One of the tactics of the left is to distort stories for its political benefit. Nowhere is that more true than with the Israeli-Arab conflict.
There is a story of a venerable rabbi who walked through his Polish town with one of his students. As they arrived in front of one house, they heard horrible screams. The oldest son of the house cursed and shouted at his parents with no break. The rabbi listened to the horrible words but did nothing. His student was surprised, as the rabbi was always the first to make peace between neighbors, husbands and wives. After a few minutes, the son and father appeared at the front door. The son was about to push his father out of the house. The rabbi ran up, whacked the son with his cane and called him an evil person. Afterwards, the rabbi and student walked quietly back to their neighborhood. “I don’t understand. You did nothing until the young man tried to push his father out the door. Why?” The rabbi answered: “When the father was young, he also used to swear at and curse his own father. But he never tried to throw him out of the house. Once they reached that stage, I got involved. Everything that came before it was deserved.”
Recently, one of the Israeli hostages released in a daring raid, Noa Argamani, threw a party to celebrate life. If anyone deserves to rejoice, it would appear to be this young woman and others who went through Hamas hell and have returned home. Someone on X commented that 200 Gazans were killed to release her and three other abductees. And this exchange perfectly distills one of the central problems in discussing the Israeli-Arab conflict: where do you start the story?
The woman who complained about 200 Gazans being killed to release Noa Argamani made it seem that she sees the story starting with Noa Argamani somehow being in Gaza by means unknown. The Israeli brutes came in and murdered Palestinians left and right to get her home. She did not want to delve somewhat further into the manner by which Argamani arrived in Gaza. One can watch the video of her being sandwiched on a motorcycle between two Hamas brutes and begging anyone to save her from the horrible fate that was to await her. If one goes back just one more step to her violent kidnapping from the music festival, then the killing of many Gazans to get her out would seem completely acceptable. And that’s why where one begins the story becomes critical in any honest assessment of the Israeli-Arab conflict.
When thousands of Hamas terrorists raped, burned, killed, and kidnapped Jews in numbers not heard of since the Holocaust, the Western Jew haters were dealt a difficult hand. Jews going about their business on a Sabbath/Holiday were murdered, tortured, and burned to death in the most horrific manner—with the atrocities conveniently recorded by Hamas. But the lefty and Islamist protesters did not miss a beat. Already on the 8th of October, only one day after the pogrom and while Israel was still looking for terrorists on the loose, Jew-hating groups and individuals blamed the Jews for what happened to them. They claimed that Israel was occupying Gaza. Anyone who has seen the news in the past 20 years would know that Israel left Gaza in 2005. But how did Israel get into Gaza in the first place? In 1967, Gamel Abdul Nasser, the Baathst leader of Egypt, planned with his Arab partners to fight a multi-front war to destroy Israel. Israel preempted Egyptian actions and the result was the Six Day War in which Israel, for the first time, took over Gaza. When Israel made peace with Egypt, Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat, declined to receive Gaza back. He knew that the Palestinians were only a headache. It might be the first time in world history that a leader turned down extra territory.
Every discussion regarding Israel and its Arab enemies depends on when you start your story. When we were blown up on King George Street in Jerusalem, the head of the terror cell that sent the bomber said that he did what he did to avenge his brother who was killed by Israeli security forces. But why was his brother killed? He had been involved in multiple terror attacks in which Israelis had been killed and injured. But why did the brother do what he did? Because of the Israeli occupation. But the West Bank is the same story as Gaza, but it was taken from Jordan in the same planned war of Israel’s destruction in 1967.
Much of fake news is technically correct but factually distorted. The BBC often likes to lead with some Israeli reprisal and then at the end mention the terror action that brought it about. This trick was brought out this week claiming that Israel attacked Lebanon and Hezbollah sent rockets into Israel. Israel only attacked because Hezbollah had arranged to send thousands of rockets and missiles into Israel. The BBC, like the anti-Argamani X commentator, made Israel’s actions the cause of an Arab response, when the truth was exactly inverted. So what is the truth? Where do we start our timeline?
Even if we ignore the proven historical ties of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, as stated in the Bible and confirmed by numerous archaeological finds, the truth is on the side of the Jews. Those who came from the 18th century forward bought the land where they settled. Towns like Tel Aviv, west Jerusalem, and Zichron Yaakov were set up by Jews who came, purchased land, and built new settlements. Our home sits on land bought by my wife’s grandfather in the 1920s. The purchase was recorded in the land registry. I have seen it. So the Jewish areas pre-state were all purchased. In 1947, the UN offered a partitioned map which the Jews accepted and the Arabs rejected. Five Arab armies came to destroy the nascent state of Israel in May of 1948 and lost. Israel added land in 1967, again through war. Whatever land is in Israel’s hands is “kosher” no less than the land in any other country in the world. The US is made up of purchased land (from France) and land taken by war.
So, yes, Israel killed a lot of Palestinians both in the rescue effort and overall in the post-10/7 Gaza war. And the Palestinians deserve everything they get. Those murdered in Israel were not occupiers or settlers. They were legitimate citizens in a kosher country. The death and misery of the Palestinians is something that they repeatedly bring upon themselves nearly 80 years running. Don’t blame Israel for killing them. When the Palestinians attacked on 10/7, they signed off on everything that would come to follow.