But even the details of the current conflict are obscure to many. For example, Israel is often touted as the only democracy in the Middle East, but Netanyahu has said that Arabs are second-class citizens in Israel. Many Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons without charges, and they are subject to a different system of justice than Israelis. Palestinians’ freedom of speech, never the equal of what Israelis enjoy, has been severely curtailed since Hamas committed the 7 October atrocities.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-hamas-war-free-speech-crackdown-palestinians-students-rcna120985

Then there is the treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank. Attacks by Jewish settlers have escalated in recent weeks.

How a Campaign of Extremist Violence Is Pushing the West Bank to the Brink.

In Gaza, the humanitarian crisis worsens as bombings continue, hospitals are overwhelmed or out of service entirely, and the risk of disease looms. Israel claims it does all it can to limit civilian casualties, but evidence suggests otherwise. At least 69 journalists have been killed, and some deaths are called deliberate.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/21/israel-idf-accused-targeting-journalists-gaza

The Palestinians in the West Bank already have a better future. They live at a higher standard of living than most other Arab and Muslim states. Their standard of living is equivalent to Israelis. Even a fair amount of Gazans have a high standard of living. Gaza would not have luxury hotels, shopping centers, riding academies, water parks, restaurants galore, and Porsche dealerships otherwise.

I am staggered by the level of ignorance or bias displayed by that statement. But then the reason for such became apparent when reading chapters in:

‘Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question’ by Christopher Hitchens (Editor), Edward W. Said Sept. 2001

in particular the Chapter ‘Middle East Terrorism and the American Ideological System’ (METATAIS) by Noam Chomsky. Chomsky hardly your typical Palestine empathiser.

We are once again reminded of how dire is the life for Palestinians of the West Bank.

American citizens have been at the forefront of the rise of settler violence in the occupied territories, and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land, but as US passport holders they cannot be barred from their own country.

Many of the estimated 60,000 Americans living in the West Bank outside of occupied East Jerusalem moved to settlements for the lifestyle and have little to do with the Palestinians on whose land they live. But a core of ideologically driven US citizens were at the forefront of building religious settlements on land expropriated from Palestinians while others have led the rise of what has been described as “settler terrorism”.

How American citizens lead rise of ‘settler violence’ on Palestinian lands

METATAIS (almost reads as metastasis uncannily like the cancerous explosion of Israeli settlements on confiscated Palestinian West Bank land – an international crime BTW) also contains a rigorously referenced counter to the propaganda of one Joan Peters which I suspect is behind much of the misconception rife in the US particularly in academia.

The manner in which Palestinians have been robbed of self determination, going against the treaties drawn up and thus another crime, is well described by Baruch Kimmerling in ‘Politicide: Ariel Sharon’s War Against the Palestinians’.

A recent book worth a look is:

‘Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History’ Nur Masalha Aug. 2022

which also discusses the myths used to create the backstory to justify the creation of a modern state of Israel.

Now you may try to devalue the writings cited above but they are only a part of the total of sources that I have studied.

You can quote Finkelstein, Pappe, Morris, Chomsky all you want.

Thank you I might just do that also others that have contributed to opening the discussion in ways that the mainstream media and the likes of AIPAC membership try to suppress.

Try reading Gideon Levy’s ‘The Punishment of Gaza’ which exposes the sheer violent international lawbreaking of Cast Lead. Finkelstein also describes this in his book ‘Gaza: An Inquest into its Martyrdom’ an essential read. In the book Finkelstein also describes the venom (from such Dershowitz) which greeted the Goldstone report on that massacre of the innocents and rebuts their bull with aplomb. I expect that you will try rebuttal using later criticism of the Goldstone report, don’t bother the horse is already bolted and reports from later Israeli attacks on Gaza only serve to underline the findings of that report. You accuse me of bias, that is pot kettle black. Also I have been studying this issue for much longer than three years and fully understand some facts on the ground.

That not everybody finds Finkelstein unreliable is brought out by comments on the dust jacket of the hardback:

“Norman Finkelstein, probably the most serious scholar on the conflict in the Middle East, has written an excellent book on Israel’s invasions of Gaza. Its comprehensive examination of both the facts and the law of these assaults provides the most authoritative account of this brutal history.”—John Dugard, Emeritus Professor of Public International Law, Leiden University, and former Special Rapporteur to the UN Human Rights Council on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, 2001-2008

“No scholar has done more to shed light on Israel’s ruthless treatment of the Palestinians than Norman Finkelstein. In Gaza, he meticulously details Israel’s massacres of the Palestinians in that tiny enclave during Operations Cast Lead and Protective Edge, while demolishing the myths Israel and its supporters have invented to disguise these shocking events.”—John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago

“As a modern-day Sisyphus, rolling the heavy boulder up the hill of disinformation, Norman Finkelstein does not waver in his determination to take it to the crest. Although a non-lawyer, he masters the legal issues, the Geneva Conventions, ICJ advisory opinions, UN resolutions, and commission reports, weaving them into a compelling narrative, an articulate appeal for justice, a protest against the moral cop-out of the international community. Finkelstein refutes the Big Lie and many arcane little lies about Gaza and Palestine. A scholarly manual for every politician and every person concerned with human rights.”—Alfred de Zayas, Professor of Law, Geneva School of Diplomacy, and UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order

See more here:

Gaza: An Inquest into its Martyrdom

Now, I have only scratched the surface here on Gaza will likely follow up with demonstrating the duplicity of the Israeli governments when engaging in ‘peace talks’ in bad faith to allow a halt in any formation of a Palestinian state whilst they themselves prepare for the next big assault on the Gaza strip goading Hamas, by picking off people with sniper fire or by taking prisoners, this to provoke Hamas into a response which can be used to cover an Israel need to ‘defend’ itself. It is never acknowledged that the Palestinians need to defend themselves also.

I have also yet to describe fully the manner in which Palestinians in the West bank have been forced off their lands and walled in to a disjointed existence where basic rights of self determination and freedom of expression are denied them. The vandalism of Palestinian land, destroying crops and buildings further impoverishing those much put upon people, also being picked off by snipers or bored settlers, settlers who often use extreme violence to force Palestinians out of their homes destroying everything left behind, is a marked feature. Their lives are most certainly not rosy as reading any of the books that I have depicted will show.

The war crimes and crimes against humanity of such as Sharon and Netanyahu are legion and ugly.

You can quote Finkelstein, Pappe, Morris, Chomsky all you want. They are held in high disregard by people who value facts, accuracy and history. I could link to dozens of refutations of their mistakes and deliberate mischaracterizations. You need to find them yourself.

You have trotted out a veritable Gish Gallop of Palestinian propaganda points – it would take a week to respond fully. Meanwhile, let me say this: You have done an excellent job of laying out the Palestinian narrative. But, do you even know what the Israeli side of the story is? It’s not too easy to find. I know.

About three years ago, I realized that I knew very little about the conflict and decided to learn the truth of the matter. I looked at BOTH sides. I read the source documents. I learned about actual International law. Google is decidedly not your friend on this – the Palestinian narrative overwhelms. The question is, is it correct?

I can tell you that the Palestinian narrative time after time after time – is not correct. The United Nations position actually contradicts their own policy. The entire narrative that Jews stole land, are occupiers, expelled Arabs, have illegal settlements, that Israel is an apartheid state – all of these are either completely untrue, or have very little truth to them.

I urge you to start your own quest for the truth. I took me several hundred hours of study. I asked myself one simple question which demanded an answer: Whose land is it?

You might want to start by reading the Mandate for Palestine itself – it is still valid International law. And then, you might want to read this, as it addresses what are the legal borders of Israel according to actual International law:

https://arizonalawreview.org/pdf/58-3/58arizlrev633.pdf

Israel stops imposing an apartheid system that old-time south african leaders would be proud of .

Indeed, this is a point explored by Chomsky and Pappé in the books covers of which can be seen in my illustration ‘Bookmark’linked earlier.

Finkelstein, another Jew BTW like the two already mentioned, also touches on this aspect and also the fact that Israel is conducting a policy of incremental or creeping genocide. That the land now disputed was empty of inhabitants and barren when the Jews began their influx (Joan Peters et. al.) has been exposed as a myth and thus can not be used as an excuse to prise Palestinians away from the lands in which they were allowed to settle after the Nakba.

Ahron Bregman in his book depicted in Bookmark wrote, pp307-308:

I believe that the verdict of history will regard the four decades of occupation described in this book as a black mark [and spreading wider as if from an upturned ink pot] in Israel and indeed, Jewish history. This was a period in which Israel, helped by the Jewish diaspora, particularly in America, proved that even nations which have suffered unspeakable tragedies of their own can act in similarly cruel ways when in power themselves. Back in 1967, the defence minister, Moshe Dayan, observed that if he had to choose to be occupied by any force among the nations of the world, he doubted he would choose Israel.

My comment in parenthesis, square brackets.

You need better books.

You need more flexible thinking. Have you read those books?

I was simplifying and concatenating in the interests of brevity as I suffer from disabilities in sight and hand mobility.

In 1967, Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in the Six-Day War. UN Security Council Resolution 242 followed, calling for withdrawal (return to the 1949 armistice lines) from territories occupied in the conflict in exchange for peace and mutual recognition. Since 1979, the United Nations Security Council,[54] the United Nations General Assembly,[33] the United States,[55] the EU,[56] the International Court of Justice,[57] and the International Committee of the Red Cross[34] refer to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as occupied Palestinian territory or the occupied territories. General Assembly resolution 58/292 (17 May 2004) affirmed that the Palestinian people have the right to sovereignty over the area.

West Bank

Sorry for citing Wiki but ploughing again through my books finding apposite quotes that you will only mischaracterise would take time I don’t have with a cancer sick wife.

As for Gaza see: “Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom”: Norman Finkelstein on the Many Lies Perpetuated About Gaza

Isreal is a rogue state terrorising the hell out of Gaza’s population all because a democratically elected entity was used as a cause for the Israeli terrorism in the early years of this century. We hear much about Israel’s right to defend itself but the Palestinians are demonised for attempting, in their own feeble way, same.

You need better books.

The UN did not “allot” any territory to the Palestinians. It can not allot territory, or make a nation, or make a border because it does not have the power to do so. Which is exactly the opposite of the League of Nations, which could, and did, do all three. And the borders which the LON gave to Israel, which were on public display for 20-odd years waiting for Israel to declare its Independence, were exactly how I described them. They were from the Jordan River on the east, to the Mediterranean Sea on the west. They included all of the so-called West Bank, Gaza, and part of the Golan Heights.

What the UN did do was make a General Assembly Resolution, which proposed a partition as part of a peace treaty. The Arabs rejected the proposal and attacked Israel in an illegal war of aggression, and seized Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and held it until 1967 when Israel repatriated its own sovereign territory. There is no entity on the planet – including the United Nations – which recognizes the validity of the sovereignty of territory taken by a war of aggression. Jordan had no legitimate claim to that land then, and certainly does not now.

While this territory is in dispute, nobody besides Israel has anything approaching a valid claim to it. The LON’s Mandate for Palestine (and seven treaties) are still valid International law. There was never a Palestinian state there from 1948 – 1967. And Jordan ceded all claims to it in 1995.

MEMRI is not supposed to be a unbiased source – its mission is to accurately translate Arabic speeches, communications, and official statements into English for the Western world. “Propaganda outfit” ?!?

All you have done here is show us your own biases and misperceptions.

The strange distortion of fact with respect to the West Bank and Gaza, contrary to the information I have here in a slew of books raised red flags. The West bank, originally a part of the territory allotted to Palestine by a 1947 UN Resolution has since been encroached upon by Israel promoting settlements dotted about the territory and since split up by walls and arterial roads for use by Israeli peoples and military, only by Palestinians under duress and for limited access.

They want all of Israel. They say it very plainly, over and over and over in public in Arabic. MEMRI has documented hundreds of such speeches. Perhaps we should listen to them.

I decided to have a look at MEMRI and discovered that this is a basically a propaganda organisation to promote the reputation of the Israeli state and gloss over the war crimes of the Israeli state. War crimes such as repeated breaking of ceasefires to provoke Hamas in making limited responses which gives Israel the excuse for another round of ‘mowing the lawn’ [Finkelstein, Levy], IOW carpet bombing using thousands of tons of bombs, tank shells, shelling from warships etc. All in response to a few enhanced fireworks (bottle rockets0 that Hamas may use in desperation given the disparity in the capability between the protagonists.
On MEMRI:

The second thing that makes me uneasy is that the stories selected by Memri for translation follow a familiar pattern: either they reflect badly on the character of Arabs or they in some way further the political agenda of Israel. I am not alone in this unease.

Selective Memri

This explains the bias evident in both of your posts.

For comprehensive understanding of this issue described as complex but very simple at its base this selection of books will be useful. I have not stopped with these having obtained others since creation but inclusion would make the bookmark unwieldy.

Bookmark

Not sure if the above will work.

OK so there’s some details I glossed over…

Thanks, though, for the much needed perspective.