitler himself- who had fled to Brazil. The AFD, Germany’s far-right populist party, also found support for Israel to be a convenient way to whitewash its antisemitism domestically.
But what is it that attracts these reactionary movements to Israel? Why do they profess love for Israel internationally while championing antisemitic and racist politics locally?
Far-right fascists love Israel for multiple reasons:
1) Israel serves as a model for the ethno-state that they seek to build. For the far-right, Zionism as an ideology and a movement is something to be emulated. White nationalist and neo-Nazi Richard Spencer proclaimed himself to be a “white Zionist”. He also went on to describe Israel as “the most important and perhaps most revolutionary ethno-state” — the “one that I turn to for guidance.” What is humorous here, is that this white nationalist possesses a more sober understanding of Zionism than most liberal Zionists do.
2) Israel and the far-right have in common their xenophobia, anti-migrant politics, and Islamophobia. They both see themselves as guardians of “Western civilization” and a bulwark against the East. Their political messaging is inundated with “war on terror” scaremongering, and a chilling obsession with demographics. Israel is more than happy to accommodate these groups, no matter how antisemitic they are, as long as they are supportive of Israeli policies. A prominent instance of such was a visit by a group of German far-right, anti-Muslim bloggers, who toured the streets of Israel expressing their desire to blow up mosques, and calling African refugees “invaders”. Unsurprisingly, as they visited Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust victims memorial, it became apparent that this group was full of Holocaust deniers, but since they spoke about the importance of supporting Israel’s fight against “the Muslim problem”, they were seen as friends and allies. Meanwhile, Jewish proponents of BDS have not been allowed entry at the border.
3) Finally, if all goes according to plan and these movements succeed in establishing their ethno-states, Israel would receive the Jewish population of these countries. In this way, these movements get to establish their racist entities, and Israel would benefit from the exodus of these Jewish communities to bolster its Jewish population. Unfortunately, the well-being or safety of these communities never enters into the equation. This is hardly a new position for the Zionist movement, as Ben Gurion in the 1930s famously said:
“If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.”
From a Zionist standpoint, this is clear to understand, as to Zionists only a Jewish state could ensure the long-term safety and prosperity of the Jewish people. Such thinking only reinforces the natural kinship between Zionism and other reactionary ethno-nationalist movements and parties.Sadly, none of what was described above is new. Historically speaking, some of the most dedicated supporters of Zionism have been raging antisemites themselves. Even the infamous Lord Balfour implemented anti-Jewish laws, and saw the Zionist movement as a way to:
“Mitigate the age-long miseries created for Western civilization by the presence in its midst of a Body which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or to absorb.”
Naturally, these racist views and prejudices extended to other “races”:
“We have to face the facts. Men are not born equal, the white and black races are not born with equal capacities: they are born with different capacities which education cannot and will not change.”
Yet somehow, many Zionists today are under the delusion that a colonial, racist Empire massacring natives all across the globe, and ruthlessly squashing liberation movements, chose to support the creation of Israel out of the goodness of its heart. Instead of correctly viewing the patronage of Zionism as a continuation of imperialist policy, they choose to deceive themselves into thinking it is some grand gesture aimed at redemption.
Support for Zionism in the United States had similar colonial roots. Zionists, understanding the need for Western support, emphasized how similar they were to the American pioneers in their desire to “tame” the wild land, and vanquish the savage natives. This was before the liberal Zionists of today tried to re-frame colonial ethno-nationalism as an indigenous rights movement.
These pleas resonated the most among Christian Zionists, who until today form the largest body of support for Zionism and Israel in the United States, if not the world. Christian Zionists offered their support to the Zionist movement not out of any humanistic or altruistic considerations, but out of religious ones. According to their beliefs, Israel needed to be restored before the second coming of Christ so Armageddon could occur. During these events, the Jewish people would be forced to convert to Christianity or die.
With support for Israel dwindling among Jewish youth in the United States -to the point where ~40% of them agree that Israel is an Apartheid state- maintaining the support of Christian Zionists becomes paramount. Even though groups like Christians United for Israel (CUFI) hope to see the Jewish people either convert or die, Israel would rather cater to them than the Jewish people it claims to represent. Quite simply, just one of the many Christian Zionist organizations such as CUFI has more members than the entirety of the Jewish population in the United States. This is a support base that is dogmatically committed to Israel, and is not swayed by considerations of human rights or international law.
Overall, the Christian Right has been found to constitute the largest social movement in the U.S and the largest voting bloc within the Republican Party, and its support for U.S. imperialist policy vis-a-vis Israel for years has culminated in billions of dollars of aid. This is in addition to the millions evangelicals have poured into West Bank settlement projects over the past 10 years, estimated at somewhere between $50 million and $65 million.
Ultimately, we find ourselves in a situation where antisemites who are supportive of Israel come to be branded as “allies of the Jewish people”, and Jewish critics of Israel are called the new “antisemites”. Meanwhile, Palestinians can’t sneeze without being accused of inciting genocide.
Time and time again, Israel, the self-proclaimed Jewish state, has been shown to throw world Jewry under the bus if it furthers its aims. It would ally itself with the most reactionary forces on earth if it was deemed beneficial to the state. We must refute Israel’s claim to represent the Jewish people worldwide and reject its false accusations of antisemitism whenever it is rightly denigrated. Ultimately, we must reject Israel’s claims to moral authority on what does and does not constitute antisemitism, as this authority is seriously unearned. | {
"articleTitle": "Myth: You can't be antisemitic if you support Israel | Decolonize Palestine",
"pageTitle": "Myth: You can't be antisemitic if you support Israel | Decolonize Palestine",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:39:27.003Z",
"url": "https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/cant-be-antisemitic-if-you-support-israel",
"description": "Declaring your support for Israel has become a convenient way for antisemites to whitewash their reputation. Israel sees no problem in allying itself with these reactionary antisemitic forces as long as they support its policies."
} |
The electoral defeat of Benjamin Netanyahu has been the cause of many a celebration. This was especially the case among supporters of Israel who still believe themselves to be liberals or progressives. Finally! King Bibi was dethroned, after more than a decade in office. Maybe now Israel can return to its original values -the values that Netanyahu supposedly betrayed.
Over the years we have heard time and time again how Netanyahu was an “aberration” from Israel’s alleged democratic and progressive core. Thus, Netanyahu became a bit of a convenient scapegoat upon which Israel’s sins could be piled. This is a familiar tactic that is often employed by the Zionist left, where they have created a mythological version of Israeli history before “things went wrong”. This mythology is fluid and ever-changing, adapting to any current narrative with the purpose of absolving Israel from all wrongdoing. The occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem in 1967 is often invoked in this context .
Suddenly, the defenders of the “only democracy in the Middle East” were beseeching people not to lump in the people of Israel with their democratically elected representatives. As if that government formed itself and Netanyahu wasn’t elected as Prime Minister multiple times. It appears that the propaganda of appealing to Israeli democracy is only so useful until the time comes for any kind of collective responsibility.
For the liberal Zionist, combatting the perceived loss of Israeli morality and legitimacy worldwide is paramount. After all, it is becoming increasingly difficult to defend Israel and still be accepted in progressive circles. This is not a uniquely Israeli trait, as we saw a similar phenomenon upon the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States. Liberals all over the country bemoaned how Trump’s actions were “un-American”, and were eroding the United States’ moral standing, completely ignoring how Trump was a symptom rather than a root cause of racism and reactionary politics in the U.S. They too, mistakenly believed that removing Trump would solve these issues.
As in the U.S, in Israel Netanyahu was also a symptom, and a deeply racist, ethno-nationalist settler society has always been the root cause.Like all settler societies, Israeli society depends on the dispossession of the natives to exist. Consequently, extreme dehumanization of Palestinians is necessary to justify the war crimes frequently committed; after all, if Israelis viewed Palestinians as equally human, they wouldn’t be able to so easily brush aside the systems of oppression and domination they benefit from.
Decades of brainwashing and incitement against the native Palestinians are evident in the daily attitudes of the Jewish Israeli population. We’re not even talking about Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza Strip, but the Palestinians they refer to as “Arabs” who hold the same citizenship, and who are frequently tokenized to prove how egalitarian and democratic Israel is. For instance, 79% of Jewish Israelis believe they should get preferential treatment over “Arabs”. Half of Jewish Israelis believe that “Arabs” should be completely ethnically cleansed.
None of these sentiments are new, as an older poll from 2007 found that 75% of Jewish Israelis didn’t approve of living in the same apartment building with “Arabs”. Over a half of them considered marrying an “Arab” to be national treason. 55% were for open segregation, keeping ethnicities apart in entertainment sites. Half of Jewish Israelis wanted their government to encourage “Arabs” to emigrate, and a large portion (40%) wanted “Arab” voting rights revoked. Clearly, these racist views have only grown.
These attitudes are also intergenerational, and cut across ideology and demographics. Nearly two thirds of Jewish Israeli teenagers believe that “Arabs” are less intelligent, less cultured, and violent. This was during Ehud Olmert’s tenure as Prime Minister, and before Netanyahu’s long reign. Since then, these attitudes have remained, as today approximately half of the religious, and a quarter of secular Jewish teenagers in Israel are in favor or stripping “Arabs” of their nationality.
One of the most popular Israeli football teams, Beitar Jerusalem, is renowned for its racist slogans, chanting “may your village be burned” whenever going up against a team with any “Arab” players.
As you have surely noticed, we have been referring to “Arabs” in parenthesis; this is because most Palestinians living within the green line see themselves as Palestinian Arabs, not merely as Arabs. Naturally, this is a threat to the Israeli narrative of the non-existence of Palestinians as a people . Even as they are tokenized in international Israeli propaganda efforts, their actual identity is denied and erased.
None of these attitudes were created by Netanyahu, and none of them are unintentional or isolated phenomena. As mentioned earlier, they are part and parcel of Israel as a settler colony. Naturally, a colonial society will also produce a colonial “left”, and even a colonial “peace” movement. This was exemplified by Yitzhak Rabin, who many Israelis consider to be a dove and peace-maker. The issue, of course, is that Rabin was a notorious war criminal responsible for many atrocities against Palestinians. One of them was the policy of breaking the bones of any Palestinian arrested during the first Intifada, and another was signing the order for the ethnic cleansing of Lydda and starting the infamous Lydda death march.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their homes in Lydda, and forced to march to Ramallah in a single file. No water or aid was given, and hundreds died on the way. Chilling testimonies from the survivors evoke genocidal massacres committed by imperialist forces all over the globe:
“While marching in the blazing heat, he [Shammut] spotted some water. He rushed to fill a pot he was carrying. He later recalled: “At that moment, a jeep pulled up with three people. One of them, a Zionist officer, got out. He pulled a gun and put it to my head and ordered me to put the water down.” The Arab teenager had no choice but to obey. Ismail would never forget the thirst of the thousands of people who trudged on, not knowing where they were going. He saw people chewing grass in the hope of obtaining a bit of moisture. Others drank their children’s urine. By the roadside pregnant women were prematurely delivering babies, their labour brought on by the strain of their ordeal. None of these infants survived. Since no one had any opportunity to bury the dead, they were covered with grass and abandoned. Eventually Ismail managed to get some water out of sight of the Israeli soldiers. Although the water was dirty and obviously polluted he drank some while soaking his clothes in the reddish liquid. As Ismail attempted to return to his family, people followed him hoping to get a few drops of the precious fluid. One woman sucked at his moist shirt.”
Even this supposed “dove” never agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state, but a “state-minus” with no real sovereignty [you can read more about this here]. Ultimately, the debate on the “peace” process in Israeli society was not a disagreement over the subjugation of Palestinians, but over what form it would take. Even this was considered a step too far, and Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli, with his supporters often referred to as “leftist traitors”. | {
"articleTitle": "Myth: Netanyahu [or any other Israeli politician] is/was the problem | Decolonize Palestine",
"pageTitle": "Myth: Netanyahu [or any other Israeli politician] is/was the problem | Decolonize Palestine",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:39:27.065Z",
"url": "https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/netanyahu-is-the-problem",
"description": "It is often claimed by Israel apologists that certain politicians, such as Netanyahu, are the problem with Israeli politics today. This claim completely ignores how Israeli politics have always been fascist and colonial towards Palestinians."
} |
Nearly 80 years before the Holocaust, a group which came to be known as the “Bilu pioneers” came to settle in Palestine. It was comprised of primarily Russian Jewish settlers who viewed their mission in Palestine as a pioneering one towards “the physical upbuilding of the land as contributing toward both a revitalization of the Jewish nation and the reemergence of Jewish masculinity and virility”. While this group predated Zionism as a political movement as we understand it today, it would not be unreasonable to call it proto-Zionist.
Unsurprisingly, and like all colonialist movements at the time, they had the same condescending and racist attitude towards the Palestinians living there. In a rare moment of reflection, one of the group leaders, Chaim Chissin, wrote the following entry in his diary, after failing to grow any crops:
“Whenever the Arabs told us that it was already too late to sow barley, or that the land was unsuited for it, we never hesitated to tell the ‘barbarians,’ with considerable self assurance, ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter. We’ll plow deep, we’ll turn the soil inside out, we’ll harrow it clean, and then you’ll see what a crop we’ll have!’ We provided ourselves with big plows, sunk them deep into the soil, and cruelly whipped our horses which were cruelly exhausted. Our self-confidence had no limits. We looked down on the Arabs, assuming that it was not they who should teach us, but we who would show these barbarians’ what a European could accomplish on this neglected land with the use of perfect tools and rational methods of cultivation. The only trouble was that we ourselves knew about European methods of cultivation only from hearsay, and our agriculturalist, too, knew very little [about conditions in Palestine].”
The Bilu pioneers would be followed by other groups, such as the Hibbat Zion. Some would fail and leave, others would remain. However, the shift in the quality and organization of Zionist colonialism would begin in 1897. Convened in the Swiss city of Basel, the first Zionist congress included over 200 delegates from all over Europe. The program of the congress called for establishing a Jewish state in Palestine, and to begin coordinating the settlement of Zionists there. The Zionist congress distinguished itself from previous attempts at settling Palestine by being the first to organize and marshal colonization efforts in a centralized and effective manner.
All of these efforts to colonize Palestine began nearly a century before the Holocaust, and was already picking up steam after the first world war. By the end of the 1800s, Theodor Herzl -the founder of political Zionism- was sending out letters to imperialist powers all over the globe in an attempt to elicit their aid in colonizing Palestine. Perhaps the most infamous is his letter to Cecil Rhodes, arguing that Britain recognized the importance of “colonial expansion”:
“You are being invited to help make history,” he wrote, “It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen, but Jews. How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial.”
Following from the above, the colonization and ethnic cleansing of Palestine were a precondition for the success of the Zionist movement, and these were being planned long before even the first world war. This was encapsulated by a conversation overheard and documented by Moshe Smilansky in 1891:
“We should go east, into Transjordan. That would be a test for our movement.”
“Nonsense… isn’t there enough land in Judea and Galilee?”
“The land in Judea and Galilee is occupied by the Arabs.”
“Well, we’ll take it from them.”
“How?” (Silence.)
“A revolutionary doesn’t ask naive questions.”
“Well then, ‘revolutionary,’ tell us how.”
“It is very simple, we’ll harass them until they get out… Let them go to Transjordan.”
“And are we going to abandon all of Transjordan?” asks an anxious voice.
“As soon as we have a big settlement here we’ll seize the land, we’ll become strong, and then we’ll take care of the Left Bank [of the Jordan River], we’ll expel them from there, too. Let them go back to the Arab countries.”
The second problem with this misconception is that it assumes that world powers operate based on a system of morals, or that they can be compelled to “do what is right”. A cursory glance at history would show how misguided an idea this is. While the French waxed poetic about defeating fascism in the wake of the second world war, they were committing genocide against the people of Algeria. French intellectuals would write about how the various peoples of the French colonies were better off living under their domination. Since then the “Allies” would prop up tyrannical and bloody regimes the world over to protect their interests. As de Gaulle once famously said, France has no friends, only interests.
This is the context of the establishment of Israel; it was supported by the hegemonic imperialist powers of the time, not because they suddenly grew a conscience, but because it was deemed strategic for their interests. A glimpse at the political landscape today reveals that remarkably little has changed with this arrangement. While Western countries pay lip service to the façade of a “rules based international order”, their actions betray their intentions. Human rights are only as useful as their ability to be instrumentalized to their benefit.
Listening to western diplomatic statements justifying sanctions on Russia, for example, you’d be forgiven for thinking international law was a holy set of commandments, faithfully adhered to as a matter of principle. However, you’ll soon snap out of it when you hear the same diplomats prevaricate and collectively shrug when asked to comment on Israeli annexation of territory, or the brutal war crimes in Yemen. Germany, which loves to act contrite and endlessly prattles on about how many lessons it learned from its genocidal past, couldn’t even pretend to care that it is supplying nuclear-capable submarines to an Apartheid state, by the admission of the largest human rights organizations in the world.
It is not a coincidence that Israel has always enjoyed the backing of the colonial powers of the world, especially the settler colonies which share similar origin stories, and it is not a coincidence that Israel is basically a client state of the world’s imperialist hegemon. Israel was useful to these powers at the time of its establishment, and it continues to function as an outpost for imperialism in the region today.
The Holocaust was undoubtedly one of the greatest tragedies of modern history, where millions of innocents were murdered in an unspeakably cruel and industrialized manner. Also true is that this was not the reason for the creation of Israel, which had its colonial seeds planted nearly a century prior. It was not remorse that motivated the colonial powers to support Israel, powers which were actively committing genocide against multiple colonized populations. Framing the creation of Israel as repentance for the Holocaust is not only historically inaccurate, but deliberately paints the legitimate rejection of its creation at the expense of the Palestinians as complicity with Nazi genocide. It transfers Europe’s guilt onto Palestinians, where they become the embodiment of everything the grandchildren of fascists claim to despise in their grand quest for (empty, symbolic) redemption. A redemption with the theatrics and loud proclamations of regret and change, but none of the substance. At the end of the day, nothing can justify the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, who share no blame for the barbarity of Europe’s pogroms and genocides.
Palestine has always been home to countless refugee populations; Jewish people fleeing persecution and finding a safe home in Palestine was never the issue. The issue is that these ideals of coexistence were never reciprocated by the Zionist movement, who showed disdain towards Palestinians from the very beginning and sought to take over the land. It sanctioned its own settlers working with Palestinians, even calling Arab labor an “illness” and forming a segregated trade union that banned non-Jewish members.
In 1928, the Palestinian leadership even voted to allow Zionist settlers equal representation in the future bodies of the state, despite them being a minority who had barely just arrived. The Zionist leadership rejected this, of course. Even after this, in 1947 the Palestinians suggested replacing the Mandate with the formation of a unitary state for all those living between the river and the sea, to no avail. These gestures were brushed aside, as they did not benefit the Zionist leadership who never intended to come to Palestine to live as equals.
For decades Palestinians have been massacred, their homes stolen and destroyed, ethnically cleansed into refugee camps and denied their right of return. The notion that these colonial powers were ever concerned about Jewish safety as they fomented the conditions that made pogroms possible and denied Jewish refugees safety within their own borders is absurd. So too is the idea that Jewish people from all over the world must all live in a singular nation-state in the Middle East where they are a demographic majority to be safe, that the eradication of anti-Semitism around the world is a lost cause, and that whatever violence is wreaked upon Palestinians for the maintenance of this regressive demographics-obsessed state is justifiable.
It would instead behoove us all to question what it really means to make sure that never again can millions be so dehumanized as to make their dispossession and their violent deaths be widely seen as justified. The way that the Israeli government and Israeli society at large legitimize the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the name of this state, which includes but is not limited to calling Palestinians death-loving terrorists incapable of loving their children, brazenly discussing rape as a form of collective punishment, and pontificating the logistics of the mass-transfer of Palestinians to other countries, is in fact laying the groundwork that makes mass extermination feasible.
Western countries who were complicit in the Holocaust and in other genocides against colonized peoples did not and cannot wash their hands of these crimes by backing a racist settler-colonial project. To believe so is to deny the actual historical conditions that made creating the state of Israel possible, and to keep us all further away from a world free of racist colonial oppression and its bloody consequences. | {
"articleTitle": "Myth: Israel was created as penance for the Holocaust | Decolonize Palestine",
"pageTitle": "Myth: Israel was created as penance for the Holocaust | Decolonize Palestine",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:39:27.113Z",
"url": "https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/israel-penance-for-holocaust",
"description": "The misconception that Israel was created as penance for the Holocaust is the result of a lack of knowledge regarding the Zionist movement, the international community, and a transference of Europe's guilt onto the Palestinians."
} |
As a result of social media platforms such as Facebook censoring Palestinian content, including the Palestinian flag, images of watermelon slices have become ubiquitous in pro-Palestine circles. This harkens back to Israel banning anything Palestinian that could be interpreted as making a political statement, or displaying nationalistic imagery, including the Palestinian flag. The adopters of the watermelon claim that after Israel banned the colors of the Palestinian flag, Palestinians resorted to displaying slices of watermelon instead, as they mimicked the colors of the flag -red, black, green and white. This method for bypassing Israeli censors allegedly prospered during the first Intifada where it became a widespread practice.
While the intentions of this adoption are admirable, there is very little evidence to suggest such a practice took place, especially during the first Intifada. We suspect that this belief arose from a misunderstanding stemming from this interview with Sliman Mansour, the prominent Palestinian artist.
Mansour and his fellow artists’ exhibition was shut down due to its “political nature”. Not only was the Palestinian flag not allowed, but anything mimicking its colors was also totally banned. So, one of the artists asked “What if I were to make a flower of red, green, black and white?” To which the soldier replied:
‘It will be confiscated. Even if you paint a watermelon, it will be confiscated.’
Mansour himself does not recollect any artist using the watermelon in their art as a political statement. It was all as hypothetical as the aforementioned flower his colleague asked about.
There is no mention at all of this practice in the literature of the first Intifada. There are references to people using the watermelon as an example of the banned color combination -which we are not disputing- but none of the widespread use of watermelon slices as a political statement or as a substitute for the Palestinian flag.
There is one singular New York Times story from 1993 that mentions watermelon slices:
“In the Gaza Strip, where young men were once arrested for carrying sliced watermelons – thus displaying the red, black and green Palestinian colours – soldiers stand by, blase, as processions march by waving the once-banned flag,”
This detail was later retracted, due to insufficient evidence of this ever happening. You will notice that most stories covering the watermelon phenomenon today link back to this same article. Of course, Israel has been known to arrest Palestinians for the flimsiest of pretexts, so this is not entirely outside the realm of possibility. However, there is little to suggest it was a widespread practice.
Additionally, we reached out to several members who were active in the popular committees of the Intifada regarding this issue, none of them could recollect anyone ever using watermelons as symbols of resistance.
Naturally, we are open to any kind of correction, and if there is some mention in literature we missed or a reliable documented source, we are happy to update the article as necessary. However, if this practice was as widespread as claimed, we wouldn’t need to be searching this deeply for a mention of it, in both Arabic and English sources.Revolutionary movements tend to produce revolutionary iconography. These symbols can take a wide variety of forms ranging from art, to even the revolutionaries themselves becoming immortalized. However, there is also a danger inherent to the adoption of symbols, or rather what or who is chosen to be turned into a symbol.
It goes without saying that adopting a symbol based on a myth leaves it open to attacks from Hasbara organizations and other pro-Israel groups. The go-to tactic of these groups is to cling to any factual inaccuracies -no matter how minuscule- in an attempt to discredit the entire movement. You need only browse a website like “NGO Monitor” to find a mountain of examples of sentences broken down, taken out of context, and twisted beyond recognition to frame them as antisemitic. Nevertheless, Palestinian content will be attacked regardless of how factual it is, with the legions of Nakba deniers attesting to this fact. Fear of defamation from pro-Israel advocates is not the main concern here, but rather something a bit more complicated that the pro-Palestine movement needs to reckon with.
The adoption of something or someone as a symbol can often be the quickest way to diffuse it and empty it of its radical significance. Take the revolutionary legacy of Nelson Mandela for example. Upon his death, western media rushed to call him a “man of peace”, describing how his principled non-violence paved the way for the fall of Apartheid South Africa. What was conspicuously missing from these obituaries, is the fact that Nelson Mandela underwent military training, established the military wing of the ANC, and planned attacks against the Apartheid government. What was also missing, is the fact that at the time these newspapers called him a terrorist, and published opinion pieces on why Apartheid had “nuances”, and how equal voting rights was a “recipe for slaughter”.
The revolution is taken out of the revolutionary, and they become a harmless icon, divorced from their radical politics and actions. They are declawed, and a distorted, tame version of their life is propagated and celebrated by the very forces they dedicated their lives to fighting. Unfortunately, such an occurrence is not unique to our present day, as Lenin so succinctly wrote more than a century ago:
“During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred, and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their deaths, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names, to a certain extent, for the ‘consolation’ of the oppressed classes, and with the object of duping the latter, while, at the same time, robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge, and vulgarizing it.”
Another pertinent example is Martin Luther King, whose real, radical politics are glossed over, morphing into a caricature upon which any stance or position can be projected. At the end of the day, distorted and misquoted tidbits from his long struggle amount to “MLK wouldn’t want you to make me uncomfortable”. That is quite clearly the complete antithesis of MLK’s increasingly radical politics, which posed such a threat to the U.S. empire that he was assassinated.
As you might have surmised, this is no longer about mere watermelons, but a growing trend in Palestine advocacy. As the struggle for Palestinian rights becomes more mainstream, it will undoubtedly attract a more diverse range of supporters, not all of who necessarily share the same radical politics that birthed the Palestinian revolution. Suddenly, being involved in some aspects of Palestine solidarity does not mean the automatic end to your career that it used to. In this context, reformists will emerge; that is, those who strive for inclusion in imperialist systems rather than their dismantlement, and who believe that if they moderate the Palestinian call for freedom enough, they can still climb, both socially and professionally.
There is a reason why the myth of the watermelon gained so much momentum without even the most basic of fact-checking. Because it is respectable. It is safe, it is easy, it is convenient. Why do you think the originators of this symbol chose the first Intifada as its supposed genesis?
Because it is considered the “good” Intifada, the unarmed one, the peaceful one, the mythical and ideal version of Palestinians. The one you can support without that large a risk to your career or social standing in the west. This is naturally contrasted with the second Intifada, the “bad” one, the armed one.
There is a recent trend in Palestinian solidarity circles to turn the Palestinian into the perfect victim. Perhaps this is done in an effort to draw more sympathy for Palestinians, but it has -at times unintentionally- created a mythic, sanitized, meek version of Palestinians who would rather wave watermelons at their tormentors instead of picking up a rifle to resist their colonization.
To be clear: we are not saying that anyone using this symbol subscribes to the views described above. Neither are we saying that this cannot be an effective part of resistance and awareness-spreading. Our fear is that symbolic gestures alone will come to dominate the Palestine solidarity movement, to the detriment of Palestinians on the ground.
Unfortunately, we could already see vestiges of such politics during the last Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip. People were full-heartedly supportive of the Palestinians of Jerusalem, as they resisted the eviction of their homes in Sheikh Jarrah with what little was available to them. The moment the Palestinians in Gaza chose to support them militarily, however, the tune changed. Suddenly, many pundits and “allies” started wagging their fingers, talking about it not being the “time” or “the way” to resist Israeli colonialism, despite the action being overwhelmingly supported by the very Palestinians on the ground in Jerusalem they claimed to champion.
Steven Salaita wrote an excellent article on this kind of conditional support:
“Watch how your favorite pundit reacts when Palestinians take up armed struggle or consort with actors beyond the U.S. sphere of influence. Does the pundit drop the crowd-pleasing slogans and start yammering about strategic errors and moral failures among the resistance? Does the pundit exhibit a sudden compulsion to nuance? Does the pundit begin ruminating about how this-or-that U.S. enemy is actually worse than Israel? Those are your tells.”
Once again, we are not saying anyone using the watermelon or propagating the myth practices these politics intentionally or otherwise. Rather, it is our concern that its ahistorical prominence represents the latest attempt at respectability politics within Palestine solidarity circles. It can have its uses, but the attempts of its originators to claim it as some Intifada political tradition is perhaps misguided at best, and malicious at worst. Unlike Israelis, we do not need to exaggerate or conjure historical events from thin air. As always, the truth is on our side. | {
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Liberal Zionists are not unique in this nostalgia for the past. Beneficiaries of imperialism are always looking back fondly on the “good old days”, which they imagine represented a better form of society. For instance, half of white Americans say that things were better in 1950 than they are today.
To put that into perspective, half of white Americans think that a society with segregation, where you needed to sit at the back of the bus if you weren’t white, where there were lynchings of Black people, was preferable to society today. And why not? They weren’t the ones facing any of this tyranny. They weren’t the ones being murdered in cold blood in the street.
A large portion of white Britons are also nostalgic for the days of the British empire, one of the most bloody and colonial empires in history. Half of those who voted “leave” during Brexit would prefer that Britain be an empire again. Once again, why wouldn’t they? They enjoyed the spoils of colonialism, and never needed to suffer its consequences. It wasn’t them being enslaved and butchered.
For the liberal Zionist, their nostalgia is not related to a perceived loss of power such as the examples above. It is about a perceived loss of morality and legitimacy. It is about Israel’s reputation, about them being unable to support Israel without feeling guilt or seeming reactionary. However, the most significant difference here is that the nostalgic “uncorrupted Israel” these liberal Zionists yearn for is fictitious. The Israel they imagine before 1967 has no basis in reality, and is a result of a national mythology cultivated by intense propaganda.
Ultimately, the common thread uniting all of this nostalgia is the complete erasure of its victims.Just like any other colonizer, Israelis are impressively self-centered. Settler narcissism knows no bounds, as even as they lament the occupation of 1967, it is not out of concern for the Palestinians, who are the direct victims oppressed by this brutal military dictatorship. Instead, their focus is on themselves:
“The greatest damage has been internal. The settlement enterprise has become a divisive factor in Israeli society, sowing bitter rivalries among Jews not seen since the end of the Second Temple period, a story with its own tragic ending.”
Even when Israelis oppress, they are still the victims. As if this “settlement enterprise” happened in a vacuum, without any people being displaced, killed or oppressed. The real damage, it seems, is how it became a divisive factor for Israelis, because Palestinians have always been invisible collateral damage to the Zionist project. As a matter of fact, great efforts were implemented to erase Palestinians’ presence; entire forests, parks and nature reserves were created with the sole purpose of hiding the ruins of destroyed Palestinian villages. It appears that these efforts have been successful when it comes to the Israeli public, because the only way someone could possibly believe that pre-1967 Israel was on the “right side of history” is if you completely excise Palestinians from this history.
The willful ignorance needed to sustain this view is quite impressive, considering that Palestinians in the newly established Israeli state lived under martial law, needing permits to even leave their neighborhoods or villages. The living conditions in these communities were so abysmal that an Israeli politician at the time described them as “fenced concentration camps”.
We remind you that these were supposed to be the so-called “Arab Israelis” which were citizens of the state. They remained living under such conditions until 1966, basically a year before the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. As a matter of fact, the reason Israelis were able to so easily seize and administer the newly occupied areas was because they simply transferred the same structures and systems used on Palestinians living under Israeli control after 1948.
Furthermore, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians would not stop after the war; Palestinians in the Naqab, as well as those close to the ceasefire lines, would continue to face mass expulsions into the 1950s. This should solidly dispel the myth that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine was an unplanned consequence of war, as it continued years afterwards . Many massacres and mass killings took place during this period against Palestinians who were supposedly “equal citizens of Israel”. For instance, the Kufr Qassim massacre claimed 49 Palestinians, who were murdered in cold blood by Israel. To drive in how dehumanized and erased Palestinians are, the commander responsible for giving the order to open fire was fined 10 measly pennies. This is what the life of 49 Palestinians was worth. His accomplices were sentenced to very light jail time, but were all pardoned and set free within a year.
Given these facts, the idea that Israel somehow lost its way after 1967 is quite laughable. The tactics used to dehumanize and dominate Palestinians in 1967 occupied areas were pioneered and tested on Palestinians in 1948 occupied areas. Ethnically cleansing 800,000 Palestinians and destroying over 500 villages is not some small aberration to the noble Zionist project, but a necessary precondition for the existence of the Israeli state today.As we always emphasize, the occupation of 1967 is a symptom, not the root cause of the question of Palestine . Trying to understand the Palestinian revolution by starting at 1967 will produce a flawed, incomplete and selective understanding of the conditions on the ground today.
Despite their insistence to the opposite, Zionists are largely uninformed and selective about the history of their ideology and state. This is because for the most part, the information they get is from either Israeli or Zionist media and education sources. One need only look at some of the colossal myths still popular in Zionist circles today, to see how effective this brainwashing has been. The vast majority of these myths are lazy, and could be dispelled through a basic investigation of primary sources. When it comes to the story of the founding of Israel, Avi Shlaim argues that the disconnect between the Zionist narrative and reality is aided by the fact that:
“Most of the voluminous literature on the war was written not by professional historians but by participants, by politicians, soldiers, official historians and by a large host of sympathetic chroniclers, journalists, biographers and hagiographers.”
Therefore, most “historical” knowledge Israelis and Zionists have are from sources relegated to the realm of political claim-making rather than honestly reflecting actual events. Combine this with the silencing of Palestinians, willful ignorance and reactionary ethno-nationalist chauvinism and you have a recipe for an impenetrable bunker mentality. Liberal Zionists are not immune to this mentality, as we see their cognitive dissonance and contradictory politics all the time. They talk about the rights of refugees and asylum seekers in the West, and revert to blood and soil fascists the moment the right of return for Palestinians is mentioned, discarding their “progressive” charade and ranting about “demographic threats”.
Simply put, liberal Zionists live in denial. They are in denial about how Israel was founded, how Israelis came to have their homes, how Israel operates, and how it is sustained. They never ask themselves why Israel was supported by the biggest colonial powers at the time. They never ask why they are supported today by the largest imperialist hegemon in history. They make-believe that they are part of some liberation movement, while being sponsored by the forces squashing liberation movements all over the world.
It is easy for them to condemn the occupation, as far as they are concerned 80% of the territory is enough. Some even look down on the West Bank settlers as uncivilized, thinking that somehow the colonization of Palestine in 1948 was different than what the West Bank settlers are doing today, or that their homes were acquired in a different manner than the infamous Yacov in Sheikh Jarrah. They live in a bubble, claiming “this isn’t the Israel I believe in” whenever a new heinous war crime is committed by a state that could only exist due to heinous war crimes. This denialism is akin to Americans saying “this is un-American” whenever something terribly American happens.
Invoking a mythical idealized version of Israel that never existed serves mainly to assuage liberal Zionist guilt about supporting Israel today. Regardless of how loud they protest, Israel is increasingly being identified with reactionary and fascist movements all over the world. With every war crime committed, support for Israel becomes more of a taboo in progressive circles. Claiming that Israel has merely “lost its way” is a coping mechanism to keep pretending that this is a temporary state of affairs, that Israel at its core is good, and thus worthy of continuous support.
Naturally, this means that they must concede that Israel has some faults, but this criticism is reserved and shallow, focusing on individuals rather than systems, and definitely not interested in root causes. This saves them from having to admit that Israel as a whole has been a racist, colonial endeavor, or confront their own complicity in the destruction of Palestinian society. Fortunately, this tactic has been transparent and ineffective. As a result, there are personalities on the Zionist “left” whose sole purpose is to endlessly whine about how they aren’t welcome in progressive circles anymore, naturally accusing those circles of antisemitism rather than inspecting their own reactionary politics.
In reality, for Palestinians there has never existed a “good” Israel which was corrupted. It is an impossibility, and a complete contradiction of terms. Israel was built at the expense of the destruction and subjugation of Palestinian society. The only way liberal Zionists think Israel was on the “right track” in this period is because, like their right-wing counterparts, they don’t view Palestinians as equally human. | {
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Despite how ubiquitous this accusation is, there is actually scant evidence to corroborate it.
If the use of human shields was so wide as to cause hundreds upon hundreds of dead Palestinian civilians, then surely there would be a reporter or an observer on the ground that could have caught a whiff of it. But reporters on the ground could find no trace of such a supposedly widespread action, Jeremy Bowen of the BBC wrote that he found no evidence of the use of human shields while he was covering the assault on Gaza. Similarly, Kim Sengupta writing for the Belfast Telegraph interviewed Palestinians in Gaza and unsurprisingly came to a similar conclusion: Hamas was not forcing anybody to be a human shield, counter to Netanyahu’s claims.
But perhaps these reporters were missing something, let us consult an organization which specializes in these matters. Fortunately for us, Amnesty international released a detailed report of its investigation into the matter. In their report they indicate that:
“The Israeli authorities have claimed that in a few incidents, the Hamas authorities or Palestinian fighters directed or physically coerced individual civilians in specific locations to shield combatants or military objectives. Amnesty International has not been able to corroborate the facts in any of these cases.”
So, it seems that the Israeli claims have no basis in reality, and are just a way to demonize Palestinians and legitimize their indiscriminate bombardment of civilians. This is hardly the first time Israel has used this accusation to delegitimize their enemies. For example, in the 2006 war against Lebanon Israel accused Hizballah of using human shields. Unsurprisingly, investigations by both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch similarly found no evidence.
The same accusations were also hurled at Palestinians during the great march of return when Israeli snipers killed Palestinian nurse Razan Al-Najjar while she was tending to the injured. Naturally, no evidence was provided other than a clearly doctored video in an attempt to defame her.
Fortunately, these investigations into the supposed Palestinian use of human shields tend to backfire on Israel, and have historically produced a wealth of literature showing how often Israel targets civilians far removed from any combat context. Amnesty International reported that
“In the cases of precision missiles or tank shells which killed civilians in their homes, no fighters were present in the houses that were struck and Amnesty International delegates found no indication that there had been any armed confrontations or other military activity in the immediate vicinity at the time of the attack.”
This is not in error, and is in fact by design. The destruction of non-military infrastructure and incurring massive losses in civilians is a deliberate policy followed by the IDF. This policy has come to be known as the Dahiya doctrine, where it was first practiced in the Dahiya area of Beirut.
Gadi Eizenkot was quoted as saying that:
“We will apply disproportionate force on it (village) and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases.”
This is a direct admission that Israel sees civilian areas as military targets, now the only thing that remained was finding a way to justify it. This is where the human shields accusation comes in. And in the end when the war is over, the fact that no evidence is ever presented, or that various organizations exonerate the accused is forgotten, and the smears remain, and contribute to justify the same inhumane actions in any future conflagration.
Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of this accusation is that it is a case of pure projection on part of Israel. Israel has been notorious in its use of Palestinians as human shields. As a matter of fact, many of these same reports investigating the Palestinian use of human shields found that it was actually Israel that was using Palestinians as human shields. For example, they would force Palestinian civilians to check houses for traps, or handle suspicious objects, or tie them to military vehicles to discourage stone throwing.
Even a simple search reveals hundreds of cases of Palestinians being used as human shields. This is not a case of a few bad apples, but of rampant and widespread behavior. In fact, using Palestinians as human shields was so popular that when the Israeli high court attempted to outlaw the practice the IDF actually appealed to have the decision reversed.
I would further argue that not only does Israel use Palestinians as human shields, but also its own population when it uses them to settle and colonize areas beyond the green line. They are directly put in danger as a sacrifice to Israel’s expansionist colonial designs, which they can then blame on Palestinians to further accelerate this same project.
So not only is the Palestinian use of human shields a myth lacking any evidence, it is in fact Israel who is infamous for using human shields in its oppression of the Palestinians. Examples of this are incredibly easy to find even with the most rudimentary of research. Like much Israeli propaganda, it seeks to turn reality upside down and accuse the Palestinians of the crimes that Israel so often commits. This is a prime example of baseless dehumanization that many eagerly embrace because they have come to internalize a demonized image of Palestinians based on Israeli propaganda.
The fact that this slander is so prevalent while not having any basis in reality is a testament to the power of propaganda, and how readily people accept the projections of barbarity onto the peoples of the global south. In the narrative war against Palestine there is hardly a method Israel has not resorted to in order to dehumanize Palestinians. It is on us to resist that, and set the record straight. | {
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Even before the establishment of Israel, the Zionist Yishuv worked tirelessly to cultivate a certain image for itself. Civilized, democratic, inventive, and above all, moral. This is why the claim of the moral superiority of the Zionist militias, and later the IDF, is central in the narrative of the Israeli state’s foundation.
Similar to other elements of this narrative, such as depicting the Zionist settlers as outnumbered underdogs facing an Arab goliath, this talking point becomes impossible to argue when presented with a factual historical record. As Shlaim notes, especially when it comes to the history of the 1948 war that:
“Most of the voluminous literature on the war was written not by professional historians but by participants, by politicians, soldiers, official historians and by a large host of sympathetic chroniclers, journalists, biographers and hagiographers.”
Therefore, much of the written “history” of the 1948 war is bare-faced propaganda with little basis in reality. This becomes exceedingly clear when it turns out that, for example, Israeli military forces outnumbered and outgunned the entirety of the Arab armies in the 1948 war, which is the complete opposite of the popular narrative of the scrappy Zionist underdog, persisting against the odds.
A central aspect of the claims to the IDF’s morality is the concept of the “purity of arms”. Shlaim continues:
“Of particular relevance here is the precept of tohar haneshek, or the “purity of arms,” which posits that weapons remain pure as long as they are used only for defensive purposes. This popular-heroic-moralistic version of the 1948 war is the one that is taught in Israeli schools and used extensively in the quest for legitimacy abroad. It is a prime example of the use of a nationalist version of history in the process of nation building.”
Needless to say, these claims about the IDF use of weapons only for self-defense have no bearing on reality.
Let us take a brief look at the conduct of the IDF and its predecessors over the years, to show just how baseless this talking point. Naturally, this is by no means an exhaustive list, otherwise this article would be hundreds of pages long.
If the purity of arms dictates that weapons can only be used in defense, I find this difficult to reconcile with the Zionist assault and depopulation of approximately 600 Palestinian villages during the Nakba. I know what you are thinking, perhaps these villages were simply the battlefield and their destruction was a byproduct of the war?
While this claim is put forward by many advocates of Israel, it has no evidence to support it. The evidence actually points to the purposeful ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to create a demographically viable Jewish ethnocracy, which went far outside the proposed borders of the UN partition plan .
Deir Yassin is probably one of the better-known examples of Zionist war crimes during the Nakba.
Deir Yassin was a small, pastoral village west of Jerusalem. The village was determined to remain neutral, and as such refused to have Arab soldiers stationed there. Not only were they neutral, they also had a non-aggression pact signed with the Haganah. This, however, did not save it from its fate, as it was in the territory of the Jewish state lined out in Plan D .
This meant that not only was it to be destroyed and have its population ethnically cleansed, an example needed to be made of it as to inspire terror in the surrounding villages. As a result this massacre was particularly monstrous.
On April 9th 1948, Zionist forces attacked the village of Deir Yassin under the cover of darkness. The Zionist forces shot indiscriminately and killed dozens of Palestinian civilians in their own homes. The number of those murdered ranges from roughly 100 to over 150, depending on estimation.
Perhaps one of the most graphic witness testimonials comes from Othman Akel:
[Warning: Explicit descriptions of torture and violence. Click here to skip]
“I saw the Zionist terrorist soldiers ordering the bakery man of the village to throw his son in the oven and burn him alive. The son is holding the clothes of his father tightly and crying from fear and pleading to his father not to do it. the father refuses and then the soldiers hit him in his gut so hard it caused him to fall on the floor. Other soldiers held his son, Abdel Rauf, and threw him in the oven and told his father to toast him well-done meat. Other soldiers took the baker himself , Hussain al-Shareef, and threw him, too, in the oven, telling him, “follow your son, he needs you there”.
Other stories include tying a villager to a tree before burning him, rape and disembowelment. Dead villagers were thrown into pits by the dozen. Many were decapitated or mutilated. Houses were looted and destroyed. A number of prisoners were taken, put in cuffs, and paraded around West Jerusalem as war trophies, before being executed and dumped in the village quarry.
[End of explicit descriptions of torture and violence]
It is important to note that this massacre was carried out before the 1948 war. It posed no threat and was not part of any military action. More recently, Zionist revisionists have tried to frame the massacre as a battle because the village guards put up resistance to the invading militias. In typical Zionist fashion, I’m certain that even had the villagers lain on the ground and died without resistance, they would have found a way to blame them for their deaths anyway.
It is also noteworthy that because the village had a non-aggression pact with the Haganah, it was the Stern and Lehi that carried out this massacre. The Yishuv offered a few words of condemnation, but later the name of Deir Yassin would be seen listed next to successful operations. In the future, there would not even be the charade of caring about non-aggression pacts or the neutrality of villages that were designated for ethnic cleansing.
But Deir Yassin is far from the only example. Al Dawayma was a Palestinian village that lay west of Al-Khalil (Hebron). According to Haganah records, the village was considered “Very friendly”. Meaning it had not host or participated in any attacks against the Yishuv. This, like Deir Yassin, did not spare them the brutality of the Zionist militias.
On October 8th 1948, the village was occupied by Battalion 89 of Brigade Eight, who committed some depraved acts upon the villagers. 20 armored cars invaded the village while soldiers attacked from another flank. The village guards couldn’t even respond, and the village fell with very little resistance.
The soldiers got out of their vehicles and started indiscriminately shooting villagers to force a panic and hurried depopulation of the village. Hundreds were killed, many of which were women and children. Villagers attempted to seek refuge in mosques and a close by shrine were shot by the dozens. Acts of barbarity were also reported by Zionist troops:
[Warning: Explicit descriptions of torture and violence. Click here to skip]
Babies skulls cracked open, women raped and burned alive in houses, villagers stabbed to death.
The execution of captured prisoners of war by the IDF has been documented, Prior writes that:
“The Israeli daily Ma’ariv (2 August 1995) exposed the killing of some 140 Egyptian prisoners of war, including forty-nine Egyptian workers in 1956 by the elite paratroop unit 890, on the orders of Rafael Eitan, who later became the IDF Chief-of-Staff, subsequently founded the Tzomet party and now serves as Minister of Agriculture and Environment Quality in the Netanyahu government. Israel’s ‘purity of arms’ culture was further rocked by the revelation of former Labour MK, Michael Ben-Zohar, that he had witnessed the fatal stabbing of three Egyptian PoWs by two Israeli chefs during the 1967 June War. Military historian and also former MK, Meir Pa’il knew of many instances in which soldiers had killed PoWs or Arab civilians. In response to these revelations Prime Minister Rabin regretted that ‘things have been said so far. I won’t add anything to this’“
I don’t know about you, but I personally find that torturing children, taking civilians as human shields, massacring hundreds of defenseless villagers and executing prisoners of war does not sound very “pure” to me. And if you consider all of these atrocities to be committed under the guise of “defense” then we have very different definitions of the word.
At the end of the day, the IDF is an army, and like other armies it is there to commit violence. The difference is that other armies are acknowledged as such, while the IDF baselessly claims an elevated moral position for itself. But how does the IDF act when such atrocities come to light? Surely if it is such a moral army, then it would punish the perpetrators of these acts.
Predictably, this is also an area where the IDF fails miserably to live up to its desired image.
The first instinct of the IDF in such circumstances is to deny the existence of the event, or even try and blame it on the Palestinians. They frame the event as “faked” or part of Pallywood . Only after the overwhelming evidence of these atrocities becomes viral and widespread, do the IDF admit that it was caused by them, and promise to investigate. As usual, these investigations are shams that are designed to shield the IDF from ICC prosecution, rather than seeking actual justice for its victims.
The case of Razan al Najjar is emblematic of this operational mode. She was a volunteer nurse who was shot tending to the wounded during the Gaza protests of 2018, even though she posed no danger. The IDF began its usual mantra, blamed Hamas for her death, and even released an edited video to try and defame Al-Najjar and make it seem that she was being used as a human shield. This backfired when the full video was released that made no such claim. The whole issue was buried under the IDF’s “internal investigation” routine.
But even in the extremely rare cases where the investigations lead to a trial, and in the infinitesimally rarer cases it actually finds a soldier to be guilty, the “punishments” are rather laughable. For example, the commander found to be responsible for the Kufr Qassim massacre where 49 Palestinians were murdered in cold blood was fined 10 measly pennies for giving the order to open fire on civilians. His accomplices were sentenced to very light jail time, but were all pardoned and set free within a year. So even when these insulting sentences are given, it’s rare for an Israeli soldier to actually serve their full sentence.
Ultimately, the goal of propaganda is not to paint an accurate image of reality. The most effective variants of it is short, easy to remember, and corresponds to your worldview and biases. This is the case for all Israeli propaganda, much of which was considered the conventional wisdom when it came to the question of Palestine. However, thanks to the efforts of scholars and historians from all over the world, these myths and talking points no longer hold the sway they used to. This is not lost on advocates of Israel, which is why they have moved to try and censor and stifle Palestinian voices through legislation. It is up to us to make sure that Palestinian voices are heard and centered and let no Israeli myth pass unchallenged. | {
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When you’re a serial violator of human rights and international law, it becomes imperative to try and cover up your atrocities as much as possible. This is especially the case when a cornerstone of your propaganda strategy revolves around projecting an image of morality and civilization.
In the light of the spread of smart phones and the ability of any bystander to document the systemic abuse of Israeli forces, Hasbara efforts had to similarly evolve to counter this new form of evidence. In the past, it was easier to dispel accusations by simply denying them, claiming that Palestinians were incapable of being objective, and that these accusations only aimed to delegitimize Israel. This was even the mainstream view of the Nakba, where the Palestinian narrative was dismissed in the West only to be indisputably confirmed by declassified Israeli war archives .
Following a similar logic, advocates of Israel developed the incredibly racist concept of “Pallywood” to shed doubt on any photographic or video evidence of Israeli violations. According to this talking point, Palestinians produce fake media to demonize Israel. This could range from hiring crisis actors, to doctoring footage and editing it in a dishonest way that misrepresents reality.
The appeal of this to Israelis is clear, not only does it clear Israel from any wrong-doing that is caught on camera, it also frames Palestinians as untrustworthy schemers without integrity, hell-bent on making Israel look bad at any cost. This means that any photographic or video evidence, no matter how clear or concise, could ever be proof of Israeli violations.
This concept became popular among defenders of Israel in the second Intifada. Perhaps the most emblematic usage of this smear was in response to the murder of Muhammad al Durra, who was killed by Israeli gunfire during clashes between Palestinian resistance fighters and the IDF. Although many Palestinian children died during this week, what separated the case of Muhammad al Durra was that he died in his father’s arms, and more importantly, that it was caught on camera.
Naturally, the first reactions from Israel was to claim that either the child is not dead, and that he was merely a crisis actor, or that if he died, he was actually killed by Palestinian gunfire to make Israel look bad. The video has been dissected and studied to exhaustion, with known conspiracy theorists such as Nahum Shahaf, coming up with “evidence” that debunks the video. Some of the ridiculously insulting “evidence” is the allegation that Al-Durra did not bleed when shot, but was holding a red piece of cloth to make it look like blood for the cameras. Needless to say, that the child was buried and his father is still traumatized to this day are inconvenient truths that are not addressed.
But as usual, the goal of propaganda is never to reach the truth. The goal of this talking point is to contest any kind of evidence against Israeli violations. That’s all it needs. Because in the minds of many, if a case is contested then it is not settled. It doesn’t even matter if this contestation is illogical or implausible, all it needs to do is exist for them to discard the whole case and pretend that Israel was vindicated. This has been the go-to approach of Israeli hasbara whenever an inconvenient video or photo surfaces.
However, no matter how you look at it, these claims about Al-Durra are quite ridiculous. Either the former child is alive in hiding, with absolutely no evidence at all for the last 20 years, with his entire family still living the charade, not to mention the buried body. Or the other implication, is that Palestinians killed one of their own children just to make Israel look bad. Both of these scenarios are incredibly absurd and racist.
To suggest that Palestinians would murder an innocent child of their own just so that they could have some incriminating footage on Israel is immensely dehumanizing. Yet, this view is not so fringe in Israel. During Israel’s bloody 2014 assault on Gaza, Netanyahu addressed those raising concerns about the high number of murdered innocent civilians by claiming that:
“They want to pile up as many civilian dead as they can. They use telegenically dead Palestinians for their cause. They want the more dead, the better.”
Telegenically dead.
That’s all Palestinians were good for. In typical colonist fashion, they cannot even begin to comprehend the humanity of the colonized. Even in their death, the center of attention must remain on the settlers. To the settlers, the colonized do not have dreams or ambitions, they have no loved ones or family. They exist only as an undifferentiated monolith solely to make their lives more difficult.
Another case which demonstrates the intellectual dishonesty of this talking point is the case of Nadeem Nuwarra. In 2014, and during the annual Nakba day protests marking the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, Nadim Nuwarra and Mohammad Salameh were both shot and killed by Israeli forces in front of the Ofer military prison in Beitunia.
They were unarmed and far away from anything that could possibly be constituted as a risk to the soldiers, they were killed with live ammunition, and one of them was even shot in the back while walking away from the soldiers. They were standing over 90 meters away from the soldiers, for reference, that’s close to the length of a professional football field.
What followed, was the typical song and dance that the IDF performed every time it is accused of war crimes and human rights violations against Palestinians.
First, they denied that there was any use of live ammunition. The soldiers were only supposed to be firing rubber bullets. This was “corroborated” by an internal “investigation” that concurred that no live ammunition was used. Second, they claimed that these two teenagers were shot by the soldiers in self-defense, as they were partaking in violent attacks against the soldiers who felt threatened. But before that, the idea was floated that they were actually killed by Palestinians who were firing at the IDF and killed them by mistake. The IDF changing its story multiple times is a staple of its damage control modus operandi.
Then the videos began to surface. Taken from multiple CCTV cameras in the vicinity, they showed that the teens were standing far away and were shot while they indisputably could not have been posing any threat, debunking the entire defense the IDF had been running with prior.
Naturally, this is where the smear of “Pallywood” reared its ugly head once again. The videos, they alleged, were faked and doctored. They were simply created to defame Israel and its army. As a matter of fact, Micahel Oren, former Israeli diplomat, claimed that the shot teens were actually Palestinian crisis actors, and baselessly claimed that nobody even died in the first place.
“That film was edited and does not reflect the reality of the day in question, the violence,”
claimed Major Arye Shalicar, an IDF spokesperson. Moshe Ya’lon, even though he admit that he had not watched the film yet, was sure it was edited:
“but I’ve seen lots of films that were edited [to distort what had happened]. This film I’ve not yet seen, but I know the system.”
Israeli Channel 2’s military correspondent Roni Daniel claimed that the film was a fake. To try and prove this, he quibbled about the position of hands of the teens being shot, and how it did not appear consistent with being shot.
Pro-Israel media “watchdog” Camera also claimed that something was amiss with the Palestinian story about what happened. Johnathan Tobin even claimed it was a blood libel akin to the case of Mohammed al Durra. In a Facebook post, Danny Ayalon also claimed that the video was fabricated.
These accusations and more were hurled at the victims. Shortly after, the spent bloody bullet was found in Nuwarra’s backpack, it had landed there after it exited his body. Of course, Israel claimed it was planted there and not real. To challenge this, the family exhumed the body of their murdered child and had an autopsy confirm that indeed, the bullet wounds were consistent with this kind of live ammunition. However, the final nail in the coffin of Israeli lies, was when new footage from CNN surfaced, showing the soldier clearly shooting in the direction of Nuwarra at the same time of death.
Of course, none of these sources ever apologized for the disgusting dehumanization of the victims, or their claims of manufactured Palestinian suffering.
The false accusations of doctored footage are also quite a clear case of projection on the part of Israel. For example, Razan al Najjar was a volunteer nurse who was shot tending to the wounded during the Gaza protests of 2018, even though she posed no danger. The IDF began its usual mantra of denials, and even released an edited video to try and defame Al-Najjar and make it seem that she was being used as a human shield. This backfired when the full video was released that made no such claim. The whole issue was buried under the IDF’s “internal investigation” to this day.
Time and time again, these smears are shown to be false. There was even an attempt to frame a “die-in” protest in Cairo as a case of Palestinians in Gaza faking being dead. Is this not exactly what advocates of Israel claim Pallywood is? However, once again, it doesn’t matter. Because as I said, as far as propaganda goes, for many it’s enough to contest a video to discard it completely. Then they can go back to believing in the myth of the righteous Israeli state that never does wrong as opposed to the lying, bloodthirsty, backwards Palestinian who would do anything to harm it.
There will never be a form of evidence put forward by Palestinians, or any other group, that will not be defamed and attacked. This is not a uniquely Israeli trait. Oppressive systems have always accused the oppressed of exaggerating or lying about their lived experience.
In these particularly egregious cases, what propagandists are asking of you is to believe them over your own eyes, hearts, minds and historical precedents. | {
"articleTitle": "Myth: Palestinians fake Israeli atrocities, hire crisis actors (Pallywood) | Decolonize Palestine",
"pageTitle": "Myth: Palestinians fake Israeli atrocities, hire crisis actors (Pallywood) | Decolonize Palestine",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:39:29.243Z",
"url": "https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/pallywood",
"description": "With the advent of modern communications technology, it has become easier than ever to document Israeli war crimes. Consequently, hasbarists have adapted to this by claiming any footage that surfaces is fake (Pallywood)."
} |
The right of return is a central issue in the Palestinian question. The refugees created by Israeli ethnic cleansing operations before and after the war of 1948 remain dispersed all over the globe, awaiting the day when they can return to their pillaged communities. Even though there have been countless resolutions calling for their return, Israel has remained adamant about not allowing this.
This is not a new policy, from the very beginning Israel purposefully destroyed hundreds of villages and shot any refugee who attempted to return to cement the new status quo .
As an ethnocracy, Israel has always been obsessed with demographics. So, it makes sense that it would do everything in its power to reduce the number of Palestinians as much as possible, while increasing the number of Jewish Israelis as much as possible. The fact that today the two populations between the river and the sea are reaching parity must be so infuriating to Israeli policy makers, to know that despite all the ethnic cleansing and millions of imported settlers that they are still not able to form a solid majority.
Thus, Palestinian refugees have always been in Israel’s crosshairs, not only physically but also discursively. We can see the effects of this when the status of Palestinian refugees is questioned. The popular talking point claims that Palestinian refugees are unique, and that no other refugee population can pass on their refugee status to their descendants. This, they argue, is proof that most Palestinian refugees are actually fake refugees, and that the only real refugees are the originally expelled population. Granted, of course, that this is in the unlikely event where they even acknowledge that any Palestinians were expelled to begin with, and they do not simply regurgitate other ahistoric myths such as the Arab orders to evacuate .
To begin with, it is important to understand that contrary to other refugees, Palestinian refugees are under the mandate of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Normally refugees fall under the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This, of course, only adds to the accusation that Palestinian refugees are treated differently than any other. In reality, however, it was due to the fact that the UNHCR did not exist at the time, and UNRWA was created as a special body specifically for the Palestinian refugee crisis.
So, does UNRWA treat Palestinian refugees differently than the UNHCR? Would Palestinian refugees be unable to pass on their status to their descendants if they were under the mandate of the UNHCR, for example?
Let us inspect the main argument of the talking point, that Palestinian refugees are in the unique position of passing down their refugee status to their descendants:
This is simply nonsense.
The United Nations states that:
“Under international law and the principle of family unity, the children of refugees and their descendants are also considered refugees until a durable solution is found. Both UNRWA and UNHCR recognize descendants as refugees on this basis, a practice that has been widely accepted by the international community, including both donors and refugee hosting countries.”
The website continues:
“Palestine refugees are not distinct from other protracted refugee situations such as those from Afghanistan or Somalia, where there are multiple generations of refugees, considered by UNHCR as refugees and supported as such. Protracted refugee situations are the result of the failure to find political solutions to their underlying political crises.“
UNRWA spokesman, Chriss Dunnes, explains this further, stating that:
“..refugee families everywhere retain their status as refugees until they fall within the terms of a cessation clause or are able to avail themselves of one of three durable solutions already mentioned — voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement in a third country.“
Since none of these solutions have occurred for Palestinian refugees, then they and their descendants are still considered refugees. Palestinians are not unique in this regard, refugees from Afghanistan or the Western Sahara, for instance, are also multi-generational, because a solution to their political crises has not yet been reached.
Some form of the argument claims that had Palestinian refugees been subjected to the UNHCR as opposed to UNRWA, most would not be classified as refugees due to resettlement or naturalization. The official UNRWA website refutes this completely:
“…the protracted situation in which Palestine refugees live is not unique. UNHCR estimates that 78 per cent of all refugees under its mandate – 15.9 million refugees – were in protracted refugee situations at the end of 2017. According to UNHCR data, of the 20.1 million refugees under UNHCR protection in 2018, less than three percent of refugees (593,800) were repatriated back to their country of origin. Far fewer were resettled in a third country (92,400) or naturalized as citizens in their country of asylum (62,600). The vast majority remained refugees pending a solution to their plight.”
The attack on Palestinian refugees stems from the deep insecurity of Israel and its advocates, even if they refuse to admit it. The refugees are the living breathing evidence of Israel’s original sin, they are a stark reminder that heinous crimes were committed against the native population of Palestine. Despite all these efforts to define them out of existence, they are not going anywhere, and have a full right to return to their homes. | {
"articleTitle": "Myth: Palestinian refugees are unique | Decolonize Palestine",
"pageTitle": "Myth: Palestinian refugees are unique | Decolonize Palestine",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:39:29.288Z",
"url": "https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/palestinian-refugees-are-unique",
"description": "The Palestinian refugees resulting from Zionist ethnic cleansing campaigns remain a cornerstone of the Palestinian question. Naturally, this has opened them up to attacks on their very existence."
} |
Framing is important. Being able to dictate the narrative, to be given the freedom to explain events in a way sympathetic to your worldview can be an incredibly powerful tool. As many studies have shown, there has been an empirically proven bias towards the Zionist and Israeli narrative in US media. This means that Israelis have had enormous advantages in framing what is happening in Palestine.
Palestinian Author Mourid Barghouti wrote:
“It is easy to blur the truth with a simple linguistic trick: start your story from “Secondly.” […] Start your story with “Secondly,” and the world will be turned upside-down. Start your story with “Secondly,” and the arrows of the native Americans are the original criminals and the guns of the white men are entirely the victim. It is enough to start with “Secondly,” for the anger of the Black man against the white to be barbarous.”
He continues:
“You only need to start your story with “Secondly,” and the burned Vietnamese will have wounded the humanity of the napalm, and Victor Jara’s songs will be the shameful thing and not Pinochet’s bullets, which killed so many thousands in the Santiago stadium. It is enough to start the story with “Secondly,” for my grandmother, Umm ‘Ata, to become the criminal and Ariel Sharon her victim.”
The selective “telling” of the story, is exactly what Israel aims to achieve by framing all its military operations as “self-defense”. Invoking self-defense shifts the conversation from Israeli settler colonialism, and focuses it on any reactions to said colonialism. It compartmentalizes current events into separate decontextualized “escalations” that Israel must “handle”. This is done to avoid situating anything into its proper historical context.
If you limit the scope of the story and begin it with Hamas’ rockets, suddenly they become the aggressors. What gets swept under the rug is the entire history of Zionist settler colonialism -which predates every Palestinian faction existing today- or how the Gaza Strip was created, why there are millions of refugees, and why they are prevented from going home or from having the most fundamental of human rights. Even Hamas’ Arabic acronym translates into “The Islamic Resistance Movement”, which should clue you that it was formed as a reaction to resist something. Stripping this information from the story completely changes its conclusions.
This rhetorical method has been applied to even the most ludicrous scenarios, such as framing a sneak attack on Egypt in 1967 as a “preemptive defensive strike” . Because no matter what Israel does, it always argues that it is purely for defensive reasons.The whole situation is quite ridiculous when you think about it.
What does it even mean for a settler colony to defend itself against the natives it is colonizing? What does it mean for an entity that can only exist through the negation of Palestinians to defend itself from said Palestinians?
Settler colonialism by its very definition necessitates violence and oppression. They are so constant that they seep into every facet of life for the colonized. There are no periods of “calm” or “normalcy” for the Palestinians. Take the average Palestinian living in Gaza, for example. They are a refugee who had their family ethnically cleansed simply because they were not Jewish, and would thus be an inconvenient “demographic threat” to Israeli ethnocracy. This person has the right, by any means possible, to try and reclaim their stolen rights. That cannot under any possible scenario be construed as aggression which could warrant “self-defense”. Even more, Israel wants to reserve the “right” to occupy Palestinians, torment them, besiege them, ethnically cleanse them and steal their land, homes and livelihoods and claim self-defense against any push-back to this oppression.
It boggles the mind that we have people demanding that the colonized and militarily occupied population must guarantee the safety of their oppressors and tormentors. It is akin to a mugger claiming self-defense when their victim fights back against their mugging.
This is hardly unique to Zionism and Israel; colonial forces throughout history have always sought to frame their racist colonialist expansionism as “self-defense” or as acts of mere “self-preservation”.
Thomas Jefferson even argued against abolishing slavery using this exact same logic, citing “self-preservation” as the reason why this barbaric practice must continue. Imagine the audacity of arguing that the slave masters were acting in self-defense against their slaves.
Naturally, this example is not meant to equate the oppression between the victims of slavery on Turtle Island and those of Israeli colonialism, but to highlight the ridiculous ways in which reactionary forces consistently frame their aggression as self-defense.Israel has a long history of arguing about its dubious “rights”.
An infamous example is its “right to exist” which has no basis in international law, nor does it have any practical meaning . It would not be an exaggeration to say that Israel’s legal claims have always gone hand in hand with masking its colonial expansionist agenda. After all, Israel still claims that the West Bank and Gaza strip are unoccupied, even with its troops, siege, settlements and military bases; their argument is that for an occupation to exist, a territory must be part of a sovereign state, which the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were not. This same justification is used to argue that the Geneva conventions, and international and humanitarian law in general, don’t apply to Palestinians. Of course, this argument was never accepted by the international community, which still maintains that these areas are occupied.
Long story short, Israeli legal claims should be taken with a mountain of salt.
However, due to the long-standing refusal of said international community to hold Israel accountable, Palestinians have become jaded by international law. Decades of advisory opinions and resolutions have gone ignored by Israel and the international community, even as Israel’s violations have become more brazen. Were international law be actually applied, Israel’s “right” to self-defense wouldn’t pass muster.
The major flaw with Israel’s claims is that quite simply no legal right can be derived from an illegal act. What are the illegal acts in question?
Basically, Israel’s actions are illegal to begin with, and therefore it cannot claim any right to “defend” these actions.
It should be noted that resistance or insurrection here does not necessarily mean “peaceful” or “popular” resistance, but includes all means possible.
United Nations resolution 37/43:
“Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle”.
It continues:
“Reaffirms the inalienable right of the Namibian people, the Palestinian people and all peoples under foreign and colonial domination to self-determination, national independence, territorial integrity, national unity and sovereignty without outside interference”.
Even if such a right was not enshrined in international law, Palestinians have a moral right to rid themselves of domination and oppression.
Regardless of what type of resistance Palestinians choose, they will be designated as terrorist aggressors anyway. When Israel seized private Palestinian land to expand an illegal settlement, Palestinians responded by erecting a small encampment called Bab al-Shams on it as a peaceful demonstration against this action. Naturally, they were accused of practicing “construction terrorism” by Israelis and promptly beat, repressed, arrested and removed from the land. When Palestinians started preparing a case against Israel in the International Criminal Court, they were accused of practicing “legal terrorism“. Palestinian prisoner hunger strikes are described as “Terrorism in Prison”. None of this would qualify as terrorism from an international law perspective; however, Israel uses this designation indiscriminately to demonize and ostracize any kind of Palestinian resistance, no matter what it looks like, while simultaneously claiming its monstrous repression as defensive. There must be consistent and principled pushback against the ludicrous claim of Israeli “self-defense”. It is the Palestinians who are defending themselves against settler-colonial, ethnonationalist aggression, and who surely need the support more than an imperialist backed nuclear state. | {
"articleTitle": "Myth: Israel is defending itself | Decolonize Palestine",
"pageTitle": "Myth: Israel is defending itself | Decolonize Palestine",
"dataScrapedDate": "2025-10-25T18:39:29.333Z",
"url": "https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/israel-is-defending-itself",
"description": "What does it mean for a settler-colony to defend itself from the people it is colonizing? How is Israel defending itself when its existence depends on violence against Palestinians?"
} |
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