Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 6: Duplicity as an art form

Palestinian deception designed to influence public opinion

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 1: Introduction

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 2: A historical perspective

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, Part 3: Modern Israel

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 4: Refugees

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 5: Pallywood

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 6: Duplicity as an art form

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 7: Right of conquest

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 8: Conclusion

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Billions of dollars have been sent to the Palestinian people and authorities, based on what appear to be falsehoods and propaganda.

This begs the question: what has Hamas done with all the billions of dollars in aid given to Gaza? As Natalie Ecanow, Research Analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD, a DC based research institute) put it: “An interviewer recently posed a logical question to Mousa Abu Marzouk, a senior member of the Hamas politburo: “Since you have built 500 kilometers of tunnels, why haven’t you built bomb shelters where civilians can hide during bombardments?” Abu Marzouk said the tunnels are “meant to protect us” from Israeli aircraft and facilitate attacks on Israeli targets. “Us” meaning Hamas. Not civilians. Hamas chooses not to build bomb shelters in Gaza because that would undercut its ability to use the population as human shields. By putting civilians in or above its military positions, Hamas knows it cannot lose.”

And it is not just that they funneled all that aid money and bags of cement into their own military installations, in, under and near civilian buildings. They even systematically dug up steel water pipelines to turn them into rockets. And even after that became known, the EU still continued to fund exactly those types of steel pipe water installations in Gaza... The Telegraph headlined “EU funded water pipelines despite Hamas boast it could turn them into rockets”, and explained how the “European Union is continuing aid to Palestinians amid growing fears over how it is being used.”

“The European Union helped to build more than 30 miles of water pipelines for Palestinians despite Hamas terrorists boasting of their ability to forge an arsenal of home-made rockets from pipes.”

Not just a boast, but backed up by a Hamas video showing them doing exactly that...

The fact that they fearlessly post this as a propaganda video, to showcase their ingenuity and commitment to attack Israel, indiscriminately, shows just how biased international coverage is towards even Hamas. They will instead point at the water shortages in Gaza, and blame Israel for that. How dare Israel deny innocent Gazans life-giving water? Amnesty International doesn’t care what Hamas does, they will expose Israels “Occupation of water”! Yet not a word about Hamas destroying their own water infrastructure, and not just that, but to make rockets with which they target civilians?

And to talk about those rockets and their indiscriminate nature, Hamas does not care if even other Arabs or non-Jews are hit by their shelling. As the NYPost reported, “Bedouins once sympathetic to Palestinian cause ‘seek vengeance’ after being targeted during Hamas’ assault on Israel, member says”: “Hamas’ rockets never discriminate between Arabs and Jews — they fall where they fall. But the gunmen who raced across the border, butchering and kidnapping as they went, were not particularly discriminating either.

“I saw reports about Hamas terrorists killing Muslims inside of Israel after they infiltrated the border,” he said. “I was terrified the moment I heard the news — extremely terrified.”

Especially because Masudin’s family hails from the Bedouin village of Segev Shalom in southern Israel, just an hour’s drive from the border with Gaza.” This now begs the question: what exactly is Hamas fighting for?

Either way, the story-telling and exaggerations from ‘Pallywood’ are still an effective tool by Hamas, the PLO and other Palestinian groups. And we in the West keep falling for it, believing immediately every report by Hamas, through their many subsidiary organisations.

Take, for example, the number of casualties on Palestinian side during the latest invasion by Israel. It’s a genocide! Out of proportion violence! They even have a live tracker, on Al-Jazeera, where you can follow the number of people killed and wounded, neatly divided. As of the moment of writing this, the toll stands at this:

Killed: at least 37,626 people, including more than:

More than 15,000 children killed.

Not only that, over 100 journalists have been killed! What a disproportionate number! This must be willful targeting by the IDF, in order to silence the truth of their genocide! Obviously!

What do we see, however, if we examine those claims?

Let’s start with the claims on victims of the war. In May, the United Nations was forced to change her own numbers, effectively halving the death toll. Their first estimates of 9,500 women and 14,500 children killed by the Israeli invasion were revised to 4,959 women and 7,797 children killed. Where did such discrepancy come from?

The answer is simple: the source for those casualty numbers is Hamas. Well, Time states the following sources: “The number of dead in Gaza is based on information released by three Hamas-controlled entities: the Gaza Ministry of Health, Gaza’s government media office and the Gaza chapter of the Palestinian Civil Defense.” Conveniently, those numbers don’t distinguish civilians from fighters or active Hamas members.

There is also some work done by reporters who looked at the death toll numbers from statistical perspective. Abraham Wyner, Professor of Statistics and Data Science at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, wrote an article “How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers”, with the provocative subtitle “The evidence is in their own poorly fabricated figures”. In it, he asked, if the numbers given by Hamas are fake, if there may be evidence in the numbers themselves. He points out that “[f]rom Oct. 26 until Nov. 10, 2023, the Gaza Health Ministry released daily casualty figures that include both a total number and a specific number of women and children.” Based on that dataset, he shows how the death toll is “increasing with almost metronomical linearity,” something very unlikely. He points at other elements, but you can read those in his article. The point remains: there are, apparently, statistical reasons to doubt the Hamas provided numbers.

An interesting paragraph from that article is this: “Taken together, Hamas is reporting not only that 70% of casualties are women and children but also that 20% are fighters. This is not possible unless Israel is somehow not killing noncombatant men, or else Hamas is claiming that almost all the men in Gaza are Hamas fighters.”

Next, the claim about the high number of journalists killed. David Collier is a British reporter with a special emphasis on Israel. When he was confronted with an increasing story about how Israel is targeting Palestinian journalists (see this article by the Guardian, for example, titled “Israeli military accused of targeting journalists and their families in Gaza”)  in order to silence them, and to keep their own atrocities hidden, he decided to take a closer look. In a 150 page report, titled “A Modern-Day Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory Promoted By Mainstream Media”, he breaks apart the claim and the data.

He looked at the lists given by Hamas, which is claiming 109+ have died, and the American NGO ‘Committee for Protecting Journalists’ (CPJ), which claims it is about 70. All people on the CPJ list are also on the Hamas list. Looking at the names, he found many issues. “On the CPJ list, 35 of the 70 named journalists (50%) are openly associated with proscribed terror groups and are therefore active parts of terror organisations at war with Israel.” According to the CPJ rules of neutrality, those people should not be labeled ‘journalist’, based on their membership of Hamas or other terror groups.

Next, “Approximately 19 (27%) others on the CPJ list do not seem to be ‘’journalists’ at all. A freelance graphic designer who works for a PR company, a builder, the unemployed, someone whose father runs a sports club, and administrative employees of media companies, are examples of people listed as journalists by the CPJ.” That leaves 16 people who arguably could be journalists.

Again, a tool used to discredit Israel seems to fall apart when looking closer. Why is there such an incredible amount of false claims and outright propaganda?

Or look at this article by NBC News. It exemplifies the whole system of lies and insinuation. After 2 people were killed in an Israeli strike on their car, and Israel dared state that this strike was aimed at 2 ‘terrorists’, all hell broke lose. NBC (as many other outlets worldwide) wrote that “The deaths of Al Jazeera journalist Hamza Dahdouh and freelance reporter Mustafa Thuraya caused a firestorm among press advocates overseas and Palestinians in Gaza. Hamza was the son of prominent Al Jazeera correspondent Wael Dahdouh, raising the killings’ profile. Facing global outcry, the Israel Defense Forces said this week that the two reporters were members of militant groups.” NBC then states that the IDF had evidence for their claims, but simply stated ‘they had not verified the accusation or the document released by the IDF’. Which did not respond to a request for further information and evidence.

So what did they do? Instead of independently trying to corroborate or refute the claim, they go to Al Jazeera. Of course, they “strongly condemn and wholly reject — and indeed express its very considerable surprise at — the Israeli army’s false and misleading attempts to justify the killing of our colleague Hamza Wael Al-Dahdouh and other journalists.” Next comes the gaslighting and projecting: “Israel has a well-known history of making false allegations and of fabricating evidence”, and, of course, a call for the international community to hold the IDF accountable.

This then becomes a segue into Israel’s record on ‘killing journalists’, ending with a quote from a spokesperson for the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate: “following intense media attention to his killing in a surgical strike, the Israeli military issued a statement with fabricated ‘evidence’ in order to justify the systematic killing of journalists in Gaza.” And a repeat of the basis for that accusation: “So far 72 Palestinian journalists have been killed since the war began, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.”

David Collier has something to say about this. He dug into the Al-Dahdouh family, and found they were inextricably linked to the Islamic Jihad terrorist group. He aptly called that article he wrote about them “The Al Dahdouh clan – kings of the two industries in Gaza”. “There are two flourishing industries in Gaza – terrorism and journalism. One is all about killing Jews, the goal of the other is to deceive the world about it. The Al-Dahdouh family provides a perfect example of how they exist in a symbiotic relationship.” Read the full article for all the info, I will pick out 1 example: Zia Al-Dahdouh, brother of Hamza Al-Dahdouh.

 He got injured in May 202, and remained in a coma for 18 months before passing away in December 20212.

He was, of course, a journalist, just like his father.

Yet he led a double life, as he also was an Islamic Jihad terrorist:

In an Arabic website glorifying the different ‘martyrs’, a biography on Zia Al-Dahdouh firmly identified him as a jihadi, and confirms the double life he led: “Our martyr, the knight Diaa, enjoyed a very high degree of secrecy. He hid the nature of his work from everyone. His mother said: “Diaa was extremely secretive. He did not talk about his work to anyone. Although he did not hide anything from me, all we knew about him was He is in the ranks of Islamic Jihad, without knowing the nature of his work.”

In a message on Twitter, the father, Wael, admitted he knew what his son was doing. He even “thanked all the leaders of the Palestinian factions who visited us or called us and offered condolences and consolation, especially the leadership of the Islamic Jihad Movement, to which our martyr son Zia belongs.”

He died because of an accidental explosion that left him severely wounded and in a coma. This linking of a hidden life, as member of a terror group, with an overt life, and ‘innocent jobs’ like teacher, journalist or UN worker, is not uncommon at all. We keep seeing reports that ‘surprise’ the world, whenever such dual identity comes to light and we hear about how ’at least 12 UNWRA employees were involved in the October 7 attacks on Israel’, for example, as even the WSJ reported.

Let’s go back to the main claims about the overall death toll. In truth, the UN did not lower the overall death toll of over 37,000 people killed in the Gaza strip, but it corrected the number of women and children, as BBC explained in a report. Instead of those two groups comprising 69% of all reported fatalities, as reported on May 6^th, two days later the UN stated that was only 52%. The reason given is rather strange: “The UN says it is now relying on figures from the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, rather than from the Hamas-run Government Media Office (GMO).”

The health ministry in Gaza is responsible, among other things, for handing out death certificates, and takes that responsibility a bit more serious. The Hamas Government Media Office, however, is their propaganda arm. They have a vested interest in spiking the number of women and children killed, to garner the sympathy vote from the world, and to demonize the Israeli military response to their own attacks. There are many reports from Israeli sources that state that Hamas officials/fighters prevent people from leaving buildings, even after the IDF warned about planned bombing strikes. “But your people will die!” “We want them to die!”

This has been corroborated many times. FDD reports that “Eyad al-Bozom, a spokesman for Hamas’ interior ministry, encouraged Gaza’s residents to “stay put in your homes and your places.”” Reuters gave a fuller quote, confirming this: “We tell the people of northern Gaza and from Gaza City, stay put in your homes, and your places. By carrying out massacres against the civilians, the occupation wants to displace us once again from our land.”

DW News, a German state-owned media outlet, reported on the situation, and spoke with Frank Ledwidge, a British military expert.

“It's been described to me as common knowledge - now that doesn't necessarily mean much but you mention it in the report - that many of the headquarters are located under hospitals. I'm certain that's the case and entries and exits in places like mosques or schools or UN, some say UN facilities. And that's the problem and that's why we've seen, I think, so many non-combatant casualties so far, because Israelis have to hit these systems, many of which have command centers, and they are located in such places.”

John Spencer, who chairs the Modern War Institute's urban warfare studies at West Point, confirms this as well. “They built many of their tunnel entrances and exits and passageway underneath protected sites like hospitals, schools, mosques, because it restricts the use of force that the IDF can take without going through the — all the laws of war calculation.”

Even people like António Guterres, Secretary-General of the UN, not a known sympathizer of Israel, stated in a November 6, 2023 press conference that “At the same time, Hamas and other militants use civilians as human shields and continue to launch rockets indiscriminately towards Israel.”

Still, groups like Amnesty International claim that they have not see evidence of such claims. In a July 2014 report, they stated: “Amnesty International is monitoring and investigating such reports, but does not have evidence at this point that Palestinian civilians have been intentionally used by Hamas or Palestinian armed groups during the current hostilities to “shield” specific locations or military personnel or equipment from Israeli attacks.”

The IDF has been issuing many warnings before they strike certain targets, especially when such targets are in or near civilian areas. When the IDF gave a telephone warning about a planned strike at the house of Hamas leader Waal Rajub Al-Shakra, people flocked to his house. Hamas spokesperson Mushir Al-Masri then stated on Al-Aqsa TV (Nov 20, 2006): “The citizens will continue defending their pride and houses and will continue to serve as human shields until the enemy will withdraw.”

In a similar case, the IDF aborted an airstrike, for the same reason. Here we see footage from Al Aqsa TV itself, presented by the IDF. In it, Sami Abu Zuhri states openly “The fact that people are willing to sacrifice themselves against Israeli warplanes in order to protect their homes, I believe this strategy is proving itself. And we, Hamas, call on our people to adopt this practice,” while a video shows drone footage of people gathering on a rooftop.

Sami Abu Zuhri then slipped out the truth, during another interview on Al Aqsa TV (July 14, 2014): “Hamas despise those defeatist Palestinians that criticize the high number of civilian casualties. The resistance praises our people…we lead our people to death…I mean, to war.”

Then you have conversations such as this one:

An IDF officer calls a Palestinian civilian in Rafah telling him he has to evacuate his family 1/2 km away to be safe: “We will wait for you to evacuate but there isn’t much time.”

The Palestinian is not interested in saving his family: “We love death the way you love life.”

“We don’t want the peace that comes from you.”

“We all want to die on this side.”

And this happens all the time.

The Goldstone Report (A UN fact-finding mission headed by Judge Richard Goldstone established in April 2009 following the war, published a 574-page report in September 2009) disputed Israel’s claim that the Gaza War was initiated as a response to rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, claiming that, at least in part, the war was targeted against the “people of Gaza as a whole”, which makes it genocide.

This is exactly what Hamas wants us to do: look at the conflict as Israel against the Palestinian people, and not between Israel and Hamas. The lines are very, very blurred, regardless, to the point that perhaps that it is indeed the case that the conflict is now against the Palestinian people as a whole. More about that later.

Meanwhile, the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (stratcomcoe) issued a report on Hamas’ use of human shields, and offered this conclusion:

“Hamas aspires to exploit its rival’s commitment to normative and explicitly defined international law. Acknowledging Israel’s military and technological supremacy, Hamas’ use of human shields is one aspect of its asymmetric response, utilising another form of warfare: lawfare.

In practice, Hamas employs the best of both worlds: if indeed the IDF uses kinetic force on a massive scale, and the number of civilian causalities surges, Hamas will be able to use that as a weapon in the lawfare it conducts. It will be able to accuse the IDF (and Israel) of committing war crimes, which in turn could result in a wide array of sanctions. On the other hand, if the IDF limits its use of military force in Gaza in order to avoid collateral damage, Hamas will be less susceptible to Israeli attacks, thus protecting its assets, while continuing to fight.”

This tactic, to sacrifice their own people, and then use their dead bodies as emotional blackmail to isolate Israel, works. You see it all around us. And those who dare speak up against it, are shoved even more heart wrenching pictures under their noses: “Don’t you care about this baby dying? Her mother crying as she holds her dead child? You are complicit with the Israeli butchers as they commit GENOCIDE!”

Yeah. Of course.

As another quick aside: people claim that the recent hostage rescue action by the IDF came at too high a price, with 236 Palestinians killed and more than 400 wounded, many of them civilians.

Now, time to go back to that claim that Israel is not targeting Hamas, but the “Palestinian people as a whole.” And it is here that I will make many upset, yet I am afraid that the facts, as they are, force us to ask some very unpleasant questions. The Times of Israel reports that “All of the hostages rescued by the IDF from Gaza, including the four on Saturday, were saved from buildings and not from Hamas’s vast network of tunnels.”

Their reporter specified where the 4 hostages had been held: “Argamani was held by Hamas guards alone in the home of a Palestinian family, while the other three hostages were held at a separate home, also with guards. According to the IDF, Hamas pays such families to hold the hostages in their houses. (Meir Jan said on his release that he, Kozlov and Ziv were held together throughout their eight months in captivity, in a total of four homes, Channel 12 reported on Saturday night.)”

Even CNN confirms this: “Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Israeli forces had to enter civilian areas to reach hostages as this was where Hamas had embedded itself.

He said the hostages had been locked in two separate apartments in civilian multi-story buildings about 200 meters (650 feet) apart, with Argamani held in a different building to the three males. He said the IDF had received intelligence on their location beforehand, noting that hostages in Gaza were frequently moved around and Argamani had previously been held elsewhere. Similar raids had been called off at the last minute “more than three or four times” due to unfavorable conditions, he added.”

Even worse, the hostages were held in the house of a prominent Gazan family. The WSJ brings the story in their headline: “The Hostages Next Door: Inside a Notable Gaza Family’s Dark Secret - To the outside world, they were a physician, a journalist. No one suspected their apartment had become a prison.” The brother of the head of the family is also a Hamas lawyer. While WSJ reported that “it was an open secret within the Nuseirat camp that Aljamal’s family was associated with Hamas”, they also stated that most people around had no idea he was holding 3 hostages in his family home, even though they admitted it is very hard to keep secrets like that hidden within such a close-knit community that is so tightly packed together.

Locals were very unhappy after the raid, wishing Hamas would keep the hostages in their tunnels, away from civilians. Mustafa Muhammad, who fled Gaza City to Nuseirat early in the war, told WSJ “Hamas should give us a map of the safe zones we can stay in because if we knew there were hostages in the neighborhood, we would have looked for another place.”

According to the IDF, the death toll after the raid was less than a hundred, while the Hamas-run Health Ministry gave a number well over 200. Again, the numbers game, where the Palestinian sources have a very poor track record. The fact that the father, a doctor, his son, a journalist, and his daughter-in-law also a doctor, were killed, will undoubtedly mean they will be added in the list of doctors and journalists that the IDF is murdering in Gaza. That they were directly involved in keeping Hamas hostages as prisoners in their own family home, where their children also lived, will be lost to history. If it is up to the current media and Hamas plans, we will only remember the 3 prominent and well respected Gazans who were brutally killed in their own house by the thugs of the IDF... That is the playbook, and the absolute mixing of personal life and Hamas fighter/prison guard/etc. is used to have it both ways.

For decades this has been going on. Palestinian schools teach their children to hate and to kill. Even when I was a teenager, in the 1980s and 1990s, I read such reports. Generation upon generation has been fed those same lines, and the same putrid hatred. Now, before I go on and document this, allow me to pre-empt the criticism that such hatred is understandable, perhaps even deserved, given the crimes Israel has committed. Even if I accept that premise as is (my previous research shows that a certain doubt in regards to claims against Israel is more than warranted, which does NOT mean that I am claiming they have made NO mistakes, and committed NO crimes!), the question is this: if you chose to infuse your children, and their children, and their children, with such hatred, and such an open call to kill and maim, what solution are you working towards? However justified such emotion of hate might be, however we can understand feeling that? This is child abuse, where we impose on our children our own current situation, depriving them of their own future. Instead, we force them to fight OUR wars, to settle OUR scores. That is the inevitable result of teaching kids hate, to the degree we see in Gaza.

Etc.

Children, 7 or 8 years old, are taught to recite poems filled of hate and violence, under the praise of the adults present. And this is just the tip of the iceberg:

The Telegraph wrote already in 2013 an article warning about how “Hamas teaches Palestinian schoolboys how to fire Kalashnikovs”.

Geography and history is likewise part of the curriculum. Except, Israel does not exist, and Jews were never the founders and original inhabitants of Jerusalem. All with the repeated mantra: these are stolen lands, and we will get them back! We will return one day! “Right?” as they ask the children to confirm. “Right!”

In another example, very young children recite this: “World, hear and see, my rock has turned into an AK-47.” When finished, they are praised by the host: “Bravo! You’re so talented!"

And not just to shoot AKs, but even how to throw grenades and plant improvised explosive devices. “Hamas authorities introduced the 'Futuwwa', or youth programme into the state curriculum last September for 37,000 Palestinian boys aged between 15 and 17, conceiving it as a scheme intended to initiate a new generation of Palestinian men in the struggle against Israel.” In the article, they cite Mohamed Syam, head of the education ministry in Gaza. "We are not conducting military training in our schools, we are providing information," he said. "The youth can join military wings of factions, they don't need military training at school."

Yet an article written in Arabic on the Hamas ministry of education website credits the al-Qassam Brigades for its contribution to the course and notes their attendance at a graduation ceremony, also attended by Mr Syam. A YouTube clip showing a military demonstration in a Gaza school also appears to contradict the Hamas official line.

And no, this is not just educational, or academic.

In 2004 (!!), 14 year old Hassam Mohammed Hufni Abdo was sent to a West Bank checkpoint, with 5 to 10 kg of explosives around his chest. When challenged by the soldiers, he froze, and decided he did not want to blow up. This would have killed not only the soldiers at the checkpoint, but also many of the Palestinians waiting in line to pass. At the time, this was reported, among others by the Guardian.

This only got worse. And no surprise, if you fill the heads of impressionable children with such hatred and violence.

Human Rights Voices wrote in a report from September 6, 2018, titled “A Society Not Ready for Statehood: Palestinian Children Who Kill and Their Adult Enablers”. “There have been at least 142 separate terrorist attacks by at least 174 Palestinian children since September 13, 2015. As a result of these terrorist attacks by Palestinian children, 7 Israelis have been killed and 58 injured. Victims have included those who were children themselves.”

Speaking on this, UNWatch reported on some of those attacks:

“These child terrorists were responding to pervasive anti-Israel incitement and glorification of martyrdom coming from Palestinian leaders, on Palestinian television, and in the Palestinian education system. For example:

*    The 16-year-old terrorist who brutally stabbed to death 38-year-old Israeli Dafna Meir in front of her horrified children was acting in response to Palestinian television shows that portrayed Israel as killing and humiliating young Palestinians. He told investigators that if allowed to go free he “would go to Al-Aqsa mosque, even if I was killed, and on the way I would kill as many Zionist Jews as I could.” (source)

*    A 17-year-old posted the following on Facebook one day before carrying out a fatal stabbing attack: “History will write that we faced Israel with a stone, a knife, explosive devices, weapons, and our hearts, and we offered blood of Mujahideen as sacrifice for the place from which the Prophet ascended to heaven. May God accept us as martyrs in paradise.” (source)

*    One week before stabbing to death a 13-year-old Israeli girl, her 17-year-old attacker posted on Facebook about wanting to be a martyr: “death is a right and i am asking for my right.”(source)

*    In another case, a 15-year-old would-be stabber was motivated to become a “martyr” by Palestinian media coverage of recent stabbing attacks. (source)

*    After being released from Israeli prison in 2018, then 17-year-old Ahed Tamimi pledged “to continue on the path of the martyrs, so that their blood will not have been shed in vain. We shall always continue on their path. I have pledged to continue to make sacrifices, even sacrificing my life, for the sake of liberating Palestine.” (source)

Of course, when we hear about Palestinian children in Israeli prisons, we think of actual innocent children. Not people like Ahed Tamimi. Or Marah Bakir.

Yes, there are similar images of Israeli children in military garb, with guns, etc.

This picture shows a young boy dressed like an IDF soldier, armed with a toy Uzi, on the Jewish festival of Purim.

Yet this is met with debate, within the Jewish community. The Times of Israel reported “We are at a time of [evil] decrees, and dressing up as a soldier in this period does not increase happiness, rather it increases sadness,” Rabbi Mordechai Blau of the ultra-Orthodox group Guardians of Sanctity and Education said, according to a report Wednesday in the Hebrew daily Israel Hayom.”

Or you have these two pictures:

And

Israeli children signing artillery shells to be shot at ‘Arabs’. One website titled the pictures “Israeli kids send(ing) gifts of love to Arab kids” and added a letter, purportedly from Israeli children, actually wishing the death of Lebanese, Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and Christian children. Which was never written by actually Israeli children, of course.

The writing on the shells reads, among others, “[To] Nazrala with love from Israel”  and another message “I’ve been waiting for this a long time”, and is signed “Nasrallah.” Knowing that these children are from the settlement Kiryat Shmona, regularly shelled by Hezbollah, lead by Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the context becomes much more clear. As the Jerusalem Post wrote, “Kiryat Shmona: Israel’s northern city is a symbol of the threat Hezbollah poses”. Not hatred against ‘Palestinians’, but a way to deal with the constant fear and attacks, responding to the perpetrator, Nasrallah.

Now, if other pictures and videos can be found about Israelis mirroring the Palestinians, there are 2 things to look at: first, when was the video from? Something broke within Israeli society after the attack of October 7 2023. And this regardless of who knew what, when: yes, there were very serious intelligence problems. Or, if the intelligence was there (it was, see ‘Jericho Wall’), those in charge made the wrong decisions, or decided they needed a cathartic experience to be able to shape public support in their own country. People are tired of the constant attacks, after all the goodwill steps taken, and all the concessions made in offered peace agreements. “Land for peace” showed a true commitment to peace. The existence of the Palestinian Authorities itself, and the autonomous regions of Gaza and West Bank, is only the result of Israeli desire to meet the Palestinians halfway on the way to peace. Even when Egypt, Jordan and Syria occupied those areas from 1948 until the Six-Day War in 1967, they never worked to give the Palestinians in those territories any autonomy!

Second: there will always be hatred, sadly. But look at the general sentiment: is it generally accepted? Is open debate about the acceptability of such hatred possible? Do other people openly take the opposite position? Then compare that with what happens within the Palestinian territories, and notice the difference... It is a qualitative difference, not just of degree.

So, what do we do with this mountain of history and stories?

As I hope my series have shown, so far, Palestinians grow up with a vast number of falsehoods. Foundational myths, propaganda, revisionist history and education, they cannot escape it. People born in 1948 are now grandparents or even great-grandparents. If you have a people immersed in such falsehoods for 4 generations, you create a parallel reality, dooming any conversation, agreement and understanding right from the start.

The result is much more than lacunae in the education of the Palestinian children. This determines their worldview, and it determines their relationship with Israel and with Israelis.

To give an example, the following. In an article for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs ambassador Dore Gold wrote “Speaking in Qatar on Feb. 26, at an Arab League conference, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas resumed the Palestinian attack on the historical Jewish connection to Jerusalem. This diplomatic strategy began with his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, who questioned whether the Temple ever existed at the end of the July 2000 Camp David summit: “There is nothing there.” Then U.S. President Bill Clinton was stunned. Arafat then asserted that Solomon’s Temple was in Nablus, not in Jerusalem. Two years later in leading pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat, Arafat continued: “They found not a single stone proving the Temple was there …”” This stunned Clinton. It should stun us all.

This is now the official Palestinian position. The Jerusalem Post reported in 2015 about the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem: “Asked in an interview with Channel 2 if he accepts that the Jewish Temple existed at the site, the mufti said “the Aksa Mosque was an Islamic mosque since the world was created.” He added, “It was never anything other than a mosque.” How can Palestinians accept the Jewish desire to go and  pray near the Temple, if they flat-out deny there ever was such a temple? Israel accepts freedom of religion, which is why it calculates the Islamic sensitivities and demands into their own policies and negotiations. Palestinians cannot reciprocate that, as they don’t accept the most basic Jewish and Israeli claims.

In the second article, we saw how the Waqf is actively destroying the archaeological evidence on the Temple Mount, in an attempt to erase that Jewish history. Let’s repeat this quote, and look at it in light of what we have learned in the subsequent article:
NBC reported on this destruction of Temple archaeology, and quoted the director of the Waqf: “I have seen no evidence of a temple,” said the Waqf’s director, Adnan Husseini. He had heard “stories,” he acknowledged, “but these are an attempt to change the situation here today, and any change would be very dangerous.” Now the real meaning should be clear: ‘change is dangerous’. That the revisionism is theirs, trying to change the real facts into their own deception that Jews were never in Israel or Jerusalem, is a detail, but one that fits perfectly within the Palestinian habit of deception.

And this deception is pushed far and hard. In 2016, the UNESCO adopted a resolution, submitted by several Arab countries. In it, they wrote how Unesco “deeply deplores the failure of Israel, the occupying Power, to cease the persistent excavations and works in East Jerusalem particularly in and around the Old City, and reiterates its request to Israel, the occupying Power, to prohibit all such works in conformity with its obligations under the provisions of the relevant UNESCO conventions, resolutions and decisions.” The adoption of politically very loaded language is one thing that jumps out: “Israel, the occupying power’. Next, the complete omission of Waqf destruction on the Temple Mount, and their complete refusal to allow any investigation or preservation.

Apart from a single line in the beginning, “Affirming the importance of the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls for the three monotheistic religions,” added in the second version of the document after a delay in the Unesco proceedings caused the first version to be leaked and caused an uproar, there is no mention of Jewish or even Christian names or elements. The temple mount is strictly referred to by it’s Arab name Al-Aqṣa Mosque/Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharif. As the Guardian reported: “Israel says the resolution’s exclusive use of Arabic terms to describe parts of the site deliberately airbrushes out the Jewish connection to the site of the Second Jewish Temple – destroyed in 70 AD.”

Israeli historians and archaeologists (and other archaeologists, too) decried this blatant politization of Unesco. The Temple Mount Sifting Project protested:

The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adopted today a biased and political resolution that disregards Judaism’s historic connection to the Temple Mount, casts doubts regarding the Jewish connection to the Western Wall, and protests against the Israel Antiquities Authority’s attempts to supervise construction work on and around the Temple Mount in order to preserve the antiquities and other archaeological data.

This is a purely political resolution that was composed by Palestinian officials and that was accepted by UNESCO as is. It seeks only to preserve the heritage of Islam, and while this is important, UNESCO must not do this at the expense of Jewish and Christian heritage and culture. This resolution does not recognize the daily reality of Jerusalem or the Temple Mount, and its political agenda is in opposition to UNESCO’s own charter and purpose of protecting and promoting science, culture, education and heritage.

The events in the past decades prove that Muslim authorities on the Temple Mount, which are officially controlled by Jordan but controlled by the Palestinian authority and Hamas in practice, have no concern of preserving even their own archaeological heritage, or advancing education, science, and culture at the site.

The very political terms, and the very one-sided nature of the complaints by Unesco are incredible, especially in light of the Palestinian refusal to acknowledge the historical claims of Israel, and their flat-out rejection of the fact that there once was a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Deutsche Welle reported: "Contrary to what the Israeli government claims, the resolution ... aims at reaffirming the importance of Jerusalem for the three monotheistic religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. It calls for respecting the status quo of its religious sites," Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), said. This is the game that is played: with some token language, Palestinian groups can appear open and respectful of the other side, while in practice they reject even the most basic claims of fact and truth. Groups like Unesco and the UN then fall for this deceipt, and lend their support to the Palestinian cause, rumberstamping resolutions like this one by Unesco, without a word of protest.

This blatant denial of a Jewish Temple is new, too. The official 1925 Guide Book to the Temple Mount, published by the Islamic Supreme Moslem Council (Waqf) in charge of the Temple Mount (the Al-Haram Al-Sharif, in Arabic, also known as the Al-Aqsa), readily admits that there was a Jewish temple.
“The site is one of the oldest in the world. Its sanctity dates from the earliest (perhaps prehistoric) times. Its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute. This too is the spot, according to universal belief, on which “David built there an altar unto the Lord and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.”

 This is very clear historical revisionism for political reasons. The effect is felt, after decades and generations, where Palestinians cannot accept actual truth anymore, as their whole worldview has been poisoned and tainted by these lies. How can they and the Israelis ever agree on anything?

It would be hilarious, if not for the real-life consequences of this abject ignorance.

Every Palestinian knows about the Nakba, it is drilled into them from the moment they are born. Of course, not the actual version, but the one where they are the victim, and Israel the sole aggressor. It is emotional, not factual. When Arafat refuses a very good peace deal, it is whitewashed, and ignored, so the Palestinians never have to look at themselves for why their situation hasn’t changed yet. Many blood libels still survive, even among higher educated Palestinian people.

Primitive blood libels survive easily, as well, in such a climate. The idea that ‘Jews drink blood’, and therefore kidnap children and women is still going around. Many of those ideas are based on misunderstandings of actual Jewish religious beliefs or practices, even if some of them only done by the Ultra-Orthodox groups.

Or you have this:

From Memri:

According to Agence France Presse (Sept. 8), the book, previously banned by Israel, has been allowed by the PA and is 6th on the Palestinian best-seller list. Bisan publishers in Lebanon first published this edition in 1963 and again in 1995. The book costs about $10. The cover shows a picture of Hitler, a swastika, and the title in both German and Arabic. The translator, Luis Al-Haj, wrote the following introduction:

    "Hitler the soldier left behind not only a legend stained by tragedy itself; the tragedy of a state whose dreams were shattered, a regime whose pillars were torn down, and a political party that was crushed. Hitler was a man of ideology who bequeathed an ideological heritage whose decay is inconceivable. This ideological heritage includes politics, society, science, culture, and war as science and culture."

Inconceivable to us, in the West, that such books and ideas are spread without any shame.

The link with Islam makes things so much harder, as well, adding a religious substrate that is hard to counter. Any concession is seen as a betrayal of Islam, of the Prophet. Any topic is linked to something Islamic, seen from Islamic eyes, and then made untouchable, as the proven revisionism regarding the Temple shows. By hyper-spiritualizing everything, everything becomes religious, and political accords, negotiations and concessions are thrown out of the window.

The obsession with death, and the glorification of martyrdom, even for their children, is something people in the West struggle conceptualizing. We simply cannot fathom a culture or framework of thinking where such is normalized and accepted, and when we are confronted with it, we automatically downplay and whitewash it, making it conform to our own standards and expectations. If we take Palestinian thinking at face value, as they themselves see it, it becomes hard to see them as just victims.

But we need to tackle this and all the other topics brought up, and confront not just Israel, but specifically also the Palestinians, with these errors. They have to take responsibility, and change direction, if there ever is to be any hope for a peaceful solution.

The next part will deal with a series of various topics that are relevant to a proper understanding of the background and context of the current conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.