Bernie Sanders on U.S. aid to Israel

I am very worried about what Netanyahu is doing and some of his allies in government and what may happen to the Palestinian people.  And let me tell you something: I haven't said this publicly, but I think the United States gives billions of dollars in aid to Israel, and I think we've got to put some strings attached to that.  And so you cannot run a racist government, you cannot turn your back on the two-state solution, you cannot demean the Palestinian people there.  You just can't do it and come to America and ask for money.

~ Bernie Sanders, "Bernie Sanders on the Truth About Israel and AIPAC," The Majority Report, February 21, 2023

Bezalel Smotrich on a one-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict

[A]s Jews, we ought not give up our national aspiration for an independent state in the Land of Israel—the only Jewish state in the world.  As such, the party that will have to give up its aspiration to realize a national identity in the Land of Israel is the Arab one.  The reason we are condemned to a never-ending cycle of bloodshed is that nobody dares voice this simple statement.  Nevertheless, only in this declaration lies the key that can unlock the door to real peace. 

Ending the conflict means creating and cementing the awareness—practically and politically—that there is room for only one expression of national self-determination west of the Jordan River: that of the Jewish nation.  Subsequently, an Arab State actualizing Arab national aspirations cannot emerge within the same territory.  Victory involves shelving this dream.  And as motivation for its fulfillment dwindles, so will the terror campaign against Israel. 

This goal will be achieved even with declarations—with an unequivocal Israeli statement to the Arabs and the entire world that a Palestinian State will not emerge—but primarily with deeds.  It requires the application of full Israeli sovereignty to the heartland regions of Judea and Samaria, and end of conflict by settlement in the form of establishing new cities and settlements deep inside the territory and bringing hundreds of thousands of additional settlers to live therein.  This process will make it clear to all that the reality in Judea and Samaria is irreversible, that the State of Israel is here to stay, and that the Arab dream of a state in Judea and Samaria is no longer viable.  Victory by settlement will imprint the understanding upon the consciousness of the Arabs and the world that an Arab state will never arise in this land.

Based on this unequivocal starting point, the Arabs of the Land of Israel will face two basic alternatives:

1. Those who wish to forgo their national aspirations can stay here and live as individuals in the Jewish State; they will of course enjoy all the benefits that the Jewish State has brought and is bringing to the Land of Israel.  We will discuss the status and living management of those who choose this option in more detail below.
2. Those who choose not to let go of their national ambitions will receive aid to emigrate to one of the many countries where Arabs realize their national ambitions, or to any other destination in the world.

It is of course safe to assume that not everyone will adopt one of these two choices.  There will be those who will continue to choose another "option"—continuing to fight the IDF, the State of Israel, and the Jewish population.  Such terrorists will be dealt with by the security forces with a strong hand and under more manageable conditions for doing so.

[...]

From a historic, international and religious perspective, the Zionist project of the return of the Jewish People to its land after two thousand years of exile, wandering, and persecution, is the most just and moral undertaking or enterprise to have taken place in the past several centuries.  We are not the U.N., and under no compulsion to assume that we are dealing with two narratives equal in justice and arguments.  Our belief in the justice of our cause is what gives us the moral strength to defeat the conflicting Arab aspiration.

~ Bezalel Smotrich, vice chairman of the Knesset, "Israel's Decisive Plan," Hashiloach, September 7, 2017

(As of 2023, Smotrich served as Finance Minister.)

The Jerusalem Post: Israeli environmentalists shocked by Greta Thunberg's position on Gaza

More than 100 Israeli environmental leaders and activists have sent a letter to Greta Thunberg after she posted a pro-Hamas thread on X, formerly known as Twitter. 

Today we strike in solidarity with Palestine and Gaza.  The world needs to speak up and call for an immediate ceasefire, justice and freedom for Palestinians and all civilians affected. 

Israel’s environmental leaders told her over the weekend that they are “deeply hurt, shocked and disappointed with your tweets and posts regarding Gaza, which are appallingly one-sided, ill-informed, superficial and are in complete contrast to your ability to deep dive into details and get to the bottom of complex issues.”

They accused Thunberg of “[taking] sides with terrorists, with the worst and darkest representatives of humans, and plainly - with the wrong side of history.” 

The letter was spearheaded by Rony Bruell, founder of the Israeli Forum of Women in the Environment. In just a few hours, Bruell captured more than 200 signatures from like-minded individuals nationwide, many in top roles at their institutions.

~ Maayan Jaffe Hoffman, "Israel environmentalists slam Greta Thunberg for ‘Stand with Gaza’ post," The Jerusalem Post, October 21, 2023

The Education Ministry has said it will remove any reference to climate activist Greta Thunberg after she published a post over the weekend holding an anti-Israel sign reading "stand with Gaza."

~ Maayan Jaffe Hoffman, "Israel removes Greta Thunberg from school curriculum over anti-Israel post," The Jerusalem Post, October 22, 2023

Ben Shapiro on the solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict

The time for half measures has passed...  Some have rightly suggested that Israel be allowed to decapitate the terrorist leadership of the Palestinian Authority.  But this, too, is only a half measure.  The ideology of the Palestinian population is indistinguishable from that of the terrorist leadership...

Here is the bottom line: If you believe that the Jewish state has a right to exist, then you must allow Israel to transfer the Palestinians and the Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper.  It’s an ugly solution, but it is the only solution.  And it is far less ugly than the prospect of bloody conflict ad infinitum...

The Jews don’t realize that expelling a hostile population is a commonly used and generally effective way of preventing violent entanglements.  There are no gas chambers here.  It’s not genocide; it’s transfer...

It’s time to stop being squeamish.  Jews are not Nazis.  Transfer is not genocide.  And anything else isn’t a solution.

~ Ben Shapiro, "Transfer is not a dirty word," Narkive, August 27, 2003

Theodor Herzl on displacing Arabs in Palestine

We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country… expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.

~ Theodor Herzl, 1895

Mike Whitney on how Zionists view the Arab population

As an American, diversity might not seem like such a big deal.  But to many Israelis, it’s pure strychnine.  Zionists, in particular, see growth in the Arab population as a “demographic time-bomb” that threatens the future of the Jewish state.  And that’s what the Gaza fracas is really all about; getting rid of the people but keeping the land.  In fact, the last 75 years of conflict can be reduced to just 8 words, “They want the land, but not the people.”

[...] 

Demographics are considered a national security issue, an existential issue, and an issue that will decide the future of the Jewish State.  Is it any wonder why the reaction has been so extreme?  Is it any wonder why people refer to the fact that there is a large population of Palestinians in Palestine as the “Arab problem”?  And, of course, once the indigenous population is regarded as a “problem”, then it is incumbent on the political leaders to conjure-up a solution.

So, what exactly is the solution to the Arab problem?

Why fewer Arabs, of course.  Which is why the idea of expelling the Palestinians has a long pedigree in Zionist thinking dating back a full five decades before the establishment of the Jewish state.  As it happens, the Arabs were always a problem even when the Jews represented less than 10 percent of the population.  Go figure?  Check out this comment by the ideological father of political Zionism himself, Theodor Herzl, who wrote the following: 

We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country… expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly. 

Shockingly, Herzl wrote those words in 1895, 50 years before Israel declared its statehood.  And many of the Zionist leaders who followed him shared that same world view, like Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion who said: 

You are no doubt aware of the [Jewish National Fund’s] activity in this respect.  Now a transfer of a completely different scope will have to be carried out.  In many parts of the country new settlement will not be possible without transferring the Arab fellahin.  Jewish power [in Palestine], which grows steadily, will also increase our possibilities to carry out this transfer on a large scale. (1948) 

And here’s Ben-Gurion again in 1938:

I support compulsory transfer.  I don’t see anything immoral in it.

See how far back this line of reasoning goes?  The Zionists were tweaking their ethnic cleansing plans long before Israel had even become a state.  And for good reason.  They knew that the numbers did not support the prospects for an enduring Jewish State.  The only way to square the circle was through compulsory resettlement, otherwise known as “transfer.”  And while that policy might have been repugnant to a great many Jews, a far larger number undoubtedly believed it was a cruel necessity.

~ Mike Whitney, "The War in Gaza: It's Not About Hamas. It's About Demographics," The Unz Review, December 16, 2023

Norman Finkelstein on how many young Jews are opposing Israel's war on the people of Gaza

You look at what the evidence shows, not based on biased sources or naturally-biased sources, but on the available evidence.  And I tried to be a strict adherent of the two principles of truth and justice and that's where I landed.  And I think frankly that's where most of the world has landed and it's also, incidentally but not trivially, it's where a large part of the young Jewish population has landed.  If you go to the demonstrations now, the ones that have garnered the headlines, say the one in Grand Central Station, it was overwhelmingly Jewish.  It was all organized by Jewish organizations, young people mostly, but not entirely.  The Statue of Liberty demonstration: again, it was Jewish young people who organized the demonstration.  So this idea that it's somehow polarized ethnically is belied by the facts.

Now I will wholeheartedly admit that when I first started out we were a handful of people, Jews who opposed what Israel was doing.  But the spectrum has radically changed in recent years.  I'm just one among a large number, a sea of Jews who oppose what's going on, not because they're self-hating, not because they're indifferent to the faith of Israelis, but because the evidence is overwhelming.

You started out by saying you're not knowledgeable about the topic.  Fair enough.  There are 10,000 topics I'm not knowledgeable about and where you have much more knowledge, I'm quite certain of that.  But this is not a particularly complicated situation right now.  The Israeli government is openly, unabashedly, flagrantly, blatantly - it's declared a war of genocide on the people of Gaza.

~ Norman Finkelstein, "Israel vs. Palestine with Norman Finkelstein," 8:10 mark, November 17, 2023

Ryan McMaken on the political logic of sanctions

The idea behind sanctions has long been to make the population suffer so that "the people" will revolt against the ruling regime and force it to cease the policies that the sanction-imposing regimes find objectionable.  In many cases, the stated goal is regime change.  It's essentially the same philosophy behind Allied efforts to bomb German civilians during World War II: it was assumed the bombing would ruin civilians' morale and lead to domestic demands that Berlin surrender. 

Economic sanctions are less despicable than bombers targeting civilians, of course, but they are also likely less effective.  Instead of convincing the domestic population to abandon their own regime, foreign attacks on civilians—whether military or economic—often cause the domestic population to double down on their opposition to foreign powers.

~ Ryan McMaken, "Why Sanctions Don't Work, and Why They Mostly Hurt Ordinary People," Mises.org, March 9, 2022

Scott Ritter on how Israel supported Hamas in order to sabotage a Palestinian state

The Israelis have been fostering Hamas from the very beginning.  Hamas was conceived by the Palestinians as its own thing, but it was the Israeli government that said, "This we can use."  You see, Israel didn't want the Palestinian Liberation Army, or PLO, to become this powerful entity because the last thing Israel wants is a viable Palestinian state.  I'll say that one more time just so people understand what I'm saying: Israel does not want a Palestinian state.  Never has.  Won't tolerate it.  They talk about it, but they knew they were never going to allow it to happen.  And one of the ways they prevented it from happening was to create a division within the Palestinian population.  So they promoted Hamas, they funneled money into Hamas, they openly collaborated with Hamas - even though I don't think Hamas understood they were being collaborated with - and they empowered Hamas.

All of the terrorist acts that took place in the 1990s took place because Israel wanted them to take place.  I'm not saying they planned them.  What I am saying is that Isreal viewed that as a very effective way of not only dividing the Palestinian population, but then demonizing them in the eyes of the world so that there wouldn't be a Palestinian state.  You see, if Hamas is going around blowing up buses and bridges, no one's going to support a Palestinian state because everybody's bought into the notion that Israeli security must come first.  

Israel was facilitating the acts of terror that took place against them by creating the organization that produced the terrorists.  That doesn't mean that Israel wasn't hunting them down and killing them.  Of course they were.  I'm just saying that Israel's not an innocent party here.  Netanyahu's not an innocent party.

[...]

The only solution to this problem - the only solution - is the creation of a Palestinian state.  If you want to defeat Hamas - and the only way you're going to defeat Hamas - you have to create a Palestinian state that diffuses Hamas's reason to exist.  Hamas exists to resist Israel, but if there's a Palestinian state, there's really nothing left to resist.  So Hamas will go away.

~ Scott Ritter, "US Marine Corps Officer Scott Ritter Reveals Truth About Israel War," Cyrus Janssen, 13:10 mark, November 1, 2023

Ted Galen Carpenter on war propaganda

[T]oo many journalists have given exposure to questionable Israeli accounts. One story that made an especially big splash was a report that Israeli troops had found at least 40 dead babies “some beheaded,” in an Israeli kibbutz recaptured from Hamas. That story soon became clouded with uncertainty. At first, the Israeli government conceded that it could not confirm the report. Then, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office presented photos of dead children, although their authenticity could not be verified by outside experts.

Whether true, false, or exaggerated, the account had served its purpose as widely circulated propaganda to generate hate toward Hamas and the Palestinians. As pervious wartime episodes have confirmed, most readers and viewers remember the initial high-profile stories about alleged atrocities (often vividly when bloody images are used) rather than later, more restrained, less prominent analyses. Pro-war propagandists shamelessly exploit that tendency.

Indeed, this Israeli account had a somewhat musty quality. Hawks used a similar story in late 1990 about Iraqi troops pulling Kuwaiti babies from incubators in a Kuwait city hospital and letting them die on the floor. The supposed witness to the atrocity turned out to be the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States. Subsequent investigations confirmed that the story was bogus, but by that time, it had helped shape public opinion to support President H. W. Bush’s decision to launch Operation Desert Storm.

Indeed, the tactic of using exaggerated or phony atrocity stories (frequently with innocent children as the victims) goes back much earlier. During World War I. the British government conducted an extensive campaign to portray Imperial Germany as the epitome of evil, Kaiser Wilhelm II as “the beast of Berlin,” and German troops as homicidal monsters. One very effective initiative was the circulation of supposed eyewitness accounts of German soldiers raping nuns and bayoneting babies. Those phony propaganda stories were not debunked until the postwar years.

Given that history, one might think that responsible journalists would be very cautious about regurgitating accounts – especially atrocities stories – put forth by one faction waging a war. However, with respect to both Ukrainian and Israeli accounts, most establishment media outlets have displayed very little prudent skepticism. Such unprofessionalism has embarrassed previous generations of editors, columnists and reporters. The same dismal outcome is likely this time.

~ Ted Galen Carpenter, "Credulous or Dishonest Journalists Regurgitate Pro-War Propaganda," Anti-War.com, October 17, 2023

WWI propaganda poster

Anonymous progressive American tourist on the Israel-Palestine conflict

My original interest for coming here was really the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  I was raised in a pretty left-wing culture, household, critical of the Israeli government and I still feel that way.  I'm pro-Israel, I'm pro-Palestine and I feel I'm pretty "on the left" on that issue.  But being here has shown me the value of being here and the value of talking to Israelis and learning about Israel and respecting Israel.  And I think the biggest mistake of the Berkeley, pro-Palestinian stereotypical people is not wanting to engage with Israel, wanting to boycott Israel; don't visit Israel, don't talk to Israeli professors.  I think being here has reinforced how much you can learn about a country even if you don't agree with the government on a particular thing.  And the people - so many people in Israel have so many mixed, complicated views about the conflict.  It's not like they all hate Arabs, or Palestinians.

~ "Tourists in Israel: What surprised you about Israel?," The Ask Project, 19:45 mark, February 5, 2023

Neil Rogall on Truman supported Jewish immigration to Palestine after WWII

By 1945 the US government fully supported the Zionists.  They knew how important oil had been in war and were keen to have reliable allies in the Middle East.  The news of the death camps in Germany led to worldwide sympathy for the Jews.  The Zionists used this to bolster their demands.  President Roosevelt’s successor Harry Truman put pressure on the British to allow all Jewish holocaust survivors to be sent to Palestine.  The British refused.  This wasn’t sympathy on Truman’s part.  Most camp survivors wanted to go to the USA. But Truman was an openly racist and anti-Semitic politician who had only been chosen as Roosevelt’s running mate to placate southern 'Dixiecrats.'  Truman was opposed to letting Jewish refugees into the US. However, in 1947, the Zionists won a key propaganda battle.  The Exodus, a packed refugee ship was sent back from Palestine to Germany.  Much western opinion saw this as an inhuman act.

~ Neil Rogall, "Making the Palestinians the scapegoats for Nazi crimes," rs21, October 9, 2014

Harry Truman with Israeli President Chaim Weizmann

Neil Rogall on UN partition plan and King Abdullah's secret plan to divide Palestine with the Zionists

The UN general assembly voted on November 29th.  The UN today has 193 member states...  

The Jewish population owned less than 6% of the land and comprised a third of the population but they were to be given more than half the country.  The Arab delegates stormed out declaring the resolution invalid.  But that was mostly bluster.  We now know thanks to Avi Shlaim‘s ‘Collusion Across The Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine’ that the Hashemite monarchy in Transjordan had secretly negotiated a deal with the Zionists to divide Palestine between them. 

The Zionists were ecstatic that the UN had voted for a Jewish state, yet they didn’t support the plan.  Ben Gurion’s view was that the Jewish state’s borders "will be determined by force and not the partition resolution…there are no territorial boundaries for the future Jewish state."  That was written on 7 October 1947, some 7 weeks before the UN vote.  Israel to this day has not declared its borders. 

~ Neil Rogall, "Making the Palestinians the scapegoats for Nazi crimes," rs21, October 9, 2014

1988

Hans-Hermann Hoppe on who rises to the top of a democracy

Democracy virtually assures that only bad and dangerous men will ever rise to the top of government.

~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy: The God That Failed

2001

Neil Rogall on Palestinian landownership under Ottoman and British rule and rise of conflicted Palestinian leadership

Palestinian fellahin (peasants) viewed the land they cultivated as their birthright.  They might not formally own it but that was somewhat beside the point.  Landlordism had only really taken off in Palestine with the Ottoman Land Code of 1858.  Many peasants failed to register their land under the new laws.  They often couldn’t afford the registration fee or didn’t want their names on government documents for fear of conscription into the Ottoman army.  In these cases the land was registered in the name of the local notable.  The fellahin believed that this way they would hold onto ‘their’ land.  Elsewhere the Ottoman government simply seized land claiming it was needed for security reasons or that it wasn’t being cultivated properly.  Such land was then put up for sale and often bought by wealthy men from Beirut.

City of Bethlehem during the Ottoman Empire, 1880

The result was that many cultivators lost control of their land.  The dispossessed ended up as sharecropping tenants on what had been their own land.  When Zionist settlers purchased such land from the landlords, they evicted the fellahin.  As early as 1883, peasants were attacking these new Jewish settlements.  This affected not just the fellahin but also the nomadic Bedouin who were no longer able to graze their animals on what had been seen as common land.  In response the Ottoman government often called out the army to remove peasants who had occupied their old lands or were refusing to leave.  Such resistance continued into and throughout the entire period of British rule. 

Peasant unrest pushed the local elite into protesting about Zionist immigration.  Such protests were pretty feeble, and began to undermine the relationships between the notables and their followers.  Many of these elite figures hoped that Palestine would be incorporated into Syria following the end of the war.  When this didn’t happen, a distinctive Palestinian nationalism begins to develop.

[...]

In reality none of the notables were able to play an effective role as a nationalist leadership.  They were far too compromised.  Some had good jobs in the colonial government.  They couldn’t defend the peasants from the settlers who were evicting them from their land because it was they, the a’yan who were selling the land to the Zionists.  Nor could they offer any political progress to their supporters, as the British were hostile to any democratic reforms that would relegate the Jewish settlers to a minority position.  They were totally incapable of providing any serious leadership to ordinary Palestinians faced with the growing settler threat. 

Colonial policies helped ruin the countryside.  The drive to commercial agriculture, the encouragement of land sales to the settlers and the sheer greed of landlords wretched rural Palestine. 

By 1930 some 30% of all Palestinian villagers were landless, while as many as 75% to 80% of the remainder didn’t have sufficient land to meet their needs.  On top of this, colonial taxation policies hit Palestinian peasants far harder than the Jewish agricultural enterprises.  Such taxes were of course used to pay for British rule and its support of the settlers.

[...]

The impoverishment of the rural Palestinian population accelerated with the global depression that followed the 1929 Wall Street Crash.  This was made worse by the increasing number of settlers who arrived following Hitler’s appointment as German Chancellor in 1933 and the growth of an increasingly deadly anti-Semitism in Poland.  Peasant indebtedness led to many selling their land to pay their debts.  Simultaneously the big landlords made huge killings selling their estates to the Jewish National Fund.

The bankruptcy of the notables’ policies was therefore increasingly apparent: they had made no progress toward achieving national independence, and were incapable of stemming the Zionist tide of increasing population, land settlement and economic development.

In these circumstances the a’yan class themselves splintered.  The Nashashibi family clan turned against the policies of the Arab Executive, dominated by the Husseini family.  The Nashashibis called for compromise with the British and the settlers.  This followed from their class interest: the Nashashibis were the wealthiest landowners, the largest citrus exporters and greatest sellers of land to the settlers.

~ Neil Rogall, "The birth of Palestinian Resistance and the 1936 uprising," rs21, September 12, 2014

Neil Rogall on the British defeat of the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine

But by the summer of 1939 the British had crushed the uprising.  The infamous Munich agreement, between Nazi Germany and Britain was signed on the 30th September 1938.  More Imperial troops were now available to send to Palestine to put down the rebels.  By 1939 the authorities had 30,000 trained soldiers fighting the insurgents.  The RAF bombed Palestinian villages.  A policy of collective punishment was implemented.  If one member of a village was involved in armed rebellion the whole community was punished.  The Israelis of course, continued this vicious policy. 

Throughout the rebellion the settler community, the Yishuv collaborated with the British.  The Mandate authorities formed the Jewish Settlement police.  By 1939, one in twenty of the settler community was a member, some 21,000 people in all.  Orde Wingate, a British officer, organised a counter-insurgency force of Jewish fighters, the Special Night Squads.  They terrorized villagers and guarded the oil pipeline.  Internally the Yishuv expanded the Haganah, secretly imported arms and set up factories to manufacture weapons. 

The revisionist militia, the Irgun, began a terrorist campaign in May 1938.  They threw bombs into crowded Palestinian market places or left them hidden in carts.  Jerusalem, Haifa and Jaffa were all targeted.  Some estimates suggested that up to 250 Palestinians were killed in these barbaric attacks.  When Zionists talk about Palestinian suicide bombers, it is worth remembering who began bombing civilians in Palestine. 

[...] 

There were up to 6,000 Palestinians killed in the uprising, and 6,000 more in detention.  2,000 homes had been destroyed.  The British hanged 100.  The Palestinians had suffered an enormous defeat, any leadership they had was dead, in exile or driven out of politics.  They could no longer play an independent role.  In future they became disastrously dependent on other Arab states for leadership.  They still had not recovered from the defeat when the crisis of 1948 hit.  It wasn’t until the 1960s that an independent Palestinian leadership was to re-emerge with Yasser Arafat and El Fatah.

~ Neil Rogall, "The birth of Palestinian Resistance and the 1936 uprising," rs21, September 12, 2014

British soldiers and Palestinian prisoners during the 1936 revolt

Al Jazeera on the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine

What happened during the 1930s?

• Escalating tensions eventually led to the Arab Revolt, which lasted from 1936 to 1939.

• In April 1936, the newly formed Arab National Committee called on Palestinians to launch a general strike, withhold tax payments and boycott Jewish products to protest British colonialism and growing Jewish immigration.

• The six-month strike was brutally repressed by the British, who launched a mass arrest campaign and carried out punitive home demolitions, a practice that Israel continues to implement against Palestinians today.

• The second phase of the revolt began in late 1937 and was led by the Palestinian peasant resistance movement, which targeted British forces and colonialism.

• By the second half of 1939, Britain had massed 30,000 troops in Palestine. Villages were bombed by air, curfews imposed, homes demolished, and administrative detentions and summary killings were widespread. 

• In tandem, the British collaborated with the Jewish settler community and formed armed groups and a British-led “counterinsurgency force” of Jewish fighters named the Special Night Squads.

• Within the Yishuv, the pre-state settler community, arms were secretly imported and weapons factories established to expand the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary that later became the core of the Israeli army.

• In those three years of revolt, 5,000 Palestinians were killed, 15,000 to 20,000 were wounded and 5,600 were imprisoned.

~ Al Jazeera Staff, "What's the Israel-Palestine conflict about? A simple guide," Al Jazeera, October 9, 2003

Palestine's 1936 Great Revolt

Elisa Miah on the oppression of the Palestinians

Naturally, those at Yale with relatives who have been taken as prisoners or died in this manner have a right to mourn for their loved ones.  However, the losses must be compared to the losses, abuses and deaths inflicted upon the Palestinians.  Without a clear and full understanding of the situation, its origins and effects, we will not be able to draw a roadmap to resolving the crisis. 

When the Palestinians try to mobilize peacefully, they face brutal retaliation. Attempts at peace imposed by the international community — led, as usual, by the Western bloc and the United States — have led to nothing.  There have been countless UN declarations and condemnations.  The problem is that Israel has no respect for international law. 

Attempts at peaceful resolution, such as the Oslo Accords, have failed the Palestinians completely.  When Palestinians try to peacefully take matters into their own hands, such as in the peaceful ‘Great March of Return,’ they are shot at, mowed down.  Whether they resist or submit, Palestinians can be sure that Israeli bullets will kill, maim and injure them. 

There can then be no confusion.  This conflict is between a powerful, aggressive imperialist state against a weak, oppressed people, deprived of their every right.  To present these sides as equal aggressors and to take a stand middling between the two, or to claim the oppressed to be the instigators of violence is to look at the situation without any sense of history, perspective or understanding of how we got here. 

There is no conscionable stance that can be taken except to stand with the right of the oppressed to live in liberty and dignity, free from oppression. Israel’s “right to defend itself” is an inversion of the whole situation.  Palestinians have been unrelentingly oppressed and are the ones trying to defend themselves, throwing whatever they can at a mighty military machine that has crushed their resistance every time. 

~ Elisa Miah, "Fanning the Flames," Yale Daily News, October 16, 2023

(Elisa Miah is a sophomore in Branford College and an active member of Socialist Revolution, a communist group active in New Haven and across the United States.)

Amnesty International on the killing of Palestinian demonstrators in the Great March of Return (2018)

According to the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, since the start of the protests, over 150 Palestinians have been killed in the demonstrations.  At least 10,000 others have been injured, including 1,849 children, 424 women, 115 paramedics and 115 journalists.  Of those injured, 5,814 were hit by live ammunition.  According to Israeli media, one soldier was moderately injured due to shrapnel from a grenade thrown by a Palestinian from inside Gaza and one Israeli soldier was killed by Palestinian sniper fire near the fence that separates Gaza and Israel outside of the context of the protests. 

Why are Palestinians demonstrating? 

This year has marked 11 years since Israel imposed a land, air and sea blockade on the Gaza Strip.  The United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), among others, have characterized Israel’s closure policy as “collective punishment” and called for Israel to lift its closure.  Under Israel’s illegal blockade, movement of people and goods is severely restricted and the majority of exports and imports of raw materials have been banned.  Travel through the Erez Crossing, Gaza’s passenger crossing to Israel, the West Bank, and the outside world, is limited to what the Israeli military calls “exceptional humanitarian cases”, meaning mainly those with significant health issues and their companions, and prominent businesspeople.  Meanwhile, since 2013, Egypt has imposed tight restrictions on the Rafah crossing, keeping it closed most of this time. 

Over the last 11 years, civilians in the Gaza Strip, 70% of whom are registered refugees from areas that now constitute Israel, have suffered the devastating consequences of Israel’s illegal blockade in addition to three wars that have also taken a heavy toll on essential infrastructure and further debilitated Gaza’s health system and economy.  As a result, Gaza’s economy has sharply declined, leaving its population almost entirely dependent on international aid.  Gaza now has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world at 44%.  Four years after the 2014 conflict, some 22,000 people remain internally displaced, and thousands suffer from significant health problems that require urgent medical treatment outside of the Gaza Strip.  However, Israel often denies or delays issuing permits to those seeking vital medical care outside Gaza, while hospitals inside the Strip lack adequate resources and face chronic shortages of fuel, electricity and medical supplies caused mainly by Israel’s illegal blockade. 

The protests were launched to demand the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees to their villages and towns in what is now Israel, and to call for an end to Israel’s blockade.  They culminated on 14 May, on the day of the US embassy’s move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, when Palestinians commemorate the displacement and dispossession of hundreds of thousands in 1948-9 during the conflict following the creation of the state of Israel.  On that day alone, Israeli forces killed 59 Palestinians, in a horrifying example of use of excessive force and live ammunition against protesters who did not pose an imminent threat to life.

The organizers of the “Great March of Return” have repeatedly stated that the protests are intended to be peaceful, and they have largely involved demonstrators protesting near the fence that separates the Gaza Strip from Israel. Despite this, the Israeli army reinforced its forces – deploying tanks, military vehicles and soldiers, including snipers, along the Gaza/Israel fence – and gave orders to shoot anyone within several hundred metres of the fence.

~ "Six Months On: Gaza's Great March of Return," Amnesty International, October 19, 2018

Luke Tress on the United Nations criticizing Israel

Since 2015, the [UN] General Assembly has adopted 140 resolutions criticizing Israel, mainly over its treatment of the Palestinians, its relationships with neighboring countries and other alleged wrongdoings.  Over the same period, it has passed 68 resolutions against all other countries, UN Watch said.

In the 193-nation assembly’s most recent anti-Israel resolution Friday, it approved a call for the International Court of Justice to weigh in on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

The resolution promoted by the Palestinians passed by a vote of 87 in favor, 26 against, with 53 abstentions.

The resolution, titled “Israeli practices and settlement activities affecting the rights of the Palestinian people and other Arabs of the occupied territories,” calls on the Hague-based ICJ to “render urgently an advisory opinion” on Israel’s “prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of Palestinian territory.”

[...] 

In a strongly worded statement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would not be bound by the “despicable decision.”

Netanyahu’s new hardline government, sworn in on Thursday, is likely to further stoke tensions with the UN and the international community.

Of Netanyahu’s coalition partners, none are on record supporting a two-state solution with the Palestinians, some support annexing the West Bank without granting equal rights to Palestinians in those areas, and many also vehemently oppose coordination or strengthening the PA [Palestinian Authority].

~ Luke Tress, "UN condemned Israel more than all other countries in 2022 - monitor," The Times of Israel, January 3, 2023

Ludwig von Mises on how nationalists and classical liberals view free trade

The nationalists stress the point that there is an irreconcilable conflict between the interests of various nations, but that, on the other hand, the rightly understood interests of all the citizens within the nation are harmonious.  A nation can prosper only at the expense of other nations; the individual citizen can fare well only if his nation flourishes.  The liberals have a different opinion.  They believe that the interests of various nations harmonize no less than those of the various groups, classes, and strata of individuals within a nation.  They believe that peaceful international cooperation is a more appropriate means than conflict for the attainment of the end which they and the nationalists are both aiming at: their own nation's welfare.  They do not, as the nationalists charge, advocate peace and free trade in order to betray their own nation's interests to those of foreigners.  On the contrary, they consider peace and free trade the best means to make their own nation wealthy.  What separates the free traders from the nationalists are not ends, but the means recommended fo attainment of the ends common to both.

~ Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, p. 183

1949

Ludwig von Mises on the historical struggle between free trade and imperialism

History is a struggle between two principles, the peaceful principle, which advances the development of trade, and the militarist-imperialist principle, which interprets human society not as a friendly division of labour but as the forcible repression of some of its members by others.

~ Ludwig von Mises, Socialism, p. 268

1922

Wikipedia on how early Zionist movement discriminated against Arab workers

The Zionist movement tried to find work for the new immigrants who arrived in the Second Aliyah [1904-1914].  However, most were middle class and were not physically fit or knowledgeable in agricultural work.  The Jewish plantation owners had previously hired Arab workers who accepted low wages and were very familiar with agriculture.  The leaders of the Zionist movement insisted that plantation owners (those who arrived in the First Aliyah) only hire Jewish workers and grant higher wages.  The conquest of labor was a major Zionist goal. However, this caused some turmoil in the Yishuv for there were those who felt that they were discriminating against the Arabs just as they had been discriminated against in Russia.  The Arabs became bitter from the discrimination despite the small number of Arabs that were affected by this.

~ Wikipedia, "Yishuv: Beginning of modern Aliyah"

Many of the European Jewish immigrants during the late 19th-early 20th century period gave up after a few months and went back to their country of origin, often suffering from hunger and disease.  David Ben-Gurion estimated that 90% of the Second Aliyah "despaired of the country and left."

~ Wikipedia, "Second Aliyah"

Jewish yishuv in Rishon Levion, 1882

Brahma Chellaney on how Israel's policy of backing Hamas was influenced by U.S. support for mujahideen in Afghanistan

The international focus on the war in Gaza has helped obscure the fact that Israel in the 1980s aided the rise of the Islamist Hamas as a rival to the secular Palestinian Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah.  Israel’s policy was clearly influenced by the U.S. training and arming of mujahideen (or Islamic holy warriors) in Pakistan from multiple countries to wage jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. 

The multibillion-dollar American program from 1980 to create anti-Soviet jihadis represented what still remains the largest covert operation in the Central Intelligence Agency’s history.  In 1985, at a White House ceremony attended by several mujahideen, then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan gestured toward his guests and declared, “These gentlemen are the moral equivalent of America’s Founding Fathers.”

Out of the mujahideen evolved the Taliban and al-Qaida.  As then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton openly admitted in 2010, “We trained them, we equipped them, we funded them, including somebody named Osama bin Laden ... And it didn’t work out so well for us.”

~ Brahma Chellaney, "Israel's Historical Role in the Rise of Hamas," The Japan Times, November 21, 2023

President Reagan meeting with Afghan mujahideen
leaders in the Oval Office in 1983

Brahma Chellany on how Israel supported Hamas in order to thwart a two-state solution

Hamas, for its part, is alleged to have emerged out of the Israeli-financed Islamist movement in Gaza, with Israel’s then-military governor in that territory, Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, disclosing in 1981 that he had been given a budget for funding Palestinian Islamists to counter the rising power of Palestinian secularists.  Hamas, a spin-off of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, was formally established with Israel’s support soon after the first Intifada flared in 1987 as an uprising against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. 

Israel’s objective was twofold: to split the nationalist Palestinian movement led by Arafat and, more fundamentally, to thwart the implementation of the two-state solution for resolving the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  By aiding the rise of an Islamist group whose charter rejected recognizing the Israeli state, Israel sought to undermine the idea of a two-state solution, including curbing Western support for an independent Palestinian homeland. 

Israel’s spy agency Mossad played a role in this divide-and-rule game in the occupied territories.  In a 1994 book, “The Other Side of Deception,” Mossad whistleblower Victor Ostrovsky contended that aiding Hamas meshed with “Mossad’s general plan” for an Arab world “run by fundamentalists” that would reject “any negotiations with the West,” thereby leaving Israel as “the only democratic, rational country in the region.”  Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official involved in Gaza for over two decades, told a newspaper interviewer in 2009 that, “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.” 

~ Brahma Chellany, "Israel's historical role in the rise of Hamas," The Japan Times, November 21, 2023

Mehdi Hasan on how Israel helped finance Hamas

[D]id you also know that Hamas — which is an Arabic acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement” — would probably not exist today were it not for the Jewish state?  That the Israelis helped turn a bunch of fringe Palestinian Islamists in the late 1970s into one of the world’s most notorious militant groups?  That Hamas is blowback?

This isn’t a conspiracy theory.  Listen to former Israeli officials such as Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s.  Segev later told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.”)

“The Israeli government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques.”

~ Mehdi Hasan, "Blowback: How Israel Went From Helping Create Hamas to Bombing It," The Intercept, February 19, 2018

Richard Becker on the myth that the Six-Day War was "preemptive"

Most of the mainstream media, along with Israel’s apologists in the United States, propagated the notion that the war was a rerun of the biblical “David versus Goliath” battle.  Israel was pictured as the heroic underdog, with God once more on its side. 

The misnamed, U.S.-based “Anti-Defamation League,” which has long served as propagandist for the Israeli regime, said that “Israel launched a preemptive strike against Egypt,” suggesting that it only did so to avert annihilation. 

None other than the extreme right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin later exposed the utter falsity of such claims.  Fifteen years after the war, in an Aug. 2, 1982, speech to the Israeli National Defense College, Begin said: “We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him [Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser].” 

It was not just Begin who exposed the myth.  Ten years earlier, Gen. Mattiyahu Peled, one of the Israeli commanders in the 1967 Six-Day War, told the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz: “The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only a bluff, which was born and developed after the war.” 

In 1997, Israel’s minister of defense at the time of the Six-Day War, Moshe Dayan, talked to the New York Times about the events leading up to the war on the Syria-Israel front.  He stated that the Israeli kibbutz (cooperative farm) residents in the area wanted to take over the rich farmland of Syria’s Golan Heights: “They didn’t even try to hide their greed for that land.” 

Describing Israel’s tactics on its border with Syria, Dayan told the Times: 

We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn’t possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot.  If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot.  And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that’s how it was. …  The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war [June 9, 1967], were not a threat to us.

By the 1967 war, Israel succeeded in achieving its long-held objective of expansion.  The remaining 22 percent of historic Palestine—the West Bank and Gaza—was conquered by Israel’s surprise attack, along with Syria’s Golan Heights and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. 

More than 35,000 Arabs were killed, many of them burned to death by Pentagon-supplied napalm bombs.  Thousands more were wounded. Most of the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian air and armor forces were destroyed in the opening days of the surprise attack.  The Israeli army drove more than 90,000 Syrians and Palestinians out of the Golan Heights, an agriculturally rich region north of the Sea of Galilee. 

Many of the Syrian villages and Golan’s main city, Quneitra, were bulldozed by the Israeli military.  Israeli settlers began arriving in Golan in July 1967.  In 1981, the Israeli Knesset (parliament) passed a law annexing the Golan Heights.  The continuing occupation of Golan, as well as the West Bank and Gaza, defies scores of United Nations resolutions.

~ Richard Becker, "Fifty years later: Myths and facts about the Six Day War," Liberation, June 7, 2017

(This article is based on a talk by Richard Becker at a PSL forum in San Francisco on June 3, 2017.)

Richard Becker on how the Six-Day War unleashed the Palestinian resistance movement

With the conquest of the remaining 22 percent of Palestine in 1967, it appeared that the fate of the Palestinian people had been sealed.  But in a seeming paradox, the Six Day War led to the rise of the Palestinian resistance movement and new wave of popular radicalization across the region. 

Until the 1967 war, organizations such as Fatah- Palestine National Liberation Movement, and the Arab National Movement [ANM] led by George Habash, had placed their main hope for the liberation of Palestine with the Arab armies.  The outcome of the war brought that period to a close.  In 1968, Fatah and two organizations which emerged from the ANM, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for Liberation of Palestine, took control of the Palestine Liberation Organization and launched mass resistance against the occupiers. 

Since then, the struggle has continued in many forms and the vicious Israeli repression funded by the U.S., has taken an enormous toll.  The dispossession of the Palestinian, the killings, systematic torture, the illegal settlements, the house demolitions, the destruction of olive and fruit groves, the theft of water, the lethal blockade and isolation of Gaza, the apartheid practice of the right of return, the apartheid roads, the apartheid everything – continue day after day. 

Since the 1967 war, according the Addameer prisoner rights organization, 800,000 Palestinian men, more than 40% of the adult male population, have been imprisoned.  Today, there are more than 6,300 Palestinians in Israeli prisons – every one of them held in violation of international law.  And there are 0 Israelis held in Palestinian prisons.  If that were the one and only fact one knew about the conflict there, one would know who is the colonizer and who is the colonized, who is the oppressor and who are the oppressed. 

The Palestinian liberation struggle continues under the most difficult conditions.  Many times since 1948, the Palestinians have been counted out, but they have never surrendered.

~ Richard Becker, "Fifty years later: Myths and facts about the Six Day War," Liberation, June 7, 2017

(This article is based on a talk by Richard Becker at a PSL forum in San Francisco on June 3, 2017.)

Gideon Levy on the dehumanization of Palestinians by Israelis

By the end of the day, how many Israelis did ever try, for a moment, to put themselves in the place of the Palestinians, for a moment, for one day?  And I want to give you two examples which will demonstrate it.

Many years ago, I interviewed then candidate for Prime Minister, Ehud Barak.  And I asked him a question which I try to ask in any occasion: "Mr. Barak, what would have happened if you would have been born Palestinian?"  And Barak gave me the only honest answer he could give me.  He said "I would have joined the terror organization."  What else would he have done?  Would he become a poet?  He doesn't know to write poems.  Would he become a pianist?  He's quite a bad pianist and I doubt he would have become a collaborator because he is a fighter.  And it became a scandal because how can you dare to put Ehud Barak to think what would have happened if he would have become a Palestinian.

And the second incident briefly: second intifada, the city of Jenin, the most closed city in the West Bank, real, total seige.  I go out from Jenin, I come to the checkpoint, Palestinian ambulances parking there with the red lights.  I stand after him.  No cars can get out of Jenin in those days, no cars can get out, and I wait.  The soldiers are playing backgammon in the tent.  Usually, I know, I know myself, it's better that I don't get into confrontation with the soldiers because it always ends up very badly.  So I stayed in the car.

But after 40 minutes, I couldn't take it.  And I went out from the car, I went first to the Palestinian ambulance driver and I asked him, "What's going on?"  He told me, "That's the routine.  They let me wait one hour until they come and check the ambulance."  And I couldn't take it anymore and I went to the soldiers.  It became a confrontation.  But the question that I asked them which really brought them to direct their weapons toward me was one: "What would have happened if your father would have been lying in this ambulance?"  This freaked them out.  They lost control.  How can I dare to compare between their father and the Palestinian in the ambulance?  And this set of beliefs, that they are not human beings like us, enable us - Israelis - to live in so much peace with those crimes, ongoing crimes, for so many years, with losing any kind of humanity, values.

I heard today, people talk about Jewish values.  I must be frank with you, I don't know what are Jewish values.  I know what are universal values.

~ Gideon Levy, "How Israelis Live So Easily With Occupation," Saad Tasleem, 3:35 mark, November 7, 2023

Major James Larry Fields on how Irgun ideology influenced the Herut (now Likud) party

With the state of Israel secured, and the inclusion of the Irgun into the ZAHAL, there was no longer a need for the tactics of terrorism which had served the Irgun, and seemingly the Jewish people, so well.  However, the ideology of the men involved in the leadership of Irgun was perpetuated by the establishment of a political party, the HERUT which was based on the same zeal and ideals upon which the Irgun had thrived.  The new State of Israel would respect those ideals through incorporation of Irgun leadership in the new legitimate state.

~ Major James Larry Fields, USA, "Irgun Zvai Leumi: The Jewish Terrorist Element of the Arab-Israeli Conflict," Air Command and Staff College student report, April 1985

Murray Rothbard on the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre at Hebron (1994)

The brutal massacre at Hebron in late February was as fascinating for the inappropriate responses of the Israeli and U.S. authorities as for the dramatic nature of the act itself.  The initial response of the Israeli government was the traditional reaction in matters of this sort: to blame it all on one lone, "deranged" nut, in this case Dr. Baruch Goldstein.  But this first reaction fell through quickly when it turned out that, however nutty, Dr. Goldstein was scarcely alone: that he was, in fact, the leader in Hebron of the "Kachniks," the movement founded by the notorious Brookly Rabbi, the late Meir Kahane, which is now split into the Kach ("the way") Party and the smaller and even more fanatic Kahane Chai ("Kahane lives.")  The loneness was further called into question when the Kackniks praised Goldstein's mass murder of Arabs while kneeling in prayer in their mosque, and mourned the "martyrdom" of Goldstein, who was beaten to death by the enraged remnant of those of his victime who managed to remain alive.  World-wide television spread the remarkable comment of Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, at the Goldstein eulogy, a comment that was repeated by various of the mourners: "One million Arab lives are not worth one Jewish fingernail!"

[...]

The Palestinians were all too aware of the emptiness of these gestures of shame and anger by Israel.  Talk is cheap; as we say in New York, that and $1.25 will get you on the subway.  Despite all the talk of moving against the Kachniks, in fact only a half-dozen have been proscribed by the government, and only one is actually in jail.  The rage of the Palestinian Arabs is unbounded; even the usually passive Arabs of Israel proper have rioted against Israel; and even the traditionally pro-Israel Bedouin Arabs are talking about resigning from the Israeli Army.  You know that matters are serious when Farouk Khadoumi, the "foreign minister" of the PLO, and a man who has always been an ultra-moderate, refused Arafat's call to meet at Tunis because he didn't want even the hint of implication in a possible resumption of peace negotiations.

~ Murray Rothbard, "The Vital Importance of Separation," Rothbard-Rockwell Report, April 1994, pp. 1, 3

Yoseph Haddad on how Arab leaders contributed to the 1948 Nakba

My grandfather got an order to evacuate and get out of his village.  Not by the Jews, by the Arab leaders from Syria and Lebanon.  My grandfather rejected this request, or demand, back then.  And he stayed and he said, "I'm staying in my land."  And when the IDF came, no one took his land.  I'm speaking specifically about my grandfather.  I'm not saying there weren't events like this.  Just giving you my grandfather's story.  And he said, "I stayed in my village," which is Ishish.  It's a village in the north of Israel.  So he stayed there and that's exactly how I become who I am today, which is an Arab Israeli.  And you know what?  I'm very glad about that.

[...]

The majority of the Arabs who left the land of Israel were getting the orders to leave the land by Arab leaders, whether it's from Jordan, Syria, Lebanon or Egypt.  They're the ones who actually went on and just evacuated based on those orders.  Again, saying that, we still have to understand that in a war, there are terrible things that happen to both sides and we should acknowledge that.  By acknowledging that, we can actually move forward.  That's my message.

~ Yoseph Haddad, "Stolen Palestinian Land? An Arab Israeli Responds," Indigenous Coalition for Israel, 1:00 mark, April 26, 2023

Anonymous Palestinian American woman on how the West Bank has changed

Q: Now you are a Palestinian American?

A: Palestinian American.

Q: You haven't been here in 12 years.  Now you just came here.  What surprised you most this time being here?  What's different?

A: Honestly, how modern it's become.  I mean, it's just as modern, if not as modern as where we live.

Q: And where do you live?

A: New York.  So it's kind of like being in New York right now: the life, the way people are interacting, the restaurants, all the fun activities they have.  It's amazing.

Q: So 12 years ago when you came here, that didn't exist as much?

A: No.  Seeing that, especially for the youth, they're literally riding motorcycles...  What I've noticed, honestly the first thing, is how many young girls are working now, that are in the workforce.  It's unbelievable.

Q: In stores...

A: Yeah.  It's amazing how much more forward and really progressive they've gotten.

~ anonymous Palestinian American woman, "Tourists: What surprised you in Palestine?," The Ask Project, 1:40 mark, February 2, 2023

Anonymous Israeli man on how the Six-Day War impacted Israel

A: Until 1967, we had a wonderful country.

Q: And?

A: Since 1967... the country went to shit.

Q: Why?

A: Because we turned into a big headed people, great heroes.  We conquered all the Arabs.  We made them small.

Q: So it was better before?

A: Yes.  In my opinion, 100%...  Both sides are losing.

~ anonymous Israeli man, "Israelis: What do you think of the one state solution?," The Ask Project, 8:45 mark, February 16, 2022

Anonymous Israeli man on why a one-state solution is untenable

Q: Would you agree with the Palestinians for one state for all?

A: No.

Q: Why?

A: Because in my view, they have a high birthrate and they will be the majority in the country.

Q: What is bad about that?

A: They will take away control.

Q: Okay, let's say that happens.  That can't be fair to the Jews?

A: It won't happen.  They will dominate the entire country, will give preference to themselves, and in the end they will expel us.

Q: You think it will get to that?

A: I am certain.

~ anonymous Israeli man, "Israelis: What do you think of the one state solution?," The Ask Project, 0:10 mark, February 16, 2022

Margherita Stancati on Israeli settler violence in the West Bank

Since Israel captured the West Bank in 1967, the building of Israeli settlements—considered illegal by most countries—has undermined efforts to create a sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

Settler groups and Israeli authorities say many Palestinian hamlets in the West Bank were built without permits and are illegal.  Some of them were established in areas later declared military zones, archaeological sites or nature reserves and demolished. Israeli and Palestinian rights groups say the overarching aim is to forcibly expel Palestinian residents from parts of the West Bank.

Pro-settler groups and some far-right Israeli politicians are pushing for the formal annexation of settlements in the West Bank to Israel.

Settlers have attacked Palestinians in the past, but the current level of violence is unprecedented in frequency and intensity, rights groups say.  “The moment the war in Gaza started, settlers knew they had an opportunity because no one was looking,” said Dror Sadot, a spokeswoman for B’Tselem.

Settler attacks have nearly doubled since Oct. 7 to an average of five a day, resulting in the killing of eight Palestinians, the U.N. said.  In nearly half of the attacks, Israeli forces accompanied or supported the settlers, it added.  A spokesman for Israel’s military said soldiers were required to intervene to stop violations by Israelis against Palestinians or their property and that, should soldiers fail to adhere to orders, they would be disciplined.

~ Margherita Stancati, "Palestinians in West Bank Flee After Settler Violence: ‘We Were Forced to Leave’Since the start of the war in Gaza, around 1,000 Palestinians living in the West Bank have left their homes," The Wall Street Journal, December 3, 2023