Rise in Antisemitism and Anti-Israel Sentiment

Rise of anti-semitism and anti-Israel sentiment across the world is something that has been garnering a lot of attention in different media outlets and social media platforms. Although, depending on which of these vessels of information (and disinformation) you venture into, the story tends to vary drastically from one in which years of oppression, apartheid and colonialism led to a tragic event on October 7^th 2023 to one in which the absolute destruction and raising of the Palestinian city of Gaza and the killing of tens of thousands of civilians was an action those victims had ‘brought upon themselves’

A bitter feud/A tense history:

Before anyone begins forming opinions on the situation in Palestine and Israel, one must go further back than the mass killings Hamas carried out on the Nova music festival in Re’im in the Negev desert region. Specifically one must take a nuanced view of what life has been like for Palestinian people living under Israeli rule for the last 77 years.

The issue stems as far back as November 2^nd 1917, when, the British foreign secretary  Arthur Balfour liaised with Lionel Walter Rothschild (from the very influential and wealthy Rothschild Jewish family) expressing his support for establishing a Jewish ‘homeland’ in Palestine. At the time Palestine was a governorate under the British Empire (for those that say Palestine never existed, that piece of misinformation or fake news is easily refutable with a quick search on any of your favourite search engines). This laid the groundwork for the long-standing conflict between the Jewish and Arab populations.

The Palestinian people were not consulted but rather were forced to accept boatloads of Jewish migrants from all over the world (mainly Eastern Europe, Spain, Morocco and South America) to come settle in the land they had called home for centuries.

Things escalated quickly over the years between the UN Partition plan of November 29^th 1947 and late Israel’s declaration of independence in May 14^th 1948.

By that time the Jewish population had its own militia (their own Hamas, if you will) the Paramilitary Zionist organisations, the Irgun, The Lehi and The Hagannah, who carried out a number of terrorist and sabotage attacks against the British and Palestinians. (The bombing of the King David Hotel being one of the most infamous) and  the Deir Yassin massacre, killing at least 107 Arab villagers, including women and children, and expelled the rest of the village’s residents (approximately 750 people).

There were a lot of back and forth victories and defeast for the Israeli militias (eventually the Israel defence Forces) between them and the Arabs from Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen who helped the fledgling Palestinian populace, these countries themselves still in their infancy and using outdated arms and small numbers of soldiers as their were emerging from mandatory rule.

3 truces were entered into with the last one being broken by a massive assault by the Israelis on many fronts, surprising unprepared and ill equipped Arab forces who then gave way to a lot of land as 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled. By the time, the borders of what is know as Israel today were formed in 1949

With the Gaza Strip and the West Bank completely separated by now Israel territory, something that would make a two state solution practically impossible and would make daily life a living struggle for any Palestinians who had family on either side to visit one another as they would be forced to go through hundreds of checkpoints just to visit relatives, often dying on the way.

Israel further macerated the Egyptian (at the time to strongest Arab force) with a surprise attack on their airfields in 1967, destroying the majority if not the entirety of the Arab air force after a cunning intelligence operation kept the Egyptian pilots occupied in parties and belly dancing events and attacked while they were intoxicated and sleeping in the early hours of June 5^th that year.

With no air support, Israel decimated all the ground troops of the Arab states and re-inforced its control of the area as the sole major military power in what will forever be the embarrassing defeat of the aptly named, Six Day Way.

The only time the Arab forces managed something close to a victory would be the 1973 Yom Kippur war, when, under Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian forces surprise attacked Israel with a huge offensive and re captured a large chunk of the Sinai peninsula on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal. Israel, however, still managed to gain territory when it took the Syrian Bashan region of the Golan Heights.

Settlement’s expansion and further land grabs:

For decades upon decades later, Israel would expand it’s possession of land in the West Bank (where Jerusalem is situated and the most Holy Sites of the Jews and the Muslims) destroying Palestinian homes, evicting its residents and reshaping the landscape so that future pictures of the areas would look different to what the Palestinian residents held when citing proof of their land certificates they still had possession of.

Jewish families from all over the world (the United States, England, France, Poland, Russia, Spain, North Africa) were invited to come ‘settle’ in Israel. They would get a house free of charge to raise their families there and expand the Jewish population. The issue with this was that they were doing this at the expense of Palestinian people’s homes, who were now forced to be refugees in refugee camps across the Arab world, often living in slum like conditions and losing all their possessions.

Palestinian resistance grows:

The Palestinian resistance movement has had a large number of groups rising up to fight for what they saw as the occupation of their land and the subdugation of their people, some with more extreme motives than others.

In the 1970s there were many hijacking and assasinations of Israeli politicians, civilians, sportsmen and military personnel.

The PLO – Palestine Liberation Organisation and the PFLP – Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine formed in the 60s and 70s where more left wing, Marxist ideology groups but with the purpose of fighting for Palestinian independence.

Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad were two groups formed in the 70s and 80s had more Islamic and extremist views about the taking back Palestine and evidently so in their methods of attacks (suicide bombings became a thing, seeing every Israeli as a potential target etc)

Fatah – this was Yasser Arafat’s party and consisted of more moderate resistance with a mix of special operations militia that targeted Israeli military but was also a political wing that was willing to enter into negotiations with the Israeli authorities.

History of Israeli actions targeting civilians:

Multiple raids into the holy Aqsa mosque and West Bank villages of Nahalin resulting in the deaths of 21 people and injuring 150. This started the first Intifada in October 1990.

Operation Grapes of Wrath 1996 – Shelling into Lebanon killing 154 Lebanese Civilians

Mansouri Attack 1996 – IDF helicopted rocketed ambulances killing 2 women and four children

Nabatieh Fawka attack 1996 – IDF bombing of an apartment killing 9 people, including 7 children

Qana massacre 1996 – Shelling of Lebanon killing 106 and injuring 116 civilians

Siege of Refugee camp of Jenin – In an attempt to clear the camp of so called Palestinian militias, 500 Palestinians were killed, the majority being civilians with some militant elements also destroyed.

This led to the Second intifada in April 2002

2006 Gaza Conflict – Indiscriminate bombing of targets in Gaza including hospitals and sniping of Journalists from Italy, Egypt, Germany and other media representatives reporting on potential war crimes.

2008-2009 Gaza War – Disproportionate force (a common theme) used, against purported Hamas targets but the civilian casualties mounted into the thousands. Israeli forces would begin using the Human Shield reason (that terrorist elements were hiding or using Hospitals to fire rockets or stash weaponry, often disproven)

On top of all that there was the use of white phosphorous, the 2012 and 2014 Gaza Wars, further destruction of homes in the West Bank and Gaza, Shelling of UNRWA schools, the killing of 16 journalists between 1999 and 2014 (many more if you take into account the journalists killed since October 7^th 2023)

The list goes on and there are too many to name. This is not to say that Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups have not committed their fair share of attacks targeting civilians, such as the 1972 Munich massacre, the multiple suicide bombings in Tel Aviv in the 90s, the attacks by the Venezulan terrorist Carlos the Jackal in Paris etc.

Conclusion and review:

The history is a complex one. The Jewish peoples have faced persecution on a large scale for centuries or millenia in many geographic locations under many different empires. AS to why the Jewish people seem to have been targeted so oft is still a subject open to much interpretation, from it being the ease of which to scapegoat a certain group of different religious values to more sinister conspiratorial theories such as Jews somehow establishing themselves in dominant and prominent positions of wealth and power and eventually attempting to subvert the nations in which they resided.

In any case, one can only sympathise with the Jewish people who almost were exterminated under Hitler’s abhorrent concentration camps and Gas chambers, that these people deserved a homeland and a safe space, after so many centuries of oppression and exodus.

The solution is one involving two states, with access from Gaza to the West Bank for Palestinians and their own police force (a military should not be needed) and the recognition as such by Israel. On the other hand, the recognition of Israel by all Arab states that it is there to stay and a slow but purposeful progression towards allowing the Palestinian people the freedom to live in a non subjugated way, to be able to visit their relatives from one city to the other and to stop further land confiscations. For arable land that was confiscated illegally to be returned to the Palestinian farmers that they may grow their own produce and not rely on foreign aid to live, all seem like acceptable, humane conditions.

With none of that in sight, however, is it any surprise that an oppressed people will do whatever they can to fight back ? I leave that up to you to ponder upon.