The Israel-Palestine Conflict, Contextualised

So, I am back on here after a long break, and while this was something I was planning to do at some point, right now it is for raising some awareness and increasing the knowledge about a very important but very neglected humanitarian issue.

So neglected, in fact, that this is something that no one was really all that aware of or concerned about even when it’s been going on for the past 75 years. So neglected, that even I as a Muslim never knew much about it until very recently.

If you’ve been following the news in some form, you would probably know what I am talking about. It’s the Israel-Palestine issue.

Honestly, I am not even sure of what exactly I want to share with my first post regarding this, I did have a list of topics to cover, but so much has happened, and so much keeps happening, that I have a hard time keeping track of it all, yet alone finding the words, the heart, and the long-lost habit of writing to talk about all this.

But I guess I will just start writing, and see where it goes.

History, again

You might have seen videos or read articles about the history of Palestine. You might have seen the claims and counter-claims to who rightfully owns that land. Or you might be one of those people who are yet to get into all of it, and are looking for a place to start learning about it, or just the motivation to start learning about it.

Let this article be that place. Let this article be that motivation.

Before I get into the details, I will just post a quick video by Vox that explains all of this. It is important to note here that this video is seven years old, which means that it has nothing to do with, and is not influenced by, what the current situation looks like.

So, now that you have watched the video, I believe you will understand why history was important to put into context in here. It will become even more clearer as you pay attention to the current Israeli narrative.

The history, or the past 100 years of it, establish a few things:

1. Palestinians were the ones who originally lived on that land, and had done so for a long time
2. The ‘country of Israel’ didn’t exist 75 years ago
3. What existed was Palestine, and this name, which is not recognised as a country by the UN now, was very much known and recognised as Palestine at the time and was referred to as such by all the documents of the time
4. Israel was established on top of the existing country of Palestine, with its inhabitants still very much living there
5. Palestinians did not have a ‘choice’ in this matter as some people like to point out. It was very much a decision made by the British without consulting the native population
6. As if this wasn’t enough, even the boundaries drawn by the UN, which were already unfair for Palestinians because of the aforementioned lack of choice, were further violated and have been violated by Israel ever since
7. And Israel intends to continue these violations until it has taken all the land that originally belonged to the country of Palestine (maybe even beyond)

Long story short, this is like someone illegally occupying half of your land AND using arms to drive you out of the other half, to claim it all as their own too.

For some reason, the oppressed has become today’s oppressor. And they continue to refer to history which shows them as the oppressed in order to gain sympathy while simultaneously denying the history that shows them becoming the oppressor.

Now I will talk about how this breaks the narrative presented by Israel to its citizens and the West for decades, and I will address the claims by Israel as to why that land rightfully belongs to them.

1. It was their land and taken from them by force by Arabs and Palestinians: As already established, Palestinians already lived there for centuries, and Arabs weren’t attacking and driving out Jews, if anything, Europeans were the ones indulging in anti-semitism, and later assisting Israel in driving out Palestinians
2. Palestine and the Arab world is related to Nazism and the holocaust: This one is so absurd that I don’t think anyone who knows anything about history can possibly call it true. if you don’t know about Nazism and holocaust and Hitler and World War II, I suggest looking into it, it is too much to cover in a single article
3. The land belongs to jews because they lived there thousands of years ago: Humans have migrated so much over the millenia, it would be unrealistic to expect a current population to go away and make space for people who were there sometime prior in history. Also, DNA samples for both Palestinians and Israelis have been found in Palestine, so that way the land at least belongs to both, and not just Israel

If you still have your doubts, you don’t need to look too far to find documentaries about what happened to Palestine, what kind of occupation they have been living under since the past 75 years, and the extent that Israel goes to to ensure that the true narrative and the true living conditions and threats to Palestinians aren’t leaked out to the world.

There is plenty of footage showing how Israeli soldiers and civilians treat Palestinians and take over their land, all the attacks that they have made on Palestinian civilians and civilian places such as hospitals, UN shelters and mosques over the decades, and not just the past two weeks, how they force journalists out and warn them against recording what is going on in Palestine, Israeli ministers referring to Palestinians in the most inhuman terms, and the population of Israel using the same language of hate that they have been indoctrinated into by their government.

Even since 7th October, you will find multiple instances of Netanyahu and other Israeli authorities referring to Palestinians in the most degrading terms, calling them ‘human animals’ (not specifying Hamas vs civilians), and many more. These are all things they have said which they deny whenever the public uproar gets too loud, as in the case of Al Ahli Hospital blast.

Due to the power dynamics of today, western nations are also deeply invested in protecting the Israeli narrative of events, with the media staying silent on this even when their own reporters are threatened. I will probably go into the reasoning behind the West’s support of Israel in my next post.

But for now, I encourage you to look at all this from a new lens and from a critical thinking perspective, keeping aside your presumptions and personal biases, if you haven’t already done so. I know you are probably being fed information from the other side too, all the beheaded babies and women, that Israel talks about. Some of that has already been retracted by Israel since then, at the same time as they continue to refer to it regardless. As for the rest, as I have already mentioned, you don’t have to look too far to find the flaws in Israeli, Western, and mainstream media narrative.

This is because proofs for many of Israel’s claims are either nonexistent and a variety of ‘because I said so’, or are fake. This is because of Israel paying for social media ads about Israel while Palestinian content is shadowbanned by these platforms. This is because when you ask questions to the media, they divert or ignore you instead of giving answers. This is because they ask you to ignore the huge death doll on the Palestinians and the horrifying images of the dead and injured in Gaza, saying ALL of it is fake, while providing little to no concrete evidence of their narrative, just telling you to believe it because they said it. This is because they threaten the UN chief to resign and banish the UN from coming to Israel. This is because Israel continues to deny a ceasefire.

Above all, this is because there is a reason why a majority of the countries, and those countries’ populations, are on the side of Palestine, despite most of them not being that way before this started, despite many of them being fed ads by Israel on social media and elsewhere, despite most of them having vastly different cultural and religious backgrounds. It’s because they have studied this issue and identified the lies they were told for decades.

As such, I implore you to take just a little time off to study all this in detail, and to go beyond the past two weeks, to really understand what’s going on. I also want you to remember that being pro-Palestine is not being anti-semitic, as Jewish people have supported Palestinians for a long time, which would then make them anti-semitic too, and that obviously doesn’t make any sense.