#read about the history of israel and palestine

[infiniteglitterfall]

This is vitriolic and rageful in a way I think most people won't understand.

For anyone who thinks OP is way out of line or overreacting or whatever, I'd like to offer a set of helpful quotes.

The first one is graphic as hell.

In Abu Kabir, I examined incinerated remnants of teeth and bones; charred remains of children; and physical cadavers of victims. I read CT scans of children and adults bound together and burned alive. I viewed images of a decapitated young girl, her child skull tethered to her trunk by only a sliver of decaying skin. Her facial expression, surrounding milk teeth, haunts me still. Across the boundaries of death, her Edward Munch-like scream still echoes.

The second is a little long, but I cut out as much as I could:

Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps.

...Supportive Forces Behind the Enemy:

For a long time, the enemies have been planning, skillfully and with precision, for the achievement of what they have attained. They took into consideration the causes affecting the current of events. They strived to amass great and substantive material wealth which they devoted to the realisation of their dream.

With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others....

They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world.

They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it....

They aim at undermining societies, destroying values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character and annihilating Islam.

...When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying....

This is the only way to free Palestine. There is no doubt about the testimony of history. It is one of the laws of the universe and one of the rules of existence. Nothing can overcome iron except iron.

The first quote is from a Muslim physician in Jordan who's also a senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum. And who went to Israel to see the aftermath of Hamas's attack for herself.

That's what she's describing here.

The second quote is an excerpt from Hamas's founding document: its 1988 covenant.

And while I'm here, a final one from a Lebanese news interview on October 24, 2023:

Hamas official Ghazi Hamad: "Israel is a country that has no place on our land. We must remove that country, because it constitutes a security, military, and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation, and must be finished. We are not ashamed to say this, with full force....

"The occupation must come to an end."

LBC News Anchor: "Occupation where? In the Gaza Strip?"

Hamad: "No, I am talking about all the Palestinian lands."

Anchor: "Does that mean the annihilation of Israel?"

Hamad: "Yes, of course.... The existence of Israel is illogical. The existence of Israel is what causes all that pain, blood, and tears. It is Israel, not us.

We are the victims of the occupation. Period. Therefore, nobody should blame us for the things we do. On October 7, October 10, October 1,000,000 – everything we do is justified."

I'm tired. I'm so fucking tired. It's 3 am. I've stayed up till 3 am so many times now, compulsively showing people truths they don't care about, researching things people say that turn out to be wildly untrue, and on and on.

All out of the pure trauma reaction to being told that people like you weren't actually raped and genitally mutilated, even though you'd already read eyewitness testimonies from survivors.

That the war is an attempt at genocide, not a reaction to attempted and openly announced, desired, genocide.

That Jews who think it's okay for Israel to keep existing are Nazis; but Hamas, which is the armed wing of an organization supported and funded by the Nazi Party, is "the Palestinian Resistance."

fuck every single one of you who defended these rapist monsters. fuck hamas.

thank g-d for israel. thank you hashem for the idf.

i dont give half a flying fuck what any of you say. you are evil. you have no morals. hamas and the rest make shit up about us that THEY DO. they do it every day. and you are all blind to the truth.

you would have loved a good goosestep in 1939. even now, you claim to care about one man who did a salute when you supported and babied a whole society of men who love hitler and hate jews enough to rape our women, murder our elderly, kill our children, and kidnap our people. you support the tearing down of the one jewish country and vilify our liberation movement because nazis tell you to with faked videos.

evil.

🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕

[fuckyeah-bears]

Genuine question. What was it about Hamas breaking into homes, doing war crimes, killing civilians, raping women, killing and possibly beheading babies made y'all break your "no politics" rule to post support about it?

Condemning one side for genocide while ignoring the other side chanting "gas the Jews" is a special kind of irony.

i don't have the energy to respond to this right now. i never once said i approved of or condoned hamas. hamas is a terror organization and any and all killing of human beings is wrong. however you are listening to propaganda. most of the sensationalized headlines about hamas, specifically the beheading one have all been proven to be fake and have literally no evidence. hamas does not represent the palestinian people or the people of gaza. and yet the genocidal israeli government has decided to indiscriminately punnish all 2.1 million people living in gaza for the horrific actions of hamas. this is called collective punishment and it is literally defined as a war crime. gaza's population is 50% children. gaza is the world's largest concentration camp and open air prison. it has been under military blockade for the past 16 years. israel controls the food water electricity fuel movement of people and everything else going in and out of gaza.

this is a walled off open air prison that is extremely densely populated, extremely poor, and full of children. and israel is depriving the entire population of food, clean water, electricity, and carpet bombing them, using banned illegal chemical weapons, refusing to allow in humanitarian aid. they have bombed hospitals, bombed residential buildings, bombed people fleeing after israel told them to evacuate (but joke was on them because they can't evacute since there's no where to go because israel controls all the check points and refuses to let palestinians out, instead trapping them in gaza while there's still no electricity or water or food or any other supplies coming in.

and then don't even get me started on the propaganda israel has been using to demonize and dehumanize palestinians. the defense minister literally called all palestinians "human animals" and said israel would treat them as such. top government officials have released images depicting palestinians as cockroaches and insects needing to be exterminated. they have referred to all gazan's as terrorists to justify their massacre of them.

this is fucking genocide. this is exactly what the nazi's did to jewish people. this is genocide. this is genocide. this is genocide. i have not heard a single palestinian person directing hatred at jewish people. (which is not to say that there has been no antisemitism going on, because there absolutely has, and I wholeheartedly despise it). however i have heard them criticize the israeli government for its depravity and cruelty and literal fucking war crimes it is gleefully committing.

criticizing israel for committing genocide is not antisemetic. criticizing a government for doing horrific evil highly illegal things against international law and against literally all moral humanity and human decency is not antisemetic. it is literally the morally right thing to do. what israel is doing is evil.

there are jewish people who agree wholeheartedly that israel's illegal occupation of palestine and their apartheid and ethnic cleansing are horrific. because they are.

and don't talk about irony. israel is the biggest fucking hypocrite in the entire fucking world. surviving a genocide does not give you the fucking right to perpetrate another genocide. but here israel is. and despite everything they do, they somehow always always play the victim despite the fact that they are the oppressor. israel will always say that any criticism of them and their actions is antisemetic. when in fact, it is entirely justified criticism of a deeply awful and morally bankrupt governnment that is and has been perpetrating heinous atrocities against the people of palestine for decades.

israel gives all jewish people a bad name. because real jewish people know that genocide is never okay. real jewish people know that israel's actions against palestinians are horrific and in no way justified. real jewish people stand with palestinians and support a free palestine.

all this and more is why it is the morally correct thing to do to support palestine and take a stand agains israel

and because you asked, the reason i'm breaking the 'no politics' rule is because of the responses from people like you. so many people have bought into israel's propaganda and their dehumanization of palestinians. there is so much islamophobia that any time people hear a single critique of israel, they jump in to condemn hamas and say 'oh so you support hamas' 'what about hamas' 'so you approve of people wanting to kill jews', demonstrating the insane racist mental gymnastics they are doing by literally mentally equating all palestinians with terrorists who deserve to be killed. and this is so widespread. people and all the world governments are sitting back and watching as this happens without lifting a goddamn fucking finger. with ukraine and russia, everyone jumped in to defend ukraine and support them and condemn russia. immediately. but it's radio fucking silence for palestinne. because of racism and islamophobia and because people are too cowardly to take a stand and risk pissing off all the masses of misinformed racist islamophobic biased people who support israel. and not only are people not fucking talking about it (or only talking about poor innocent israel and their right to 'defend themselves' which is the biggest fucking load of shit ever), almost all of our governments are actively funding israel's military. the very same fucking military that is literally committing a genocide right now.

if you're not horrified by all of this, then you are not a human being. if you do not stand with palestinians as israel blatantly to tries to annihilate them, then you do not have an ounce of humanity left in your soul.

Free Palestine 🇵🇸

[incorrect-riordanverse]

the problem with all these white authors like rick riordan who are revealing their stances on the israel-palestine apartheid is that they barely do anything but virtue signal when they claim “i’m on the side against war” “i’m anti-violence” “i abhor terrorism.” zero people are going to disagree with you. zero people believe what hamas did is justified. zero people think israel shouldn’t have a right to defend itself against terrorism. but that isn’t what israel is doing when they collectively punish all of palestine, who doesn’t even have an official army. when rick riordan says some wishy-washy bullshit about the violence suffered on both sides of the conflict, and words his whole dumbass blog post like it’s violence that is in any way equal, that literally helps no one. in fact, it’s so damn negligent of the 75 years of violence that palestine has suffered and been oppressed for. yes, there are innocent civilians in israel who are suffering, no one is disagreeing with you. that doesn’t erase the fact that israel is a disgusting state that has used state-sanctioned violence on a systemic scale since its conception, and the oppressed people have responded to that in violent retaliation (because OBVIOUSLY they would). israel is built on the subjugation of palestine, there is no equal suffering between the two.

[crimeronan]

guys. okay. rubs my temples.

i have blacklisted every word u can Possibly think of to block posts i do not want to see and somehow keep seeing them. so Please know that this is not a shit-starting post. hence why it's unrebloggable. because i legitimately just want to communicate to people in my immediate sphere.

it is... Not Acceptable Or Appropriate... to make/reblog posts referring to a collective of "jews" or "jewish people" in response to israel's genocide of palestine.

what i mean by this are posts along the lines of "what jews don't realize is-" "i wish american jews knew-" "can't wait to watch jewish bloggers come up with the worst takes imaginable-" etc etc etc.

it is similarly Not Acceptable Or Appropriate to refer to rabbis, synagogues, jewish practice, and other aspects of judaism/jewish culture as a monolithic hivemind that's loyal to israel. this includes "you're all being brainwashed by your rabbis/synagogues" "synagogues are zionist institutions" "stop speaking hebrew until your people stop committing war crimes" etc etc etc.

your kneejerk reaction (if u are a leftist goy) will likely be along the lines of: but it's simply like referring to a collective of british people or american people wrt imperialism, colonialism, and war crimes. you don't mean LITERALLY all jews, just like you don't mean literally all brits or americans.

this is unfortunately a false equivalence because of the antisemitic history and violence behind the idea of Monolithic Jews and Dual Loyalties. there is a quick overview of some of The Problems here; jewish scholarship and discussion of this is incredibly broad and varied... because jewish people are incredibly broad and varied.

like i'm fucking begging. you have Got to knock it off. i was gonna say something snide about how it's telling that i'm seeing a lot more posts About The Jews than about the fundamentalist christians who fanatically support israel's right-wing fascist govt, but like.... god i don't care i don't care i don't want to be writing this. It Just Sucks.

That's It. It Just Sucks

while i'm here, since i don't plan to talk about this anymore unless i have important resources to share: ACTUAL helpful things you can do are to keep an eye on the news and communicate with your own governments. for americans (just bc i am american) -- the biden administration has pledged to work with israel to allow humanitarian aid into gaza. it's important that the public pressure for that to happen continues & that the documentation of what's happening in palestine continues.

the more you guys turn your issue into an issue with "the jews" or "jewish people," the more time we're going to waste explaining why this is not acceptable or appropriate. which is frustrating because there is shit out there that Matters A Whole Lot Fucking More Right Now.

so keep talking about what matters. and please please PLEASE think for two seconds before you make any posts referencing jewish people.

[whywoulditho]

not saying the holocaust wasn't bad. but i need people to understand that it wasn't the only genocide that happened in the same period of world history. not because i want you to pay less attention to holocaust but because i need you to ask why it's the only one we ever talk about. it wasn't the longest occured massacre of a marginalized group, it wasn't the most gruesome, it wasn't the one with the most casualties, it wasn't the first and it wasn't the last one. i need people to think about why we didn't pay much attention to all the other holocausts after WWII that happened simultaniously and were just as horrible. it says so much about media, the news we are fed, and that our empathy is BOUGHT by the same people that keep funding genocides all over the world.

[embraceyourdestiny]

"Israel’s military said Thursday it had conducted an overnight raid into the northern Gaza Strip as part of “preparations for the next stages of combat,"

israel literally said this with their own fucking mouth and people insist this takeover isnt happening THEYRE LYING TO YOU YOU IDIOT WAKE THE FUCK UP

[ohfuckohfucknoplease]

So let's talk about Ukraine vs Palestine. While generally I hate when people bring it up, cuz I lost people in the Ukraine war and I lost my home, I STILL GET IT. Fuck, I really do. The glaring and blatant racism that exists even in the humanitarian sector is CRAZY. I work in humanitarian aid, and in case you didn't know, the humanitarian sector has 4 humanitarian principles that everyone in the sector has to adhere to, one of them being NEUTRALITY.

Well, wouldn't you know, one of humanitarian organizations I had the displeasure of working with has signed an open letter that dismissed the notion of being neutral in the Ukrainian war. They signed a letter that urged people to stop being neutral on the issue. And when this was brought up to higher ups (not some no name local organization, but an INTERNATIONAL COMPANY), they said IT'S FINE. It's their choice to not be neutral and we have to respect that.

Which is fucking crazy, because imagine if something like this was discussed in literally any other context? Like right now, Palestinian speakers are getting invited on TV only for the interviewer to jump on the person that was grieving just a moment ago about their lost family, asking if they condone Hamas. Holy shit, isn't it fucking crazy?

Ukrainians had a big platform to advocate for their cause, they had loud voices tell it as it was instead of what the propaganda said. That's just true. A lot of Ukrainians are proud of that. It's only possible because, YES UKRAINIANS (mostly) ARE WHITE. Geopolitically there's more to that but that's not the point of the post at all. The blue eyed blonde Ukrainian stereotype isn't true in reality but it's true in minds of westerners. And that's really all that matters to them.

Are Palestinians asked the same questions Ukrainians were? Why not? What is the difference? Ask yourself that question, and know that the right answer is that Ukrainians are (mostly) white and more palpable for the western audiences.

Anyway, I urge all Ukrainians to actually read about this issue from Palestinians, stop falling for stupid propaganda, stop trying to whitewash Israel as well. Same goes to every Ukraine sympathiser. And before anyone comes here and tells me I don't know anything about Ukrainian situation and war... I work in a humanitarian field in crisis analytics and data analysis, I am Ukrainian, I am from Donbas, I lost relatives and friends in the war and my home, so maybe I even know more than some of y'all.

[thebusylilbee]

"zionism is for jewish people to discuss, goyim have no place in this conversation !!!"

what in the holy ethno-brainwashing... are yall... are yall zionist pieces of shit forgetting that the primary victims of the zionist ideology are goyim palestinians and arabs as a whole ??! never fucking seen oppressors be this confident to try to erase their own fucking victims from the conversation holy shit. this is like saying "white supremacy is for white people to discuss, people of color have no place in this conversation" like im sorry but THE JEWISH SUPREMACIST COLONIALIST IDEOLOGY THAT DEHUMANIZED PALESTINIANS AND ARABS AS A WHOLE FROM DAY FUCKING ONE IS VERY MUCH AN OKAY TOPIC TO DISCUSS AMONG ARABS YOU BRAINDEAD ZIONIST CUNTS

[penwrythe]

Learning how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable is important. I'm genuinely not okay when I hear, see, and research more about the genocide happening in Gaza, the history of Israel's founding, and its terroristic actions. It is important for me to know.

Taking short breaks (usually a couple of hours or so) does help when things get too much. Then, I return and continue engaging with reblogs on Palestine.

I really don't know what else to say, but this genocide must end. All genocides must end and must never happen again. Keep talking about Palestine, Armenia, Congo, and Sudan! Keep protesting! Keep fighting!

What is important now is to be as loud as you can be! Raise ruckus! Make your voice unavoidable! Be as annoying as possible! Do not let your representatives ignore this!

[statementlou]

tbh as an israeli, i was so embarrassed that they put the flags there and i wish they didn’t do that. I don’t support that at all.

❤ and that's why YOU are my people, not those flag wavers- it's definitely my identity as a Jew that makes me extra outspoken about this issue in particular because like you say I feel personally embarrassed on behalf of my kin, and a responsibility by association to speak out against the israeli state's genocide. And it's made so much worse by the way people think israel= all jewish culture, or that to be anti-Israel is anti-semitism which, as @captainrayzizuniverse pointed out in tags (YES! well said and thank you!! you are also my people❤), is a tactic of zionist propaganda used to shut down criticism of the Israeli state. I think anon meant well and wants to keep an eye out for anti-semitism during this terrible time of its rise everywhere and I appreciate that! But that's why it's important to talk loudly and constantly about the fact that taking a stand against anti-semitism does not have to include defending the Israeli state- and indeed to be broadly anti-racist, one must call out Israel's colonization and genocide in Palestine

[lookinthymirror]

i do care about palestinians and whenever i try to join groups dedicated to supporting them, i immediately get met with antisemitism. don't get me started on the fact that you'll hear more negative things about israel and jews than positive things about palestine. so much of their "appreciation" for palestinian culture focuses on such weird shit like palestinian terrorists being violent or random child speaking about bombs...it's very fetish-y and trauma porn-y. i try to read books by palestinian scholars (memoirs history books etc) and not a second goes by before i run face first into antisemitism. the most popular antisemitic lie i always always always see is: jews don't belong in israel because it's not our land. this is BS that i can't entertain because it is so painfully false. the most antisemitic people i've ever met hide behind palestine. back when i was stupid, confused and clueless, i thought i was anti zionist and you know what made me a zionist? interacting with other anti zionists. i realized "wait a minute even the most annoying zionists haven't been as cruel as the anti zionists in my circles". and then of course the more anti zionist lit i actually read i realized it clashed with reality. moreover, their arguments were childish and ridiculous, for example hebrew bad.

it's funny because I considered myself to be firmly anti-zionist *until* I started listening to what palestinians and their supporters actually have to say. not the peace-loving public image they've crafted, but what they say when they feel comfortable. a friend of mine who's basically been radicalized by these marches in europe directed me to follow a bunch of palestinians on instagram who have been documenting the war. I do genuinely feel very bad for anybody caught up in war and was initially 100% on their side, seeing how their homes were being decimated and loved ones killed. but then every so often they'll make an off-hand comment about praying for the destruction of the jews or calling all jews vermin and it's like... is anybody else seeing this?? are you seriously cool with this?! one of them, an ostensibly sweet girl in her early 20s, posted a story yesterday lamenting the hostages being returned because they didn't deserve to live and should've been secretly killed by hamas. she actively cheered on acts of terrorism against israelis and celebrated the release of murderous criminals. she openly stated that she wants all jews wiped off the earth. and people I have respected for years, so-called leftists and humanists an feminists, aren't saying a peep against it. they're also cheering it on. they're swallowing all of that hamas propaganda and praising them for "looking after those evil soldiers well", saying they're "the bigger country" despite hamas parading these poor girls in front of a banner calling them nazis. I tried raising the point with one friend that hamas has repeatedly put gazans in danger by refusing to build shelters for the public, by stealing aid that's delivered (the girl I mentioned above even documented this! but still supports hamas!). my "friend" said I sounded dangerously like a zionist, as if that's the worst thing in the world. I feel like I'm going insane.

^^

[museofvoid]

have been purposefully avoiding to talk about the war on gaza with my dad because i just kind of knew he'd be insufferable about it, but just now they brought up greta thunberg's support for palestine on the news and he commented on how stupid it was so i just had to say something

and turns out that, yeah, my dad thinks israel is completely justified in destroying all of palestine along with its people :)

[edge-oftheworld]

still though actually what the fuck

[studyingnstruggling]

holy shit! Is that an Arab leader with Hitler??????

But I thought there was no Arab anti Jewish sentiment! I thought the Arabs were only oppressed and it’s the Jews that are evil!

What the fuck he was also with an SS commander??

Wait so a “free Palestine” wouldn’t include Jews? Is that why the Arabs rejected a two state solution?

I thought it was the fault of those evil imperialist white supremacist settler colonial Jews?????

Holy shit! So it was the Palestinians who rejected a two state solution!

wait a goddamn minute. “responsible for devastation in Middle East”? Could this be the reason why Arab countries reject Palestinian refugees?

Rejecting more peace plans with violence? I thought those evil Jews were the violent ones?

WAIT? Israel left Gaza in 2005??

Preventing others from attending a peace conference? Damn.

Perhaps when we take responsibility we can start talking about peace, and an end to violence. Because how can we move forward if we are in denial.

[chaiaurchaandni]

In the biggest street in Tel Aviv, Israelis hang up signs that say “Victory looks like 0 people in Gaza,” and “Genocide Gaza.”

via ahmedeldin

[victoriousscarf]

This article was from last October and thus does not take the most recent events into account but I often find myself going back to it lately... Excuse me while I also now quote excessively from it below:

ROBINSON

And this helps us to understand the development of Palestinian resistance to this project. Today, this is characterized often as being based on irrational anti-Semitism. But as you point out, when we understand the history of the development of this resistance, we see it differently. There are even early Zionists on the record saying things like I don’t know how you expect the Palestinians to react, they’re going to react the same way every indigenous population reacts when there is a colonial project to impose minority rule. [Ben-Gurion himself said: “If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country.”]

...

ROBINSON

There have been many attempts in the United States and Israel to make Palestinians completely unpalatable and impossible offers and then characterize Palestinians as unreasonable, uncompromising “rejectionists” when they won’t accept the offer.

KHALIDI

That’s a trope that goes back to Abba Eban: “Never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” There weren’t very many opportunities. There might have been one or two. I talk about the 1939 White Paper. It was a very limited opportunity. The Palestinians, in my view, were very foolish to fail to accept it. There might have been other opportunities. I was involved in the negotiations at Madrid and Washington [in the early 1990s] with an Israeli delegation in which we tried to achieve self-determination and statehood. And that was something that was systematically denied us by the ground rules laid down by the United States at the behest of Israel. The same ground rules ended up governing the Oslo process later on. So there was no opportunity there.

It turns out, I argue in the book, and I’ve argued elsewhere, that the maximum that would be offered, has ever been offered to the Palestinians, is some form of autonomy under Israeli sovereignty with complete and absolute Israeli security control. Israelis would have control of the borders, the airspace, the land, and the water under everything that Israel was willing to offer under every Israeli government. I go into Yitzhak Rabin’s shift in his willingness to accept the existence of a Palestinian people and his willingness to negotiate with the PLO. But even Rabin in his last speech made it very clear that there would never be a Palestinian state.

So self-determination, statehood, and independence are ruled out by the Americans and Israelis, then and now, I would argue. So what are we talking about? You can pick up your own garbage, but we’ll arrest anybody we want, any time we want, to torture them, beat them up, and drag them off to our jails. And we’ll do it to anybody who resists our dominance, and we make all the laws, and you obey our military rules. What kind of “state” is that? That’s not a very good deal.

ROBINSON

Let me dwell on this because it seems critical. To the extent that there has been talk of a “two state solution,” what has actually been on the table consistently in every negotiation for the last 50 years has never involved a concession by the United States and Israel—they negotiate together—that Palestinians should have anything that we would consider to be equivalent to a state in the sense that other states are states.

KHALIDI

The United States talks the talk, but it will not walk the walk. It will never say “this outcome has to include complete and absolute Palestinian independence.” It will never impose that in Israel. It will never lay that on the table as the outcome that has to be reached.

There are some Israeli governments that came closer to this than others. Rabin came closer. But none of them would have accepted the idea that Israel would give up its security control, that Israel would cease to control the borders, that Israel would cease to be the only sovereign power. I mean, if you don’t have your own army and your own borders, and your own economy, and your own ports and your own airports and your own airspace, you’re not sovereign. You’re not independent. You’re a dependent subunit of a larger sovereign state. And that’s all that Israel has so far been willing to offer. The United States has never pushed it to do anything more than what Israel was willing to do. The deference of the United States to Israel is limitless.

...

ROBINSON

When you said the Palestinians are not engaging in terrorism, one important point is that various means of resistance are denied them. You’re very critical in the book of attacks on civilians. But at every stage, the available ways that Palestinians can fight back have been constricted, and those things that horrify us come out of that. 

KHALIDI

I think there’s another point to be made. I argue in the book that various forms of armed action, including, especially, attacks on civilians, are horrific, immoral, and, very importantly, politically counterproductive. I go into this in some detail at one point in the book. But it has to be said that slaughtering civilians is slaughtering civilians. When Israel kills 16 children and five women in Gaza, using 2000-pound bombs and Hellfire missiles, if you don’t describe that as terrorism, and you describe the death of an Israeli child or an Israeli woman or another Israeli civilian as terrorism, this is Orwellian language. You are simply using the word “terrorism” as a bludgeon to demonize Palestinian resistance, whereas somehow the murder of children in Gaza … 16 kids were killed in these attacks, five women were killed in these attacks. Heaven knows how many other civilians were killed. Maybe a dozen militants were killed? I don’t know. But 30 or so civilians were murdered. If that’s not terrorism, then the word has no meaning. And this happens every single time. There were 240 civilians killed in one of these attacks a few years ago. Each time the toll is equally lopsided. Why are attacks on civilians not considered terrorism? If you use the same measure, I have no problem with the use of that term. But then you have to describe the use of Hellfire missiles and F-16s and heavy artillery in the same way. In the book I go into the kinds of weapons that are used by Israel— the artillery, the missiles, the aircraft, the helicopters—and the indiscriminate nature of the attacks on a population of a couple of million people in a tiny area. If that’s not terrorism, I don’t know what is. But of course, the term is only applied to the Palestinians. Somehow Ukrainian resistance is not terrorism yet Palestinian resistance is. I repeat, I think the killing of civilians is wrong and immoral. It’s a violation of international law. But if that’s true for the Palestinians, certainly it’s true for the Israelis as well and on a much larger scale.