As of Wednesday, it has been three years since the Hamas terror attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of approximately 1200 people and started the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. I normally only report on American news, but since this conflict has now cost U.S. taxpayers over 30 billion dollars, with a seemingly endless amount of more money expected by Israel in the future, American citizens deserve to know what is happening over there and what led to this.
So let’s start with the basics. We all know what happened to the Jewish people during the Holocaust. Not good. Anyway, two years after the end of World War II, the UN wanted to make up for what Germany did to the Jewish people, and wanted to give them their own land, so that they were no longer at the mercy of other countries’ governments.
Their solution was to declare that the thousands-of-years-old nation of Palestine be divided into two provinces, a Jewish side, and an Arab side. The Jewish section of the country would be known as Israel, after the Biblical Jewish land. Palestine was chosen as the country to separate because it had a high population of Jewish people already, and Britain had control over the country and was finding it difficult to control the existing tensions between the Arabs and the Jews. Splitting it was a win-win for them, but a nightmare for the citizens.
Arab Palestinians were deeply opposed to it, because Israel was allocated around 56% of the total land, even though they made up around 33% of the population and only owned about 6-7% of it. Also, the land was not divided in a half-and-half border that made sense. It was done in a patchwork pattern where one side would have to cross into the other’s side to get to another patch of their own territory. It was always going to be a recipe for disaster.
And then in the coming ten years, around one million Jews immigrated to Israel. The Palestinians whose families had owned their houses for generations and chose to stay in what was now Israeli territory were forcibly expelled to make room for the Jewish immigrants, and the ones who did not comply had their houses destroyed.
Cue several, several more years of conflict and civil wars and we are brought to more recent times. By this point, things have gotten pretty bad. Palestinians are still salty about being forced out of their homeland, and a lot of Israelis have begun to embrace an idea known as Zionism, which is a belief that the Jewish people have a God-given right to own their ancestral homelands, which encompasses all of Palestine, and areas of Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt.
This belief in Zionism caused a lot of Israelis to have hostility toward anyone they believe is residing in their land. As a result, more and more Israelis took to settling outside of Israel, in Palestinian territory. Israel also set up armed blockades for any Palestinian crossing into Israeli territory (as you have to do to get to the other parts of Palestine). These Israeli blockades have been known for their brutality and oppression, even going so far as to confiscate food and medical supplies, because they see Palestinians as intruders, and want to make things so bad and inconvenient on them that they move somewhere else so that Israel can have their land. The quality of life of the Palestinian people worsened rapidly during this time.
This created the perfect conditions for a radical group called Hamas to take over control of Palestine in 2007. When people are heavily oppressed, they are far more likely to elect someone radical as a sort of “Hail Mary” because normal measures to free themselves have not worked. Hamas is a radical Islamist militia that believes it is their religious duty to stand their ground, protect their land, and keep Israel from taking it. Some of the even more radical members believe that it is also their duty to fight Israel and retake their land, going back to the pre-1947 borders.
Which leads us to October 7, 2023. That day, Hamas and its allies sent around 6000 people across the Israeli border and used thousands of rockets in an attack that killed around 1200 people.
It’s very important to note right here that Palestine has no government military. Hamas is basically just a militia of armed citizens and donations of military equipment that have been smuggled from other countries and improvised. This is a huge contrast to Israel’s IDF, one of the most sophisticated and well-funded (thanks to us) militaries on the planet.
I’ve never experienced the oppression that leads to desperate measures to free themselves such as that sort of violence, so I’m probably just being insensitive, but from the outside looking in, it was a very stupid decision for them to attack a country who was already looking for an excuse to get rid of them.
Israel made sure that its full wrath reigned over Palestine in the coming months. Palestine attempted to fight back, its attacks successfully killing around 800 more Israelis. But Israel’s death toll? Over 75,000 people killed, over 175,000 injured, and between 80% to 90% of Palestine’s hospitals, schools, and homes have been destroyed. Satellite image before-and-after’s of the Gaza Strip are harrowing.
In addition to these things, Israel has greatly damaged Palestine’s food supply and water treatment plants, and their blockades are now tightly limiting the amount of food that is allowed to enter Palestine, including international attempts at aid, creating mass starvation for the people still alive there. Many of the blockades are also refusing to allow injured Palestinians, even children access to their hospitals, or to bring medicine and medical supplies back into Palestine.
This is where things get complicated. How much is too much force? At what point does an unequal war become a genocide? Is how Israel is treating the Palestinians similar to how Nazi Germany treated the Jews? Does Palestine deserve this for the October 7th attack? You would get a different answer from pretty much anyone you asked.
I’m sure you have all heard about the children’s entertainer, Ms. Rachel. She has called for Israel to stop the war on behalf of the children on both sides. She claims that as a Christian, it is her duty to speak up for the innocent children that are being harmed in the war. She’s gotten a lot of hate for being so vocal about it but she isn’t wrong. Over 64,000 Palestinian children have been killed or injured since October 7, 2023, and that’s a tragedy no matter what your other views are. I don’t think “We shouldn’t kill children” is a problematic stance.
Then, of course, came Israeli the claims that the children were only casualties because Hamas uses human shields. They claim that Hamas has hidden its military infrastructure underground below civilian things like schools and hospitals, and that they weren’t actually targeting the schools and hospitals, but instead the underground military sites. Hamas has denied this, and claims that Israel is the one who builds these things under civilian buildings, using their own citizens as human shields. Neither of these things have been able to be confirmed, so we can only speculate about what is true about them.
Last month, however, came a bombshell that shook everyone’s understanding of October 7th. Reports came out that the president of the UAE and multiple Israeli security agencies warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the October 7th attack at least ten days prior to it happening. Netanyahu, who is up for reelection in just two weeks, has, of course, denied these allegations as “fake news”.
But the reports are extremely credible. So if Netanyahu knew about this and did nothing, it would mean that he wanted it to happen. He is a documented Zionist, so he welcomed any opportunity for Israel to wipe them off of “their” land and still look like the good guys. A military attack that he could propagandize as something similar to 9/11 would do just that. He obviously couldn’t bulldoze the country and get away with it. But if it was framed as self-defense, it would be a little easier to sell. But that would mean that he sacrificed those 1200 people who died on October 7th so that he could get his dream of destroying Palestine and expanding Israel. That’s a bad thing to come out just before election day.
Most of the Muslim countries, and even the European Union and the UN have sent aid to Palestine and condemned the actions of Israel. As for Israel’s allies, The United States is by far their largest donor. We have chosen their side unconditionally and given them over $300 billion since they were formed in 1946. Why have we given them so much money? Well, the answer is complicated.
In 1909, a study Bible called the Scofield Reference Bible was published, and it introduced to most of America the idea of dispensationalism, the belief that Christians are to support the Jewish people because they are still God’s chosen people. It’s still a popular belief in our country today and is the primary reason for so much support of Israel as a country.
Then there’s the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, also known as AIPAC, which is a political organization that funds campaigns for pro-Israel candidates. It is funded primarily by dispensationalist Christians and Jewish citizens, and it has an enormous level of pull in our elections. AIPAC has spent over $221 million on US elections in the past five years, and their candidates have a win rate of approximately 98% and span across both Republicans and Democrats.
There is a lot of fair criticism about a political committee with interest in a foreign government influencing our elections, especially where the outcome is candidates who will vote for sending our tax dollars and military tech to that foreign country. I am not unbiased. I am a part of that criticism, because I believe our tax dollars should stay for the betterment of our own country. I also believe that it is hypocritical to accept this because Israel is our ally, when it would be unacceptable if any other country had this much influence over our elections.
If Netanyahu truly did not know about October 7th, then I don’t see an issue with his retaliation to that one attack. However, I think there is a level of respect for humanity that we must maintain, even in wartime. I think Israel went too far on that regard, and the excess punishment that they delivered and are still giving to Palestinians should be seen as the war crime that it is.
But I don’t see the Israeli-Palestine conflict as entirely their own fault. It was a system set up to fail from the start, and everyone knew it was going to happen eventually.
I just wish our tax dollars weren’t paying for it.
(Taryn Ogletree is a local small business owner and author with previous experience of several years in finance.)