History of Israel and Its Neighbors

Palestine, Israel, Gaza, The West Bank, Hamas

As I take in all the demented reactions to the atrocities of October 7 at the Music Festival in Israel, I still wonder why, why, why?  How can reasonably intelligent people take the side of this terrorist perpetrator and castigate their clear victims – even before retaliation occurred?  Accordingly, I did some research to understand the case being made that the Gazan/Hamas side is somehow in the right and deserves a pass.

The history of these tiny entities, whose enmity for each other has occupied the world stage disproportionately for decades, dates back thousands of years. Only superficially aware of their history, I did some research.  Even now I am uncertain if my understanding is substantially accurate.  Palestine is the land area that comprises Israel and the Arab territories known as the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.  The Gaza Strip from which the terrorist atrocities of October 7 emanated is a narrow strip of land the size of Washington D.C. wedged between Israel and Egypt. Two million people reside in Gaza making it one of the most densely populated areas on earth.  By comparison, 700,000 live in DC.

The presence of the Jewish people in this area called Palestine dates back to Abraham, whom most religious scholars consider the father of both the Hebrew and Muslim (as well as Christianity) religions through his sons, Isaac and Ishmael.  The Bible teaches that God ordered Abraham to establish his people in a land called Canaan, which is modern day Palestine.  The timeline suggests this was in 1885 BCE.  So like a while ago (4000 years).

The Muslim religion originated in the 6th century.  Islam arrived in Palestine in the 7th Century when the Muslims invaded.  About 2500 years after Abraham established his home base in Canaan/Israel.  The math doesn’t work.  How do the Arabs living in Palestine today get to claim they were there first and got kicked out?  By virtue of a League of Nations mandate, Britain controlled Palestine from about 1922 until they relinquished control in 1947.  When Britain left, the UN recommended a partition plan whereby Palestine would be divided between Israel and the Arabs.  The Arabs turned their nose up at that and war broke out.  The end result was the UN-ordered establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.  The Arabs retreated to several smaller settlements, namely the West Bank and Gaza, after protracted fighting.  Gazans still consider themselves to have been expelled and imprisoned in Gaza.

It seems to me the Six Day War is at the heart of the contention that Arabs in Gaza are disenfranchised.  Egypt controlled Gaza until the Six Day War broke out in 1967.  Israel instructed Egypt that if they closed the straits of Tiran through which 90% of Israel’s oil was transported, it would be considered an act of war.  Egypt did just that and war broke out.  It took Israel only a few days to defeat the combined forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan.  After that Israel, not wanting vulnerability from Gaza or the West Bank, occupied these territories.  Later Jewish settlements arose in the Gaza but they were dismantled and removed in 2005.  Today there are no Jewish settlements in The Strip.  Only several million Gazans who live in camps and squalor with no economy controlled by terrorists of the worst order.

So what is the reality?  Hebrews were in the land called Palestine almost 2000 years before the religion of Islam was even created.  Arabs only invaded the region in 700 AD.  The Arabs rejected the UN resolution for a partition of Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state.  Subsequently, they have waged countless skirmishes, battles, wars and terrorist acts to overthrow Israeli presence. 

They’ve lost on every occasion.

How are they the wounded party and deserving of sympathy for beheading babies and raping young girls and pregnant Israeli women?

True, Gaza is blockaded.

People, food, fuel, internet, power and water cannot leave or enter Gaza without permission from Israel. Egypt has a land crossing in the south, Rafah, but in practice, the military regime in Cairo – an enemy of Hamas and ally with Israel’s most powerful backer, the US – acts as an enforcer of the blockade.  Israel says the blockade is for its own security, citing repeated Hamas rocket attacks and incursions. Some UN experts say the blockade, and intense bombing during five wars on Gaza, amounts to collective punishment on civilians, a war crime under international law.  So, who’s “more right?”  Well, I’d say the October 7th massacre decided that rather conclusively.

One argument I hear is that while Hamas are terrorists, the Palestinians are good people.   Well, fact is the good people of Gaza elected Hamas in 2007 and they run the country (if Gaza is a country).  So, all the money we send to Gaza is controlled by a TERRORIST government.  Might as well send our taxpayer dollars to the Mullahs in Iran.  Oh yeah, I forgot, Barack and Biden already did that – TWICE.

It’s a well-documented fact that very few in the world have any time for the Jews, besides the Jews themselves and the USA (at least most of, I thought).  So where did all this violent antisemitism at the “prestige” universities of American come from?  Well, for sure, the leftist-leaning professors.  But, quite probably, from all the foreign students from the Middle East and China.  You know the ones our unis love because they pay FULL tuition.  Anybody think many of these are subsidized to enter our country and sew seeds of anti-Americanism?  Just like on the southern border where lines of well dressed Chinese with roller bags wait to enter. Nah.

Hope you all got a dose of that garbage the Presidents of UPenn, Harvard and MIT spewed to Congress this week. Refusing to condemn antisemitism on their campuses (“matter of context”), these three liberal sycophants attempted to conflate hatred of the Jews with Islamophobia.  Fact is here in the good ole USofA Jews are 2.4% of the population and yet are the target of a whopping 60% of hate crimes.  You tell me Muslims aren’t stirring this pot!

Hats off to Ross Stevens of Stone Ridge Asset Management who pulled a $100M endowment to the UPenn Quakers.  Good for him.  We need more willing to Defund Education.  Money is the only thing that talks.  Common sense, morality, decency and fairness are out the window in the Halls of Ivy.

I readily admit my sympathies are clearly with the Israelis.  My shallow research may well have gotten some details wrong, so feel free to delete, condemn or clarify.